New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz: US may migrate to renewable energy

The United States may join international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fuels – but not for environmental reasons, says British Prime Minister Tony Blair.


He told a Wellington climate change conference the United States might move more to renewable energy sources to gain greater security of energy supplies.

"It may well be that America comes into this for reasons as much to do with energy security as with greenhouse gas emissions and the environment," he said. "In Europe, energy security is now a major, major question".

"These two issues can be brought together – energy security and climate change," he told the conference on climate change and governance at Te Papa by video link from Auckland.

But this would require an international framework to enable a move to sustainability which also gave increased energy security, and the important thing was to make progress before the opportunity slipped away, he said.

Mr Blair said a broad global grouping was needed to take urgent action to tackle climate change and must include all the world's major economies and developing nations.

Countries needed to go further than the UN's Kyoto Protocol of 1997, the agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with an initial commitment period expiring in 2012, he said.

AdvertisementAdvertisement"I believe we can't wait five years to get a new agreement. I think we have got to do it more quickly than that," he told delegates.

"That agreement has to have at its heart a goal of stabilising climate change."

Mr Blair said there were opportunities to push for an international accord this year, with the meeting of the Group of Eight rich nations in St Petersburg, Russia, and the G8-plus-five meeting in Mexico in September.

"We have to have the agreement not just of the signatories of the Kyoto treaty but all the major economies now and in the future – and that needs, in particular, the United States, China and India."

Mr Blair said people in Europe were noticing problems such as melting ice caps that appeared to be connected to climate change.

"The science is sufficiently clear – and in my view is pretty much certain – that it would be deeply irresponsible not to take action," he said.

"Most people understand this is a major issue and they want governments to act," he said. "I think the problem is: how?"

Developed countries such as Britain – which produced about 2 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – and New Zealand, with 0.2 per cent, were only a small part of the problem. In comparison, China will increase its emissions over the next 10 months by an amount equivalent to all the emissions from Australia.

International action to mitigate emissions was not going to work without the biggest industrial economy, the United States, and the biggest developing economies of China, India and Brazil agreeing on a universal framework that set clear stabilisation targets.

Australia and the United States – both big producers of fossil fuels such as oil and coal which high levels of greenhouse gas emissions – have said the protocol threatens their economic growth and means little without the agreement of developing countries such as India and China.

At an international level, governments needed to be re-assured that they would not lose some sort of short-term competitive advantage to meet the long-term goal of environmental sustainability, said Mr Blair.

There also needed to be mechanisms operating on business lines, such as international trading in emissions, and separately, the ordinary consumer had to be shown there were ways to use resources in a more responsible way.

Asked by a conference participant, environmental lobbyist Cath Wallace, of Wellington, what the UK was doing to get the price signals right for the true cost of carbon dioxide emissions, and what mechanisms it used to encourage the uptake of renewable energy, Mr Blair said he was looking at a "carbon budget".

In a couple of months time, he hoped to be able to show people details of the costs of greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr Blair said he wanted to lift the UK target of 10 per cent for energy to come from renewable sources, and had set a specific target for transport and transport fuels.

"Right throughout government, we preach the question of sustainability at the heart of what we try to do," he said. There was a framework providing incentives for use of renewable fuels, and for changing behaviours.

The climate change levy on business gave businesses advantages if they were able to reduce the amount of their emissions, and there were other incentives for reducing emissions from fuel and housing.

But individuals could also lead by example, he told another questioner, Auckland businessman Stephen Tindall.

"The best way of getting governments to do the right thing is showing that you can make economic growth not just compatible with, but part of sustainability," he said.

And citizens must keep up pressure on governments to address climate change: "When governments are faced with an issue where they have got to confront certain interests. . . if there is not the support. . . it can be very difficult," he said.

Even though the United States was not a signatory to the 1997 Kyoto agreement, citizens in California and at least seven north-eastern states were pushing their state governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.