Delivering the solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and other clean technologies the world needs to meet its climate goals requires a massive expansion of the supply chains responsible for producing them.  

From mining and processing critical minerals, to assembling, transporting and installing these technologies across the world, the transition away from a fossil fuel-powered society requires a huge shift, which could help support the creation of thriving economies and millions of jobs.  

At the same time, the transition away from coal, oil and gas requires a multitude of new resources, the extraction and processing of which can cause social and environmental harms if improperly managed.  

Delivering a fast and fair energy transition means avoiding the pitfalls of the extractive fossil-fuel economy and building new industries which can benefit workers and communities everywhere. 

What we are looking for 

Our “Clean Energy Frontier” series aims to produce hard-hitting accountability journalism on these issues. 

In our first series, we reported on lithium mining booms in Zimbabwe and Argentina; explored India’s dream of building its own solar supply chain; uncovered accusations of rights abuses linked to an Indonesian nickel park; delved into efforts to recycle rare earths in Canada; and examined Swedish company Northvolt’s sodium-ion battery plans.  

In our second series, we are looking for longform stories (1,500-1,700 words) that explore how the energy transition can help support sustainable development, address inequalities and create jobs.  

We are interested in stories that illustrate the opportunities and challenges of the transition and how it can be funded (especially in developing countries), spotlight geopolitical and trade tensions and efforts to address them, expose harms, and examine how technologies are transferred from wealthy to poorer countries. 

Each story should blend on-the-ground reporting with investigative or explanatory journalism.   

We particularly welcome strong character-driven stories and the use of data or satellite images to unveil new trends. The ideal story will have an original angle that captures the attention of our international audience.  

We plan to publish six deeply reported articles between November 2024 and June 2025. We are seeking stories from around the world and we encourage journalists from developing countries to send us their ideas. 

Stories should be accompanied by visual elements, including high-quality photos and video, and we encourage partnerships between journalists and photographers.  

How to pitch 

Join us for an hour webinar at 12pm GMT on August 20 2024 to find out what we expect from your pitches. Sign up here.  

We welcome pitches from journalists with at least three years’ experience. You must have fluent spoken and written English. Journalists from all countries are welcome to apply. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have awareness of climate change issues. 

Your pitch should include: 

• The top line of the story and essential context in no more than 250 words. If we like the idea, we will ask for more detail 

• The sources you would interview 

• Any travel requirements 

• A short summary of your journalism experience, including links to three recent stories you are proud of 

• A link to the portfolio of the photographer you are planning to work with.  

We can offer a competitive reporting fee, as well as an additional budget to commission photographers and cover travel and accommodation expenses. Travel costs will be negotiated in advance and reimbursed subject to valid receipts. 

Please send your pitches with the word ‘Pitch’ in the subject line to project editor Chloé Farand by emailing chloe.farand [at] outlook.com.  

The post Call for pitches: Climate Home News seeks story ideas on clean energy supply chains appeared first on Climate Home News.

The American firm had offered Ruto support in running the summit during a meeting with him and US ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman in late May, several sources told Climate Home News. 

A few days later, in early June, McKinsey wrote the concept note, which set the summit’s structure, and later drafted a paper to frame its outcome. 

“For a few weeks, it was their way or the highway,” a source close to the summit’s organisation told Climate Home. 

At the time, the Kenyan government said civil society accusations that Mckinsey had captured the summit were “extremely far from the truth”. McKinsey said the claims were “inaccurate”. 

But the backlash publicly exposed the influence McKinsey wields on Africa’s climate agenda – a position it would prefer to keep discreet. 

Leaked documents 

Now, Climate Home has obtained leaked documents and interviewed multiple sources, who have asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue.

They show how McKinsey dominates an ecosystem pushing carbon markets in Africa and processes designed to help governments develop long-term energy plans.  

This has been facilitated by McKinsey’s deep-rooted ties with Sustainable Energy For All (SEforAll), which is responsible for delivering on a 2030 sustainable development goal for everyone to have access to affordable, reliable and sustainable energy; and the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), which works to accelerate the energy transition.  

In numbers: The state of the climate ahead of Cop28

Climate Home’s investigation reveals that SEforAll staff complained of CEO Damilola Ogunbiyi’s “preferential treatment” of McKinsey in a whistleblower report in 2020.

That year, SEforAll brought in the firm to facilitate a leadership retreat and develop the organisation’s business plan. At the time, SEforAll’s top management dismissed the allegation. 

Three years on, documents show how McKinsey has turned initial pro-bono work into lucrative contracts. 

A source close to SEforAll told Climate Home that McKinsey encountered hardly any competition and enjoyed “almost unrestricted access to the highest levels of the UN and national governments”. 

An SEforAll spokesperson said: “All SEforALL processes are followed at all times in the selection and engagement of any advisory services,” adding that any idea to the contrary was “baseless”.  

“Come to take over” 

African government insiders say McKinsey’s domination is problematic because it is pushing a top-down tunnel vision and non-Afro-centric view of how to address the continent’s climate and development challenges, which, if unquestioned, could constrain its ambition. 

“The role of McKinsey is highly problematic because they don’t come in a capacity support role, they come to take over,” said one source. 

There is a role for consultants to help governments and international organisations plug skill and knowledge gaps.

In numbers: The state of the climate ahead of Cop28

But consultancies should advise “from the sidelines in a transparent way… rather than be allowed to run the show from the centre,” economist Mariana Mazzucato and researcher Rosie Collington write in their book about the consulting industry The Big Con.

Michael Marchant is head of investigations at Open Secrets, an NGO which advocates for private sector accountability and investigated McKinsey’s work in South Africa. 

He told Climate Home that despite receiving large amounts of public money, large consultancy firms like McKinsey “operate in secrecy and with almost no public accountability”.  

Heart of climate governance 

Yet, allowed in by governments, McKinsey has found a place at the heart of critical climate governance processes. France24 recently reported that McKinsey is pushing fossil fuel interests in its advisor role to the UAE, which will preside over the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai starting this week. 

The company’s client list includes some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, including Saudi Aramco, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell, according to court filings in the US, where McKinsey is being sued alongside Big Oil. McKinsey rejects the accusations.

In more recent years, McKinsey has advised polluters, including oil and gas companies, on how to use the carbon market to offset their emissions or raise revenue. A 2022 internal McKinsey document, seen by Climate Home, names Chevron and BP among clients of its carbon market business line.

Meet the Italian fugitive advising Emirati start-up Blue Carbon

In Africa, the consultancy is behind a push to significantly grow the continent’s carbon offset offering, working closely with both GEAPP and SEforAll. 

In 2021, McKinsey supported the Rockefeller Foundation to design and establish GEAPP, according to a McKinsey document seen by Climate Home. The following year, GEAPP asked SEforAll to hire McKinsey to develop the African Carbon Market Initiative for $1.5 million as part of its grant to the organisation, Climate Home understands.  

Launched at Cop27 in Egypt, the initiative aims to scale carbon markets on the continent 19-fold by 2030.

While GEAPP and SEforAll publicly sponsored the initiative, McKinsey described its role in a sustainability report as “shaping and refining the initiative’s ambition” and “developing its strategy”. McKinsey’s concept note for the Africa Climate Summit elevated carbon markets to a core theme.

President Ruto appointed Joseph Ng’ang’a, GEAPP’s vice president of Africa, CEO of the summit. 

President William Ruto has appointed Mr Joseph Ng’ang’a, Vice President of Africa at the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP, as Chief Executive Officer of the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, which will take place in Nairobi from 4- 6 September 2023.… pic.twitter.com/eKtjGri5s8

— Kenyan Wallstreet (@kenyanwalstreet) June 12, 2023

Climate campaigners denounced the focus on carbon markets as “a dangerous distraction” from African climate priorities and accused McKinsey of working to protect the interests of its western corporate clients. 

McKinsey has repeatedly dismissed these allegations, arguing there is no way to deliver emissions reductions without working with high-emitting industries and that it has rigorous policies to manage conflict of interests. 

A spokesperson for the company said “sustainability is a mission-critical priority for McKinsey”, which has “committed to rapidly scale this work to help clients in all industries reach net zero by 2050”. 

A GEAPP spokesperson said it was established “to unite a diverse range of partners” to rapidly facilitate a global shift towards renewable energy. In doing so, it “leverages a spectrum of… experts and consultants”. 

A close relationship  

McKinsey’s rapidly growing climate work in Africa has been facilitated by a close relationship between its African Sustainability Practice lead Adam Kendall and SEforAll’s CEO Ogunbiyi, who also serves as a UN special representative for sustainable energy. 

Before joining SEforAll, Ogunbiyi worked closely with Kendall, who led McKinsey’s natural gas practice in Lagos, Nigeria. He helped build the Nigerian vice president’s advisory power team and worked with the Rural Electrification Agency, which Ogunbiyi both headed. 

A McKinsey document describing its previous work for SEforAll said the firm “provided strategic support to Ms. Ogunbiyi during her transition” into her new CEO role, starting in January 2020.  

Weeks later, Kendall was invited to co-facilitate an SEforAll leadership retreat in London and subsequently developed the organisation’s 2021-2023 business plan, effectively for free. 

Thanks @Shell for hosting our Leadership Team meeting and @RockyMtnInst and @McKinsey for facilitating #SEforALL 3.0 strategy in making. pic.twitter.com/BPue9Fhyez

— Sustainable Energy for All | #SDG7BeBold (@SEforALLorg) January 24, 2020

The same year, McKinsey seconded employee Ugo Nwadiani to SEforAll. An SEforAll recruitment note shows he was directly appointed Ogunbiyi’s special assistant. 

Whistleblower report  

An anonymous complaint prepared by several SEforAll staff raised concerns about these developments.  

A source said the complaint was backed widely among employees and sent to the organisation’s whistleblowing account and to one of its major funders. 

It described “a culture of fear” at SEforAll, and accused Ogunbiyi’s leadership of being “marked by favouritism”, including towards McKinsey. 

During the business planning process, McKinsey “had direct access to SEforALL financial information and organizational systems and processes” putting the company “in a privileged position” to apply for any future tender, it said.

It raised concerns that McKinsey had been the only firm asked to comment on terms of reference for work to update Nigeria’s integrated energy plan which SEforAll was seeking to contract out. McKinsey had worked with the Nigerian government on the first version of the plan the previous year. It was eventually hired for the job. 

Slow start for Indonesia’s much-hyped carbon market

Responding to the complaint at the time, SEforAll’s management said it had strengthened procurement oversight and put in place mechanisms to help “create a climate of trust”.  

Since then, SEforAll has hired McKinsey to work on at least three of its five core initiatives in Africa: developing energy transition plans, scaling up the carbon market, and boosting renewable energy manufacturing capabilities.  

Francesco Starace, chair of SEforAll’s governance board, said the board was satisfied with the outcome of a review process following the complaint. “We are confident with the integrity of the SEforALL procurement process and the leadership demonstrated by the CEO and the executive management team,” he said. 

McKinsey’s work in Nigeria  

McKinsey’s extensive work for SEforAll in the early days of Ogunbiyi’s leadership set it up for further opportunities.   

In Nigeria, McKinsey provided the modelling which underpins the country’s energy transition plan pro bono, working with SEforAll and the former government. A new government, which came into office in May, has warned that it will need a lot more investment to deliver

Chukwumerije Okereke, a Nigerian climate governance expert, said the exercise was a “cautionary tale”. The use of McKinsey-owned tools prevented robust scrutiny of the assumptions in the model, he told Climate Home. And the “closed door” process and lack of consultation may partly explain diminished political momentum to implement it, he added.  

Ghana’s flood victims blame government for overflowing dam destruction

More recently, SEforAll and Kendall’s McKinsey team have sought funding to develop energy transition plans in up to ten developing countries, according to a 2021 joint concept note for funders, obtained by Climate Home.

With support from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the pair has developed a plan for Ghana, and is working to do the same in Kenya and Barbados using a joint open-source model. In Kenya, draft plans, seen by Climate Home, would increase gas power capacity in the 2040s.

SEforAll told Climate Home these plans were procured through an open and transparent process, rigorously peer reviewed and subject to civil society consultations.  

For Okereke, international consultants can bring quality and gravitas to energy planning. “But it’s about the way they do it.”  

The post Leaks reveal how McKinsey drives African climate agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate Home News is seeking stories on the global renewable energy supply chain.

The rapid deployment of renewable energy is critical for the world to meet its climate goals. This requires a massive expansion of the renewable energy supply chain, from the critical minerals required to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries to the skills and jobs needed to produce, assemble, and install them.

Yet, large parts of this supply chain are concentrated in a few countries (including China) and dominated by a handful of companies. This rapidly-growing industry has at times pitted the clean energy transition against human rights and other environmental impacts, and sparked conflicts over land and water resources.

Delivering a fast and fair energy transition means avoiding the pitfalls of the extractive fossil-fuel economy. Responsible extraction and production, and centering local communities and workers’ rights could spur sustainable development and create good jobs.

What we are looking for

Our ‘Clean Energy Frontiers’ series aims to produce hard-hitting accountability journalism on the changing-landscape of the renewable energy supply chain.

Stories should spotlight bottlenecks, scrutinise key actors, and expose environmental impacts, and human and labour rights violations. We are also looking for stories robustly examining solutions to these challenges, including through innovation.

This could include examining the plans of emerging transition mineral producers, exposing working conditions in manufacturing processes, investigating the relationship between coal power and clean technology production, and assessing early efforts to address waste.

We plan to publish six deeply reported articles by June 2024. We are seeking stories from around the world and we encourage journalists from developing countries to send us their ideas.

The ideal story will capture the attention of our international audience by providing an original angle, highlight (geo)political tensions or controversy, and combine on-the-ground reporting (when appropriate) with investigative journalism techniques.

Stories should include visual elements (such as satellite images, high-quality photos and videos) and we encourage partnerships between journalists and photographers. A graphic designer is working with us to support the creation of graphics and illustrations.

How to pitch

If you are a journalist with at least three years’ experience, please send us your pitches. You must have fluent spoken and written English. Journalists from all countries are welcome to apply. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have awareness of climate change issues.

Your pitch should include:

• The top line of the story and essential context in no more than 200 words. If we like the idea, we will ask for more detail
• The sources you would interview
• Any travel requirements
• A short summary of your journalism experience, including links to three recent stories you are proud of.

We can offer a reporting fee of around $1,600 per story, including photos and videos, in addition to covering travel and accommodation expenses. Travel costs will be negotiated in advance and reimbursed subject to valid receipts.

Please send your pitches with the word ‘Pitch’ in the subject line to project editor Chloé Farand by emailing chloe.farand@outlook.com. We will commission the first three stories by late October and continue to review pitches until February 2024 for publication by June next year.

The post Climate Home News seeks pitches on renewable energy supply chain appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the past, his earnings have been sufficient to provide for his family. But Gakpo is now struggling to make ends meet. 

Once the poster child economy for West Africa, Ghana is suffering from its worst economic crisis in a generation. The debt-laden nation is gripped by soaring inflation and a depreciating currency that has pushed it to default on some of its debt payments. 

The energy sector has been a major contributor to the country’s financial woes. A lack of planning and unfavourable fossil fuel contracts have previously locked Ghana into paying for gas power far in excess of what it could use, pushing the sector into spiralling debt. 

Electricity tariffs have increased around 50% for small businesses and households since September alone. Gakpo says his electricity bill has doubled in a year. To cope, he is cutting back buying food for his family. 

John Gakpo milling corn flour in his workshop in Accra. (Photo: Emmanuel Ameyaw)

Yet opposition lawmakers, energy analysts and local NGOs have warned that Ghana’s plans to import liquified natural gas (LNG) under a 17-year agreement with oil giant Shell could make things worse. 

The agreement, they say, risks pushing electricity prices even higher, perpetuate a cycle of fossil-fuel related debt and leave little space for renewable energy. 

Until 2020, the UK, Germany and the African Development Bank indirectly channelled development funds for a new LNG terminal in the country.  

The project is part of a $245 billion expansion of gas infrastructure in Africa, according to Global Energy Monitor. But it is among the first to allow commercial LNG imports to a Sub-Saharan African nation. 

Threat of EU carbon tax prompts dubious “green aluminium” claims in Mozambique

A gamble for economic development  

Ghana is heavily relying on gas to meet its growing power needs. Gas generates half of its electricity, while less than 1% comes from solar. 

The government argues importing LNG will shore up Ghana’s energy security as electricity demand is projected to double between 2022 and the early 2030s. 

Proponents say gas power will need to meet virtually all of this added demand, arguing that domestic gas production is reaching capacity and imports from Nigeria are unreliable. 

LNG, they say, will help power the country’s industrial development, displace dirtier and more expensive heavy fuel oil and support the roll out of intermittent renewable energy. 

This is tied to the construction of a $400 million LNG terminal in the port of Tema. The project aims to turn Ghana into a hub for providing LNG to the West African market. 

But critics have denounced the LNG terminal as an example of how mismanaged gas and power investments are financially crippling the country and failing to deliver reliable and affordable energy. They have urged the government to suspend the project.  

Analysts agree that additional gas supplies could be needed in future. But under the deal, Ghana will have to pay charges for some of the LNG even if it unable to use it –– a type of gas contract known as “take-or-pay”. 

However, neither the contract nor the liabilities Ghana could incur have been made public.  

For many developing countries, take-or-pay obligations can become a form of public debt, explained Accra-based analyst Rushaiya Ibrahim-Tanko, of the Energy for Growth Hub. “That’s why we are asking for these contracts to be made transparent,” she said.  

Opponents say Ghana cannot afford such an opaque deal at a time when the country is receiving its 17th bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the lender of last resort. 

Denis Gyeyir, the Africa programme officer at the Natural Resource Governance Institute in Accra, likened the deal to a rope “hanging around our necks” that could leave cash-strapped Ghana to “suffocate” in more debt. 

Containers in the port of Tema in Accra, Ghana. (Photo: Jonathan Ernst / World Bank)

Energy sector crisis

Ghana is still unable to pay for all the power it consumes. Independent power producers have threatened to shut down their plants if the government doesn’t find a way to pay  $1.7billion in outstanding debt it owes.  

At the same time, the country isn’t using all its own resources. The government has allowed British oil company Tullow to flare gas from its TEN and Jubilee oil fields because it is unable to process the gas. 

Flaring is a wasteful practice that releases climate-heating carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and is harmful to human health. 

Analysis of government data shows that between 2019 and 2022, Tullow flared or re-injected into its oil fields 325 billion cubic feet of gas – worth close to $400m, according to the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (Acep). 

