Govts face cost hurdle to halve CO2 by 2050 - IEA

A man works on a roof covered with solar panels at the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Wales March 25, 2010. Governments will have to grapple with sharply higher upfront costs to deploy clean energy technologies and halve carbon emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) - Governments will have to grapple with sharply higher upfront costs to deploy clean energy technologies and halve carbon emissions by 2050, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

Action to curb greenhouse gases is going in the "wrong direction", said the energy advisor to 28 industrialised nations, adding that under current trends carbon emissions would instead double by mid-century.

Many renewable energy technologies cost more upfront but benefit from fuel savings. Wind turbines, for example, are cheaper to run but face higher capital costs than conventional power plants. The report did not specify where the extra initial capital would come from.

"The next decade is critical," said its Energy Technology Perspectives report.

"If emissions do not peak by around 2020 and decline steadily thereafter, achieving the needed 50 percent reduction by 2050 will become much more costly. In fact the opportunity may be completely lost."

The IEA said action to halve emissions and so help avoid more dangerous climate change would require 17 percent more investment, but the extra $46 trillion through 2050 masked fuel savings of $112 trillion compared with no new climate policies.

Such savings would help boost countries' energy independence as well as mitigate environmental hazards posed by fossil fuels, illustrated by the BP (BP) Gulf oil spill, said IEA chief Nobuo Tanaka.

The Deepwater Horizon accident is "a tragic reminder that our current path is not sustainable" and that the world must move to cleaner energy, Tanaka told reporters.

Under a radical low-carbon shift, world oil demand would plateau around 2030 and be 27 percent below 2007 levels by 2050. Gas and coal demand would also fall by then, the IEA report estimated.

SKILL SHORTAGE LOOMING

Governments will have to intervene on an unprecedented level to tweak energy markets and avoid locking in high-emitting, inefficient technologies over the next few years.

"They must take swift action to implement a range of technology policies that target the cost-competitive gap while also fairly reflecting the maturity and competitiveness of individual technologies and markets," the report said.

Government funding for research, development and deployment in low-carbon technologies will need to be two to five times higher than current levels, it said.

The Paris-based agency warned that a severe skill shortage could quickly become a major hurdle to deployment across all sectors and all regions.

"There is an urgent need to properly assess the skills required, considering regional situations and human resource availability, and to develop recommendations on how to fulfil these needs," it said.

(Reporting by Muriel Boselli in Paris, Gerard Wynn in London and Tom Doggett in Washington, editing by Jane Baird)