UN urges ‘complete transformation’ of global energy system

The world needs to double the supply of electricity from renewables by 2030 to avoid climate change undermining global energy security, the United Nations says.

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 stresses.

In its State of Climate Services annual report, the WMO warns that increasingly intense extreme weather events, droughts, floods and sea-level rise — all linked to climate change — are already making energy supply less reliable.

“Time is not on our side and our climate is changing before our eyes,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas stresses.

“We need a complete transformation of the global energy system.”