Norway approves oil and gas fields despite Cop fossil phase-out push

In 2022 alone, Tullow flared or re-injected two and half times more gas than what Ghana could receive in LNG in the first year of the deal. 

“With the amount of gas that we are flaring we could meet a lot of demand for power generation if we are able to create new processing capacity," Charles Ofori, climate policy lead at Acep, told Climate Home. 

The company, which has committed to end routine flaring by 2025, says it is committed to agree a long-term gas sales deal with the Ghanaian government. 

The Tema project

Located in the eastern port of Tema, in Ghana’s industrial enclave, the LNG terminal will combine a purpose-built floating regasification unit and a former tanker converted to receive and store the liquid gas. 

The project developers say the terminal will have the capacity to process 1.7 million tons of LNG a year – or around 30% of Ghana’s electricity generating capacity. 

It is developed by a partnership between two leading Africa-focused private equity firms: London-based Helios Investment Partners and the Africa Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM). 

AIIM’s investments in the project included funding from the African Development Bank, and the UK and Germany’s development finance institutions. Both the UK and Germany defended their investments in AIIM, arguing the firm funded necessary infrastructure to meet growing energy demand in Africa. 

The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund, which is backed by European donors, and the Development Bank of Southern Africa also contributed finance. 

World Bank adaptation funds slept through Pakistan’s record flooding

Keeping a low profile

First expected in 2020, the LNG terminal has been repeatedly delayed – something critics have described as “lucky”. Europe’s soaring demand for LNG to replace Russian gas pushed up prices and contributed to the delay. 

Commercial operations are now expected to begin in 2025 and LNG deliveries will be phased in to reach capacity towards the end of the decade.  Plans for Ghana to re-export the LNG to neighbouring countries remain elusive. 

The project partners are keeping a low profile about the plans. AIIM is the only partner to have responded to Climate Home’s questions. 

It said the project will ensure “a significant portion of the population in Ghana can benefit from cleaner and more economical energy sources” and help reduce the cost of power generation. 

But energy analysts are concerned the opposite may be true. Extracts of the contract obtained by Acep show the price of LNG is indexed on the price of crude oil – a common practice for long-term LNG contracts which exposes countries to volatile crude prices.   

Several analysis found LNG could be Ghana’s most expensive gas supply. 

“What Tema LNG will do is make the electricity much, much more expensive,” opposition lawmaker John Jinapor, former deputy minister of energy, told Climate Home. “It could result in huge financial debt. It’s really serious,” he said.   

A woman sets up her breakfast stand near a mobile money box on the side of the road in Accra, Ghana. (Photo: IMF Photo/Andrew Caballero-Reynolds)

Take-or-pay contracts: Ghana’s curse

Former minister Jinapor is familiar with the consequences of excessive gas contracts. 

In response to a period of power shortages in 2012-2016, known as “dumsor” – literally “off -on” – his party, then in power, signed dozens of emergency “take-or-pay” power agreements with support from development finance institutions. 

From a severe undersupply crisis, Ghana soon experienced the opposite problem: it became contracted to purchase gas and power beyond what it could use.   

The IMF estimates that the take-or-pay contracts and inadequate power tariffs cost the country 2% of its GDP annually since 2019. At the end of 2020, a former energy official revealed excess power and unutilised gas were costing Ghana $1.2bn a year. 

Among the reasons for this bloating bill was an unfavourable “take-or-pay” agreement with oil company Eni to buy 90% of gas produced from its deepwater Sankofa field off Ghana’s western coast at a high price. It was backed by $1.2bn in World Bank Group guarantees and debt financing. 

But a lack of infrastructure meant Ghana was unable to use all the gas it purchased despite paying hundreds of millions of dollars annually for it. The deal was widely criticised for putting undue burden on the country’s finances. 

Revealed: How Shell cashed in on dubious carbon offsets from Chinese rice paddies

The World Bank argued the take-or-pay clause was necessary to make the project viable for private investors. A spokesperson told Climate Home the Sankofa development has been “key to providing energy security to Ghana”. 

While there are no formal discussion to restructure the deal, the World Bank is considering another $300m loan to help Ghana clear its power sector arrears. 

Tess Woolfenden, senior policy officer at Debt Justice, told Climate Home the proposed loan “exemplifies that Ghana is in a lose-lose situation with these take-or-pay contracts,” describing “a very toxic cycle” of fossil fuel investments that exacerbate debt. 

Omar Elmawi, of the ‘Don’t Gas Africa’ campaign, urged African countries to stay away from “expensive and inflexible take-or-pay gas contracts” and prioritise renewable energy. 

Impact on the energy transition

The fallout of Ghana’s energy sector debt has diverted investments away from sustainable development and left little room for the deployment of renewable energy.   

In its 2023 budget, the government has planned to spend three times more to offset the energy sector shortfalls than on investments in the agriculture, fisheries, roads, education, gender, social protection and health sectors combined. 

To address the power oversupply issue, the government suspended licences for grid-connected solar and wind projects. The six-year-old ban was only lifted in April. In 2019, Ghana postponed by 10 years a goal to achieve 10% of renewables in its energy mix by 2020. 

Dennis Asare, of the think tank Imani, told Climate Home the LNG deal will continue to incentivise the use of gas and “delay the energy transition”.   

“We have enormous renewable resources to meet our energy needs but the government is more focused on this LNG agreement,” he said, warning that lower-income households, like the miller Gakpo and his family, will “bear the brunt” of a deepening crisis.   

Emmanuel Ameyaw contributed with additional reporting.

The post Gas lock-in: Debt-laden Ghana gambles on LNG imports appeared first on Climate Home News.

Their recommendations could have broad influence on how the world considers the technology. For some insiders, it’s been uncomfortable. For critics, it’s seriously problematic. The Overshoot Commission was set up last year to discuss accelerating emissions cuts, helping the world adapt to climate change, carbon dioxide removal and solar geoengineering.

The idea of blocking the sun’s warming effect by pumping aerosols into the high atmosphere – a technology known as solar radiation management (SRM) – was once of the realm of science fiction.

But as global efforts to reduce emissions fall short, solar geoengineering is attracting growing attention as a potential cheap and fast solution to relieve the world from extreme heat. However, the technology carries major uncertainties and risks, which are not well understood.

A moral hazard

SRM won’t protect the planet from rising greenhouse gases but only temporarily offset some of the warming caused by climate change – acting as a band aid rather than a cure.

Opponents argue it is a distraction from addressing the root causes of climate change and offers polluters an avenue to avoid taking climate action.

Rich world’s leaders fail to commit to Paris global financing summit

Frank Biermann is a professor of Global Sustainability Governance at Utrecht University, who opposes the technology and gave the commission a 10-minute online presentation.

He fears the group, which was initiated by geoengineering researchers, was set up “to put SRM as an option on the table” and “build its global legitimacy”.

Several young people selected to engage with the commission told Climate Home about feeling used to give legitimacy to the technology.

Some commission members are uneasy about the discussions too. Documents obtained by Climate Home News show four commissioners raised concerns about the lack of time to discuss sensitive issues before the group publishes its recommendations in September.

World Bank set to take on risk of insuring carbon credits amid market upheaval

One concerned commissioner is Frances Beinecke, former president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She told Climate Home she has been “extremely worried…from the get go” about the focus on SRM.

“There are a number of us that are very aware of these concerns and are focusing on making this a useful endeavour,” she said, hoping the report will prompt the world to “double down on mitigation – and fast”.

No stone unturned

Hosted by the Paris Peace Forum, the commission comprises 13 global leaders, including former presidents and ministers, and is chaired by its president Pascal Lamy.

With the world on track to breach 1.5C, at least temporarily, Lamy told Climate Home “we have to leave no stone unturned”.

Lamy said that the commission recognises that “SRM remains – and rightly so in my view – a very controversial option".

"But", he said, "it’s not because it is controversial that it should not be looked at seriously".

Confusion surrounds China’s pledged climate finance towards the Global South

Those expecting the report to support the technology “will be strongly deceived,” he added. But “if the critic[ism] is: ‘this option should never be considered’, we disagree with that.”

Ruling out solar geoengineering isn’t an option for the world’s most vulnerable nations.

Commission member Anote Tong is a former president of the sinking islands of Kiribati. He said solar geoengineering is "another attempt by humanity to control nature".

But, he added, “we are facing a catastrophe and we’re trying to survive. What other options do we have?”

Wrong priority

Margot Wallström, Sweden’s former foreign minister, disagrees. Discussing SRM is “the wrong priority,” she said. “We know what we have to do [to address climate change] so let’s focus on that”.

Originally a member of the commission, Wallström left the group after being unable to attend the first meeting, citing a lack of time to participate.

In private, Wallström felt uneasy about the focus on SRM in briefing documents and felt the discussions were edging towards “how do we take this on,” she told Climate Home.

Bitter conflicts stop Eastern Europe from choosing next year’s Cop host

After disengaging and learning more about the technology, Wallström said she felt leaving the group had been “the right thing”. “I’m totally against it. I think it’s crazy,” she said of solar geoengineering.

Others are concerned too. Youba Sokona, vice chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was one of 11 members of a steering committee convened to shape what an overshoot commission would look like.

Sokona declined to join the group arguing it was “very premature” to discuss SRM and would distract attention and resources away from reducing emissions, he told Climate Home.

The origins

The commission was set up by academics involved in geoengineering research. The idea was first floated by Edward Parson, who leads the Emmett Institute’s Geoengineering Governance Project at the University of California.

Supported by the Paris Peace Forum, the Emmett Institute and Harvard University – where applied physics professor David Keith launched a major solar geoengineering research programme – began a consultation on geoengineering governance which led to the commission’s creation.

Diplomatic discussions on the issue became critical to research advocates when Keith’s group halted high-profile testing in the atmosphere above Sweden after outcry by indigenous Saami people.

Both Parson and Keith remain involved with the commission’s secretariat, which includes geoengineering researchers Joshua Horton, of Harvard’s research group, and Jesse Reynolds.

Feeling used

Several members of the youth engagement group told Climate Home they were concerned about the secretariat’s “one-sided” views. Two of eight have left the group.

“We were only there to make them seemingly more open to engage with diverse people and opinions,” said a youth who spoke to Climate Home on condition of anonymity.

Gina Cortés Valderrama, of Colombia, who left earlier this year, said young people and former politicians with no extensive knowledge of SRM were being “instrumentalised” to normalise discussing how to govern the technology in view of potential future deployment.

Creeping "techno-fixes into the political agenda…results in a very dangerous distraction from the just and equitable phase out of fossil fuels that we need,” she said.

Fake social media profiles wage “organised” propaganda campaign on Cop28

In a letter in February, the youth group accused the secretariat of “a lack serious intention to facilitate meaningful and genuine participation”.

This prompted the Children Investment Fund Foundation to pull the plug on a $500,000 grant to the commission, email correspondence shows.

The secretariat apologised for initial “suboptimal” participation. Since then, Lamy said the youths had been playing an important role and were now considered like “advisors”. The youth group presented its recommendations in person at a meeting in Nairobi in May.

‘Can’t put genie back in the bottle’

Commissioners insist their deliberations are independent from the secretariat’s views. “This will be the commissioners’ report, not the secretariat’s,” said Beinecke.

The recommendations, she said, will be “very cautious” on SRM but “somebody has to be talking about it”.

“It’s out there now, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. You need more research, you need broader participation across the world, you need a governance mechanism,” she said, citing the risks of a repeat of a rogue experiment that took place in Mexico this year.

But for a growing group of scientists, calls for more research is cause for alarm. Writing in the New York Times, Chukwumerije Okereke, a climate and development expert from Nigeria, argued “more studies into this hypothetical solution look like steps toward development and a slippery slope to eventual deployment”.

More than 440 scientists have signed an open letter advocating for an international non-use agreement on solar geoengineering, including a ban on outdoor experiments.

Biermann, who led the initiative, said: “Some American philanthropists who have made their fortunes with technology seem to believe that quick technofixes can now also save humanity and global capitalism from the climate crisis. Yet solar geoengineering is only a false solution that would make the climate crisis even worse.”

The post The Overshoot Commission is talking about solar geoengineering. Not everyone thinks it should appeared first on Climate Home News.

This uncomfortable truth is giving strong impetus to the development of technologies that capture carbon from polluting plants or directly from the air and store it permanently in geological formations for example.

While unproven at large scale, countries like the US are putting billions behind the technology.

Now, Joe Biden is inviting leaders of major emitting countries to join the “Carbon Management Challenge” and announce goals to scale the sector at Cop28.

Removing carbon from the atmosphere is needed to counter-balance residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors and meet climate goals.

Proponents of the technology argue removal tech could be use to rein back temperature rise if we overshoot 1.5C. A UN report found this week that the world is on track to blow through the 1.5C carbon budget in 10 years.

But campaigners are concerned focusing on these technologies will distract from the hard work of cutting emissions and throw a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry.

As if to prove the point, Saudi Arabia and Russia called on the World Bank to finance carbon capture projects. Both countries have plans to increase their oil and gas production.

This week’s news: 

• US pledges $1 billion to Green Climate Fund amid call to keep 1.5C in reach
• UN’s Green Climate Fund too scared of risk, finds official review
• UN: World set to blow through 1.5C carbon budget in 10 years
• German official sees ‘a chance’ Cop28 can agree to phase out fossil fuels
• Campaigners sue EU for labelling gas sustainable
• US bets big on carbon-sucking machines
• Japan, US and EU block G7 from setting coal phase out date
• China and Brazil to cooperate in stopping illegal trade fueling deforestation
• Saudi Arabia, Russia push for more World Bank money into carbon capture

At a meeting of leaders, Biden brought positive news for communities on the climate frontlines.

The president pledged $1bn to the Green Climate Fund – ending a six-year freeze in US contributions to the UN’s flagship climate fund.

Climate finance campaigner Joe Thwaites told us this will help reboot US credibility after its ability to deliver climate finance was put in doubt.

However, the pledge only goes half way in paying back the $2bn the US owes the fund after Donald Trump reneged on a pledge made under Barack Obama almost a decade ago.

The GCF has been spending its money as soon as it comes through the door. The extra cash will help fund a pipeline of carbon-cutting and adaption projects in developing countries.

But the fund could achieve more with every dollar spent if it took on more risks. That’s the conclusion of an independent review of the fund calling for better risk management when deciding on projects.

The post Carbon capture gets its day – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Joe Biden made the commitment as he hosted a virtual meeting of world leaders on Thursday to spur high-level leadership to limit global warming to 1.5C.

This is the first time since 2017 the US has pledged cash to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which supports developing countries to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

The move was part of a broad call to action to the Major Economies Forum on energy and climate, a group of more than 20 high-emitting developed and developing countries which account for around 80% of global greenhouse gases.

US brings cash

Biden promised to ask Congress to approve an additional $500m over five years for the Amazon Fund to end deforestation by 2030.

He pledged to raise $200m from public, private and philanthropy sources for cutting methane emissions in developing countries and urged nations to scale up carbon capture and removal technologies.

The US president called on leaders to join a collective pledge for half of all car sales and at least 30% of medium and heavy-duty vehicles to be zero emissions by 2030.

UN’s Green Climate Fund too scared of risk, finds official review

“It’s a really big deal,” Joe Thwaites, a climate finance campaigner at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Climate Home News of Biden’s pledge to the GCF.

“Over the last few years, the fund has been right up against the limits of its resources. It has been approving money to projects as soon as it is receiving it from donors and has had to hold back projects because of a lack of money,” Thwaites explained.

“This $1bn is significant because it will allow the GCF to unlock more money for communities in need,” he added.

The move, he said, will boost US credibility at the fund, after its ability to provide climate finance had been put into doubt.

As I address the Major Economies Forum on our climate challenges, let me make a few things clear:

We are committed to following the science.
We are determined to strengthen our actions.
We will do what it takes to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

— President Biden (@POTUS) April 20, 2023

Climate finance laggard

However, as the GCF is calling on countries for a third round of funding pledges to replenish the fund, the US is yet to deliver on its first commitment.

The $1bn announcement only accounts for half of the $2bn the US owes the fund after Donald Trump reneged on a $3bn pledge made under Barack Obama almost a decade ago. Since then, European and other donors have doubled their pledges to the fund.

“The question is: can the US clear another billion dollars and finally deliver on the pledge?” Thwaites said. Other donor countries will closely watch what the US will bring to a GCF pledging conference in October, he added.

Keeping 1.5C within reach

The leaders’ meeting was framed by the findings of a report by the International Energy Agency which outlined steps to take to keep the 1.5C goal within reach.

It highlights four key pillars: decarbonising the energy sector, ending deforestation, tackling non-CO2 emissions such as methane, and accelerating the deployment of carbon capture and storage and removal technologies.

UN: World set to blow through 1.5C carbon budget in 10 years

Alden Meyer, senior associate at think tank E3G, told Climate Home that the US was seeking to create more coalitions of the willing to advance action in key sectors – a model which has proved successful in galvanising support to cut methane emissions under the Methane Pledge.

“There are some good pieces,” said Meyer, “but it’s not comprehensive,” citing the lack of initiatives to decarbonise the energy sector.

That’s a gap the EU intends to fill. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed to launch an initiative for setting global targets for energy efficiency and renewable energy by Cop28. “These targets would complement other goals,” she said.

Betting on carbon capture

Biden called on countries to speed up the deployment of carbon capture and removal technologies by joining the ‘Carbon Management Challenge’.

This includes capturing carbon from specific polluting plants or directly from the atmosphere and storing it in geological formations, in the oceans or in products.

The White House said the initiative will develop a suite of announcements and goals that will be unveiled at Cop28.

US bets big on carbon-sucking machines

Meyer said US officials are considering setting a collective target for the amount of carbon being stored annually. The EU Commission has already proposed a binding target for the union to store 50 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030.

Scientists say carbon capture and removal technologies are needed to limit global warming to 1.5C by counter-balancing residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors. How much of it is needed depends on how quickly countries reduce emissions and reach net zero.

The IEA estimates that projects are needed to capture around 1.2 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2030 to meet global climate goals – a 30 fold increase on 2021 levels.

However, such technologies remain underdeveloped and face technological, economic and environmental barriers. There’s also uncertainty on the risks of deploying carbon dioxide removal at large scale.

Saudi Arabia, Russia push for more World Bank money into carbon capture

Campaigners have warned that focusing on techno-fixes risks distracting from pressing carbon-cutting action and impede the transition to clean energy sources.

Steven Feit, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, told Climate Home it was “very concerning” that carbon capture was increasingly being used “to justify the construction and expansion of the fossil economy” ahead of Cop28 hosted by oil and gas producer UAE.

Feit cited a major scientific report showing that carbon capture was one of the most expensive technologies with little mitigation potential.

