Saturday, June 25, 2011

If The Sea Is In Trouble, We Are All In Trouble

The report that the ocean is in trouble is no surprise. What is shocking is that it has taken so long for us to make the connection between the state of the ocean and everything we care about – the economy, health, security – and the existence of life itself.


If the ocean is in trouble – and it is – we are in trouble. Charles Clover pointed this out in The End of the Line, and Callum Roberts provided detailed documentation of the collapse of ocean wildlife – and the consequences – in The Unnatural History of the Sea.

Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learned about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost. Some 90 per cent of many fish, large and small, have been extracted. Some face extinction owing to the ocean's most voracious predator – us.

We are now appearing to wage war on life in the sea with sonars, spotter aircraft, advanced communications, factory trawlers, thousands of miles of long lines, and global marketing of creatures no one had heard of until recent years. Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Friday, June 24, 2011

Why Localisation Is A Key Part Of The Answer

Last week it emerged that the Department of Energy and Climate Change, whose official position remains that "we do not have any contingency plans specific to a peak in oil production", was actually stating in internal documents released under the Freedom of Information Act that "it is not possible to predict with any accuracy exactly when or why oil production will peak".


Energy bills are going nowhere other than up, with knock-on effects across the economy. The fossil fuels of the future will be dirtier, more expensive and from less accessible places. At the same time, the need to decarbonise is urgent. The world's carbon emissions increased in 2010 by a record amount, in spite of many of the world's economies being in recession, and 19 countries recorded their hottest ever temperatures.

In March, Mervyn King, Governor Bank of England, said: "This is not like an ordinary recession where you lose output and get it back quickly. You may not get it back for many years, if ever, and that is a big, long-run loss of living standards for all people in this country." When something isn't working, it behoves us to question whether a different approach might be more appropriate.

One such approach, spreading around the world with great vigour, is the Transition movement. It suggests that within the challenges of peak oil, climate change, and our economic troubles lies a huge opportunity. In the same way that vast amounts of cheap fossil fuels made globalisation possible, the end of the age of cheap oil will inevitably put globalisation into reverse. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Groundwater Depletion Rate Accelerating Worldwide

ScienceDaily — In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment of groundwater use.


These fast-shrinking subterranean reservoirs are essential to daily life and agriculture in many regions, while also sustaining streams, wetlands, and ecosystems and resisting land subsidence and salt water intrusion into fresh water supplies. Today, people are drawing so much water from below that they are adding enough of it to the oceans (mainly by evaporation, then precipitation) to account for about 25 percent of the annual sea level rise across the planet, the researchers find.

Soaring global groundwater depletion bodes a potential disaster for an increasingly globalized agricultural system, says Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and leader of the new study.
More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Summary Of The UNCSD Subregional Preparatory Meeting For The Caribbean 20 JUNE 2011

The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) Rio+20 Subregional Preparatory Meeting for the Caribbean convened at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana, on Monday, 20 June 2011.


Over 50 participants, including representatives from governments, UN bodies, and non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations attended.

The meeting generated Caribbean inputs in preparation for the UNCSD in June 2012. Participants discussed creating a green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication, the need for a blue economy addressing oceans and related issues, the institutional framework for sustainable development (IFSD), and emerging issues and partnerships.

Participants recognized that there is much work to be done in the lead-up to UNCSD and little time to do it. They identified the value and benefits in engaging in the process and the opportunities that it represents, particularly in regard to the green economy. The meeting generated interest and momentum within the Caribbean subregion, which promise to lead to further discussions over the coming weeks and months. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Al Gore Blasts Obama On Climate Change For Failing To Take 'Bold Action'

Former Vice President Al Gore is going where few environmentalists – and fellow Democrats – have gone before: criticizing President Barack Obama's record on global warming.


In a 7,000-word essay for Rolling Stone magazine that will be published Friday, Gore says Obama has failed to stand up for "bold action" on global warming and has made little progress on the problem since the days of Republican President George W. Bush. Bush infuriated environmentalists for resisting mandatory controls on the pollution blamed for climate change, despite overwhelming scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuels is responsible.

