Green energy policies could halve emissions by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). They suggest that to achieve this, the world’s energy sector will need a trillion dollar makeover.
Their new joint report ‘Green Growth Studies: Energy’ suggests that green policies around the world, such as scrapping fossil fuel subsidies, supporting new renewable technologies and improving energy efficiency could cut greenhouse gas emissions in half in the next forty years.
But this is likely to need nearly $46trillion of new investment into the energy sector, suggests the research.
Ambassador Richard Jones, deputy executive director of the IEA said: “As the energy sector is responsible for the majority of manmade CO2 emissions, reforming it is critical to solving the climate change dilemma.”
He added: “As developed countries renew their energy infrastructure and developing countries build new power plants to meet growing energy demand, the OECD and IEA are urging governments to adopt a suite of policies to increase energy efficiency and lower the carbon-intensity of the energy sector.”