Bourne said he would welcome a declining role for petroleum in the energy mix, and increasing use of more climate-friendly forms of energy.
Bourne was in Perth this week as the guest speaker for the Western Australian Sustainable Energy Association's Greenhouse Reductions: Watershed Policy breakfast,
He said while the WWF supported the push for increased energy efficiency from fossil fuels, these technologies would become increasingly expensive for smaller and smaller efficiency gains.
“Oil and gas prices rising? In the context of global warming, I say, ‘Bring it on’. Oil and gas will come and go – the timeframe that we’re talking about is about the existence of the human race for as long as we can foresee it,” said Bourne.
He warned that peak oil was a geopolitical issue and it was possible that more armed conflicts and invasions could emerge if the world economy remained focused on oil rather than energy.
Renewable energy sources should be an important part of Australia’s energy mix, because economies of scale over continued development would make the energy increasingly cheaper and more effective, he said.
According to Bourne, Western Australia was well placed to "flatten the curve" of the emissions and environmental impacts of its increasing energy requirements through better use of its reserves of natural gas, technological know-how and a variety of wind, solar and tidal energy options.
All that was need was the political will to create the policy changes necessary to significantly reduce emissions, rather than reducing the rate at which emissions increase.
Bourne said that governments around the world already had access to a range of technologies and policy tools to combat climate change, and the need for immediate action was increasingly urgent.
While the science of climate change was generally accepted around the world, while Australian media and policy makers continued to engage in a "catastrophist/denialist" debate that hindered immediate action, according to Bourne.
He also questioned the validity of Australia's current greenhouse accounting practices, noting that both the Australian Greenhouse Office and Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics used systems that measured greenhouse reductions in relation to economic growth, rather than reductions in net emissions.
Bourne said that using conservative climate change models, which incorporated the need for continuing economic growth, especially in developing countries, the WWF believed immediate action must be taken to achieve net emission reductions of 60-80% from current levels by 2050 in order to reduce the risk of irreversible climate change impacts.
The timeline and reduction figures are based on avoiding global temperatures rising by 2°C, which is conservatively considered the limit for conserving an environment suitable for sustainable human existence.
The WWF has been working with the Seven Wedges model developed by Professor Robert Socolow at Princeton University, which outlines a method of reducing emissions using a mixture of familiar technologies while sustaining economic growth.
Using Socolow’s model, international organisations such as the World Bank and the WWF believe the best approach to safely manage the risks of climate change involve capping the use of fossil fuels at current levels and meeting the world's future energy requirements (expected to double by 2055) through an energy mix of low-carbon technologies.
Bourne typified the Seven Wedges into the following categories:
1. Energy efficiency and conservation
2. Fuel shifts (replacing coal-fired power generation with gas)
3. Carbon Dioxide capture and storage
4. Nuclear Fission
5. Renewable Energy
6. Forest and agricultural soils (revegetation, carbon sinks, conservation)
7. Other – Industrial gas, animal methane, etc
By prioritising and adapting mixtures of the seven wedges principle according to the needs of individual regions and nations, the WWF hopes an international treaty can emerge that outlines a collaborative plan of attack on climate change issues.
While the mix of the seven wedge approach will differ around the globe, the need for immediate action, especially from the developed nations of the world, is universal, according to WWF’s research.
Immediate implementation of Socolow’s principles would allow the descent of net emissions to be managed as a consistent 14% reduction in net emissions every five years, while maintaining the necessary increase in energy requirements through the seven alternative energy wedges.
If the governments of the world wait five years, the rate of descent is far more challenging at 20% reductions every five years. A ten-year delay in action increases the required reduction rate to 31% every five years, which Bourne said was unlikely to be achieved.
WWF-Australia is yet to determine the practicability of a nuclear fission component, although Bourne said it may not be the lowest priority in its recommendations to Australian policy makers.
Bourne also said it was his personal belief that nuclear fission was a “social issue, not an environmental issue”.
The WWF is developing a range of policies to enact immediate change in Australian and international energy strategies, ranging across and beyond transport, construction, industry and international carbon trading issues.
Bourne said he believed that fully priced international carbon trading would emerge by 2030, and would be a necessary condition of encouraging best practice by industry.
“If I was running a business and was forced to reduce emissions by fiat, without access to carbon trading markets … that would really hurt,” he said.
While international conglomerates are already able to access carbon markets in some of their global operations, Bourne said that many companies were already adopting “shadow carbon pricing” into their business models as a component of standard risk assessment.
While new energy efficiency standards are being implemented across Australia’s building industry, Bourne also suggested artificial manipulation of stamp duties for existing homes based on energy efficiency and a requirement that every home be rated for energy efficiency prior to sale. These mechanisms would encourage best practice from property owners while making potential buyers aware of the true cost of running their new property.
For more information, see WWF’s strategy to combat climate change.
