Concerted deployment of low-carbon technologies by Asian countries alone can deliver as much as 60 percent of the estimated carbon reduction target needed to prevent a 2°C rise in global temperatures, but this will not be easy to do.
At last week’s Asia Clean Energy Forum hosted by the Asian Development Bank, the latter said the Asian energy sector’s share in global carbon emissions has risen to 30 percent from a mere 8 percent in 1980. Unless the region uses more low-carbon technologies, the Manila-based lender estimates that Asia’s contribution may surge to 43 percent by 2030.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that 17 billion tons of carbon dioxide must be abated to prevent a 2°C rise in global temperatures.
The forum, an annual event where businesses, nongovernment groups and governments, with multilateral lenders, talk about the future of renewable energy in the region, again highlighted barriers to renewable energy growth.
Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda said one of the major obstacles to the effective transfer of green technology to Asia is the lack of intellectual property mechanisms. Mr. Kuroda said the bank is preparing a marketplace or exchange venue for clean energy technologies.
“[D]ue to many barriers, from the higher price to intellectual property concerns, these (clean energy) technologies are not being deployed in scale. Bringing down these barriers is our key challenge. But even then, funding will be needed to deploy these technologies,” Mr. Kuroda said.
The International Energy Agency estimates that from 2006 to 2030, Asia needs $9 trillion to develop clean energy technologies. This large amount is compounded by the fact that fossil fuels have benefitted from as much as $550 billion in annual government subsidies for decades.
Asia is home to some of the world’s largest economies. Meanwhile, Asia’s growing economies have massive demand for energy, pushing up fossil fuel consumption along with greenhouse gas emissions.
Mr. Kuroda said A.D.B. has allocated $2 billion dollars a year for climate change, but he admitted this is a small contribution compared with the investments expected from both public and private sources across the Asia-Pacific region.
But Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, said private sector’s investments will only come in if the government will do its part through pricing support and drawing up clear and transparent regulation process for clean energy.
“The government should not be in the business of building and running power plants because it’s inefficient,” Mr. Sawyer said.
Mr. Sawyer reported that wind power is leading the way in the energy revolution in Asia. He also said Asia is now the world’s fastest growing market for wind energy. China alone has a cumulative wind power capacity of over 12 gigawatts, making it the fourth largest wind market in the world.
He also believes that adequate resources and favorable government policies that granted incentives and set national renewable energy targets supported the growth of wind energy in China and India. The two countries are reportedly leading the industrial part of the green energy transition way ahead of the technological side of the trend.
