OECD to add climate scorecard to its country surveys The OECD is to start scoring countries on how well they are tackling climate change as it steps up a push to wean governments off the fossil fuels it says have put humans on a "collision course with nature." Canada is expected to be the first to be assessed by the Paris-based policy forum of wealthy countries, which is to add a climate scorecard to its regular surveys of economies. The move is needed to help nudge countries to stop burning fossil fuels completely in coming decades, said the OECD's secretary-general, Ángel Gurría, the latest head of an international institution to urge more climate action as the global economy slowly recovers. The International Energy Agency, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have called for more action. "Whatever policy mix we cook up, it has to be one that leads to the complete elimination of emissions to the atmosphere from the combustion of fossil fuels in the second half of the century," Mr Gurría said in a lecture in London on Wednesday. "After 20 years of negotiations and policy experimentation, one thing is abundantly clear: the world is nowhere near a trajectory that is consistent with the goal of zero emissions," he scolded. We are on a collision course with nature and we need to take bold decisions to change that path. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading climate authority, last month warned temperatures could rise to potentially risky levels in as little as 30 years if fossil fuels such as coal and gas continued to be used at current rates. Its findings have been seized on by campaigners ahead of a 2015 UN climate conference in Paris due to agree a legally binding deal on global warming. Mr Gurría said the approaching 2015 deadline highlighted the need for governments to start introducing measures to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas produced by human activities such as burning coal to generate electricity. Countries such as the UK with world-leading climate policies had to "stay the course," he told reporters separately, despite pressure to stem rising energy costs and exploit more natural gas. "It hasn't taken an iota away from your competitiveness," he said, adding claims that green energy policies put companies at a huge disadvantage were often exaggerated. Putting a clear and explicit price on carbon emissions was a priority worldwide, he said. The range of existing measures, from the EU's emissions trading system to Brazilian motor vehicle taxes added up to "a chaotic landscape that sends no clear signal." We need to focus on the enemy. The enemy is carbon dioxide. If we focus on that then the alternatives will follow," he said, explaining that a focus on carbon pricing would help avoid the problems that sometimes emerged when governments picked which clean energy solution they wanted to back. The US's contentious biofuel subsidies was a case in point, he said, adding it had led to a situation in which it was costing hundreds of dollars more in the US than in Europe to avoid the same amount of carbon emissions. "We need a big fat price on carbon," he said. Scrapping the fossil fuel subsidies that added up to $523bn in developing and emerging economies in 2011 is also crucial, as is regulatory reform to end "market rigidities that favour fossil fuel incumbency in the electricity sector," he added. It is also a mistake to think that technology that captures and stores carbon emissions from coal plants is a "get out of jail free card" that would allow future fossil fuel use. Even if all the carbon capture plants in planning were built - which many analysts say is unlikely - Mr Gurría pointed out the International Energy Agency had calculated they would capture less than 1 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector in 2012.