The just-released McKinsey report has reconfirmed what the Stern report of October 2006 found: that the cost of abatement measures to limit global warming to two degrees above preindustrial levels is affordable - for now. We need a cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 of 35 percent compared with 1990 output, to keep global warming to this level. But if we wait ten years before taking action, it will be "virtually impossible" to keep within this limit. And if any major sector or region doesn't reach its potential emission reductions, others can only partly make up the difference.
At the Copenhagen negotiations at the end of this year, we should have a better idea of what will be expected of each region. For now, South Africa is aiming to have its emissions peak between 2020 and 2025, stabilise for a decade, and then decline in absolute terms.
Right on cue, the provincial government of the Western Cape has just released its climate change strategy which aims to generate 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2014 and a 15% reduction of carbon (from 2000 levels) by 2014. That's five short years away, and will therefore require heroic levels of effort compared to what has gone before. But Pierre Uys, MEC for the Department of Environment Affairs and Development Planning, says an important component of the strategy was that when his department approved big development proposals, it would write into the conditions of approval certain energy efficiency requirements. The provincial government will begin energy audits of its buildings, and is looking at strategies to reduce energy and water usage. Cape Town, the province's largest city, is already working towards its own targets, for example by insisting that new housing incorporates solar water heaters.
[From reports in the Cape Times, 28 and 29 January 2009]
Could the Western Cape really become the "California of South Africa" as a leader in renewable energy? Indeed, could it be the "California of Africa"? It's going to take a lot of willpower and a really big stick, but we seem to be moving in the right direction.
The big question really is where the biggest effort should go, and part of the new McKinsey report is an update of a cost curve they have been working on for some years. The curve displays the investment opportunities by how much it would cost for each opportunity to avoid 1 tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, and sorting the more than 200 methods with the cheapest on the left and most expensive on the right. GreenBiz.com reports:
Some of the lowest-cost opportunities include switching residential lighting to LEDs, retrofitting commercial and residential insulation, efficient residential electronics and appliances, energy from landfill gas, fully hybrid cars and waste recycling. As you move further up the curve, you run into second generation biofuels, nuclear power, reforestation, plug-in hybrids, solar power and, all the way to the right, all sorts of carbon capture and storage technologies. Some of the higher-cost opportunities also have higher potential for emission reductions.