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They can make a significant contribution to global efforts to address the climate crisis – if their rights are protected.

The Green Climate Fund – the UN’s flagship climate fund – is being put to the test to heed this call.

Indigenous representatives have complained that one of the fund’s projects in Nicaragua risks fuelling escalating violence from settlers invading their land to farm cattle and exploit the forest’s resources. They say the GCF approved the project without their consent or due diligence.

Last week, armed settlers reportedly attacked two communities and killed at least five people. The Nicaraguan government has turned a blind eye.

This is the first complaint case to reach the GCF board and a test of the fund’s ability to enforce its own safeguards.

Because of its sensitivity, board members discussed the case behind closed doors at a meeting this week. But the meeting drew to a close Thursday without a public outcome to the growing frustration of civil society groups. Meanwhile, the violence continues.

Also this week, Mafalda Duarte was selected to take the reins of the GCF’s secretariat from French UN veteran Yannick Glemarec. As CEO of the Climate Investment Funds, Duarte has launched programmes that provide direct financing for indigenous communities to protect natural resources.

Perhaps, these are some of the skills she can bring to the GCF.

This week’s stories

• Green Climate Fund credibility hangs over response to violence in Nicaragua project
• Loss and damage committee ready to start talks following Asian nominations
• Argentina secures funding boost to kickstart gas exports from ‘carbon bomb’
• IMF approves first batch of climate resilience loans
• Lawyers and activists build pressure on Korean court to rule on climate
• Chinese coal boom a ‘direct threat’ to 1.5C goal, analysts warn
• Mafalda Duarte named as next chief of UN climate fund
• Vietnam’s energy transition deal is a ‘black box’, partner warns

The expansion of fossil fuel production continues to cause significant harm to indigenous peoples around the world.

In Argentina, campaigners say president Alberto Fernández’s plans to export record amounts of gas from the Vaca Muerta fields will further trample the rights of indigenous Mapuche people.

The Latin American Development Bank recently agreed to support the Néstor Kirchner pipeline, which will channel gas to Argentina’s northern Santa Fé province for export to neighbouring countries. Fernández is also eyeing exports to Europe amid plans to build an LNG terminal in Buenos Aires.

This fossil fuel buildout and a renewed coal boom in China risks pushing the world towards more violent climate disasters. As Malawi reels from what could be the longest-lasting tropical storm on record, we are once again reminded that the most vulnerable will suffer first.

The post Nature’s stewards under attack – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

In June 2021, a coalition of local groups and international NGOs complained to the fund about a $117 million project to reduce deforestation in the Unesco-designated Bosawás and Rio San Juan biosphere reserves in the Caribbean Region of Nicaragua.  

The project, which was approved in 2020, aims to reduce extensive grazing and introduce agroforestry systems such as cocoa. 

The region is home to 80% of Nicaragua’s forests and most of its indigenous populations. But it is gripped by increasingly violent conflict between indigenous communities and settlers, who are grabbing land to exploit the forest’s resources and farm cattle. 

Over the past week, the Center for Legal Assistance to Indigenous Peoples reported two attacks against communities in the project area that led to the death of at least five people.

The complainants claimed the project would exacerbate the violence. They argue it was approved without proper due diligence or their free, prior and informed consent. 

Mafalda Duarte named as next chief of UN climate fund

This is the first time a complaint case reaches the board of the UN’s flagship climate fund. Civil society observers argue the board’s handling of the case will set a precedent for future complaints.

Behind closed doors

The findings of the investigation have not been made public because of the sensitive nature of the case and complainants have remained anonymous because of the risk of retaliation.

However, excerpts from a draft report, seen by Climate Home News, shows that the redress body found the project clearly violated several GCF safeguards and procedures, including the lack of consultation with indigenous groups. It agreed that the project may exacerbate conflict.

Board members discussed the report behind closed doors this week during a meeting in Songdo, South Korea. The meeting closed on Thursday without a public update on the case.

Liane Schalatek, a civil society observer at the GCF, told Climate Home the closed door discussion was meant to protect the complainants and the integrity of the process. “It is now used to divert the latter and harm the former…and that is a tragedy,” she said.

Escalating violence

Florencia Ortúzar, a Chilean lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (Aida), a regional NGO, supported the complainants to bring their case to the GCF. 

Ortúzar said it was “unfortunate and infuriating” that the issue had not be given priority during the four-day long meeting. A delayed outcome means affected communities may have to wait until the next meeting in July for a decision – nearly a year after the investigation’s findings were finalised.

“And in the meantime violence escalates,” Ortúzar told Climate Home.

In a letter to the GCF board, and writing on behalf of 15 indigenous communities, the Center for Justice and International Law said the recent attacks were carried out by a group of 60 armed settlers who burnt down 50 homes. It urged the GCF to publish the final report on the case.

Argentina secures funding boost to kickstart gas exports from ‘carbon bomb’

In its draft recommendations, the redress body urged the board to implement robust due diligence on human rights and independent monitoring as a condition for the project to go ahead.

While the body hasn’t got the power to advise the cancellation of the project, board members could decide to scrap it – the complainants’ preferred outcome.

Credibility test

Amaru Ruiz, director of Nicaraguan organisation Fundación del Río, who supports the affected communities, said the GCF’s credibility was on the line. 

He said the fund should “completely reassess the approval of the project” or risks “legitimising environmental destruction and the process of forest invasion”.

“What is at stake is not the credibility of the [Nicaragua] regime, but the credibility of the fund,” he said.

“This not just the first major grievance case, it is a test case – for the solidity and fairness of the fund’s complaints procedures, but also for the board’s compliance with guidelines it adopted for its own conduct in such cases,” said Schalatek.

“Unfortunately, it appears that the board is falling short in this first test,” she said, adding that indigenous groups still haven’t been able to see the final findings.

IMF approves first batch of climate resilience loans

Human rights abuses

Ortúzar, of Aida, said indigenous people have no confidence in the ability of the Nicaragua government and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Cabei), which is providing co-funding, to deliver the project under strict monitoring conditions.

She said the government had expelled UN staff and dissolved close to 200 NGOs to escape scrutiny and it was unlikely to accept monitoring from any third party.

Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council found that widespread human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity are being committed against civilians by the Nicaragua government for political reasons. 

Human rights experts said this was a product of the deliberate dismantling of democratic institutions and the destruction of civic space.  

A report by the Heinrich Böll Foundation found that Cabei’s operations lacked transparency and that it was funding president Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian regime. 

A Green Climate Fund spokesman told Climate Home: “The GCF has robust procedures to address any complaints made in relation to projects, including safeguards to protect complainants. We cannot comment on this case since the matter remains confidential.”

The post Green Climate Fund credibility hangs over response to violence in Nicaragua project appeared first on Climate Home News.

The move comes a little over a week before the committee on loss and damage is due to hold its first meeting in Luxor, Egypt, on 27-29 March. It means every position on the committee has now been filled.

In a breakthrough deal at the Cop27 climate talks, countries agreed to set up a fund dedicated to support vulnerable countries address climate-related losses and damages. But how the fund will operate, who will pay, who will benefit and how it will be governed remain to be worked out.

To do so, countries agreed to appoint a 24-member committee to make recommendations ahead of the next round of UN climate talks in the UAE.

Vulnerable nations set up alliance to prepare loss and damage action plans

Regional tensions

The make-up of the committee carefully reflects geographies and groupings of countries based on wealth. It includes 10 members from developed countries and 14 from developing nations.

The Asia-Pacific group was the last to nominate its members. The group has three seats, including one for a representative of the UAE Cop28 presidency. Sources told Climate Home News that competition between Asian countries caused the delay.

“It’s a fractious region,” a committee member from a different grouping told Climate Home. “Everyone hates each other. They have almost each had a war with the other and border skirmishes.”

Compromise

To resolve the issue, the group appointed representatives from six countries to share attendance to three planned meetings this year. India, the Philippines and Saudi Arabia will share one seat, while China, South Korea and Pakistan will share the other.

The Asia-Pacific group is not the only one which has had to compromise. Countries from Latin America and the Caribbean and wealthy nations are also sharing seats to allow more governments to join the discussions.

Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s lead climate negotiator and a committee members, said: “This issue is of extreme importance to everybody, so everybody wants to be sitting at the table.”

The post Loss and damage committee ready to start talks following Asian nominations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Mafalda Duarte, a Portuguese national, joins the Green Climate Fund from the Washington-based Climate Investment Funds (CIF), where she served as CEO since 2014.

She previously held senior positions at the African Development Bank and the World Bank, working on climate finance.

Duarte is replacing French UN veteran Yannick Glemarec, who served a four-year term at the helm of the GCF and is due to step down on 2 April. In 2019, Duarte was among the contenders to head the GCF but lost out to a shortlist of three white men.

The appointment comes as the board is faced with its first complaint case after indigenous peoples in Nicaragua alleged that a project to reduce deforestation is exacerbating violence with settlers invading their land.

Vietnam’s energy transition deal is a ‘black box’, partner warns

The Green Climate Fund was established in 2010 as the main investment arm to support developing countries deliver on the Paris Agreement goals.

Countries have pledged $20.3 billion to the fund since its creation. Duarte will manage a portfolio of over 200 projects and oversee the next replenishment phase which will culminate in a pledging conference later this year.

Victoria Gunderson, co-chair of the GCF board, said the board was “impressed with her vision and drive” and that her experience in managing climate funds will be crucial in helping the GCF catalyse more funding.

Gunderson added that the recruitment process had been “highly competitive”.

The shortlist of candidates was not made public. But Climate Home News understands that Duarte beat Woochong Um, a Korean national and the managing director general of the Asian Development Bank, and Anthony Nyong, a senior director at the Global Center on Adaptation on secondment from the African Development Bank.

Vulnerable nations set up alliance to prepare loss and damage action plans

In a statement following the announcement, Duarte said she was “honoured” to have been selected and looked forward to “accelerate the delivery of critically needed climate investments”.

“Developing countries are on the frontlines of the climate crisis. They can count on my resolve to support their climate aspirations in pursuit of a better climate future for all,” she said.

Henry Gonzalez, the fund’s deputy executive director, will serve as interim director until Duarte takes over.

Liane Schalatek, a civil society observer on the GCF board, welcomed having “an experienced climate finance leader” heading the fund.

But she told Climate Home that Duarte will need to adjust “to the very special role and accountability of the GCF as the core of the UN Climate Change financial mechanisms”, which she said is “very different” from the modus operandi of multilateral development banks.

EU agrees diplomatic push for fossil fuel phase out ahead of Cop28

At the fund’s board meeting in Songdo, South Korea, this week, the fund’s redress mechanism is facing its first test.

Violence and human rights abuses

For the first time, board members will discuss a complaint brought by a coalition of local groups and international NGOs about a $117m project to reduce deforestation in the Unesco-designated Bosawás and Rio San Juan biosphere reserves, located in the Caribbean Region of Nicaragua.

The region is home to 80% of Nicaragua’s forests and the majority of its indigenous populations. Approved in 2020, the project aims to reduce extensive grazing and introduce agroforestry systems such as cocoa.

However, the region is gripped by increasingly violent conflict between indigenous communities and settlers, who are grabbing land to exploit the forest’s resources and farm cattle.

This week, the Center for Legal Assistance to Indigenous Peoples reported that a group of armed settlers attacked a community and killed up to seven people. Five people, including two children, from a separate community were allegedly kidnapped.

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Complainants, which remain anonymous because of the risk of retaliation, allege that the project will exacerbate the violence. They say it was approved without their free, prior and informed consent or proper due diligence.

The conclusions of an investigation by the GCF’s Independent Redress Mechanism (IRM) have not been made public. But excerpts from a draft report, seen by Climate Home, give right to the complainants.

It finds that the project clearly violates several GCF safeguards and procedures, including the lack of consultation with indigenous groups, and that the project may exacerbate conflict.

The draft report cited ongoing human rights violations in the project area, including the massacre of indigenous peoples.

Setting a precedent

Florencia Ortúzar, a Chilean lawyer at the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (Aida), a regional NGO, supported the complainants bring their case to the GCF.

How the board deals with the case “is going to set a very important precedent” for future complaint cases, she told Climate Home.

Because of the sensitivity of the case, the board’s discussions will be held behind closed doors. The IRM  is expected to recommend robust due diligence on human rights and independent monitoring is carried out before the project is implemented.

But Ortúzar said complainants would prefer the project to be scrapped. They have “no confidence” in the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (Cabei), which is co-financing the project, nor the Nicaraguan government, she said.

Earlier this month, the UN Human Rights Council found that widespread human rights violations that amount to crimes against humanity are being committed against civilians by the Nicaragua government for political reasons.

Human rights experts said this was a product of the deliberate dismantling of democratic institutions and the destruction of civic space.

The post Mafalda Duarte named as next chief of UN climate fund appeared first on Climate Home News.

Countries agreed on a legal framework for governing those remote parts of the oceans, where, far from sight, human activities have often gone unchecked.

Once formally adopted, the treaty will form the basis for the creation of marine protected areas and help reach a goal to protect 30% of the seas by 2030.

That’s all good news albeit the fact environmentally risky deep sea mining, which is governed by its own UN body, will be exempt from the treaty’s environmental assessment framework, Matteo Civillini reports.

The lesser known International Seabed Authority is currently negotiating a mining code that will lay the rules for extracting minerals used in EV batteries from the international seabed.

Campaigners are concerned that environmental safeguards for deep sea mining will be weaker than those of the high seas treaty, turning the exemption into a “get out of jail free card”.

Others remain optimistic the treaty will stitch the patchwork of ocean governance and avoid a two-tier standard: one for the oceans and another for their seabeds.

This week’s stories

• World Bank backs mega dam threatening to displace thousands in Mozambique
• EU agrees diplomatic push for fossil fuel phase out ahead of Cop28
• Vulnerable nations set up alliance to prepare loss and damage action plans
• High Seas Treaty exempts deep-sea mining from stricter environmental rules
• Cop28 boss urges Big Oil to join fight against climate change
• China strengthens role of courts in meeting carbon targets
• Canada sets out green investments guide amid complaints of industry capture

In Mozambique, farmers and fishermen along the lower Zambezi river are concerned international human rights standards may be flouted in the construction of a 1.5GW mega dam.

With backing from the World Bank, the government says the project will help address energy poverty and accelerate a shift to cleaner energy sources.

NGOs estimate the project could displace thousands of families but local people told Climate Home they haven’t been formally informed – let alone consulted – about the plans.

And in China, one of the country’s top courts issued new guidelines encouraging judges around the country to hear climate-related cases that can help implement China’s carbon peaking and neutrality goals.

The unusual legal intervention urges courts to balance the need for development with corporate action when ruling on lawsuits. The move is likely to increase scrutiny on new high-emission projects.

The post It’s high time for the high seas – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU Council approved a common position on climate and energy diplomacy, which sets out the bloc’s priorities ahead of the Cop28 summit.

Member states agreed to “systematically promote and call for a global move towards energy systems free of unabated fossil fuels well ahead of 2050” but recognised “a transitional role for natural gas”.

The text stresses that “a dependence on fossil fuels leaves countries vulnerable to market volatility and geopolitical risk” and that climate neutrality “will require the global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels”.

It repeats a Cop26 commitment to “close the book” on unabated coal power and calls for an immediate end to international financing for coal.  This, however, does not extend to ending financing for overseas oil and gas – despite a pledge to do so signed by 10 EU countries in Glasgow.

Vulnerable nations set up alliance to prepare loss and damage action plans

Alex Scott, who leads think tank E3G’s climate diplomacy work, told Climate Home News the agreement formalises the position the EU adopted at the Cop27 talks in Egypt but left room for improvement. 

The bloc was among a coalition of more than 80 countries that took up a call by India to extend Cop26’s groundbreaking call to phase down coal to other fossil fuels. But faced with opposition from oil and gas producers, Egypt didn’t include the proposal in the final text.

The issue is set to dominate discussions at Cop28 in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers.

The pledge to actively pursue a global fossil fuel phase out  “is a step up in EU climate diplomacy,” Scott said. But the timeline “needs to be clearer and sooner to set the direction” and the term “unabated” needs to be defined to avoid loopholes, she added.

China strengthens role of courts in meeting carbon targets

Sven Harmeling, a campaigner at CAN Europe, said the deal “sends an important signal that the EU is speaking out on the need to move away from fossil fuels”.

“What is of course missing is a clearer signal by the EU that it needs to be quicker than ‘well ahead of 2050’ because of its historic emissions and its capacity to decarbonise,” he said.

He added that the focus on coal should not distract from the need to wind down oil and gas production.

Nuclear divisions

The document, initially expected in February, was delayed because of a dispute over the role of nuclear-derived hydrogen in meeting carbon targets. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine compelled many EU countries to reconsider their long-standing opposition to nuclear power as they seek alternatives to Russian energy imports. 

France, which relies heavily on nuclear energy, argues that nuclear-made hydrogen should be considered green. Germany and Spain fear this would distract from efforts to boost renewables. 

World Bank backs mega dam threatening to displace thousands in Mozambique

On Thursday, an advisor to German chancellor Olaf Schulz, told an event in Paris that Berlin was not opposed to hydrogen made from nuclear energy and would import it from France. 

The final text doesn’t specify the type of hydrogen the union will back. But countries agreed to “promote the deployment of safe and sustainable low-carbon technologies” – language which usually refers to nuclear energy.

Alternative gas supplies

The EU said it remains steadfast to its commitment to phase out its dependency from Russian fossil fuels “as soon as possible”.

Eurostat figures show coal imports fell from 45% in 2021 to 22% in 2022, and gas from 36% to 21%.  Ministers said volumes have continued to decline in recent months. 

While countries are still seeking to diversify their gas supplies, ministers agreed there was “no need for a one-to-one replacement of former Russian natural gas import volumes” and warned against creating “fossil fuel lock-ins and stranded assets”.  

Recent analysis by Climate Action Tracker found that the global dash for gas that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is threatening the world’s ability to keep global temperature rise to 1.5C.

Call for cooperation

At a time of deepening geopolitical tensions, the EU emphasised the need for cooperation between nations.

In addition to the Just Energy Transition Partnerships, the bloc wants to increase cooperation with its coal-reliant neighbours, including in the Western Balkans, and with other developing countries with high energy-related emissions.

The emphasis on cooperation comes as the EU is scrambling to respond to the US Inflation Reduction Act – a $370bn green subsidy package with generous climate incentives for products “made in America”. Brussels is concerned the incentives will encourage companies to relocate production to the US.

