Vattenfall presents global survey of climate measures: Josefsson: "We need to put a price on emissions"

Curbing climate change through a sustainable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is technically and financially feasible if existing technical solutions are applied consistently. This is the main conclusion of the comprehensive study "Global Climate Impact Abatement Map", a worldwide compilation of possible measures to safeguard the climate that Vattenfall presented at a conference in Berlin today.

In this study, Vattenfall has produced a comprehensive survey of all the measures that can be taken around the world to curb climate change. The ambition is to demonstrate that emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere can be reduced to a level that makes it possible to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Centigrade.

"What we are presenting in Berlin here today is an outline of a first global map for measures to curb the climate change", said Vattenfall’s President and CEO Lars G Josefsson. "Now we must jointly embark on a voyage of discovery on which we gather new knowledge and new information that we can use to further refine this map. Already today, however, we can see that the active protection of the climate is not a utopia – it is possible with the technology we now have at our disposal, and this technology can also be improved. We must immediately set up a global policy framework to enable us to exploit the potential described here. One absolutely vital precondition is that we put a binding global price on the emission of greenhouse gases."

Vattenfall’s Climate Impact Abatement Map shows that the cost of limiting the concentration of greenhouse gases to 450 ppm is equivalent to approximately 0.6 per cent of the total gross world product – on condition that all the identified potential is exploited. The empirical data gathered also shows that there are considerable hidden possibilities in the industrialised countries, and particularly in the energy-efficiency field, to protect the climate at a "negative cost", that is by applying measures that finance themselves in that they reduce energy costs. On a global scale, around 7 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could be saved annually, which corresponds to about seven times the total annual emissions in Germany. It is estimated that the average cost of avoiding emissions would be EUR 15 per ton CO2 equivalent.

The data also reveals that the potential for protecting the climate is relatively evenly distributed between the investigated sectors and geographical regions. Up to 45 per cent of the potential was found in the industrial and energy sectors, while the developing and threshold countries (excluding China) account for more than 40 per cent of the climate-protection potential. According to the survey, about 40 per cent of the measures in the industrialised countries can finance themselves ("negative costs").

In order to encourage as broad and open a discussion as possible, Vattenfall has published the results of the Climate Abatement Impact Map survey on a website specifically set up for this purpose:
www.vattenfall.com/climatemap
A detailed presentation of the methodology, calculations, analyses and conclusions is available on this site.

For further information, please contact:
Martin May, Head of Media Relations, telephone: +46 (0) 8 739 52 70.
Arne Mogren, Head of Vattenfall’s Climate Office, telephone: +46 (0)8-739 52 34.

From Vattenfall's Press Office, telephone: +46 (0)8-739 50 10.