The International Energy Agency, one of the world's foremost authorities on energy, recommended policies Monday that it says will help achieve the emission cuts needed to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2020, but warned that swift action is necessary if there is any hope in keeping global warming to moderate levels.
Chief among the policy recommendations is energy efficiency in buildings, industry and transportation, which generate emissions responsible for global warming. In its World Energy Outlook special report, the IEA said carbon dioxide emissions rose to a record high in 2012 and that Japan alone saw a 6 percent increase in emissions following its nuclear power phase-out.
The United Nations has a goal of keeping global temperatures within 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels.
The IEA reports that a European Union goal of cutting emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels will not be met at the current pace. Energy expert Faith Birol, who works with the IEA, told The Guardian that pinning hopes on a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol would set the world on the path to an average of 5 degrees Celsius of warming, which would be "catastrophic."
"Rapid and widespread adoption could act as a bridge to further action, buying precious time while international climate negotiations continue," Birol also said, in an official statement.
Maria van der Hoeven, IEA executive director, said that her agency's report "shows that the path we are currently on is more likely to result in a temperature increase of between 3.6 °C and 5.3 °C but also finds that much more can be done to tackle energy-sector emissions without jeopardizing economic growth, an important concern for many governments."
In addition to curbing emissions from energy sector, which the IEA says generates two-thirds of all global greenhouse gas emissions, the agency called for partial phase-out of fossil fuel consumption subsidies, and limiting the construction of coal-fired power plants.
"I am very worried about the emissions trends," Birol, the report's lead author, told The Guardian. "The chance of keeping to 2°C is still there, technically, but it is not very great. It is becoming extremely challenging."
While the report painted a grim future if action is not taken, it did mention some positive strides, including the world's biggest emitter, China, seeing its smallest annual increase of emissions in two decades, and a decline in Europe's emissions despite an uptick in coal use. In the United States, a switch from coal to gas in power generation helped reduce emissions by 200 million metric tons, bringing the country back to the level of the mid‑1990s, the report stated.