Climate Solutions : WWF’s Vision for 2050

This WWF report seeks to answer the question: “Is it technically possible to meet the growing global demand for energy by using clean and sustainable energy sources and technologies that will protect the global climate?” In other words, can a concerted shift to the sustainable energy resources and technologies that are available today meet the more than doubling of global energy demand projected by 2050, while avoiding dangerous climatic change of more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels?

WWF is acutely aware that many of the steps considered in this report – an end to the dominance of fossil energy, a phaseout of nuclear power, a rapid expansion of biomass energy – carry with them social, environmental, and economic consequences that must be carefully weighed and closely managed. To take a single example, even the limited shift to energy crops today threatens accelerated conversion of wild habitats and further deprivation of the world’s poor by driving up food prices. A global energy transition must be managed to refl ect the differing priorities and interests of the world community at large.

Halting climate change is a long-term undertaking, but the first steps must be taken by governments currently in power. The future depends on them making critical decisions soon which could lead to a low-emission global energy economy in a timescale consistent with saving the climate, and planning for the social and economic dimensions of that transition to minimize the negative impacts of such urgent change.

Solutions

The WWF report identifies the following six solutions and three imperatives as key to achieving the goal of meeting global energy demand without damaging the global climate:

1. Breaking the Link between Energy Services and Primary Energy Production - Energy efficiency (getting more energy services per unit of energy used) is a priority, especially in developed countries which have a very inefficient capital stock. The model shows that by 2020-2025, energy efficiencies will make it possible to meet increasing demand for energy services within a stable net demand for primary energy production, reducing projected demand by 39% annually, and avoiding emissions of 9.4Gt carbon per year, by 2050.
2. Stopping Forest Loss - Stopping and reversing loss and degradation of forests, particularly in the tropics, is a crucial element of any positive climate-energy scenario. The probability of success of the climate solutions proposed here drops progressively from greater than 90% down to 35% in the absence of effective action to curb land-use emissions.
3. Concurrent growth of Low-Emissions Technologies - The rapid and parallel pursuit of the full range of technologies, such as wind, hydro, solar PV & thermal, and bio-energy is crucial, but within a set of environmental and social constraints to ensure their sustainability. By 2050, these technologies could meet 70% of the remaining demand after effi ciencies have been applied, avoiding a further 10.2Gt carbon emissions annually.
4. Developing Flexible Fuels, Energy Storage and New Infrastructure - Deep cuts in fossil-fuel use cannot be achieved without large volumes of energy from intermittent sources, like wind and solar, being stored and transformed into transportable fuels and into fuels to meet the thermal needs of industry. New fuels, such as hydrogen, that meet these requirements will require major new infrastructure for their production and distribution.
5. Displacing High-Carbon Coal with Low-Carbon Gas - Natural gas as a “bridging fuel” offers an important opportunity to avoid the long-term lockin of new coal power stations, providing significant carbon savings in the near term, while other energy sources and technologies are grown from a smaller industrial base.
6. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) - The model shows that, in order to stay within the carbon emissions budget, it is essential that fossil-fuel plants are equipped with carbon capture and storage technology as soon as possible – all by 2050. This has major and immediate implications for the planning and location of new plants, since transport of carbon dioxide to distant storage sites would be very costly. Overall, fossil fuels with CCS could account for 26% of supply in 2050, avoiding emissions of 3.8GtC/yr.