It has to be investing in low carbon technologies and infrastructures.

The United States has developed many new low carbon energy technologies, but other countries are currently far more intent, far sighted, and decisive than the US to put these technologies to large scale use. Politically, America is still the land of Big Oil.

American politicians have proved to be incapable of designing policies to shift the US to low carbon energy use. Such policies would include a rising tax on CO2 emissions, large scale research and development efforts in low carbon technologies, a shift to electric vehicles, and regulations to phase out all coal fired power plants except those that install CCS.

Of course, coal continues to offer millions of people a reliable source of electricity and the transition to low carbon technologies will not happen overnight. We need to expand access to these technologies rapidly, while helping people whose livelihoods depend on the coal industry.

Option 2 Low carbon development in the transport and industry sectors

However, if countries invest wisely in the transition to a low carbon economy, they will stimulate innovation and generate decades of sustainable growth. Thus, it is important that climate finance be used to foster public and private investment in low carbon infrastructure and technologies, particularly to lower the cost of capital, which is crucial to scale up projects and encourage renewable energy adoption.

All countries need new, low carbon technologies, many of which are still out of commercial reach. Climate negotiators should therefore be focusing on how to cooperate to ensure that technology breakthroughs are achieved and benefit all countries.

Finally, technological advances in low carbon energy systems, including photovoltaics, electric vehicles, CCS, and fourth generation nuclear power with greatly enhanced safety features, all help make the transition to low cost, low carbon energy technologically realistic, with huge benefits for human health and planetary safety.

After evaluating the technologies, policy options, and analysis included in the report, one might conclude that low carbon growth paths may be slightly flatter in the short term than their high carbon counterparts, with higher investment and lower consumption. Nonetheless, it would be difficult to deem them inferior, given their medium to long term advantages.

Investing heavily in research and development of low carbon energy, solar power, or other new technologies would become cheaper than fossil fuels much more quickly. Economic estimates show that for every 1 spent, we would do 16 worth of good.

Recent developments in wind, solar, tidal, bio energy, geothermal, and fuel cell technology are transforming the scope for low carbon energy production. Aside from saving the planet, these technologies could open up new investment opportunities, deliver affordable energy, and sustain growth.

With a long term and predictable carbon tax and subsidy system, the world would move systematically toward low carbon energy, greater energy efficiency, and CCS. Time is short.

More broadly, over the next 15 years, the world will make major investments in urban infrastructure, energy, and agriculture. If this spending is directed toward low carbon goods, technologies, and services, we will be on our way to creating more resilient societies.

The Hartwell group argues that mass improvements are needed across many technologies, requiring the determined participation of governments. They suggest partially funding the required research and development with a slowly rising but initially low carbon tax that would avoid undermining economic growth.

Yet genuine questions remain about how fast economies should move on to a low carbon path, and the most effective way to do so. Some low carbon policies have clearly been expensive, while other, apparently cost effective options, have not been pursued at all.

It was essential to step up action on technology, including investment in new technologies, such as carbon capture, and technology transfer.

Yet practical solutions are at hand, because simple and low cost technologies can address specific problems. Low farm yields can be addressed through improved seed varieties specially adapted for African conditions, combined with technologies for replenishing soil and managing water.

He suggested that precautionary steps be considered during construction, such as low cost lightning rod technologies.

NEW YORK The surest bet on the future of energy is the need for low carbon energy supplies. Around 80 of the world s primary energy today is carbon based coal, oil, and gas.

Those regime changes required people to change not only their way of life, but also their habits of mind. The ecological revolution that the world demands today a transition to a low carbon global economy and a low carbon way of daily life will require a similarly comprehensive change.

Low carbon primary energy means three options renewable energy, including wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, and biomass nuclear energy and carbon capture and sequestration, which means using fossil fuels to create energy, but trapping the CO2 emissions that result and storing the carbon safely underground.

While expensive, such an initiative would help give companies and banks the surety they need to invest the capital that these emerging technologies require. If so stimulated, the domestic energy market for cheap, low carbon energy would be a massive force multiplier in the US or any economy.

We know that we have to move from our fossil dependence very quickly into a low carbon economy in record time.

Currently, low carbon energy solutions are prohibitively expensive. The typical cost of cutting a ton of CO2 is now about 20, but the damage from a ton of carbon in the atmosphere is about 2.

