On the ground in Paris: ABB and low carbon technologies
As COP21 enters its second week, ABB offers a concrete action plan for how industries can develop and deploy renewables at scale.
COP21 kicked off in Paris last week, and the conference proceedings and events have been front-page news ever since. Climate change impacts everyone – individuals, businesses, governments – and ABB is no exception. Last week, we published “Energy efficiency: the fast track to a sustainable energy future,” our proposal for using technology to tackle energy loss, one of the biggest sources of lost energy efficiency in the power industry. But our climate change mitigation efforts don’t stop there – we’re also pleased to announce our involvement in the Low Carbon Technology Partnership initiative (LCPTi), a collaboration between the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, International Energy Agency and Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
ABB is helping to drive the LCPTi Renewables working group that focuses on grid integration of renewables. We’re working alongside industry leaders and peers such as Acciona, Statkraft, EDF, China Light & Power, and the State Grid Corporation of China to develop a series of concrete action plans – “business solutions” – for the large-scale development and deployment of low-carbon technologies. For COP21, we worked together to develop “Scaling Up Renewables,” a white paper that makes concrete recommendations on how to decarbonize the electricity sector and implement wider provision of grid services from renewable generation. In ABB’s view, traditional electricity market structures and related regulations do not fit well with new technologies, and the business solutions aim to address these issues.
As mentioned in the paper’s introduction, our statement of ambition is clear: “Renewable energy is reliable and increasingly competitive. We believe that 1.5 TW of additional capacity can be deployed before 2025.” It’s a challenge, but it’s not an insurmountable one – and in fact, this Tuesday, ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer will be addressing this topic at the New York Times’ Energy for Tomorrow conference, discussing how can industry players collaborate and compete to effect meaningful change at scale. Like much of the world we’ve got our eyes on Paris, as we look for actionable, sustainable solutions to mitigate climate change.
Image credit: Flickr user tsaiproject, courtesy Creative Commons.