While Gore credits Obama's political appointees with making hundreds of changes that have helped move the country "forward slightly" on the climate issue, and acknowledges Obama has been dealing with many other problems, he says the president "has simply not made the case for action."
More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Saturday, June 18, 2011

The Shrinking Pie: Post-Growth Geopolitics

Post-Growth Geopolitics


As nations compete for currency advantages, they are also eyeing the world’s diminishing resources—fossil fuels, minerals, agricultural land, and water. Resource wars have been fought since the dawn of history, but today the competition is entering a new phase.

Nations need increasing amounts of energy and materials to produce economic growth, but—as we have seen—the costs of supplying new increments of energy and materials are increasing. In many cases all that remains are lower-quality resources that have high extraction costs. In some instances, securing access to these resources requires military expenditures as well. Meanwhile the struggle for the control of resources is re-aligning political power balances throughout the world.

The U.S., as the world’s superpower, has the most to lose from a reshuffling of alliances and resource flows. The nation’s leaders continue to play the game of geopolitics by 20th century rules: They are still obsessed with the Carter Doctrine and focused on petroleum as the world’s foremost resource prize (a situation largely necessitated by the country’s continuing overwhelming dependence on oil imports, due in turn to a series of short-sighted political decisions stretching back at least to the 1970s). The ongoing war in Afghanistan exemplifies U.S. inertia: Most experts agree that there is little to be gained from the conflict, but withdrawal of forces is politically unfeasible. More >>>

This article is the part 6 from Chapter 5 of Richard Heinberg's new book 'The End of Growth', which is set for publication by New Society Publishers in August 2011. This chapter 'Shrinking Pie: Competition and Relative Growth in a Finite World' looks in greater depth at the prospects for further development in in an increasingly resource strained environment.

Location: Cayman Islands

Friday, June 17, 2011

A Perfect Storm for Hunger: New Oxfam report tackles broken food system

The global food system is broken,” reads a new report from Oxfam International.


While much of Growing a Better Future: Food Justice in a Resource-Constrained World essentially reviews the major factors that contribute to food insecurity, Oxfam’s call to transform the food system is certainly timely, given this year’s high food prices (blamed in part for inflaming popular revolts in the Middle East) and fears of another global food crisis.

Despite producing enough food for everyone, one in seven people globally face chronic under-nutrition and almost one billion people are food insecure. Hunger is concentrated within rural areas in developing countries, and within families, women are often disproportionally affected, having serious implications for maternal and child health.

“We face three interlinked challenges in an age of growing crisis: feeding nine billion without wrecking the planet; finding equitable solutions to end disempowerment and injustice; and increasing our collective resilience to shocks and volatility,” write the authors of the report. More >>>



Location: Cayman Islands

Thursday, June 16, 2011

What Will Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Mean for Barrier Islands?

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2011) — A new survey of barrier islands published earlier this spring offers the most thorough assessment to date of the thousands of small islands that hug the coasts of the world's landmasses.


The study, led by Matthew Stutz of Meredith College, Raleigh, N.C., and Orrin Pilkey of Duke University, Durham, N.C., offers new insight into how the islands form and evolve over time -- and how they may fare as the climate changes and sea level rises.

The survey is based on a global collection of satellite images from Landsat 7 as well as information from topographic and navigational charts. The satellite images were captured in 2000, and processed by a private company as part of an effort funded by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.

During the 20th century, sea level has risen by an average of 1.7 millimeters (about 1/16 of an inch) per year. Since 1993, NASA satellites have observed an average sea level rise of 3.27 millimeters (about 1/8 of an inch) per year. A better understanding of how climate change and sea level rise are shaping barrier islands will also lead to a more complete grasp of how these dynamic forces are affecting more populated coastal areas.