The post EU agrees diplomatic push for fossil fuel phase out ahead of Cop28 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nepal, Bangladesh, Senegal, Malawi, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Tonga and Vanuatu are exploring setting up national facilities to channel resources for climate disasters response and disburse money where it is most needed.

The initiative will help communities inform governments on how to respond to future climate shocks from a local perspective.

The alliance is being supported by the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) in Bangladesh, and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) in the UK.

Ritu Bharadwaj, a researcher at IIED, said the bottom-up approach would avoid “pre-conceived solutions” and ensure countries are “ready to deploy any additional funds which might be available in the future”.

World Bank backs mega dam threatening to displace thousands in Mozambique

Money for climate victims

In a breakthrough deal at the Cop27 climate talks in Egypt, countries agreed to set up a fund dedicated to support vulnerable countries address climate-related losses and damages.

But it could be a long time before money is mobilised. A transitional committee is due to work out how the fund would operate, who will pay, who will benefit and how it will be governed and make recommendations ahead of the next round of UN climate talks in the UAE.

The 24-people committee is due to hold its first meeting in Luxor, Egypt, on the 27-29 March despite the Asia Pacific group’s failure to nominate their two representatives. Several sources told Climate Home News this was because of several countries competing for the positions.

Mohamed Nasr, Egypt’s lead climate negotiator and one of the committee members, said: “This issue is of extreme importance to everybody, so everybody wants to be sitting at the table.”

Two sources told Climate Home that nominations from the group are expected soon.

Locally-led solutions

The alliance will help vulnerable countries prepare for the handling of loss and damage funds, said Saleemul Huq, director of the ICCAD.

“Money is not going to come for a while so part of the exercise is to know how to use it when it comes,” Huq told Climate Home. “So this is a knowledge-first approach.”

Huq said the alliance will support the development of locally-led solutions, co-created with communities, which are cost-effective.

“It’s about getting a better handle on what is needed to respond to unavoidable climate impacts so countries are ready to address them when they come. People can’t afford to wait until the world wakes up and starts filling the coffers of the loss and damage fund,” he said.

Pooling resources 

To make the most of the patchwork of existing but limited funds, the alliance urged countries to create a national facility that pools funding from the private sector, development aid, philanthropies, insurance, debt relief mechanisms, national budgets and new funding opportunities under the G7-backed Global Shield.

These national entities can act as a ready vehicles to disburse any future loss and damage cash in a cost-effective, accountable and transparent way, researchers say.

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Christopher Bartlett, a member of Vanuatu’s national advisory board on climate change and disaster, said the nation was “one of the strongest allies” of the initiative.

Vanuatu is reeling from the devastation caused by two cyclones which hit the small-island state within 24 hours of each other last week.

Lubna Yasmine, joint secretary on climate change at Bangladesh’s environment ministry, described the approach as “very good”.

“It’s very important to put people at the center of the action because if we can help communities directly, they can solve their own problems and come up with innovative solutions,” she said. “There is no time for delayed action, we need to get to work immediately.”

The post Vulnerable nations set up alliance to prepare loss and damage action plans appeared first on Climate Home News.

Wedged between Brazil and Suriname, the overseas department has little in common with mainland France bar the name. The Amazon rainforest covers more than 90% of the territory.

However, French Guiana is critical to Europe’s soft power. It is home to the continent’s spaceport where the European Space Agency launches its satellites.

Now, the French government is seeking exemptions from proposed EU rules that would restrict the use of bioenergy on the territory. The loophole would allow French Guiana to receive public financing to produce biofuels “especially for the space sector”.

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Local lawmakers argue the dispensation is necessary to protect French Guiana’s forestry sector and accelerate its energy transition. But campaigners have warned the exemption risks setting an incentive for increased logging in Europe’s corner of the Amazon forest.

“Thousands of hectares of Amazon forest could be cleared to be replaced with monocultures designed to produce energy… with the help of public financing,” Marine Calmet, a lawyer specialised in environmental law at NGOs Maiouri Nature Guyane and Wild Legal, told Climate Home News

Rules for biofuels

The EU considers burning wood a renewable energy and subsidises its production. Bioenergy accounts for almost 60% of the EU’s renewable energy mix. But a mounting body of evidence is showing that burning wood emits more carbon dioxide than coal per unit of energy – worsening climate change.

Regrown trees may eventually remove the emitted carbon from the atmosphere but the process could take decades to a century – time which scientists say the world doesn’t have to prevent the worst impacts of global heating. To start addressing the issue, the EU is negotiating stricter sustainability criteria for producing and using bioenergy.

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Draft legislation adopted by the EU parliament proposed to exclude “primary woody biomass” – untransformed wood such as whole trees, logs and stumps – from receiving renewable energy subsidies, with limited exceptions. It also caps the amount that can count as renewable energy to current use.

Biomass from agricultural crops can’t be considered renewable if they are grown on land of great biodiversity value or replacing primary and ancient forests.

But French lawmakers introduced an exemption for “an outermost region where forests cover at least 90% of the territory”. It would allow biomass fuels and biofuels “especially used in the space sector” and regardless of their origin to receive public financing if they incentivise the transition away from fossil fuels.

Analysts told Climate Home French Guiana is the only known EU region where this could apply.

The Guiana Space Center is surrounded by 90% of forest covered territory in the Amazon. (Photo: CNES/ESA/Arianespace/Optique Video CSG/P Baudon)

Biofuels in the rainforest

The loophole would allow France to count woody bioenergy production in French Guiana towards its own renewable energy target – despite a cap in the rest of the continent. In 2020, France was the only EU member state to fail to achieve its renewable energy target.

Authorities in French Guiana argue the EU’s proposed rules threatened the territory’s goal to move away from fossil fuels, including at the spaceport, which consumes 18% of the electricity produced locally.

Two biomass plants, totalling 9MW, are being built to produce electricity and cooling for operations at the space station. By 2030, French Guiana wants 25% of its electricity mix to come from woody biomass.

Thibault Lechat-Vega, a local official responsible for European affairs, told Climate Home that halting subsidies to the sector would require the territory to import wood pellets from Canada and China “at a catastrophic carbon cost”.

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“There is clearly no question of cutting the forest to produce biofuels but to support research to green the European space launcher,” he said, adding that the logging sector in French Guiana followed some of the world’s strictest sustainability criteria.

Waste from forest clearance to give way to agriculture and to build homes and infrastructure would be used, he explained.

But Calmet said these assurances were insufficient. “Elected officials are providing no guarantees about the origins of the biomass. On the contrary, they want to contravene all legal obligations designed to protect primary and old forests, and ecosystems with high biodiversity value,” she said.

Cleaner rockets

While rocket launches account for a tiny fraction of the space industry’s emissions, a number of companies are developing greener propellants, including using biofuels. In French Guiana, researchers are working to scale up biofuels production from micro algae.

Andreas Schütz, a chemical propellant expert at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), told Climate Home that producing rocket fuels from wood, using a process known as gasification, is feasible.

But Mike Mason, an engineer who researched biomass at Oxford University, said the process was “very expensive” and that burning wood to produce electricity remains inefficient.

“Wood is a renewable resource but burning it has a global warming impact,” said Mason, warning of the risk of creating a precedent for climate-damaging activities in the Amazon.

Negotiations on the draft rules are ongoing. Sources close to the discussions told Climate Home that while the EU Council showed willing to accommodate France’s request, the Commission was concerned about the biodiversity impacts.

France recently closed a consultation on requesting the waiver. The government said “minimal environmental guarantees” would be put in place to limit tree clearance for energy production purposes.

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The Beijing-headquartered development bank is considering support for a 584MW gas plant in Narayangonj on the outskirts of Dhaka. A report from the Bangladesh Power Development Board shows the plant will be fuelled by LNG.

Dwindling domestic gas resources, efforts to shift away from coal and phase out polluting diesel plants and the lack of renewable capacity has led Bangladesh to increasingly rely on LNG to meet its energy needs.

But soaring prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have left the South Asian nation priced out of the market and facing regular power outages.

“There’s no gas to supply this new power plant. It’s not justified and ridiculous,” Hasan Mehedi, secretary of the Bangladesh Working Group on External Debt, an alliance of 43 local organisations, told Climate Home News.

UAE plans to have it both ways as Cop28 climate summit host

Standard Chartered Bank is lead lender on the $613 million project, which is under construction. AIIB’s proposed contribution is a $110m loan.

To build the plant, project developer Unique Meghnaghat acquired 21 acres of agricultural land from local villages, affecting 343 landowners and fishers, according to project documents.

The fast-tracking process allows the bank’s president to greenlight support without going through the board. He could make the decision this month.

Paris alignment

AIIB found the project to be in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Petra Kjell Wright, a development finance campaigner at Recourse told Climate Home this was the first time the bank had mentioned a Paris alignment assessment. But it has not published its methodology.

The bank has pledged to fully align its operations with the Paris goals by July 2023. According to E3G analysts, it has work to do to get there.

The International Energy Agency has warned that “a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels” is needed to limit warming to 1.5C – the more ambitious end of the Paris Agreement’s goals.

Brazil’s incoming government set to scrap gas pipelines and power plants

The project documents show that renewable alternatives were barely considered. They state that renewable energy “remains a niche area that does not have the capacity to provide the power delivery at the scale and reliability in view of the existing power deficit scenario”.

Land scarcity, high initial cost and the lack of infrastructure for large-scale generation are listed as barriers.

Kjell Wright described the assessment as “very weak” and with “loopholes so big that a gas-power plant can jump through them”.

“This is public finance and taxpayers money and it should play a role in the trajectory towards renewable. Public finance should help countries leapfrog to renewables and not pull them back to the fossil fuel economy,” she said.

A spokesperson for AIIB said the project will help the government avoid using more polluting and less efficient plants and complement the development of renewable energy.

‘Clever framing’

Multilateral development banks, including AIIB, have been working on a joint framework to assess projects against the goals of the Paris Agreement.

A draft from November 2021 rules that mining or burning coal isn’t aligned with the Paris deal but it doesn’t explicitly exclude support for oil and gas. Instead, banks are asked to answer a series of broad questions to determine whether the project is Paris-compatible.

“With a bit of clever framing and number crunching, there are ways of showing that nearly every project apart from coal and peat is Paris-aligned,” said Sonia Dunlop of think tank E3G.

The approval of the Narayangonj gas project could set a precedent for how other MDBs assess similar project, she added. “This is hugely concerning”.

Last month, AIIB approved an updated energy strategy restricting financing for coal and oil projects and gas drilling. But it allows funding for gas infrastructure and power generation in certain circumstances, including if it displaces more polluting fuels and doesn’t displace clean ones.

Delaying the energy transition

More than half of Bangladesh’s electricity generation comes from gas, while grid-connected solar accounts for just over 1% of the mix.

To keep up with growing electricity demand, Bangladesh’s LNG imports have surged. A recent analysis by Ember found that, based on current plans, Bangladesh could spend $11 billion on spot market LNG between 2022 and 2024. Investments in solar power could have reduced this by a quarter and saved up to $2.7bn.

EU agrees law to crack down on deforestation in supply chains

Shafiqul Alam is the lead energy finance analysts for Bangladesh for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa).

He told Climate Home: “Given high LNG prices on the international market and the fact Bangladesh is already facing a gas shortage… this is an opportunity for Bangladesh to transition and design a clear pathway for renewable energy.” Growing the fossil fuel pipeline will only delay that transition, he said. “The government should keep space for renewables and not invest in new LNG-based plants apart from the ones are under construction.”

As of August 2021, AIIB had invested $605m in the energy sector in Bangladesh. According to analysis by the Bangladesh Working Group on External Debt, none of this went to solar or wind projects.

Mehedi, of the working group, said Bangladesh had installed nine grid-connected solar plants. “Solar is bankable and profitable so why are we going for LNG?”

The post AIIB finds gas plant in Bangladesh compatible with Paris goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

In response to a parliamentary question from a left-wing German lawmaker, the state secretary at the ministry of economic affairs and climate action Udo Philipp said the government is considering 10 applications for export credit guarantees for fossil energy projects in Brazil, Iraq, Uzbekistan, the Dominican Republic and Cuba.

A breakdown of the projects accompanying the response shows that €419 million ($442m) or around 40% of the funding, could go to a single project in Brazil. Three of the projects totalling €340m ($359m) are located in Iraq and four are in Cuba.

Other fossil fuel projects could be under consideration by the German state-owned investment and development bank KfW. The bank does not disclose projects it hasn’t decided to support.

UK coal mine approval sparks global fury and hypocrisy claims

Germany was among 16 countries to sign a pledge at Cop26 in Glasgow last year to end international funding for fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022.

Ten have published policies showing how they will restrict funding to coal, oil and gas. But Germany has not adopted a policy because of internal divisions over exemptions for gas.

Victor Perli is the German lawmaker of the leftist Die Linke party who asked the parliamentary question. He accused the federal government of “breaking promises to end funding for fossil fuel projects” and called for checks to be made on each of the 10 projects.

Gas loopholes

The government stopped short of providing details about each of the projects. But some information is already in the public domain.

In October, the German government said it was considering supporting the construction of a 1.6 GW gas power plant near the city of Termez in Uzbekistan. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is also considering support.

The government said it was considering an application for €192m ($203m) in support for a project in Uzbekistan.

UAE plans to have it both ways as Cop28 climate summit host

Germany’s existing export credit policy bans support for the construction of new coal-fired power plants and the expansion of existing ones. The only other restrictions are to do with gas flaring in oil production.

The pledge to end international finance for fossil fuel allows exceptions in “limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5C warming limit”. The International Energy Agency warned last year that investment in new coal, oil and gas production was incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

But at the G7 summit this year, Germany pushed so that exceptions would include temporary gas investments to address the energy crisis.

“[Chancellor Olaf] Scholz has an opportunity to shift billions away from fossil fuels into clean energy,” Adam McGibbon, public finance strategist at Oil Change International, told Climate Home News. “He should take this opportunity and not perpetuate a dirty, polluting, insecure fossil fuel energy system. It’s hard to see how Scholz can claim to be a climate chancellor if he fails this very minor test,” said McGibbon.

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The pipeline of fossil fuel projects is awkward for the German government.

Internal divisions

At Cop27 last month, foreign minister Annalena Baerbock was among those accusing oil producers of “stonewalling” a push by an alliance of 80 countries to expand a call to phase down coal to all fossil fuels. But at home, Germany took a different stance.

Since Cop27 ended, Germany signed a 15-year deal to buy two million tonnes of liquefied gas from Qatar starting in 2026.

Last week, the Spiegel newspaper reported that a delegation of companies involved in gas production in Senegal attended a two-day event in Berlin. Chancellor Scholz previously said he intended to “intensively pursue” plans to help Senegal export its gas.

The newspaper reports that state secretary Jörg Kukies, of the finance ministry, met with some of them. Scholz is from the centre-left Social Democratic Party and the finance minister is from the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party.

Neither the foreign ministry nor the ministry of economic affairs and climate action knew about the meeting, according to the report. Both these ministries are led by the Green Party.

Brazil’s incoming government set to scrap gas pipelines and power plants

Support for the Senegal’s gas export could come from KfW’s subsidiary Ipex Bank, which focuses on export financing.

The KfW board is meeting next week, when it will discuss a proposal to allow Germany to support oil and gas projects in countries with existing infrastructure for export to Europe to help supply Berlin with alternatives to Russian energy.

Regine Richter, energy and finance campaigner at Urgewald, said: “The German government needs to understand that you can’t say you favour climate protection and at the same time support massive fossil fuel projects. This must end if we are to stand a chance to stay within the 1.5C temperature limit.”

A spokeswoman for the economic affairs and climate action ministry told Climate Home the pledge made in Glasgow and reaffirmed at the G7 allows for exceptions “in particular for gas as a transition technology”. “The German government stands by this commitment and will implement the pledge from January 2023,” she said.

The post Germany considers €1 billion in support for 10 fossil fuel projects overseas appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Persian Gulf petrostate came out in force in Sharm el-Sheikh with the second largest delegation in the history of climate summits, including 70 oil and gas lobbyists  – a flavour of what is to come.

The UAE takes on the UN climate talks presidency from the Egyptians at the end of November next year, when it hosts Cop28 on the site of the Dubai Expo.

The Emirates are seeking international clout as the Gulf’s most proactive nation on climate action. It was first in the region to set a 2050 net zero goal. And at Cop27, it became the first to announce absolute emission cuts, instead of from a hypothetical business-as-usual baseline.

But its plan includes expanding oil and gas production, which is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C. The UAE has pitched its role as providing the world with reliable and low-carbon intensity oil and gas for decades to come.

“The UAE is known as a responsible supplier of energy and will continue to play this role as long as the world needs oil and gas,” president Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan told the leaders’ summit at Cop27.

Two-pronged approach

In its climate diplomacy, the UAE is pursuing a two-pronged approach: an aggressive campaign to fund thousands of megawatts of clean energy at home and overseas and even greater efforts to boost its oil and gas production.

It is on the defensive, as the case for leaving fossil fuels in the ground gets more vocal. In Sharm el-Sheikh, more than 80 countries pushed to extend language on phasing down unabated coal power to oil and gas, but petrostates blocked it from formal negotiation. The issue is not going away.

“The Emiratis will find it difficult to deal with a fast-moving debate on fossil fuels, given their economy is structured around oil and gas,” Glada Lahn, a senior research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House. “Sharm showed that the tide is turning. What’s missing are the great examples of diversification – the UAE could definitely elevate its work on that.”

A federation of seven emirates and home to nearly 10 million people, the UAE is the world’s eighth biggest oil producer in absolute terms and the second biggest per capita.

The discovery of commercial oil in the late 1950s bought enormous riches to Abu Dhabi, the largest of the emirates, where almost all of the country’s oil is pumped.

Today, the UAE says it has the world’s sixth largest crude oil reserves and seventh largest gas reserves.

It has made efforts to diversify the economy away from oil – grasping the need to do so earlier than most of its neighbours. Tourism is a key growth sector. Dubai is becoming a business and financial services hub. Yet, more than half of government revenues still depend on the oil and gas industry, according to Carbon Tracker.

Prepare to be dazzled

The UAE has been assiduously preparing for Cop28 since it received the green light to host the summit at Cop26 in Glasgow, UK last year.

Climate envoy Sultan bin Ahmed al-Jaber started consultations with the UK and Egypt as early as January.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, the Emirates boasted one of the largest country pavilions. The steel structure of the media centre was sprayed with “made in UAE”.

“They will hold a very slick event – they are excellent hosts. That is what they like to do,” said Lahn.

“They try to dazzle visitors. They like to say they are the biggest and the best at everything they do,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told Climate Home.

And Cop28 could turn out to be the biggest UN climate summit yet.

Late-night fossil fuel fight leaves bitter taste after Cop27

Al-Jaber told the government the event, which will coincide with the UAE’s national day on 2 December, is expected to welcome more than 140 heads of states and over 80,000 delegates at the Dubai expo site – more than double the size of Cop26.

“The expo was supposed to get the UAE back on the global map,” said Ulrichsen. Originally scheduled for October 2020 and plagued by pandemic delays, the event received fewer international visitors than expected. Cop28 is the UAE’s biggest opportunity yet to wield its soft power.

Political prisoners and pragmatism

In the UAE, like in Egypt, where human rights concerns came to the fore, it will be “a very controlled experience,” said Ulrichsen.

“The UAE have been able to brand themselves as a version of southern Spain or Ibiza although below the surface they have similar issues as their neighbours: exploited labour force, political prisoners and a police state,” he added.

In an example of authoritarian solidarity, the UAE last month arrested an Egyptian-American national over criticism of Egypt’s president. Sherif Osman may be extradited to Egypt, his fiancee told Reuters, where she feared he would not get a fair trial.

Downtown Dubai (Photo: Thomas Hackl/Flickr)

The UAE has pitched Cop28 as a moment to find “realistic, practical, and pragmatic solutions to accelerate the global energy transition”.

The summit will hold the first formal assessment of progress since the Paris Agreement came into force – known as the global stocktake. The outcome could be critical in spurring much -needed emission cuts this decade.

Adaptation and agriculture are poised to be key priorities for the host, which imports 85% of the food it consumes. Under a partnership with the US, the UAE pledged to invest $1bn in high-tech “climate-smart” agriculture. The alliance is controversial for favouring intensive agriculture over nature-friendly farming and working with climate-denying meat lobby groups.

Breaking cover

In the climate talks, the UAE negotiates under the Arab Group, chaired by Saudi Arabia, which takes most of the flak for the group’s position.

Cop28 “might force them to break cover,” said Ulrichsen.

For the UAE, like other producers, that conversation cannot happen without the oil and gas industry, who have received an early invitation to Cop28.

“The hydrocarbon industry will have to be included as part of the mix,” climate envoy Al-Jaber said of the summit earlier this year. Their expertise is necessary to develop “meaningful, practical climate solutions,” he added.

Who should pay for loss and damage? Spoiler: not China

Al-Jaber has a stake in the oil business. Minister of industry and advanced technology, he is also CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), the state-owned oil company. In addition, he is chairman of Masdar, a government-owned renewable energy company he helped establish.

“Wearing these different hats at the same time shows the UAE’s commitment to further climate action is balanced with the fact that its political wellbeing depends on oil and gas,” said Rice University’s Ulrichsen.

“It is not hydrocarbons or solar, not wind or nuclear or hydrogen. It is all the above,” Al-Jaber told The National, an Abu Dhabi newspaper owned by the royal family.

While Adnoc is planning to invest $127 billion in expanding production and downstream activities in the next five years, it is also taking part in a government partnership to scale up renewable capacity.

UAE special envoy Sultan Al Jaber at Cop26 in Glsgow (Photo: IISD/ENB)

The UAE was early in the region in establishing a climate ministry, now headed by Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, a woman representing the “young, progressive nation” the government wants to world to see.

Renewable leadership

In 2012, Abu Dhabi was chosen to house the International Renewable Energy Agency headquarters.

The Emirates were early adopters of renewable energy in the Gulf – and their renewable installed capacity far outstrips that of neighbouring countries.

With abundance of sunshine, the UAE boasts some of the world’s cheapest solar power. The government expects to have installed more than 9GW of solar capacity by 2030, tripling current levels.

It is establishing itself as a renewable energy financier overseas. The government says it has invested more than $50bn in clean energy projects in 70 countries. It promises to supply clean electricity to 100 million people in Africa by 2035.

At Cop27, it signed a deal to develop a 10GW onshore wind farm in Egypt – one of the largest in the world.

And it struck a partnership with the US to mobilise $100bn in financing and technical support to deploy 100GW of clean energy globally by 2035. That includes nuclear and technologies to cut emissions from oil and gas production such as carbon capture and storage.

“If you look at their size, they do punch above their weight,” said Mia Moisio, who leads the Climate Action Tracker project at NewClimate Institute.

As one of the world’s richest and most polluting countries per capita, the UAE is a prime candidate to expand the donor base for climate finance.

Fuzzy net zero aspirations

In October 2021, the UAE became the first Gulf state to set a 2050 net zero goal. But it has yet to set out credible plans to get there.

Under its latest 2050 energy strategy, dated 2017, the nation aimed for renewable and nuclear energy to make up 50% of its installed power capacity by mid-century.

The rest would be met with gas and “clean coal” – a misleading term that usually refers to coal-fired power plants fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.

This year, the UAE was among a handful of countries that heeded a call to step up their 2030 climate plans. It pledged to cut emissions 31% compared to business-as-usual, up from 23.5% previously.

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At Cop27, the UAE set out absolute emission reduction milestones on the road to net zero. It aims to cut emissions 18% compared to 2019 levels by 2030 and 60% by 2040. But the announcement didn’t quantify the 2019 baseline – making it difficult to assess.

The UAE's last published national greenhouse gas inventory is for 2014. “There are vastly different estimates for [carbon] emissions when you compare different sources,” Moisio said. “Without their own baseline, it’s a bit of a wild guess.”

The UAE unveiled its National 'Net Zero by 2050' Pathway today at #COP27, living up to its legacy as the first MENA nation to commit to #NetZero by 2050. @MoCCaEUAE will lead the national strategy, in collaboration with 20 federal & local government entities. #UAEforClimate pic.twitter.com/AqjKfYjOiL

— Office Of The UAE Special Envoy For Climate Change (@uaeclimateenvoy) November 11, 2022

Climate Action Tracker scores the UAE’s climate plan as “highly insufficient” to meet global climate goals. The plan, it says, is aligned with more than 3C of warming.

While the UAE is planning to use less fossil fuel in its own energy mix, it plans to export more and protect carbon-intensive industries such as aluminium, steel and cement.

Adnoc aims to increase oil production to five million barrels per day by 2027, up from around 3.5 million today. It is expanding offshore gas drilling to reduce reliance on imports from neighbouring Qatar and export to Germany.

Gambling on failure

Carbon dioxide emissions from burning oil and gas are counted in the consumer country. The UAE could achieve CO2 cuts without halting fossil fuel production for exports. But fugitive emissions of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas, count at the wellhead, where they are coming under increased scrutiny. And critically, the strategy relies on others continuing to buy oil and gas.

Without a rollout at scale of carbon capture technologies, the UAE’s net zero plan “is predicated on the rest of the world failing to achieve net zero,” Jim Krane, another fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute, told Climate Home. “There is nobody that matters that doubts climate change anymore. So oil producers are trying to play catch-up."

‘Oil and gas trade show’ promotes carbon capture at Cop27

To meet its net zero goal, the UAE is considering carbon capture and storage, direct air capture and “ocean-based solutions” to store carbon back into the Earth.

With depleted oil and gas reservoirs and suitable geology, Gulf countries have some of the highest potential for storing carbon dioxide underground. A group of experts is campaigning to get the concept of “geological net zero” recognised in the UN climate space and endorsed by Gulf’s oil producers – starting with Cop28 host UAE.

At Cop27, proponents of the concept met with the UAE presidency. It could be just what they need to square the circle.

Yet emissions capture technology remains expensive and never 100% effective, after decades of development. Campaigners widely view it as a "false solution".

“[UAE] want to be seen as being part of the public debate while protecting their interest. They are walking a tight rope,” said Ulrichsen.

Despite repeated requests, the UAE's Cop28 team did not make anyone available to Climate Home for interview.

The post UAE plans to have it both ways as Cop28 climate summit host appeared first on Climate Home News.

The climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh delivered what vulnerable countries had asked for: a decision to establish a bespoke fund to help climate victims recover from disasters.

But as Mohamed Adow, a long-time campaigner in the UN climate process and director of Power Shift Africa, put it: the fund is currently an empty vessel.

“The next task is to get money flowing through it to the frontline communities that need it.” And on that, the message from the climate frontlines stands: “Don’t fail us.”

Who pays into the fund has become the next explosive question to be resolved between now and Cop28 in the UAE.

It’s about attributing blame for the cumulative impact of coal, oil and gas burnt since the industrial revolution and working out who is in a position to pay.

Rich countries want to spread the burden beyond countries classed as “developing” under the UN climate convention in 1992.

To find out who should be on the hook, Joe Lo crunched the numbers. Spoiler, China doesn’t make the list. And rich countries, notably the US, which are still not putting enough climate cash on the table could make the biggest difference.

This week’s news…

• Battle lines drawn in talks on new plastic treaty 
• ‘Unparalleled in the world’: Australian grid operator maps path to 100% renewables
• Vanuatu publishes draft resolution seeking climate justice at UN court
• Who should pay for loss and damage? Spoiler: not China

…and comment

• The climate vulnerable are starting to roar – Mohamed Adow, Power Shift Africa

China overtook the US as the world’s largest emitter around 16 years ago. But cumulative per capita emissions since 1990 show China is nowhere near as polluting as the US, Germany or the UK – early fossil fuel adopters. In the world’s second largest economy, the average Chinese person still earns just a third the income of the average European.

By these metrics, South Korea, Singapore and Israel, and rich oil and gas producers like Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE are prime candidates to chip in.

A broader debate on expanding the donor base for climate finance is coming down the track. This is arguably a more forward looking issue than climate damages caused by past emissions. Don’t expect people to stop asking: “What about China?”

The Pacific island of Vanuatu has little faith that countries will deliver what is needed to prevent and recover from life-threatening climate impacts. In a draft UN resolution published this week, it is urging countries to give the  International Court of Justice a mandate to clarify what states’ climate obligations are and the consequences for those causing climate harm.

The island, whose future hinges on the world meeting its climate goals, says more than a 100 countries have expressed support for the initiative to establish clear legal avenues for climate justice. The warning stands: “Don’t fail us… or we will see you in court.”

The post ‘Don’t fail us’ – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

While the court, which is the UN’s main judiciary arm, has no binding authority, its opinion could inform lawsuits around the world and strengthen vulnerable countries’ position in international negotiations.

Vanuatu is facing sea level rise and increasingly powerful cyclones that periodically cripple its economy. As emissions rise and the world remains off track to meet its climate goals, overheating is threatening the archipelago’s ecology, livelihoods and infrastructure.

The draft resolution aims to establish the legal avenues for climate justice for present and future generations. It was prepared with a broad coalition of 17 countries, including Angola, Bangladesh, Germany, Mozambique, New Zealand, Portugal and Vietnam and a number of small island states.

Kevin Chand, a legal advisor to Vanuatu’s permanent mission at the UN, told Climate Home more than 100 countries have indicated they will support the resolution – over the simple majority threshold of countries needed to give the ICJ a mandate in a vote at the UN general assembly. But he is not stopping there. “We are looking for a larger majority because this is a signal to the court,” Chand said.

The draft resolution is out! This has been a long time coming for the #ICJAO4Climate camp and we look to the next steps. Thank you to the core group for your incredible engagement and efforts over the past few months, still more work ahead https://t.co/XlDdInN7mo

— Ambassador Odo Tevi (@odo_tevi) November 30, 2022

The draft resolution poses two questions to the court.

Obligations and consequences

It requests the ICJ’s opinion on “what are the obligations of states… to ensure the protection of the climate system and other parts of present and future generations” based on a number of global treaties and principles of international law. These include the UN Charter, the UN climate convention, the Paris Agreement and the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea.

The last establishes that “states have the obligation to protect and preserve the marine environment” and must “take all measures to best reduce and control pollution of the marine environment from any source” including from land-based sources.

Island states back Vanuatu’s quest for climate justice at the UN

Secondly, the document asks the court: “what are the legal consequences under these obligations for states which, by their acts and omissions, have caused significant harm to the climate system and other parts of the environment”? The question is asked in respect to small island developing states and other nations “specially affected by or particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change” and the people affected now and in future generations.

Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh is a lawyer specialising in arbitration of international disputes, who serves as lead counsel for Vanuatu. “The draft resolution strikes a careful balance between a climate justice-focused dimension and a forward-looking dimension. It recognises that we must draw lessons from the past to build a just and sustainable future and that international law has a role to play in correcting our current trajectory,” she said.

‘The ICJ making a pronouncement on this will really bolster the negotiation position of developing countries.”

Paying damages

Experts have argued that the ICJ’s opinion could give prominence to the question of support for victims of climate disaster, known as “loss and damage”. The issue dominated this month’s Cop27 climate summit, where nations agreed to create a bespoke loss and damage fund.

The resolution doesn’t explicitly ask the court whether countries have a duty to provide loss and damage support – leaving it to the court to decide whether to weigh in on the issue.

Instead, the resolution “notes with utmost concern… that human-induced climate change… has caused widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people”. It acknowledges that temperature rise, climate and weather extremes and slow-onset events such as sea-level rise and desertification “will pose an ever-greater social, cultural, economic and environmental threats”.

Earlier this year, in its updated 2030 climate plan, Vanuatu set out $178 million worth of measures it wants to take to respond to loss and damage. These include affordable micro-insurance, essential healthcare, protecting displaced people and the possible relocation of communities away from threats. Vanuatu says most of the funding would need to come from international donors.

Who should pay for loss and damage? Spoiler: not China

Vanuatu’s president Nikenike Vurobaravu used the Cop27 climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh to consolidate support for the initiative.

The nation’s permanent mission to the UN said it will begin consultations with other member states over the next few weeks, with a vote expected early 2023.

One of the key targets is the EU, which the core group of backers hopes will formally endorse the resolution.

The post Vanuatu publishes draft resolution seeking climate justice at UN court appeared first on Climate Home News.

On one of the talks most explosive issues – loss and damage – the summit produced a major breakthrough. The EU reached an agreement with developing countries, ending decades of rich country refusal to set up a fund to help climate victims in vulnerable countries recover.

But it’s a fight on fossil fuels that dominated the last-hour political wrangling. For hours on Saturday night, negotiators engaged in heated, but ultimately futile, debate on whether to call for a phaseout of coal, oil and gas.

An alliance of more than 80 developed and developing countries backed a call to wind down fossil fuels. That wasn’t enough for Egypt to open it up to negotiation.

The Cop27 presidency kept disagreements behind closed doors and didn’t include the proposal as an option in the cover text – to the frustration of many. The final decision text barely changed from the penultimate draft.

German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, who, under the EU’s umbrella, had called for stronger carbon-cutting language, blamed “stonewalling and organisational shortcomings”.

An Egyptian official told Climate Home that developing countries could cut emissions more aggressively if rich countries had, as promised, provided them with the funding to do so.

Others accused rich countries of hypocrisy, pointing to continued oil and gas expansion in some the world’s richest countries, notably the US.

The strife gives a taste of what is to come. Calls to wind down the fossil fuel industry will only intensify at next year’s Cop28, hosted by major oil and gas producer UAE.

What’s at stake

Producing and burning coal, oil and gas account was responsible for 64% of all human-caused emissions in 2019. But 25 climate summits passed without any mention of fossil fuels in decision texts.

At Cop26 in Glasgow, countries committed to accelerate “the phasedown of unabated coal” – naming the most polluting energy source for the first time. The language was repeated by the world’s 20 largest economies at summit in Bali in parallel to the Sharm el-Sheikh talks.

Campaigners hoped Cop27 would extend coal’s censure to all fossil fuels. Egyptian petroleum minister Tarek el-Molla had other ideas.

Ahead of the meeting, he said Cop27 would promote gas as a “perfect solution” to climate change. Buoyed by Europe’s scramble for gas supplies, Egypt has been seeking new gas deals.

The battle lines

It was India that first proposed to apply the phase down language to all fossil fuels. Coal accounts for 70% of India’s electricity generation and its officials felt the fuel was unfairly singled out in Glasgow.

A broad range of countries seized on the proposal. The EU, UK, Australia, US and eventually Canada came on board. Small island states and Latin American governments like Chile and Colombia rallied behind the call.

Oil and gas producers Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia opposed it. Speaking on behalf of the Arab Group, Saudi Arabia’s lead negotiator Albara Tawfiq told the plenary that the UN climate convention “needs to address emissions and not the origins of the emissions”.

Others remained silent. China was quiet throughout while the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) avoided taking a public stance. Asked whether fossil fuel phase-out is needed, Ghana’s special envoy to the Climate Vulnerable Forum, Henry Kokufu, shot back “for developed or developing countries?”

“Renewable energies remain the best option,” he said, but added that Ghana has a petrochemical industry. Petrochemicals are derived from oil and gas.

‘Trench warfare’ 

The future of fossil fuels was not on the formal agenda, so the only place for a statement to land was the “cover text”. Egypt favoured a short document that summarised the outcomes of the negotiations. Others, including the EU and the UK saw the text as an opportunity to advance carbon-cutting ambition.

Every stage of the process of drawing up the cover text came later at Cop27 than the previous summit. The first “elements” were published on Tuesday, compared to Sunday at Cop26.

Why did #COP27 finish so late?

This “cover decision” timeline probably didn’t help: pic.twitter.com/haQsUTgZNO

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) November 20, 2022

The Egyptian presidency presented a second draft to negotiating groups at around 1:30 on Saturday morning – beyond the scheduled finish time.

Heads of delegation were given 20 minutes to read the document and provide feedback. They could not take a copy of the text away to share with their teams.

“[I] was told that this was a take it or leave it text,” one developed country diplomat told Climate Home.

The EU was not impressed. Shortly after 10:00, with ministers from member states beside him, climate chief Frans Timmermans threatened to walk away from a deal.

Elsewhere in the venue, Cop27 president Sameh Shoukry was telling the media there was “equal dissatisfaction in all quarters” but the majority of countries were “receptive” to the basis on which the text had been formulated.

Cop27 president Sameh Shoukry updates the press on the negotiations on Saturday morning (Photo credit: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

Hours later, the EU and developing countries reached a compromise on loss and damage. The EU walking away from talks would now mean junking this breakthrough.

The draft text that the presidency consulted on behind closed doors overnight was released early on Saturday afternoon. It did not include fossil fuel phaseout or a target for global emissions to peak by 2025 – both demands from the EU and small island developing states.

A group of ministers from Europe, small islands, Chile and Colombia scrambled to organise a press conference under the banner of the “high ambition coalition”.

The members of the High Ambition Coalition gather on stage for their last day press conference (Photo credit: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

“The Cop27 decision must reflect that we hold fast to our commitment to 1.5C,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the low-lying Marshall Islands. That, she said, should reflect scientists’ findings that global emissions must peak before 2025 to keep 1.5C within reach and “put the world on a path to phasing out all fossil fuels”.

