But Nobuo Tanaka, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, gave a lunchtime talk that cast those general trends into actual numbers. And the outlook, to put it gently, is sobering. The IEA, which was established after the oil shocks of the 1970s to manage the strategic oil reserves for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries, compiles statistics on energy and future projections for supply and demand.
Stabilizing carbon dioxide levels at 450 parts per million in the atmosphere--a level that is projected to result in an average global temperature rise of about two degrees Celsius--would require an "energy and environment revolution" with investment in the trillions of dollars, Tanaka said.
Among the technology assumptions in that scenario are a cost on carbon emissions, energy efficiency measures at large scale, and a massive build-out of low-polluting energy generation. That includes the construction of 18 nuclear power plants, 17,000 wind turbines, two or three huge hydroelectric dam projects, and 94 concentrating solar power plants every year between now and 2030.
"This is the scale and magnitude of the infrastructure investment...Can we do that? he said. Without large-scale deployment, the target of 450 parts per million is "science fiction," Tanaka said.
cnet
