Introduction

The urgency of government action to mitigate climate change has become more apparent since the failure of the Copenhagen meeting in 2009 to agree an internationally coordinated policy to address the problem. The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has confirmed the scientific consensus on the causes, scale and risks of global warming. The risks of unabated change have become obvious through many scientific studies, e.g. on the declining extent and depth of Arctic Sea ice. The gap between existing and agreed government action and what is needed to reduce the risks has been explored by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). In addition, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has explored the risks and costs of delay in action in a series of annual reports on the outlook for world energy. This book, drawing on these studies as motivation, addresses the issue of the feasibility of decarbonisation in terms of requirements and timescales for changes in economic policies and structures, and in energy, transportation, industrial and building systems, by country and sector…