Stutz, the study's lead author, highlighted a series of key findings from the new survey during an interview with a NASA science writer. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Joint Efforts to Map Water Levels Across Arab Countries

June 9, 2011—Across and within Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco and Lebanon, water levels in reservoirs and rivers, rainfall patterns and soil moisture will be mapped by satellites high overhead.


This new view of water systems will allow leaders to monitor local and regional drought and flood conditions, track evaporation from lakes and reservoirs, and even estimate future water supplies and crop yields.
This new project, financed by the World Bank’s Global Environmental Facility, is the first in a series of investments under the Arab World Initiative approved by the World Bank Board of Directors.

In the past, information on water has come from people and equipment on the ground. But collecting data in the field is often expensive and difficult to gather and verify. Satellite images can provide a unique view, across mountains and borders, and provide it almost instantly.

Not Enough Water-20% Less
Water supplies have a major impact on agriculture and the environment. A steady water supply is also essential for city life. Cities are growing in size and population throughout the region. And, because of climate change, experts predict an increasingly dry future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that rainfall in many parts of the region will decrease by over 20% during the next century. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Editorial: Mr. President - Are you insane or just blind.

With the greatest respect I would like to ask all world leaders "Are you insane or just blind?"


The world is beset by a perfect storm of peak oil, climate change and an out of control population. all of which are potential conflict triggers.

The high cost and apparently constrained supplies of petroleum are causing blackouts, rolling brownouts and falling productivity in over fifty countries around the globe as I write this.

Climate change has the potential, given the expected rise in average global temperatures, to raise sea level by one metre by the end of the century, inundating islands, coastal plains and deltas around the globe.

Changes in rainfall patterns along with the melting of glaciers could disrupt food production in many of the worlds most populous countries causing famine. Droughts are now evident in states around the world. China is building canal over 1700 kilometers long in an attempt to bring water to water stressed northern areas of the country. Agriculture accounts for at least 70% of a countries water usage. South Asia which is home to well over one fifth of the world's population, is dependent on the seasonal monsoon rains for much of their food production as well as glacial melt water which is the source of the major rivers in the region. As temperatures rise the glaciers will melt, and if the rainfall patterns change millions may perish.

We could see refugee flows the likes of which have never been seen in recorded history, caused by any or all of the above scenarios. Climate Change Refugees will flow from areas of famine to areas where there is food. They will do so legally or illegally and they will be forced to do so even if it costs them their life.

No country can mitigate or adapt to the coming changes on its own. The only way that the human race can survive with a reasonably tolerable level of civilization is by working together. We no longer have time for political bickering, posturing or arguing within states or between states.

The time is now. We have to protect the major portions of the global commons, the atmosphere, the oceans, the biosphere. Humans need these to survive, we need the plants, the animals, the insects. We are dependent on all of it, we cannot survive without a healthy planet.

We are today, more than at any time in the history of the human race, our brothers and sisters keepers.

The Editor


Location: The Cayman Islands

Monday, June 13, 2011

The Karma of Electric Vehicles

MALIBU, California, June 9, 2011 (ENS) - Large environmental problems like the ongoing Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and the effects of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico still occupy center stage, but an even bigger solution to the planet's environmental woes is rapidly approaching.


Vehicle electrification can ease dependence on polluting petroleum that is heating up the planet, yet many people are not fully informed on how electric vehicles will fit into their lives. One information gap is public understanding of the important fit between electric vehicles and the smart grid.

A game-changing research paper that addresses this gap, "Vehicle Electrification: Status and Issues," has just been published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the special Smart Grid issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE. It shows how to change the energy equation and serves as a reference source to understand electric vehicles from a whole systems perspective. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Climate change: major impacts on water for farming

New FAO survey sums up current scientific understanding of impacts, highlights knowledge gaps and areas for attention


Rome - Climate change will have major impacts on the availability of water for growing food and on crop productivity in the decades to come, warns a new FAO report.

Climate Change, Water, and Food Security is a comprehensive survey of existing scientific knowledge on the anticipated consequences of climate change for water use in agriculture.

