US
Energy Experts Announce Way
To Freeze Global Warming
By Brad Collins
03 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Boulder, Colorado. As scientists sound daily alarms
about the dire consequences of global warming, Americans are asking
one question: What can we do about it?
The American Solar Energy
Society (ASES) has an answer: Deploy clean energy efficiency and renewable
energy technologies now!
On Wednesday morning, January
31, 2007 at a press conference in Washington, D.C., ASES unveiled a
200-page report, Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.: Potential Carbon
Emissions Reductions from Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by
2030. The result of more than a year of study, the report illustrates
how energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies can provide
the emissions reductions required to address global warming.
The press event included
remarks from report editor Chuck Kutscher, ASES Executive Director Brad
Collins, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) climate
scientist James Hansen, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, and
several members of Congress. According to Hansen, "We must begin
fundamental changes in our energy use now in order to avoid human-made
climate disasters."
To develop the report, ASES
recruited a volunteer team of top energy experts. These experts produced
a series of nine papers that examined how energy efficiency and renewable
energy technologies can reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions-the main
cause of global warming.
ASES collected the nine papers
together and added an overview of the studies to create the report.
It covers energy efficiency in buildings, transportation, and industry,
as well as six renewable energy technologies: concentrating solar power,
photovoltaics, wind power, biomass, biofuels, and geothermal power.
The results indicate that these technologies can displace approximately
1.2 billion tons of carbon emissions annually by the year 2030-the magnitude
of reduction that scientists believe is necessary to prevent the most
dangerous consequences of climate change.
The report illustrates how
energy efficiency measures could keep U.S. carbon emissions roughly
constant over the next 23 years as the economy grows, and how renewable
energy technologies could make deep cuts below today's emissions. Wind
energy provides about 35% of the renewable energy contribution, while
the rest is divided about evenly among the other technologies. "Energy
efficiency and renewable energy technologies can begin to be deployed
on a large scale today to help save us from the worst consequences of
global warming," said Kutscher. "With continued R&D to
lower costs and a reasonable level of policy support, they have the
potential to meet most, if not all, of the carbon reductions that will
be required in the future."
The report is available as
a free download at www.ases.org/climatechange.
High-quality graphics showing the various emissions reductions and deployment
locations are also available at that site.
For more information, contact
Brad Collins, 303/443-3130 x102,
E-mail: [email protected].
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights