Investors Press Governments to Prioritize Climate Conservation over Energy Supply

Investors who own assets worth $10.4 trillion are encouraging governments to engineer their efforts towards ensuring a smooth transition to using sustainable energy in lieu of focusing on potential fossil fuel supply crunches.

According to Reuters, this comes after scientists at the United Nations (UN) cautioned nations to make the swift shift to greener energy sources while delaying the usage of fossil fuels that release vast amounts of emissions, in view of climate change.

Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance’s The Steering Group said in statement, "The world is still heading for an excess of fossil fuel-based energy use that will vastly exceed the carbon budgets needed to meet the 1.5C Paris Agreement goal. This trend must be halted." They added, "In the short term, using all available energy resources – including the immediate scaling of energy efficiency – to diversify energy supply must be a top priority for many countries, especially in Europe."

The Paris Agreement instituted a goal to prevent global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial level by 2050. The Steering Group also mentioned that the unit costs for lithium ion-batteries and solar power have dropped by nearly 85% as well as wind energy prices which have lowered by 55%, making them effective alternatives to fossil fuels.

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