These include reductions in river runoff and aquifer recharges in the Mediterranean and the semi-arid areas of the Americas, Australia and southern Africa -- regions that are already water-stressed. In Asia, large areas of irrigated land that rely on snowmelt and mountain glaciers for water will also be affected, while heavily populated river deltas are at risk from a combination of reduced water flows, increased salinity, and rising sea levels.

Additional impacts described in the report:

An acceleration of the world’s hydrological cycle is anticipated as rising temperatures increase the rate of evaporation from land and sea. Rainfall will increase in the tropics and higher latitudes, but decrease in already dry semi-arid to mid-arid latitudes and in the interior of large continents. A greater frequency in droughts and floods will need to be planned for but already, water scarce areas of the world are expected to become drier and hotter.

Even though estimates of groundwater recharge under climate change cannot be made with any certainty, the increasing frequency of drought can be expected to encourage further development of available groundwater to buffer the production risk for farmers.

And the loss of glaciers - which support around 40 percent of the world’s irrigation -- will eventually impact the amount of surface water available for agriculture in key producing basins

Increased temperatures will lengthen the growing season in northern temperate zones but will reduce the length almost everywhere else. Coupled with increased rates of evapotranspiration this will cause the yield potential and water productivity of crops to decline.

"Both the livelihoods of rural communities as well as the food security of city populations are at risk" said FAO Assistant Director General for Natural Resources, Alexander Mueller. "But the rural poor, who are the most vulnerable, are likely to be disproportionately affected". More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Redefining Marine Territories in a Changing World

From a purely territorial perspective, these are bullish times for the world's oceans.



As anthropogenic climate change picks up pace, seas around the world are rising, due to thermal expansion and the melting of alpine glaciers and arctic ice sheets; according to most scientists, by at least a meter by the year 2100.
As a result, low-lying coastal areas around the world, and in several cases entire island nations, are expected to be reclaimed by the sea. Global sea level rise complicates the resolution of questions that have presented geopolitical difficulties for centuries: who owns the sea, and how much of it do they own? According to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), concluded in 1982, countries have exclusive control over their seabed materials out to the extent of their continental shelf (but with a minimum of 200, and maximum of 350, Nautical miles from their coastline). In addition, they have broader control over marine resources (including, crucially, fishing stocks) in an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending 200 nautical miles from the low-water mark on their coastlines. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Sustainable development must be as much blue as it is green

Seychelles' Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Ronny Jumeau, has reminded a United Nations debate on the pathway to sustainable development that the world's oceans, coasts, and small island countries must be included in the concept of a green economy.


Speaking at the informal debate in the UN General Assembly on the challenges of the green economy held on June 2, Amb. Jumeau stressed that what the small island developing states (SIDS) described as a "blue economy" must be part and parcel of the concept, definition, and development of a climate- and environment-friendly green economy.

"This is something we in the small islands talk about a lot but do not hear about enough," Ambassador Jumeau said, “We cannot build a new eco-friendly and sustainable world economy without factoring in and caring for the oceans, which would require integrating the SIDS.”

He later explained that the push by the SIDS for the "blue" economy to be incorporated within the concept of the global green economy is essentially to ensure that the oceans and marine resources, and consequently the small islands as large ocean territories, are not forgotten or left behind. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Monday, June 6, 2011

Countries get guidance on climate change financing

NEW YORK, United States, Friday June 3, 2011 – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has launched a guidebook that provides advice to decision-makers in developing countries, like those in the Caribbean, on how to tap into growing environmental finance markets as funding becomes increasingly available to tackle the challenges of climate change.



The guidebook, entitled “Catalysing Climate Finance,” draws on UNDP’s experience managing hundreds of climate projects in 140 countries over the past two decades. It contains step-by-step guidance for identifying and implementing a mixture of public policies and funding instruments to raise climate finance.

“In the absence of effective capacity building and appropriate advisory services, there’s a significant risk that only a few emerging economies will fully benefit from these positive developments,” UNDP Associate Administrator Rebeca Grynspan said yesterday.

