2014-04-03

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a leading international body assessing climate change recently released its Fifth Assessment Report entitled “Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability” (“the AR5”). The report provides a definitive overview of the state of knowledge concerning climate-change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability across the globe.

Eddie O’Connor, founder and CEO of Mainstream Renewable Power, a leading global renewable energy company which currently has six renewable energy farms in development in South Africa, comments on the publication: “The AR5 is a clear wake-up call for policymakers. Compared to previous reports, the AR5 has assessed a much larger pool of relevant technical, scientific and related literature. Its clear and compelling conclusions provide overwhelming evidence of the devastating impact that global warming is already having and will continue to have on our lives.”

The AR5 calls the next three decades ‘the era of climate responsibility’ – a time during which humans have an imperative to significantly reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases.

“This is why Mainstream Renewable Power is investing around the world in new solar and wind power plants, to provide energy in ways that do not imperil the planet. For example, in South Africa we will build 360MW of new wind plant in the Northern Cape Province this year, enough to power some 300,000 homes, for less than the price of new coal generation and without the related emissions, pollution and water use,” says O’Connor.

Mainstream Renewable Power is currently finishing up construction at three wind and solar farms which are situated in De Aar, Droogfontein and Jeffreys Bay, all of which are due to connect to Eskom’s grid during the course of the year. The combined capacity of these three farms alone is around 238 MW.

The rapid fall in the cost of renewable energy technology, the ability to deploy it quickly and with minimal environmental impact means that the large majorityof new power generation capacity added globally out to 2030 will be from renewables.

“This is a contribution that the energy sector can make to mitigate the impact of emissions,” says O’Connor.

He adds, “In 2013 the world saw the sixth warmest year on record. Last year there were some 150 natural disasters around the world, including Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, which killed 7,500 people, and the flooding in the Uttarakhand, Northern India, which killed 6,000 people. In addition, there was significant flooding and other weather related damage in Europe, USA, Canada and South Africa.”

Surface air temperatures in Australia in the summer of 2012-2013 were the hottest since national records began in 1910. Estimated economic loss from all these events is around R 1.5 trillion (USD 140 billion).

Over the last decade the planet has continued to warm at a rate of four Hiroshima bomb detonations worth of heat every second. According to the AR5 this warming has already locked in a future sea level rise of 1.3 metres which will submerge at least 15% of the Pacific Islands and displace over one million people.

“Not only is Mainstream Renewable Power investing in new clean power generation, we will be investing significant resources in making the case in the run-up to COP 21 in Paris in 2015 for a comprehensive global accord that commits us to a once-off transition to sustainability which will limit the global temperature rise to 2oC,” says O’Connor.

He concludes, “We see huge opportunities for entrepreneurs, policymakers and consumers across the world to work together to lift the shadow of the consequences of man-made global warming. Now we must work together to seize them”.

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