UN Panel looks to renewables as the key to stabilizing climate

The draft of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that the world faces serious risks from warming and that the poor are especially vulnerable. But it avoids the kinds of specific forecasts that have sparked controversy in the past.

Researchers continue to struggle to develop "second generation" biofuels that they hope will use enzymes to turn cellulose from wood and crop waste into ethanol.

The UNEP report says renewables are currently keeping 1.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year, a saving of 2.4 percent. But that, combined with big improvements to energy efficiency, may mark what some are hailing as the beginning of a decoupling of CO2 emissions from economic growth.

The evidence comes from a European study last fall, which found that global CO2 emissions growth in 2012 fell to 1.4 percent, compared with 3.5 percent growth in economic activity. After allowing for the leap year, the figure was adjusted to 1.1 percent. The trend was observed in each of the world's three largest economies. Helped by shale gas replacing coal, the U.S. cut emissions by 4 percent, despite an economy growing by 2.8 percent. European Union emissions fell by 1.6 percent, much more than the 0.3 percent fall in GDP. Chinese emissions grew only 3 percent while its economy grew 8 percent.

The study's data came too late for inclusion in the IPCC report, which only looked at 2010 and before. But Greet Janssens-Maenhout of the European Commission's Joint Research Center, who co-authored the study, said, "It may be the first sign of a more permanent slowdown in the increase in global CO2 emissions, and ultimately declining emissions." We must hope she is right.