UN agency calls for “complete transformation of global energy system”
Climate change risks undermining global energy security unless the use of renewables is dramatically scaled up, the UN warned Tuesday, suggesting the Ukraine conflict’s ripple effects could speed up the green transition.
Not only is the energy sector a major source of the carbon emissions that drive climate change, it is also increasingly vulnerable to the shifts that come with a heating planet, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization stressed.
In its State of Climate Services annual report, the WMO warned that increasingly intense extreme weather events, droughts, floods, and sea-level rise—all linked to climate change—were already making energy supply less reliable.
It pointed, for instance, to a historic heatwave that sparked massive power outages in Buenos Aires in January, while experts mentioned recently disrupted electricity production amid heatwaves and shrinking reservoirs in Europe and China.
WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas warned that “in the future these kinds of events will become more and more frequent”, pointing out that much of the world’s energy infrastructure is today in areas vulnerable to climate change.
[Staff Report]
More: UN eyes ‘complete transformation’ of global energy system