“By some estimates around 90 percent of investments in clean energy go to G20 [Group of 20 economies] countries and the remaining 10 percent go to the rest of the world.” More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Climate to wreak havoc on food supply, predicts repor

Some areas in the tropics face famine because of failing food production, an international research group says.



The Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) predicts large parts of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa will be worst affected.

Its report points out that hundreds of millions of people in these regions are already experiencing a food crisis.

"We are starting to see much more clearly where the effects of climate change on agriculture could intensify hunger and poverty," said Patti Kristjanson, an agricultural economist with the CCAFS initiative that produced the report.

A leading climatologist told BBC News that agriculturalists had been slow to use global climate models to pinpoint regions most affected by rising temperatures.

This report is the first foray into the field by the CCAFS initiative. To assess how climate change will affect the world's ability to feed itself, CCAFS set about finding hotspots of climate change and food insecurity.

Focusing their search on the tropics, the researchers identified regions where populations are chronically malnourished and highly dependent on local food supplies.

Then, basing their analysis on the climate data amassed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the team predicted which of these food-insecure regions are likely to experience the greatest shifts in temperature and precipitation over the next 40 years.
More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Friday, June 3, 2011

Event: 2nd World Congress on Cities and Adaption to Climate Change

The Resilient Cities 2011 congress is being held in Bonn, Germany 3 - 5 June.


The Resilient Cities 2011 official website is: resilient-cities.org/bonn2011
The Resilient Cities 2011 congress will be documented on their website. Here you can find all resources and information (photos, speeches, press releases) available for download*. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

The Peak Oil Crisis: An Announcement

With little fanfare, a press release appeared last week on the website of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES).



The release said that during a meeting between Chris Huhne, the UK's Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, and representatives of ITPOES, an agreement had been reached that Her Majesty's Department for Energy and Climate will collaborate with ITPOES on a joint examination of concerns that global oil supply will begin to fall behind demand within as little as five years. This collaboration is seen by the British government as the first step in the development of a national peak oil contingency plan.
There are many implications buried in this seemingly innocuous announcement.

First, American readers should note that the British government recognizes that energy policy and climate change are inextricably linked so that you cannot formulate policies for one without the other. The major step forward, however, is the official and semi-public recognition by a major government that global oil supplies will fall behind demand in as little as five years. After years of official denial this is indeed a breakthrough worthy of note.


Gone is the rhetoric about the billions of barrels of oil remaining that will last for so many decades that nobody alive today needs to worry. Official recognition has been given to the concept that the remaining oil will be so expensive to extract or will be locked into the earth by intractable political disputes, so that it simply will not be available in the unlimited quantities or at the prices we have known for the last 100 years.
Also implicit in the announcement is that ever-rising real energy costs will destabilize nearly all of the world's economies and that economic growth in the form we have come to know it will no longer be possible.

Location: Lawrence Bl, Cayman Islands

Editorial: Global Energy Shortages

I have just looked at my RSS News Feed under the heading of Energy Shortages and noticed that there are fifty-eight articles from around the world this morning.



These range from utilities in China that are financially struggling to rolling blackouts in Venezuela and Pakistan, to South Africa seeking to cut power consumption by thirteen percent.
This is a world-wide problem, Russia has banned the export of gasoline, which prompted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to ban exports of refined petroleum products late last month, especially as the country gears up for State Duma elections in December and Presidential elections in the spring of 2011. In Karachi, Pakistan a protester was killed demonstrating against load shedding.


It may just be my imagination but I detect a global trend in all these reports which only reinforces the theory of Peak Oil.

In the Cayman Islands households are billed monthly, with a breakdown between electricity consumed and the cost of fuel used to generate the consumed amount of electricity shown on the invoice. I have people telling me on a daily basis that their fuel charge is more than the electrical charge.

