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energ y
energ y
Energy sustainability
and the G20 agenda
The 2013 G20 Leader’s Summit will be an important
one for international energy issues thanks to
institutional, economic, and environmental reasons.
Maria van der Hoeven,
Executive Director,
International Energy Agency
The G20 has been so prominent since 2009 because, in an era of
tectonic economic rebalancing toward emerging markets, wider
cooperation is necessary to conduct global economic management.
Those broad economic shifts are naturally reflected in energy
markets as well. Yet even as the G20 membership includes major
energy consumers and producers of the new century, shifting
patterns in consumption and production further complicate the
broader trends.
The global energy map is not just shifting
east - traditional producers like Saudi
Arabia are seeing booming demand,
while heavily consuming markets such
as North America are experiencing
production revolutions thanks to new
techniques and technologies.
New trading patterns and technological
advances also mean new scope for
market integration and reform at the
international level - creating a common
incentive for market stability and
investment promotion. Meanwhile, the
most complex challenge, mitigating
global climate change, looks particularly
urgent as decarbonisation of the global
energy system stalls, and the effects
of climate change become ever more
widely apparent. Facing these common
economic and environmental challenges
will require international energy
cooperation at the highest level, as well
as strong mandates for international
energy governance structures. For all
these reasons, energy will ride high at St.
Petersburg, where ‘Energy Sustainability’
has a key spot on the agenda.
Now is the time to
bring these policy
priorities back in
line with the scale
of the challenge.
When it comes to climate change,
all eyes are on the next round of
multilateral negotiations, set to take
place in Paris in 2015. Already this year
however, the stalling global effort to
mitigate climate change passed a grim
milestone, when carbon concentration
in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per
million. This is uncharted territory in the
history of modern humans. In short, we
are drifting off-track, and still two years
out from negotiations in Paris (where no
agreement can be guaranteed).
Amid concerns over global economic
pressures, climate change has quite
frankly slipped to the back burner of
policy priorities. But the problem is
not going away - quite the opposite.
Now is the time to bring these policy
priorities back in line with the scale of
the challenge.
Achieving secure and affordable
energy supplies across the economy in
support of prosperity can present the
appearance of a false trade-off with
environmental sustainability and climate
change goals. The reality is that those
challenges can be met simultaneously
with policy, technology, and industry
working together. Responsible
unconventional gas extraction has
substantially cut North American
carbon emissions while delivering
affordable energy to the market, and
renewable energy technologies are
becoming increasingly competitive. Yet
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