A meeting of heads of delegations followed which New Zealand’s climate minister James Shaw later described as “five hours of trench warfare”.

Despite pleas from the Egyptian presidency’s Wael Aboulmagd not to “venture into the realms of renegotiation,” countries raised issues with the 11-page text.

The coalition of countries calling for a fossil fuel phase out staged an overnight push to include it in the text. Saudi Arabia resisted, questioning the need to mention energy in the cover decision. It argued “low-emission strategies such as carbon capture and storage” should be included as a way to reduce emissions.

South Korean called for “other clean energy” sources to be promoted alongside renewables. The Seoul government was elected in April promising to expand the use of nuclear energy.

Negotiators gather for “five hours of trench warfare” on Saturday night (Photo credit: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

The meeting concluded shortly after 22:00. “This will make us just go for another week,” said a Honduran negotiator, of the gulf between different countries’ positions.

Negotiators went back to their offices or to doze alongside campaigners and journalists on cream-coloured sofas outside the plenary hall.

Diplomats gathered back in the plenary hall at 04:00 on Sunday. Cop27 president Shoukry acknowledged disgruntlement with the process: “Our team and I have done our best to ensure… we are fair, balanced and transparent in our approach. Any missteps that have occurred were certainly not intentional and were done with the best interest of the process in mind.”

The historic agreement on loss and damage was gavelled through as negotiators discovered the latest version of the cover decision. There was no fossil fuel phase-out or emissions peaking date in it. But language on “low-emission” energy had been added to text supporting renewables.

Timeout

Switzerland’s Franz Perrez, on behalf of the Environmental Integrity Group, asked for a 30-minute break to read the text and “take informed decisions”.

The alliance pushing greater ambition held frantic talks on the conference floor about how to proceed. Most small island leaders had already flown home.

Negotiators from Colombia (left), Switzerland (centre) and the UK (right) huddle in the plenary hall (Photo credit: Kiara Worth/UN Climate Change)

The depleted and tired group did not object and the agreement was approved shortly after sunrise.

Exhaustion

“It was a difficult process, not transparent, certainly not inclusive, and interaction between [countries] was very difficult,” said a developed country official.

Another called it “negotiation by exhaustion” as diplomats were overwhelmed with new text in the early hours of the morning.

Chile’s environment minister Maisa Rojas told Climate Home she was “very disappointed”. Tuvalu’s climate minister Seve Paeniu said this had been a “missed opportunity for a truly successful Cop”.

For all the EU’s grandstanding, Timmermans accepted the language on the table.

“This deal is not enough on mitigation but do we walk away and kill a fund that vulnerable countries… have fought so hard for for decades? No,” he said.

‘Protecting petro-states’ 

Large oil and gas producers, led by Saudi Arabia, were quickly blamed for the pushback.

“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossile energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers,” said Germany’s Baerbock.

Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation, accused the Egyptian presidency of producing a text “that clearly protects oil and gas petrostates and the fossil fuel industries”. 

In the months ahead of Cop27, oil-producing Gulf states poured $22bn into Egypt to avert its economic collapse. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, restrictions on wheat imports and soaring inflation hit Egypt hard. Saudi Arabia alone pledged to invest $10bn into the north African state and deposited $5bn into its central bank.

In the wake of the bailout, “it’s likely that Saudi Arabia’s voice… carried more weight than others,” Glada Lahn, a senior research fellow at London-based think tank Chatham House, told Climate Home.

Egypt defended its approach. “I am surprised that some claim that they wanted to shift to phase down of fossil fuel where the same [countries] agreed to a different language just three days before” at the G20 in Bali, an Egyptian official told Climate Home.

Gas loophole?

Several negotiators told Climate Home there had been no discussion about the inclusion of the “low-emission” language.

Cop26 presidency Alok Sharma, of the UK, complained the text had been “weakened in the final minutes”.

The EU’s Timmermans seemed unaware of the late change. “I don’t know what you’re asking me, I’m too tired,” he told reporters.

Each country seemed to adopt its own definition of what “low-emission” means. Nuclear energy, hydrogen and gas with carbon capture and storage was understood by many to fall under the term, including the Egyptian presidency.

“Low-emission energy” is “vague but likely aims to justify a longer lifeline for fossil fuel use – particularly gas”, said Lahn.

That’s the message a number of countries, including the Egyptian hosts, have taken to Cop27.  A number of African countries made clear gas will be part of their journey to renewable power. The African group  described the outcome as “ambitious and balanced”.

“For most developing countries, just transition cannot be equated with decarbonisation but with low-carbon development,” India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav told the final plenary. “Developing countries need independence in their choice of energy mix and in achieving their [sustainable development goals].”

The Egyptian official said going any faster in moving away from fossil fuel would require more funding on the table, “which didn’t happen”.

Wealthy countries failed to deliver $100bn a year by 2020 to help developing countries reduce emissions and adapt to climate change – a collective target set in 2009. Rich countries are exploring bespoke packages to accelerate the transition to clean power for a narrow number of large emerging economies, including South Africa and Indonesia.

Hypocrisy

While rich countries rallied around stronger language on winding down fossil fuel production, some are doing the opposite at home.

The US is planning a bigger oil and gas expansion than any other country in the world for the period to 2025, according to analysis by Oil Change International. Canada, Norway and Australia are also expanding production.

“We need to remain focused on what high emitters do at home after they had made their messianic speeches at Cops, ” Faten Aggad, of the African Climate Foundation, told Climate Home. “The biggest challenge in meeting the emissions target at this point is not the global south. Pretending that that is a problem is only meant as a distraction.”

The US is planning a bigger oil and gas expansion than any other country (Photo credit: Oil Change International)

Meena Raman, director of Third World Network and adviser to developing countries at Cop27 said that if the EU and UK are serious about phasing out oil and gas, they should start by halting their own fossil fuel expansion. Only four European countries have joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.

“[It’s] not enough to play to the gallery but act if they really want to save the planet and not hide behind 2050 net zero targets, which will bust the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C,” she said. Instead, they should reach further and faster to get to real zero and suck more carbon out of the atmosphere than they emit.

The post Late-night fossil fuel fight leaves bitter taste after Cop27 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Procedurally, no big decisions were due to land at Cop27. But the convergence of multiple crises in 2022 – Russia’s war, global inflation, Covid’s long tail and of course climate disasters – raised the stakes of every increment.

The biggest breakthrough came on support for climate victims. Developing countries got the loss and damage fund they fought for – on the proviso that the burden of paying into it does not all fall on rich governments. Who pays and who benefits is a battle for Cop28.

There was little to stop polluters causing more damage, though. A proposal to phase out all fossil fuels, not just the coal power targeted at last year’s summit, went nowhere. The Egyptian presidency openly struck gas deals on the sidelines.

Here’s where the key issues landed.

Fossil fuels

At last year’s Cop26 in Glasgow, the presidency made a push to “keep 1.5 alive”, referring to the most ambitious temperature limit in the Paris Agreement. And it named coal as a problem for the first time, with countries agreeing to phase down its use.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, coal-reliant India sought to turn the heat onto other fossil fuels. This was seized on by a broad coalition of more than 80 developed and vulnerable countries – but not by the Egyptian presidency.

Egypt never included fossil fuel phaseout language in the draft text. Indeed, it promoted fossil gas and struck deals on the sidelines. Behind closed doors, countries including Saudi Arabia and Russia made the argument that oil doesn’t cause climate change, emissions do.

The text does promote renewables but also “low-emission” energy. This could be interpreted as gas, a fossil fuel which is less polluting when burned than coal, or fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage.

It holds the Glasgow Pact line on 1.5C and coal, but doesn’t go beyond it. There is recognition that the 1.5C target “requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions reducing global net greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030 relative to the 2019 level”.

Loss and damage finance

Three decades ago, small island states and poorer countries started calling for compensation for the damage climate change inflicts on their communities. While “compensation” became taboo, they finally got finance for “loss and damage” on the formal agenda at Cop27.

Wealthy nations, reluctant to put their hands in their pockets, offered up a “mosaic of solutions” like insurance and early warning systems. Developing countries were determined to get a dedicated new fund.

The EU blinked first. They announced they would support a fund if the donor base was broadened, if it was targeted at the most vulnerable developing countries and if Cop27 also agreed strong action to reduce emissions.

These conditions were partly met and developing nations accepted the offer. The US and other rich countries got on board and they all agreed “to establish a fund for responding to loss and damage”. 

A transitional committee will look into what funding is needed and where the money should come from. It will tackle the thorny issues of whether to expand the donor base to countries like China or Qatar and report to Cop28.

Some of the money is to come through “existing funding arrangements”, like development banks or debt relief. Some from “innovative sources”, which could mean taxes on fossil fuels, aviation or shipping.

The EU specified that support should only go to “vulnerable” countries – a term for the transitional committee to define.

UN Climate Change has been tasked with holding two workshops on the issue before Cop28 and reporting back. 

Countries agreed on how to set up an organisation called the Santiago Network which will provide technical assistance in averting, minimising and addressing loss and damage.

Aneefa Bibi holds her 5-year-old daughter, Hood, who is experiencing fever and chest pains, in Sindh, Pakistan, November 2022 (Pic: © UNICEF/UN0730453/Bashir)

Mitigation work programme

At Cop26 in Glasgow, countries noted that emissions were projected to be 14% above 2010 levels in 2030. To limit global warming to 1.5C, emissions need to fall 45%.

To fix that, they agreed to set up a “work programme to urgently scale up mitigation ambition and implementation in this critical decade”. 

In Sharm el-Sheikh, nations debated how to structure this work programme.

Developed and vulnerable countries wanted the talks to be long, strong and specific. Emerging economies wanted them to be short, weak and broad.

The latter’s fingerprints are on text saying the process should be “non-prescriptive, non-punitive, facilitative, respectful of national sovereignty and national circumstances” and “not result in new targets or goals”.

They former group wanted talks to continue until 2030, the latter until only 2023 or 2024. They compromised on 2026.

Traffic (Pic: Chris Yarzab/Flickr)

The Bridgetown agenda

A serious conversation about shifting trillions of dollars into green and climate-resilient investments has been gathering traction over the past year.  

Barbados’ Mia Mottley set the ball rolling in Glasgow. Since then, her “Bridgetown agenda“ has gathered momentum.

The proposed reforms to the international financial system are happening outside UN Climate Change. But unlocking much-needed climate finance is relevant to the process.

The International Energy Agency estimates that $4 trillion need to be invested in renewable energy every year by 2030 to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Developing countries alone need an estimated $5.6 trillion to meet their 2030 goals. Increasing debt levels is making matters worse.

Countries agreed that delivering such funding will require “a transformation of the financial system and its structures”.

They called on multilateral development banks (MDBs) and international financial institutions to scale up and simplify access to climate finance and ensure their activities contribute to “significantly increasing climate ambition”. This echoes recommendations made by a G20 expert group on the issue

However, Mottley’s flagship proposal to use IMF relief, known as special drawing rights (SDRs), to fund carbon-cutting projects doesn’t feature in the text. Discussions will continue at the spring meetings of the IMF and the World Bank.

Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados (Photo: Timothy Sullivan/UNCTAD/Flickr)

Carbon trading rules

Negotiators outlined the broad framework for a new global carbon trading scheme in Glasgow. In Sharm el-Sheikh, they filled in some details.

The text creates a two-tier carbon market, applying different rules depending on who buys the credits and for what purpose.

The Glasgow Pact banned double counting: if one country buys an emission credit from another to use towards its target, the host country needs to make an accounting adjustment. This also applies to international compliance markets such as aviation’s trading scheme Corsia. 

In the new second-tier market, carbon credits are called “mitigation contributions”. A company can buy a credit from another country and the host does not need to tweak its emissions inventory.

While the name suggests the buyer should not use these credits to offset their own emissions, there is nothing to stop them. Campaigners warn this opens the door to double claiming and corporate greenwashing of net zero pledges.

A technical body made recommendations on how to define “removals” – sucking carbon dioxide out of the air – for trading purposes. Many of the options involve untested or controversial processes and negotiators sent the recommendations back for further work.

Regarding bilateral carbon trades between countries, the text allows governments to designate any information about the exchange as confidential.

Experts have raised concerns this could allow shady deals to go unchecked and make accountability toothless.

Just energy transition

The energy crisis has been the stark background for Cop27. A number of countries have ramped up their coal, oil and gas production to deal with the short-term supply crunch.  

In Sharm el-Sheikh, countries “recognised” that the crisis underlines the need to “rapidly transform energy systems,” including by accelerating renewable energy roll out.  

Deals between rich and emerging economies to accelerate the shift away from coal, known as just energy transition partnerships, got a special mention as a way to speed up emission cuts.

Two days before the start of the summit, South Africa published details of a $84bn investment plan to transition from coal clean energy. It outlined long-awaited details of a $8.5bn deal with wealthy countries

On the sidelines of the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, rich countries announced a similar $20bn deal with Indonesia. The funds include both public and private finance contributions. Vietnam is next in line, with an agreement mooted before the end of the year.

At Cop27, countries agreed that “just and equitable energy transition” must be based on national development priorities and include social protection and solidarity measures, such as providing retraining programmes and support for coal workers affected by the transition.  

Cop27 decided to establish a work programme on “just transition” and convene an annual ministerial roundtable as part of this process.

Adaptation

A year ago, Egypt billed Cop27 as a “resilience” Cop. That buzzword was later dropped for “implementation”. 

Adapting to the impacts of a changing climate never stopped being important to those on the front lines. 

But measuring progress on adaptation is harder than counting tonnes of carbon. Work to define the Global Goal on Adaptation inched forward.

Countries agreed to develop a framework to guide delivery of the goal and track progress. This will take into account countries’ vulnerability and capacity to cope, consider a range of themes include water, food and agriculture and poverty, and science-based indicators, metrics and targets. 

A proposal to commission a special report on adaptation from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change went nowhere. 

Frustrated negotiators from both developed and developing countries told Climate Home the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) hogged the mic with unproductive interventions. 

Mariam Allam, lead AGN negotiator on the issue, rebutted the accusation. On the contrary, she said the AGN’s “willingness” to engage with the substance “was unmatched” by other groups. 

Richard Klein, an adaptation expert at the Stockholm Environment Institute, told Climate Home: “There was an opportunity to show what ambitious and transformative adaptation could look like. But it didn’t happen.” 

It doesn’t help that this agenda is poorly funded. 

Countries “noted with serious concern” the gap between current levels of adaptation finance and what is needed to responded to climate impacts. They “urged” countries to “urgently and significantly scale up their provision of climate finance”. The only mention of a pledge by rich countries to double adaptation funding to $40bn by 2025 was about preparing a report.

Women in Zimbabwe attending a climate adaptation workshop (Photo: Swathi Sridharan/ICRISAT/Flickr)

Climate finance

Rich countries are late to deliver the $100 billion they promised by 2020 to help developing countries cut emissions and cope with climate impacts. The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise that talks on a new collective climate finance goal for 2025 got off to a slow start. A decision is not due until 2024 and the Cop27 text is mostly procedural.

One developing country negotiator likened the process to growing grapes. Harvesting fruits too early doesn’t make good wine, he said.

The text agreed in Sharm says the new goal will “take into account the needs and priorities of developing countries”.

It is not just about quantity but quality. Contributors prefer to lend money for carbon-cutting projects, “mobilising” private finance where possible. Recipients want public grants, particularly for unprofitable, but essential, adaptation projects. Much of the debate will centre on sub-targets and accounting standards.

Developed countries are pushing to expand the donor base when it comes to loss and damage funding. It’s only a matter of time before that flares up in the broader finance talks.

Africa’s ‘special needs and circumstances’

African nations had hoped that the “Africa Cop” would recognise its special needs and circumstances to tackle climate action. The status unlocks priority access to international support and is enjoyed by the least developed countries (LDC), which includes 33 African nations, and small island developing states (SIDS). 

But a proposal by the African Group of Negotiators was once again rejected.  

A group of Latin American and Caribbean nations (Ailac) has repeatedly argued that expanding the special needs status to all African countries should allow them to claim it too. 

Chile, on behalf of a group of Latin American and Caribbean nations (Ailac), proposed to open a space for different groups and regions to discuss their needs. There was no consensus on the proposal. 

The “Africa Cop” did not deliver on one of the continent’s longstanding asks (Pic: IISD/ENB | Mike Muzurakis)

The post What was decided at Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh? appeared first on Climate Home News.

It was an anticlimactic end to a summit that secured a breakthrough on support for climate victims, yet did nothing to stop oil and gas expansion fueling further climate chaos.

Throughout the two-week Cop27 summit, the Egyptian presidency largely kept political confrontations out of public view. There were none of the plenary fights or intense huddles of negotiators that typically characterise the last hours of these conferences.

US special envoy John Kerry missed the finish, as he was confined to his hotel room with Covid. His deputies left the room before the formalities had concluded. Looking exhausted after two sleepless nights of overtime, they declined to comment on the outcome.

“What we have in front of us is not enough of a step forward for our planet,” said the EU’s Frans Timmermans in the plenary – but he did not carry out a threat to walk out. He “reluctantly” accepted the deal as it would be a “huge mistake” to kill the loss and damage fund developing countries had fought for.

Analysis: What was decided at Cop27 climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh?

There was a burst of optimism on Saturday afternoon as the EU and G77 bloc of developing countries agreed terms for a loss and damage fund. Campaigners hailed it as offering hope for those on the front lines of climate impacts, after years of being ignored.

“A mission thirty years in the making has been accomplished,” said Antigua and Barbuda’s environment minister Molwyn Joseph, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis).

It tees up a big fight for next year’s Cop28 over who pays into and who benefits from the fund. Rich countries are pushing for China to chip in and finance to be targeted at “vulnerable” countries.

Pakistan’s climate Sherry Rehman, on behalf of G77 and China, told the plenary: “The establishment of a fund is not about dispensing charity, it is a down payment on the longer investment in our joint future.”

That was followed by protracted – but unproductive – wrangling behind closed doors over plans to halt global warming. The final text barely changed from the previous draft, except to back “low-emissions” energy as well as renewables – potentially a loophole for gas.

Cop27: EU-developing countries’ deal offers hope to climate victims

India had proposed earlier in the week to extend to other fossil fuels Cop26’s groundbreaking agreement to phase down coal. A broad coalition of more than 80 countries took up the call, but the Egyptian presidency refused to include it in the cover statement.

Indeed, Egypt had endorsed fossil gas as “the perfect solution” to the energy crisis and encouraged deals on the sidelines. Saudi Arabia and Russia strongly opposed any reference to oil and gas, sources in closed meetings reported.

“It is more than frustrating to see overdue steps on mitigation and the phase-out of fossile energies being stonewalled by a number of large emitters and oil producers,” said German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock. “The world is losing valuable time to move towards 1.5 degrees.”

Despite a lack of consensus on the issue, UN climate chief Simon Stiell used his closing speech to say coal, oil and gas were on the way out. “[The text] gives the key political signals that indicate a phase down of all fossil fuels is happening,” he claimed.

Cop27 president Sameh Shoukry told the plenary that negotiations had “not [been] easy”. “We worked around the clock,” he said, with talks being “strained and sometimes tense”. But “we rose to the occasion,” he said.

The post In low-energy finish, oil and gas escape censure at Cop27 appeared first on Climate Home News.

On Saturday afternoon, with climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in overtime, a compromise text finally emerged. Subject to approval in a closing plenary, the deal offers hope of relief for victims of climate disaster.

Shauna Aminath, environment minister of the word’s lowest lying islands, the Maldives, emerged from the negotiating rooms smiling, hugging colleagues and taking selfies in the Sharm el-Sheikh sunshine on Saturday afternoon.

“That’s the reason,” ambassador Nabeel Munir, of Pakistan, chief negotiator for the G77 group, told Climate Home News. “Of course, it has to go to all the others first and then we will see. But I’m hopeful that it will be done,” he said.

An EU source confirmed the terms of the agreement.

Both sides agreed to decide to establish the fund as part of broader funding arrangements to address the damage inflicted by the climate crisis. These would include channels outside the UN Climate Change process, such as debt relief, insurance and potentially taxing oil and gas profits.

We have pushed very hard until the last minute for a loss and damage fund @COP27P. A positive outcome is close. Not perfect or optimal, but one that addresses the basic demand of developing nations. I believe if we stick to our positions, stay united, we will make landfall. #G77 pic.twitter.com/z0OLuOO8mu

— SenatorSherryRehman (@sherryrehman) November 19, 2022

And they specified that the fund would support “vulnerable developing countries”.

Defining vulnerability

“Vulnerable” does not have an official definition in the UN climate process but has previously been applied to the poorest countries and small island states.

On Saturday morning, EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans clarified the term should extend to middle-income countries like Pakistan. The country is struggling to rebuild from devastating floods that affected a third of its population.

“Let’s be very clear: if a country like Pakistan is hit by this tragedy that has occurred to them of course, they are a vulnerable country that would be eligible for support,” he said.

EU opens the door to a loss and damage facility – if China pays

It does not pin down who is responsible for paying into the fund. The EU and US have indicated they want to expand the donor base, against resistance from higher middle income countries.

The text hints at this, tasking a transitional committee with “identifying and expanding sources of funding,” among other operational details. These should be adopted at Cop28 next year, it says.

Whether China and other large emerging economies such as Qatar, Kuwait and Singapore should contribute will be part of that discussion.

For people on the front lines of the climate crisis, this draft text offers hope that there will be a fund to help them recover and rebuild in the aftermath of disasters.

But there are still major unanswered questions.
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— Teresa Anderson (@1TeresaAnderson) November 19, 2022

The committee could also narrow down the definition of vulnerability. An EU official told Climate Home it should be based on GDP per capita as well as a country’s vulnerability to climate impacts and ability to respond, they said.

How the US, the main holdout against setting up a dedicated fund, responds to the text is critical. American negotiators were in discussion with Australia and New Zealand as the news of the EU-G77 agreement broke.

David Waskow, of the World Resources Institute, was confident the US would support the text: “I think they’ll be fine with it,” he said, adding that the language reflected its own draft proposal on the issue, which was circulated on Friday night.

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Vulnerable countries are closer than ever to achieving what many thought would never happen – a dedicated facility for loss and damage finance.

The EU opened the door to it, putting the onus on holdout the US to broker a deal with China. The two countries’ climate envoys spent hours in a room together on Thursday night and unfortunately, one of them caught Covid.

At the methane ministerial on Thursday, John Kerry said he had a cold but had tested negative for Covid. Whitney Smith, his spokeswoman at the US State Department, said he tested positive on Friday morning. Smith said his symptoms were “mild” and he had worked all day from his hotel.

That’s a blow. Cop deals are still done in person, often on the floor of the plenary hall.

At last year’s closing plenary, Kerry strode from group to group making promises, reassurances and threats to close the deal.

US negotiators will still do this. But having to dial in the bed-ridden boss risks slowing things down.

Latest stories

• Greenwash alert as Cop27 draft allows double claiming of carbon credits
• China’s surprise visit to US-EU event hints at cooperation on methane
• Cop27 tees up speed dating for climate investment deals

The trillion-dollar question: who pays?

The key to unlocking the talks is finding a way forward for who pays for climate damages in vulnerable countries.

“If you can get agreement on the loss and damage funding piece, I think everything else falls into place,” said Alden Meyer of E3G.

That’s easier said than done. The EU has opened the door to establishing a loss and damage fund this year, with conditions: China and other nations who have the capacity to do so should pay and only the most vulnerable countries can receive money. But there is no list for who falls into each camp.

The EU says that should go hand in hand with steeper emissions cuts to prevent worsening impacts. “This is our final offer,” EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans said.

Where the US stands on this will be critical. A proposal came out yesterday to agree “funding arrangements” that would include a dedicated fund, with the hope of bringing Washington on side.

Money would come from public and private sources. Insurance, debt relief and global taxes on oil and gas could be part of the mix. The details would have to be worked out with a view to operationalise it 2024. That would be a huge move from the US but will it fly?

Despite a lack of enthusiasm from the Egyptian presidency, some are still trying to get fossil fuels in the cover text. Colombia is taking on the baton from India and has drafted text with the UK calling for a phase out of all fossil fuels.

“If we don’t have mitigation commitments, there can be a fund for loss and damage but no fund will cover the catastrophic consequences of climate change,” said Colombia’s environment minister Susana Muhamad.

We’ll find out soon if they succeeded, with another draft expected on Saturday morning.

In brief…

China shouldn’t pay – All the talk of expanding the donor base for climate finance is aimed at China. But an ODI analysis found China still too poor and low-emitting per person to pay. Qatar, Singapore and Israel are more logical targets, it found.

Chaos in Brussels – Luxembourg became the latest to announce it would quit the Energy Charter Treaty on Friday. The European Council failed to agree a joint position on whether to ratify reforms at Tuesday’s conference. Reform would allow countries to stop protecting fossil fuel investments.

Elsewhere in Egypt – While leaders were speaking at Cop27 last Tuesday, Alaa Abd el-Fattah attempted to kill himself in his prison cell, his family said. On Friday, the same day US president Joe Biden and Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi traded jokes, he collapsed and was fed intravenously.

Brazilian propaganda – The outgoing Brazilian government is exhibiting a slick virtual reality film at its pavilion at Cop27. The video claims the government is making efforts to bring renewable energy to the Amazon and to promote development while protecting nature. It does not mention deforestation.

Adaptation shortfall – The Adaptation Fund has received $230m in new pledges and contributions in 2022. Germany was the biggest donor with near $60m, followed by the US with $50m. Other European nations and Japan contributed. The fund says it still has a pipeline of unfunded projects worth $380m.

The post Cop27 bulletin: John Kerry has Covid appeared first on Climate Home News.

As a growing number of companies set net zero goals, the UN is working to establish standards and best practices. That means cutting their own emissions with minimal reliance on carbon offsets, a taskforce led by Catherine McKenna recommends.

But as talks in Sharm el-Sheikh entered their final scheduled day, the latest draft text allowed for double claiming under the Paris Agreement. That means a company can buy credit for an emission reduction that is also being counted by a country towards its climate goals. It would support US climate envoy John Kerry’s push for corporations to plug gaps in climate finance.

A broad coalition of developed and developing countries oppose the proposal. “This would be really bad. It has to go,” one negotiator told Climate Home News.

“This is largely about whether the claims companies are making are truthful or not,” Gilles Dufrasne of Carbon Market Watch, told Climate Home.

China’s surprise visit to US-EU event hints at cooperation on methane

Negotiators outlined a broad framework for establishing a new global carbon trading scheme at Cop26 last year. Now they are filling in the details.

In Glasgow, countries agreed there would be no double counting: if one country buys an emission credit from another to use towards its target, the host country needs to make an accounting adjustment. This also applies to international compliance markets such as aviation’s trading scheme Corsia.

Two-tier system

But the Sharm el-Sheikh talks could create a second-tier market for carbon credits. Called “mitigation contributions”, these would be used by private companies towards their climate goals, without any accounting tweak.

In that case, both the host country where the carbon-cutting project is located and the company paying for it could claim the same emission reduction.

Matt Williams, climate and land lead at the London-based Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, told Climate Home these were “junk credits that create a sub-prime carbon market”.

“Calling these credits a ‘contribution’ is “an important signal,” said Williams. It implies they should not be used by companies to count towards a target but only as a way to fund climate action.

If they are used by the private sector as offsets, “we might kid ourselves we’ve achieved net zero when we haven’t by any stretch,” he said.

Country opposition

Small island developing states and an alliance of Latin American and Caribbean nations are among those pushing for tighter rules.

Switzerland, which is relying on the carbon market set up under the Paris Agreement to meet its 2030 climate targets, has called for restricting the use of these “mitigation contributions” so they cannot be used as offsets by private companies.

The European nation proposed to rename them “unadjusted contributions” to make them unattractive for businesses to buy.

Republican gains quash hopes of US delivering on climate finance

What a company can claim when it buys an carbon credit is a key question for the credibility of the market.

Allowing a company to claim an offset already being used by a country is “corporate greenwashing,” Argentinian campaigner Catalina Gonda, of the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (Farn), told Climate Home.

The Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity (VCMI) initiative is due to publish recommendations on this in late 2022/early 2023.

An outcome which rules out double claiming would send the voluntary market a strong signal, Gonda said.

EU opens the door to a loss and damage facility – if China pays

Hugh Salway, head of environmental markets at Gold Standard which verifies carbon credits, told Climate Home there is a role in the market for credits which don’t carry an accounting adjustment. “But how they are being used is the big issue,” he said.

These credits could be bought by companies to comply with a domestic carbon trading scheme to accelerate national emission cuts, for example. But Gold Standard advises companies against claiming offsets that are already being used by a country.

Confidentiality

Separately, countries including European nations have raised concerned that a proposal for an oversight mechanism for countries bilaterally trading credits lacks enforcement capabilities and transparency.

The draft text includes a clause which allows countries to designate as “confidential” any information about the credit they are trading, making it more difficult to expose irregularities.

Gonda said the current proposal would render any oversight “toothless” and impede accountability. “It will be the wild west,” she said.

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The EU’s offer on loss and damage went down well with vulnerable countries and most other rich nations. China and Gulf states pushed back, while the US kept quiet.

Frans Timmermans set it out: the EU would support a new fund if it had a “broad donor base” and looked into innovative sources of finance like levies on aviation, shipping and fossil fuels.

Pakistan’s ambassador Nabeel Munir said it was “good news”.

The Maldives environment minister Shauna Aminath said she was “heartened by the good will in the room” and Barbados’ representative acknowledged the EU’s “movement”.

Resistance came from those Timmermans wants to put their hands in their pockets through his “broad donor base”.

China’s representative said “this is the time that we should implement the Paris Agreement and not the time to rewrite the convention”.

That’s a reference to the UNFCCC’s classification of developed and developing countries based on how rich they were in 1992.

Under the UN’s rules, the former are supposed to pay climate finance while the latter receive it.

But China has changed a lot since 1992. The average Chinese person is four times more polluting and 34 times richer.

Based on current and historic emissions and level of development, Gulf nations would be on the hook too.

On behalf of the Arab Group, the Saudi representative echoed China’s line on the convention, adding it was important to avoid “unfamiliar technologies and classifications and references and scopes”.

On the developed side, the EU was backed up by the Brits, Aussies, Norwegians and Swiss.

The US has been resolutely opposed to a loss and damage fund. Can it bend if China pays?

Latest stories

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• Republican gains quash hopes of US delivering on climate finance

Movement on mitigation

A new draft text on the “mitigation work programme” has been released which contains seven areas of disagreement in its five pages.

These are talks on how to structure talks on how to reduce emissions this decade and close the gap to 1.5C. It’s process-y, but it matters.

Developed and vulnerable countries want the talks to be long, strong and specific. India, China and others want the opposite.

Up for debate is whether to rule out the talks setting new targets or goals or calling for new NDC climate plans. And whether talks go on until 2024 or 2030.

India, China and co appear to have got their way in arguing that the list of sectors discussed should be a broad one – energy, industrial processes… – rather than narrowing it down to buildings, transport etc.

Saudi Arabia’s representative said in the plenary that talks should be a “focused exchange of views” and “the outcomes will be non-prescriptive, non-punitive, facilitative, respectful of national sovereignty and national circumstances and… will not result in new goals beyond those of the Paris Agreement”.

As always, the Climate Vulnerable Forum has the most to lose from a breakdown in talks. On their behalf, Ghana called last night for the text to be finalised. If it’s not, at least one of the eight years left this decade will be written off.

In brief…

Filibuster – Negotiators have told Climate Home the African Group of Negotiators repeatedly stalled discussions on a global goal on adaptation. This included a 45-minute discussion on whether to work from a PDF or Word document. Cop27 president Sameh Shoukry said the adaptation agenda was “still being held back on procedural matters”.

Spotted  – John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua were pictured going into a bilateral meeting on Thursday evening. On Monday, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping empowered the two men to resume talks. Xie paid a surprise visit to a US-EU ministerial on methane on Thursday. Watch out for any joint communique.

Cop host, who’s next – The UAE will host Cop28 from 30 November to 12 December next year, according to a draft decision for approval in Sharm el-Sheikh. Eastern Europe is next in line. Lula’s opening for Brazil comes in 2025. Australia could follow.

Crunch time – With four days until a critical Energy Charter Treaty conference, the EU does not have a joint position on whether to ratify reforms, which allow members to end investment protections for fossil fuels. The European Commission negotiated the reforms and needs Council approval – but several member states plan to quit the treaty.

Sing for justice – Vanuatu is campaigning to get the International Court of Justice to produce a climate litigation toolkit. There’s a song. It is set to publish a draft resolution to the UN today, ahead of a general assembly vote on 14 December. It needs 97 nations, a simple majority, to pass.

Offset billionaire – Indian company Eki Energy’s shares shot up 10,000% in a year, taking the company’s valuation from $10m to $1bn. Eki’s success is tied to the offset market, mostly linked to solar and wind schemes, but its business model is built on dubious green claims, according to a Bloomberg investigation.

Africa emissions cuts – Implementing 37 measures across Africa, ranging from increasing EVs to reducing food waste and capturing methane from oil and gas, could cut the continent’s emissions by 55% by 2063, compared to 2019 levels, and prevent 800,000 premature deaths per year, according a report by the UN Environment Programme and the Climate & Clean Air Coalition.

Relatable – A press conference for parliamentarians from across Africa was delayed by 20 minutes after the speakers got lost on their way to the Cairo tent. Delegates have complained about confusing maps around the venue and there are security concerns about the official app.

Snooping worries – The UK delegation is using burner phones and avoiding charging by USB sockets as they are concerned about the Egyptian government spying on them, the Times of London reports.

Unleashing plagues – Melting glaciers could unleash more than a hundred thousand tonnes of microbes over the next 80 years, according to a study by Aberystwyth University. Based on “moderate warming” of 2-3C by 2100, a tide of microbes, including pathogens, could be released into downstream ecosystems.

The post Cop27 bulletin: Tensions finally surface appeared first on Climate Home News.

This is not a text that has been discussed by countries but elements reflecting what Egypt has gathered from consultations with countries. Formal negotiations on the text are yet to start.

A proposal by India, which has been gathering steam among vulnerable countries and the EU, to phase down all fossil fuels didn’t make it in.

Instead, the document repeats what was agreed last year in Glasgow and reaffirmed by G20 leaders in Bali on Wednesday on coal power.

Under the heading “urgency of action to keep 1.5C within reach”, the document repeats the language of the Paris Agreement to “pursue efforts” to limit temperature rise to 1.5C.

Elsewhere, the text “notes” that climate impacts will be much lower at 1.5C, “requests” all countries to revisit and strengthen their 2030 climate plans in line with 1.5C, and “emphasizes the need for immediate, deep, rapid” emission cuts.

Borrowing from a recent statement of the Basic emerging economies, it proposes to “express deep regret that developed countries who have the most capabilities financially and technologically to lead in reducing their emissions continue to fall short in doing so”.

It adds: “Developed countries should attain net-negative carbon emissions by 2030.”

Indian power minister Raj Kumar Singh has previously called on rich countries to go beyond net zero emissions to net negative by sucking more carbon out of the atmosphere than they emit.

If Egypt wants to secure a successful outcome, it urgently needs to bring the discussion into negotiating rooms.

Latest stories

• EU opens the door to a loss and damage facility – if China pays
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Rich countries test G77 unity

With very limited appetite to allocate new funds for loss and damage, rich countries see the best prospects of support for climate victims outside the UN climate process.

Reform of multilateral development banks and the International Monetary Fund could free up significant cash for the vulnerable. But that won’t happen in Sharm el-Sheikh, where the developing world wants to see more commitment.

So the developed country tactic here is divide and conquer: drive a wedge between the poorest and smallest nations, and big emerging economies.

Island leader Gaston Browne last week expressed support for broadening the donor pool: “We all know that India and China… are major polluters and the polluters must pay.” Then G77 solidarity reasserted itself and he clarified that historic emissions had to be factored into the assessment.

The EU has sent its strongest signal yet that it would consider setting up a new fund, as the G77 asks, with strings attached.

“We are open for this facility, but under certain conditions,” EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans told reporters squashed in a huddle outside the EU pavilion on Wednesday afternoon.

“China is one of the biggest economies on the planet with a lot of financial strength. Why should they not be made co-responsible for funding loss and damage?” said Timmermans.

And he wants to keep other options on the table, with a decision to be made next year.

China already contributes some voluntary climate finance to developing countries. It doesn’t want its generosity to turn into an obligation.

There are still big gaps to bridge.

Brazil’s president-elect Lula da Silva got a hero’s welcome at Cop27, bringing hope for the Amazon rainforest with him. Crowds chanted his name and Facetimed relatives during his first speech. (Photo: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

Kenya joins keep-it-in-the-ground camp

For all the talk about phasing out oil and gas, only a handful of countries are committing to ban or wind down production. They’re generally not ones that were drilling much (or at all) to start with.

