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The global cost of securing a clean energy future is rising by the year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned Monday, estimating that an additional $44 trillion of investment was needed to meet 2050 carbon reduction targets. Releasing its biennial "Energy Technology Perspectives" report in Seoul, the agency said electricity would increasingly power the world's economies in the decades to come, rivalling oil as the dominant energy carrier. Surging electricity demand posed serious challenges, said IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven.
"We must get it right, but we're on the wrong path at the moment," Van der Hoeven told reporters in the South Korean capital.
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$44 Trillion Needed for Clean Energy Future
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We are now enjoying total mutual interaction in an imaginary hot tub ...
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 16 2014, @12:23AM
> I guess evidence that they aren't so prescient can be ignored when it is inconvenient.
You're right, they should have gotten out of third-world status by building excess renewable power using 80s tech and a worthless Renminbi, so that they'd be more ready to absorb the onslaught of Westerners ready to sell their grandma for a $5 labor cut and access to 1.3B poor people.
Since this thread started at "governments don't either [care much about potential 30-year returns]", I'm pretty sure that Mr Deng is sitting in his corner of afterlife, wondering if they would have sent him to the nuthouse, had he used the actual 2014 numbers as a prediction of the impact of his reforms.
Being so wildly successful that you get major ecological growing pains is not antithetic to caring about and planning to kick Capitalist ass on the world market while bringing almost a billion persons out of poverty.
China has a big problem. They could throw their massive trade surpluses at fixing their ecological issues and get results quickly, but they actually have to use that cash first to prop up the value of the US dollar and therefore their growth. So they have to tolerate pollution for a bit longer to protect their most sacred thing: stability.