Plenary Session Ι New Horizons: Navigating the Power Industry in Times of Change

Wednesday, 21 September 2016, 14:20-14:40h/V02

National emission reduction = global climate protection?

Dr. Frank Umbach, Research Director of the European Centre for Energy and Resource Security (EUCERS), King‘s College, United Kingdom

While the recent UN-climate summit in Paris can be celebrated (not quite without reason) as a big success – compared with the global Copenhagen in 2012 –, the worldwide implementation of its agreement is facing huge challenges. This is even true for the EU and its ambitious integrated climate and energy policy due to the fact that the challenges have increased not just in regard to the time schedule as the result of the UK’s Brexit. Even in the optimistic scenario of its worldwide implementation, the global climate warming might grow up to around +2.7° C instead of the target of 1.5-2°C. At the same time, the worldwide gap between global energy mega-trends and the worldwide climate protection targets have increased rather than decreased by the Paris climate summit. Against this background, the climate protection strategies for the worldwide energy policies need actually not just critically being reviewed in regard whether they are sufficient, but also whether they are expedient and effective to achieve their objectives. A worldwide coal-phase out, for instance, is in the mid-and longer-term perspective both not sufficient and only partly effective for achieving the 2°C-target as long as the industrial countries (with the exception of the U.S.) – despite the accelerated expansion of renewables – remain dependent more than ever on the import of other fossil energy sources and increasingly on critical raw materials for the ‘green technologies’ in the mid-term perspective. While those countries are decreasing their national carbon emissions, they might often even produce higher global green-house gas emissions as the (higher) emissions at transport and the exploration in the producer countries are not taken into account. Equally, the displacement of production sites of the industry to other countries will often transfer those emissions just to other countries and ultimately even result in higher global emissions (carbon leakage). Hence, almost any national emission reduction, by disregarding its global impacts, is often a insufficient approach, as national emission reductions do not automatically also lead to global emission reductions, but might often increasing emissions.