A failure to act on climate change will cost the global economy US$44 trillion in GDP through 2060, CitiGroup concluded in a study released last month.
“What we’re trying to do is to take an objective view at the economics of this situation and actually look at the costs of not acting,” said Jason Channell, Citi’s Global Head of Alternative Energy and Cleantech Research.
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“It’s not a sort of a zero sum game,” he added. “There is a cost to not doing this, although there is a cost to acting. What we’re trying to do is to actually weigh up the different costs here.”
Though he speculated that low oil prices could dampen demand for renewable energy investment, Channell said the fossil fuel crash “arguably gave more space to spend money on energy efficiency and different types of energy, ‘without slowing the global economy,’” CNBC reports
