Fuel subsidies at 16 times carbon prices stymie pollution curbs

Live Mint , Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Correspondent : Mathew Carr
London: Subsidies for fossil fuels are overwhelming efforts to curb pollution, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

Tax-breaks, subsidized fuel prices and other government support amount to an incentive to pollute worth $115 per metric tonne of carbon-dioxide, the agency said Monday in its Energy and Climate Change report. That compares with an average $7 cost to buy emission permits in carbon markets, according to the Paris-based group.

While Europe has moved to boost its emissions price and nations including India and Indonesia are cutting subsidies, countries need to make more ambitious pledges to limit heat- trapping gases, the IEA said. Fossil-fuel support systems represent 13% of global emissions, compared with the 11% governed by carbon markets, according to the group.

The test of success of climate talks in Paris in December will be “the conviction it conveys that governments are determined to act to the full extent necessary” to achieve the goal of keeping the rise in temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) compared with a pre-industrial average, the IEA said.

Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use rose 0.5% to a record 35.5 billion tonnes last year, according to BP Plc data. Still, growth was the slowest since a drop in 2009, as Chinese coal consumption held steady. Under climate pledges delivered so far, the world’s estimated remaining spend for curbing emissions will be consumed by about 2040, the IEA said.

That limit is consistent with a 50% chance of keeping the rise in temperature below 2 degrees, the agency said.

Energy-related greenhouse gases will probably continue to rise after 2030 under a scenario that covers climate pledges made so far, said the adviser to 29 nations from the US to Turkey.

Without stronger action before or after 2030, the world’s path would be consistent with an average temperature increase of about 2.6 degrees by 2100 and 3.5 degrees after 2200, it said.

The global economy will probably expand by 88% from 2013 to 2030 and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 8%, according to the IEA.

 
SOURCE : http://www.livemint.com/Industry/7g6SMwG1uXUyeRKSGLgA7K/Fuel-subsidies-at-16-times-carbon-prices-stymie-pollution-cu.html
 


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