"Close to 80 per cent of the world's energy supply could be met by renewables by mid-century if backed by the right enabling public policies," the IPCC proclaimed in a released on Monday in Abu Dhabi. The news apparently gets better. According to the IPCC, the findings of the more than 120 researchers involved in assessing 164 scenarios for the panel's suggest that "the rising penetration of renewable energies could lead to cumulative greenhouse gas savings equivalent to 220 to 560 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide between 2010 and 2050". "The upper end of the scenarios assessed, representing a cut of around a third in greenhouse gas emissions from business-as-usual projections, could assist in keeping concentrations of greenhouse gases at 450 parts per million," the panel said. "This could contribute towards a goal of holding the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius - an aim recognised in the ." This is good news indeed if those "upper end scenarios" are remotely plausible. But are they? Dr Sultan al Jaber, the UAE Special Envoy for Energy and Climate Change, seemed to feel vindicated for championing renewables in an oil exporting state: "The report makes clear that the energy mix chosen will vary from country to country, but renewable energy has a potentially huge role to play in that energy mix and the global technical potential for renewable energy as a whole is unlimited. This diversified approach is consistent with the strategy being followed by the UAE," Dr al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of , the Abu Dhabi Government's clean energy enterprise, said in a separate statement on Monday. "The inception of the Masdar Initiative, the UAE's strategic and holistic renewable energy and sustainability initiative was based on our belief that the renewable energy sector would witness an increasing growth. The data compiled by the IPCC reaffirms our beliefs," he added. Adnan Amin, the director general of the (IRENA), which is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, is another believer. "The IPCC special report indicates that the growth of the renewable energy sector is both imminent and progressive," he said. "It clearly indicates that renewable energy will have a major role to play in the future energy mix of the world." Christian Kjaer, the chief executive of the , is equally enthusiastic about the new report's findings. "During the last two years, our industry installed new new wind farms producing electricity equivalent to more than 25 nuclear power stations," he said in Abu Dhabi. "More importantly, the world's leading scientists have now confirmed that this is merely the beginning of a development that could see wind power providing in excess of 20 per cent of global electricity supply." So surely the world's oil and coal producers should start packing up their drills and shovels as the world moves towards solving its climate problems. Does the IPCC report leave any room for doubt? Unfortunately, it there are plenty of grounds for scepticism. A big red flag is the report's prediction that "bioenergy", including "primary biomass" combustion (mainly the burning of firewood), will be by far the biggest contributor to the ascent of renewable energy. This points to the imminent destruction of the world's remaining forests, which would be disastrous for the planet's biosphere. Mr Kjaer is encouraged by the finding that global renewable energy already supplied 12.9 per cent of the world's total primary energy consumption in 2008, or more than six times the 2 per cent share of nuclear energy. But that looks less impressive when one considers that biomass alone, and mostly primary biomass at that, accounted for 10.2 per cent of the total primary energy supply. Wind power's share was just 0.2 per cent, and solar power contributed another 0.1 per cent. "When it comes to electricity production, the global renewable energy revolution is already well underway," Mr Kjaer said. "In 2008, renewables contributed around 19 per cent of the global electricity supply." Maybe, but most of that took the form of large-scale hydropower, a mature technology that has been around for decades and may have limited potential for expansion. In fact, hydro projects have generated more electricity then atomic plants for at least the past dozen years, meaning that renewable energy's dominance over nuclear is nothing new. Given the tiny current contribution to primary energy of the trendier forms of renewable energy, such as wind and solar, it is unsurprising that the IPCC found those technologies were growing rapidly. Yet the 30 per cent rise in installed wind-power capacity in 2009, and the corresponding 50 per cent jump for solar power, actually add up to a smaller absolute increase in generating capacity than the 3 per cent increment in hydro-power. Lewis Page, writing for the UK technology news website , may have the best reason for not taking the IPCC's propaganda too seriously: Under the report's most optimistic scenario, renewables could furnish 314 exajoules (ej) of energy per year, or about 64 per cent of current output. But that would only constitute "close to 80 per cent" of global energy supply by 2050 if the vast bulk of the human race, mainly those living in the world's poorest countries, consumed hardly any energy at all, she argues. "Seven billion people each using as much energy as two-thirds of a present-day European will need supplies of 770ej, not 407ej as the IPCC assumes," she calculates. "In a more realistic scenario where the human population continues to climb, energy demand in the industrialised nations continues to rise instead of falling enormously and hopefully the world's poor start to get a taste of the good life, supplies in the zettajoule (1,000ej) range will be required within decades." A more plausible although arguably still aggressive projection would be for renewables to supply 20 per cent of the world's energy needs by 2050. "Renewables will only ever provide above half the world's supply in some grim future where the great majority of the human race is either wiped out within a generation or remains in grinding, miserable poverty," Ms Page plausibly concludes. So for decades to come, oil rigs are likely to keep drilling. As for the IPCC, perhaps it should go back to the drawing board, or at least present reporters with a more honest and balanced summation of its findings.