The International Energy Agency decided to exceptionally release a special early excerpt of the World Energy Outlook 2009 climate change analysis. The WEO excerpt sets out the latest energy trends and their impact on greenhouse-gas emissions, updated in light of the financial crisis, as well as detailing a pathway for the energy sector to achieve a transition to a low-carbon world – with a particular focus on the investments needed between today and 2020, a focal point for the international negotiations.
According to the report, the financial and economic crisis has had a considerable impact on the energy sector worldwide. Investment in polluting technologies has been deferred and CO2 emissions could fall in 2009 by as much as 3%. However, the economic downturn has created an opportunity to put the global energy system on a trajectory to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions at 450 parts per million (ppm) of CO2-equivalent, in line with an increase in global temperature of around 2 degrees Celsius.
The document is available on: http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/docs/weo2009/climate_change_excerpt.p…
The entire WEO 2009 will be launched in London on 10 November 2009 and contains substantially more climate analysis than that in the excerpt.