Optimism For Clean Energy as Climate Cure Wanes

The New York Times
December 10, 2008
By Tom Zeller Jr.

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The optimism of global leaders for clean energy technologies appears to be slipping a bit in the face of the global financial situation and the sheer scope of the climate problem — at least as it is reflected in a survey released this week at the global summit on climate change in Poznan, Poland.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper sums it up:

Support for renewable energy technology to fight global warming is weakening in the face of worldwide economic problems and the true scale of the carbon reductions required, a survey published today has suggested.

Figures presented at the U.N. climate talks in Poznan, Poland, show that climate experts have less faith in alternative energy than they did 12 months ago.

The survey shows less support for wind energy, solar power, biofuels, biomass and hydrogen energy as technologies with “high potential” to reduce carbon levels in the atmosphere over the next 25 years.

There was also less support for carbon capture and storage, new nuclear build, small-scale hydropower and natural gas stations as viable ways to hit targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Although in most cases, the decline in optimism for any particular technology — from solar power to wind farming — was a matter of a few percentage points, almost every category saw a drop.

Respondents saying each energy technology has a “high potential” to curb atmospheric carbon dioxide over the next 25 years. See Globescan PowerPoint for full results.

Asked to rate each energy technology’s potential to decrease atmospheric carbon levels over the next 25 years, the number of respondents seeing “high potential” for solar electric, for example, dropped to 66 percent from 74 percent. Some 56 percent saw high potential for land-based wind farms, down from 62 percent last year. And the biggest drop in optimism was for first-generation biofuels from crops. Just 12 percent of respondents saw high potential there, down from 21 percent last year.

The Guardian quotes Eric Whan of Globescan, who said: “As the climate crisis deepens they could be becoming less optimistic that individual technologies may be able to solve the problem.”

What did the experts see as having the highest potential for curbing CO2? Energy conservation and more efficient technology overall. That garnered 88 percent of respondents. (No comparable statistic was available from last year’s poll).

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the U.N. climate talks, which are aimed at finding a successor agreement to the expiring Kyoto Protocol, the European Union is struggling to reach agreement on its own climate rules — with deep divisions between governments in Eastern Europe (and Italy), and their comparatively wealthy counterparts in the West.

The former say new climate measures being proposed unfairly handicap their still developing economies — an issue that similarly divides rich and poor nations on climate measures across the globe.

Nonetheless, the Globescan survey reveals that nearly three-quarters of the 1,000 experts surveyed agreed that “equitable economic growth and development and significant progress in combating climate change can be achieved at the same time.”

Eleven percent disagreed.

The survey, conducted by Globescan, a Canadian polling firm specializing in excavating opinion among leaders and stakeholders, collected feedback from about 1,000 “climate change decision makers,” in 115 countries through the month of November.

The study had backing from the World Bank, the United Nations Environment Program, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and other organizations.

NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for research and educational purposes.

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