OREANDA-NEWS. The next 15 months will see several critical meetings take place that will hopefully lead to a new global agreement on measures and targets to mitigate the risks of climate change.  The meetings at the UN yesterday provide an opportunity to create some much needed momentum for change in the run up to the COP 21 meeting in Paris at the end of next year.

SSE is involved in this debate and has a role to play in the process of bringing about positive change.  Through direct contact and in partnership with others, SSE has called on European Governments to bring forward tangible actions in line with legally-binding long termgreenhouse gas targets to help minimise the risks that climate change could have on the economy and wider society.

To assist the energy industry in facilitating the transition to a low carbon economy, timely decisions about key elements of the EU's energy and climate policies beyond 2020 would provide substantial support for important investments in low carbon technologies and energy efficiency. SSE has made clear that an important part of this process is for the EU to restore the EU ETS as the central driver of carbon abatement; by bringing forward the market stability reserve to 2017 and ensuring the 900 million backloaded allowances don't come back into the market.

Alongside reform of the EU carbon markets, taking carbon out of electricity generation in an affordable way is absolutely key to mitigating the worst effects of climate change. That is why SSE is committed to reducing the carbon intensity of its electricity generation by 50% by 2020, using 2006 as our baseline, and SSE are on target to achieve this. SSE are already the largest generator of renewable energy in the UK and Ireland, having invested over ?3.7bn in the last seven years. SSE plan to retain this position by continuing to invest in renewable energy for many years to come. This level of investment is already making a positive difference.  Last year the output from these renewable generation assets displaced over four million tonnes of CO2e based on the average carbon intensity of electricity supplied to the UK grid.

The combination of investing electricity from lower carbon sources at the same time as investing in energy efficiency are amongst the most important actions to give us a chance of mitigating extreme climate change.  It is clear that while SSE's made a decent start, there is much more still to do.