If oil is abundant as OPEC claims why are so many stares globally having these overwhelming energy shortages? One could argue that it is the financial aspect of obtaining petroleum products that is to blame. However, one must ask why the price is escalating. Could it possible be a supply and demand situation?
It really does not matter wether it is unaffordable or unattainable it still leads to a shortage of electricity for all of us. It is therefore time to push of governments and legislators to take the necessary steps to enable the introduction of renewable sources of energy such as solar, wind and ocean thermal conversion.

Location: Cayman Islands

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Time For Obama To Say No To The Fossil Fuel Wish List

In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades -- those seem so nineteenth century. The earth is flat, or so I remember somebody saying.


But those nostalgic for an earlier day, take heart. The Obama administration is making its biggest decisions yet on our energy future and those decisions are intimately tied to this continent’s geography. Remember those old maps from your high-school textbooks that showed each state and province’s prime economic activities? A sheaf of wheat for farm country? A little steel mill for manufacturing? These days in North America what you want to look for are the pickaxes that mean mining, and the derricks that stand for oil.

There’s a pickaxe in the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming, one of the world’s richest deposits of coal. If we’re going to have any hope of slowing climate change, that coal -- and so all that future carbon dioxide -- needs to stay in the ground. In precisely the way we hope Brazil guards the Amazon rainforest, that massive sponge for carbon dioxide absorption, we need to stand sentinel over all that coal.

Doing so, however, would cost someone some money. At current prices the value of that coal may be in the trillions, and that kind of money creates immense pressure. Earlier this year, President Obama signed off on the project, opening a huge chunk of federal land to coal mining. It holds an estimated 750 million tons worth of burnable coal. That’s the equivalent of opening 300 new coal-fired power plants. In other words, we’re talking about staggering amounts of new CO2 heading into the atmosphere to further heat the planet. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands

Cities Lead on Climate Problems, and Actions

New Report Analyzes Urban Areas Across the World..


Cities are emerging as most threatened by climate change, and as the first responders to it, says a new international report. The report, led by researchers at Columbia University and the City University of New York (CUNY), is the most comprehensive study to date detailing the risks cities face, and how they are preparing for impacts such as increased heat waves, drought and rising sea level. Authors from 50 cities looked at urban areas in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe and North America, doing in-depth analyses of Athens, Dakar, Delhi, Harare, Kingston, London, Melbourne, New York, São Paulo, Shanghai, Tokyo and Toronto.

Cities are now home to half the world’s population, the authors note. “This is a groundbreaking study that should serve as a wake-up call about the need to make cities a key focus of global climate change research and response efforts,” said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a climate impacts scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Center for Climate Systems Research, part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, who is one of the coeditors. Published by Cambridge University Press, the report was convened by the Urban Climate Change Research Network, a global coalition of researchers specializing in climate change from an urban perspective. The initiative was founded at the Earth Institute in 2007.
More >>>

Location:Sandalwood Crescent,George Town,Cayman Islands

Prospect of limiting the global increase in temperature to 2ºC is getting bleaker

CO2 emissions reach a record high in 2010; 80% of projected 2020 emissions from the power sector are already locked in.

Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history, according to the latest estimates by the International Energy Agency (IEA).



After a dip in 2009 caused by the global financial crisis, emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record 30.6 Gigatonnes (Gt), a 5% jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 Gt.

In addition, the IEA has estimated that 80% of projected emissions from the power sector in 2020 are already locked in, as they will come from power plants that are currently in place or under construction today.

“This significant increase in CO2 emissions and the locking in of future emissions due to infrastructure investments represent a serious setback to our hopes of limiting the global rise in temperature to no more than 2ºC,” said Dr Fatih Birol, Chief Economist at the IEA who oversees the annual World Energy Outlook, the Agency’s flagship publication.

Global leaders agreed a target of limiting temperature increase to 2°C at the UN climate change talks in Cancun in 2010. For this goal to be achieved, the long-term concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere must be limited to around 450 parts per million of CO2-equivalent, only a 5% increase compared to an estimated 430 parts per million in 2000. More >>>

Location: Cayman Islands