At present, accelerating the development of renewable energy, and advancing transformation toward clean and low carbon energy have become a global trend.

Measures that some legislators favor, such as transforming coal into liquids, increase secure supplies, but they imply more carbon dioxide emissions than imported oil does. They should be avoided until technologies for clean coal or carbon capture are perfected.

The report points out the benefits of constructing the energy efficient buildings and infrastructure needed to underpin the low carbon global economy of 2050, incorporating low carbon strategies into municipal planning processes, and tapping the efficiency enhancing potential of the Internet. Add to that the declining costs of alternative energy sources and relentless technological advancement, and the world s carbon reduction goals do not seem so distant or costly.

An expanded carbon market can help pay for a transformation to a low carbon economy, but it won t be enough. Like other new markets, it will take time to mature and reach out to places with weaker market institutions.

To be clear, I believe that we do need more government spending as a share of GDP for education, infrastructure, low carbon energy, research and development, and family benefits for low income families. But we should pay for this through higher taxes on high incomes and high net worth, a carbon tax, and future tolls collected on new infrastructure.

The US auto industry should be re tooled for low carbon emission automobiles, either plug in hybrids or pure battery operated vehicles. Either technology will depend on a national electricity grid that uses low emission forms of power generation, such as wind, solar, nuclear, or coal fired plants that capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions.

The use of labour intensive technologies in construction and infrastructure development can provide job opportunities for low skilled urban workers and may be used wherever these technologies are cost effective and technically feasible.

So with hydro maxed out, coal and lose the climate, or nuclear, which is the current operating low carbon source, and maybe save the climate.

A substantial portion of a national policy agenda that supports an individual country s shift to a low carbon growth path (boosting energy efficiency, for example) will not produce an economic slowdown such an effort might even lead to higher growth rates than remaining on a high carbon path would have delivered. On a first approximation, low carbon paths are the dominant strategies, implying a completely different and far more favorable view of the incentive structures at work.

This will require a shift to renewable energy sources such as solar power, and perhaps nuclear power, as well as new technologies to capture carbon dioxide at power plants and then to dispose of the carbon dioxide in safe underground deposits. Society will have to pay a price for these investments in new energy technologies, but the benefits will be vastly greater than the price.

Part of the tax revenue should be channeled into subsidies for new low carbon energy sources like wind and solar, and to cover the costs of developing CCS. These subsidies could start fairly high and decline gradually over time, as the tax on CO2 emissions rises and the costs of new energy technologies fall with more experience and innovation.

Finally, policymakers should foster partnerships and new instruments that nudge the economy toward low carbon alternatives. Development banks, for example, can help leverage private sector investment.

Pressure on fuelwood resources can be reduced by promoting a shift from relatively low efficiency traditional fuelwood burning stoves to other technologies.

We need to use energy far more wisely while shifting from fossil fuels to low carbon energy sources. Such decisive improvements are certainly possible and economically realistic.

But carbon dioxide is carbon dioxide.

The expert panel concluded that investing in research and development into low carbon energy would be a much sounder, more effective option an effort that both McCain and Obama support. But this, not carbon emissions, should be the core of their climate change policy.

As more countries and companies introduce carbon pricing, the internal accounting cost of carbon emissions will rise, investments in fossil fuels will become less attractive, and investments in low carbon energy systems will become more appealing. The market signals of CO2 taxation (or the cost of CO2 emission permits) will help investors and money managers steer clear of new fossil fuel investments.

But astonishingly, it is coal, the dirtiest fuel, that is experiencing the sharpest increase in use. Companies and investors are hedging their bets by taking a few resource efficiency measures and investing in some low carbon assets, but leaving their high carbon portfolios and activities largely intact.

The Bank has the potential to be a catalyst of progress in key areas that will shape the world s future. Its priorities should include agricultural productivity mobilization of information technologies for sustainable development deployment of low carbon energy systems and quality education for all, with greater reliance on new forms of communication to reach hundreds of millions of under served students.

You would have a fluorine, carbon, carbon, chlorine.

Germany, for example, is planning the world s most ambitious low carbon energy transition, based on energy conservation and renewables. South Korea has made green growth a central economic goal.