Report summary

The report includes a discussion about possible future scenarios in terms of carbon emissions, and also recommends a 3-strand strategy to reduce the risk of global warming. Although not specific to New Zealand, the report touches on many of the key issues currently in the forefront of the New Zealand debate.

In March 2006, our UK colleagues published a report (‘The World in 2050: How big will the large emerging economies get and how can the OECD compete?’) highlighting the rapid growth and increasing global significance of what was called the ‘E7’ emerging economies: China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey. By 2050, it is estimated that the E7 economies could be larger than the current G7 by between 25% and 75% depending on the measure used. As they increase in relative size, these emerging economies will increasingly provide the motor for global growth, but can the world sustain such rapid growth without serious adverse impacts on its climate?

The new report addresses this question by extending the long-term economic model to incorporate the effects of world GDP growth on global energy consumption and carbon emissions. The conclusion is that, in a ‘business as usual’ scenario, global carbon emissions might more than double by 2050, implying an accelerating upward profile for atmospheric CO2 levels.

The E7 economies are likely to account for an ever-increasing proportion of these carbon emissions, reaching around half of the global total by 2050 (compared to less than a quarter from the G7). China seems likely to overtake the US as the largest carbon emitter within the next decade, while India looks set to overtake the EU well before 2050.

Based on the current scientific consensus, the baseline scenario seems to imply unacceptably high risks of adverse long-term climate change effects. The report goes on to discuss in detail the technological/policy strategies for mitigating global carbon emissions and stabilising atmospheric concentrations at broadly acceptable levels by 2050 without requiring a serious sacrifice of economic growth.

The conclusion is that although very challenging, this could potentially be achieved through a broad range of strategies to improve energy efficiency, adopt a lower carbon fuel mix, and develop and implement carbon capture and storage technologies. The report concludes that there is no reason for complacency or delay, and the G7 economies must take the lead in reducing their emissions and developing new technologies that can help the E7 economies to limit the rates of increase in their own emissions over the next few decades and reduce them in the longer term.