On Wednesday, Portugal and Washington state joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (Boga). That brings the core membership to six national and four subnational governments (double counting Greenland as part of Denmark).

But founding member Costa Rica has distanced itself from the initiative and Sweden’s backing is uncertain after a lurch to the right.

Still, a Boga event on Wednesday was well attended, with campaigners cheering it on.

Perhaps the most significant political signal came from Kenya becoming a “friend” of Boga – the first African nation to do so. “We have proven [oil] deposits,” said presidential climate advisor Ali Mohammed, “but the Kenyan government has taken a deliberate choice [not to exploit them].”

Kenya’s enthusiasm for renewables sets it apart from the likes of Senegal, Nigeria and Mozambique, which see gas as critical to their economic development.

With money provided by the Sequoia foundation, Boga has launched a €10m seed fund to help developing countries initiate their just transition beyond oil and gas production.

After journalists asked where Costa Rica was and why no big oil and gas producers are joining, the Danish moderator said “this is not a press conference” and turned to civil society.

A Stop Eacop activist didn’t softball it, though, putting France on the spot over Total’s controversial Uganda-Tanzania oil pipeline. Ambassador Stephane Crouzat promised France would not provide export subsidies to the project.

In brief…

Climate the culprit – Climate change made this year’s flooding in Nigeria and neighbouring countries 80 times more likely, according to the World Weather Attribution group. The floods killed more than 600 people and displaced 1.3 million between June and October.

Data drought – The same group of scientists were unable to estimate the influence of climate change on last year’s drought in central Sahel, which caused a food crisis this year, because of a lack of reliable data.

Trump is running – Donald Trump has announced that he will run to be US president again. To win the Republican nomination, he’s likely to compete with Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Forest sign-ups – Vietnam and Fiji have joined the global forest and climate leadership partnership, a spokesperson for the UK government told Climate Home. They join around 30 countries representing a third of the world’s forests in the US and Ghana-led partnership.

Gender equality stalls – Just a third of negotiators are female at Cop27, BBC analysis finds. Carbon Brief got a similar figure. Their analysis finds the percentage has trended upward for decades but has plateaued in the last few years.

Fox in hen house – The head of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, Mohamed Hamel, has addressed the main conference hall at Cop27. He said Africa’s “sovereign right to develop these natural gas resources shall be preserved” and that “gas is the energy for sustainable development”.

Methane ministerial – The US and EU have invited the 100+ countries who signed last year’s global methane pledge to a ministerial meeting tomorrow in the Amon room at Cop27. Ministers will unveil national methane action plans, “showcase progress” on energy and launch programmes to cut methane from farming and waste.

The post Cop27 bulletin: ‘Elements’ leave much to negotiate appeared first on Climate Home News.

On one of the most contentious issues at Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans hinted at room for compromise.

“We want to be bridge builders. We are open for this facility, but under certain conditions, and we need to discuss this,” Timmermans told reporters on Wednesday.

A group of 134 developing countries, known as the G77, and China, is calling for agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh this week to set up a loss and damage facility.

Rich countries prefer a “mosaic” of funding arrangements. The EU argues a facility is just one option to consider – and the decision should be made at next year’s summit.

Existing and new funding instruments, ranging from debt relief to a windfall tax on oil and gas profits, should form part of the solution, Brussels says. Many of these sit outside the UN Climate Change process.

Current v historic responsibility

In any case, Timmermans said the pool of contributors should be broader than the list of countries defined by UN Climate Change as “developed” in the 1990s.

“I think everybody should be brought into the system on the basis of where they are today. China is one of the biggest economies on the planet with a lot of financial strength,” said Timmermans. “Why should they not be made co-responsible for funding loss and damage?”

Lula charms UN climate summit, bringing hope for rainforests

Last week, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda appeared to agree. “We all know that India and China… are major polluters and the polluters must pay,” Gaston Browne said. “I don’t think that there’s any free pass for any country.”

The island leader later clarified that there had to be a “differentiated assessment” that took into account historic emissions.

At a press conference last week, China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said Beijing made voluntary contributions through south-south cooperation and was under no obligation to do more.

Developing countries’ position hasn’t budged. Under a detailed proposal published on Tuesday, the G77 calls for a committee to work out how the facility would work for approval next year.

The EU’s shift in position puts the spotlight on the US, which has so far rejected the proposal for a new fund. “That’s just not happening,” climate envoy John Kerry said on Saturday, citing concerns about liability for compensation. In other interviews, he took a softer tone, but remained vague about where the landing ground might be.

Need for speed

One of the arguments against a facility is it would take too long to get money flowing.

Developing countries have previously said the new fund could be modelled on the UN’s flagship Green Climate Fund (GCF), which was established in 2010. It took five years for the first projects to be approved.

The EU argues existing and new financial instruments outside the UN climate process could deliver funding at the scale needed, more quickly.

On Wednesday, Timmermans announced that the EU had allocated €60 million ($62m) for “loss and damage” from its Global Gateway programme. This would support an early warning initiative, climate and disaster risk finance and insurance mechanisms.

Other ideas include a new trust under the World Bank, a funding window at the GCF, a windfall tax on oil and gas profits and reforms of the financial system.

‘Complete contradiction’: Egypt burns dirtier fuel to sell more gas to Europe

The Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) has so far been unimpressed with wealthy countries’ alternative proposals. In a statement, the group said it was “gravely concerned” with the lack of progress on the issue.

Aosis chair and environment minister Molwyn Joseph, of Antigua and Barbuda, said some countries like the UK and New Zealand, had been “willing to engage”.

But “some developed countries are furiously trying to stall progress and even worse, attempting to undermine small island developing states,” he said.

Following ministerial consultations on Wednesday afternoon, one source close to the discussion told Climate Home that some developing countries may be ready to accept a compromise, as long as it leads to a decision on funding arrangements at Cop28 next year.

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There was no joint statement. But both governments’ summaries said the two largest emitters will “work together”. The US said on climate change, China said on Cop27.

That doesn’t automatically mean the US-China working group is back on but it does mean climate envoys John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua can talk formally here in Sharm el-Sheikh – with agendas, notes and decisions. US secretary of state Anthony Blinken will visit China to pick up where Biden and Xi left off.

Indonesia’s coal-to-clean package

Today in Bali, Indonesia is expected announce a “just energy transition partnership”, which the US and Japan led on. A source with knowledge of the negotiations told Climate Home that the deal was likely to be between $18 billion and $20 billion. Another said that includes private sector finance.

This follows the South African model of a package to create green jobs and economic regeneration for coal-dependent areas on the journey to clean energy. Indonesia has been keen to consult on its plans and negotiate favourable terms before agreeing on the size of the package.

The Institute for Essential Services Reform (IESR) think tank, which is advising the government on the deal, estimates there are 5GW of coal plant capacity which are highly polluting and could be closed at a cost of $4.5 billion. That’s the low-hanging fruit.

In total, IESR estimates that replacing all of Indonesia’s coal capacity with renewables will cost about 60 times what’s on offer here – $1.2 trillion.

A key question is how much will be delivered in grants vs loans. And will coal plant owners be compensated for early closures? While the emissions wins could be considerable, that feels icky.

Political clashes deferred

Ministers have arrived in Sharm el-Sheikh this week to take the baton from negotiators, but the Egyptian presidency is not ready for that.

Foreign minister Sameh Shoukry told a plenary on Monday technical discussions will continue until this evening and ministerial consultations on key outstanding issues will only start Wednesday. Traditionally, representatives from developed and developing countries are paired up to find landing zones on the thorniest issues.

That compresses the timeline to thrash out political differences. Meanwhile ministers are stuck politely reiterating their positions in roundtable events.

There is no consensus on how to ramp up national emissions targets. The battle lines on loss and damage finance have not budged: the options are to establish a new facility, or work with a “mosaic” of funding arrangements. Check out Carbon Brief’s tracker for where each issue is at.

Egypt is banking on progress in technical discussions to move the needle by tonight.

“It’s going to be a brutally hard second week for climate negotiators at Cop27,” dean of the Fletcher School Rachel Kyte tweeted.

In private, both developed and developing country negotiators told Climate Home that ministers could be brought in earlier to start working towards a political resolution. One Cop veteran defended the timetable as not particularly unusual.

Whither, cover text?

These summits usually produce a “cover text”, which puts a unifying narrative on the various technical outcomes. A draft is taking longer to emerge than normal.

Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s Cop27 special representative, set out the challenge: “There are two extremes and everything in between. The idea is to get everyone’s views in there.”

Some countries, including Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, want to keep the text to a minimum. Others, including Europeans, see it as an opportunity to set a political direction. The UK wants references to reform of multilateral development banks and just energy transition partnerships – elements of progress outside the formal negotiating agenda.

The dynamics suggest Egypt could settle for a shorter document than the 8-page Glasgow Pact.

Cop decision texts don’t have to turn into major political declarations every year. On the other hand, this is the place where Egypt can address expectations that Cop27 will deliver for vulnerable countries.

One big question is whether the text will include language on keeping the 1.5C goal within reach. That’s backed by least developed countries, small island states, the EU and the US.

Emerging countries including China want to stick to the language of the Paris Agreement to hold the temperature increase “well below 2C” and “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5C.

It’s a row set to dominate the G20 leaders’ summit in Bali, which starts today. Ministers were unable to agree on a joint communique in September after pushback by China and India on emphasising 1.5C as the world’s climate goal.

As with US-China cooperation, the parameters of a Sharm deal may be set from hundreds of miles away.

Fact check

At Cop27 on Friday, Joe Biden announced “alongside the European Union and Germany, a $500 million package to finance and facilitate Egypt’s transition to clean energy”.

What the US is contributing to this is not clear. Germany is giving €250m. That’s €100m in loans on better than normal terms, €100m in debt forgiveness and €50m in grants.

Asked what the US is bringing, a spokesperson for the German development ministry (BMZ) said to ask the Americans. The US state department has not responded to repeated requests.

Other European countries are delivering $300m through the European Bank on Reconstruction and Development.

Together, all this European cash adds up to around 550m dollars or euros. More than the $500m Biden announced.

So what exactly is the US bringing? The joint US-German-Egyptian statement says the US and Germany will provide “expected support of €85m equivalent in grants”.

If you take off Germany’s €50m in grants, does that mean the US’s sole contribution is an “expected” grant of €35m and some help mobilising private finance?

It would explain why they’re not replying to our messages.

In brief…

Moral support? – Germany’s insurance-based “Global Shield” initiative for climate victims officially launched on Monday. Germany is contributing €170m, France €20m, Ireland €10m and Canada €7m. President Joe Biden claimed the US was “supporting” the initiative, but it was not on the list of initial funders. “Further contributions by donors are expected to materialise soon,” said the German development ministry.

Big brother – Germany has complained to Egyptian authorities of unwanted monitoring and filming of its events at Cop27 by security officials. The UN confirmed Egyptian national security officers are at the venue and is investigating the complaints, Deutsche Welle reports. Germany has been vocal on human rights and held an event with imprisoned activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah’s sister.

‘Ludicrous’ – Cop27 special representative Wael Aboulmagd told a press conference that the media reports of the complaints were “vague” and “mostly inaccurate”. “On the face of it, it seems ludicrous. It was an open event. Everyone could walk in. Why would anyone put surveillance?”

LNG export club – Mozambique’s first cargoes of LNG shipped out of the country on Monday. The Gas Exporting Countries Forum hailed the news. Its secretary general Mohamed Hamel congratulated Mozambique commissioner Jerónimo Chivavi in the plenary room at Cop27.

NDC watch – Bahamas, Vietnam, Andorra, Timor-Leste have submitted updated national climate plans since the start of Cop27. The biggest economy among them, Vietnam, strengthened its 2030 emission targets to 15.8% from BAU unconditionally and 43.5% with international support.

Alaa lives – The Egyptian authorities have provided proof that British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah is alive, his sister Sanaa Seif reports. A note in el-Fattah’s handwriting, dated 12 November, says he is drinking water again.

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A loss and damage finance facility would be a huge Egyptian gift to the developing world. But, as John Kerry said on Saturday, “that’s just not happening” because the US and others still fear being sued for their historic pollution.

Instead, the rich world is offering a hodge-podge of initiatives like insurance and early warning systems. Some vulnerable countries are working with them on this.

But the sums of money involved pale in comparison to the toll of disasters like Pakistan’s floods. And all these worthy initiatives don’t need a Cop to go ahead.

To the extent that Egypt has outlined a goal, it is to promote “implementation”.

So it’s the coalitions and the side deals in the trade fair bit of Cop that matter to the presidency.

Well, the trade fair is heavy on oil and gas greenwashing. A flagship initiative to finance African renewables folded due to a bad choice of partner.

In the negotiating rooms, there’s no consensus on how to strengthen national emissions cuts and trade carbon. A draft political statement for the summit – the “cover text” – has yet to appear.

If there’s any vision behind this Cop, the Sharm Pact is the place to show it. Otherwise, it will be remembered for jailed activists, gas deals and rivers of sewage.

Biden meets Xi as Dems keep US Senate

The other place to look for political direction is the Indonesian island of Bali.

If presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping manage to find some good vibes ahead of a G20 summit, it could unlock a US-China climate statement.

It helps Biden’s authority somewhat that Democrats are set to keep control of the Senate, regardless of the Georgia runoff result. The House of Representatives is still too close to call, with 20 seats left to declare.

A thawing of relations could mean resumed technical cooperation on things like curbing methane emissions. Based on climate envoys’ statements last week, don’t expect it to magic up finance for loss and damage.

UN enforces sexual harassment rules

The UN has suspended two people registered in Colombia’s delegation at Cop27 over sexual harassment complaints, the country’s government said in a statement on Sunday.

The Colombian minister of the interior, Alfonso Prada, emphasised the accused were not government officials. One of the named people had never traveled to Sharm el-Sheikh, he said, suggesting their credentials had been used illegally.

The Colombian delegation at Cop27 told Climate Home News that there is an open investigation and declined to comment further.

The country’s delegation at the climate talks is composed of 201 people, among them government officials, private sector and civil society representatives.

“Our government strongly rejects any conduct that disrespects or harms women and violates their rights and freedoms anywhere in the world,” the minister said.

In brief…

Dirty deal takes hit – The German government agreed to leave the Energy Charter Treaty, which has been the most important tool for fossil fuel companies to sue governments for loss of profits after climate policy changes. Germany is now the biggest economy to leave the deal. Spain, France and the Netherlands have all also left the treaty for its protection of fossil fuels.

Russian oligarchs at Cop – Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and former fertilizer boss at EuroChem Andrey Melichenko are among dozens of Russian lobbyists under international sanctions registered at COP27, The Guardian reports. Oil and gas giants Gazprom and Lukeoil, also under international sanctions, sent entire delegations to the UN climate talks.

Drones overhead – A pair of powered paragliders flew over the Cop27 venue on Saturday morning with advertising banners for ADES, an oil and gas drilling services company. Perhaps they were trying to catch the eye of one of the 636 registered fossil fuel lobbyists.

Dash for gas – Turkish Petroleum and Algeria’s Sonatrach agreed to establish a joint oil and gas exploration company that will operate in the region and “especially in Algeria”, said Turkish energy minister Fatih Donmez. In recent months, Algeria sealed deals with Italy and Spain to increase gas supplies to Europe.

Stranding risk – Building gas infrastructure to meet short term needs is a bad bet, warns Carbon Tracker. By 2030 it projects it will be cheaper, across Africa, to generate electricity with new solar than run existing gas plants. That spells financial instability for gas producers like Nigeria, Algeria and Egypt.

The post Cop27 bulletin: Visionless summit flails into week two appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Egyptian host, a gas exporting nation, has made reducing the industry’s carbon footprint a focus of its carbon-cutting initiatives.

“Oil and gas has a vital role to play in this transition. Since it is part of the problem, it should be part of the solution,” its petroleum minister Tarek El Molla, told the opening of the summit’s “decarbonisation day”.

Cutting methane emissions from production and capturing and storing carbon from polluting power plants got plenty of airtime. Phasing out oil and gas production was barely mentioned.

Polluters have pitched carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the solution to decarbonise carbon-intensive industries for decades, but it remains commercially unproven. The few projects that make it pay do so by using the captured CO2 to extract more oil from the ground.

UN cancels African energy finance initiative over fraudster’s role

Inside the conference centre, oil and gas producing nations, including Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia and Canada, showcased plans to use the technology at scale.

Its proponents are pushing for CCS to be included in a UN Climate Change process to ramp up national carbon-cutting ambition this decade.

Campaigners call it a “false solution” that provides a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and distracts from the need for oil and gas phase out.

Rather than a last resort to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors such as steel and cement “it’s become plan A,” said Marine Pouget, of Climate Action Network France.

Defining a market

Inside negotiating rooms, diplomats are defining what kind of “carbon removals” are eligible for trading as carbon credits.

The technical body recommends a broad definition of “removals”. Any human activity that “durably” stores carbon in geological formation, land, ocean reservoirs and products would qualify. Even wooden furniture could count.

Campaigners warn this would open the door to a raft of controversial and unproven technologies. Some, like CCS, have repeatedly underdelivered on their promise. Others, like ocean fertilisation – adding nutrients to seawater to stimulate photosynthesis and draw carbon in – bring ecological concerns.

“This would allow the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual while relying on risky technology that we are not sure is going to work,” Erika Lennon, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law (Ciel), told Climate Home. Instead, the focus should be on real emission cuts, she said.

John Kerry’s offsets plan sets early test for UN net zero standards

Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have raised concerns about the “vagueness” of the plans. Saint Kitts and Nevis called for more work to differentiate between types of removals.

A negotiator for a small island state told Climate Home: “If we are really trying to limit warming to 1.5C –  which we must – we can’t replace the urgent cuts in fossil fuels needed with unreliable or impermanent offsets.”

Shaping the conversation

The presence of the oil and gas industry at the talks has grown since the Cop26 summit in Glasgow last year. A total of 636 oil and gas lobbyists registered to attend Cop27, according to NGO analysis of a provisional list of attendees.

In week one, Egypt launched the East Mediterranean Gas Forum regional decarbonisation initiative, in which CCS featured prominently.

Saudi Arabia announced the creation of a CCS hub to deliver on its “green initiative” to reach net zero by 2060.

Latin America closes ranks at Cop27 around climate finance

Campaigners disrupted an event by the Pathway Alliance, a coalition of Canadian tar sands producers that have committed to achieve net zero emissions in their operations by 2050. The industry’s plans rely heavily on CCS.

The alliance has placed ads about its CCS plans on links to download programmes of events hosted in some pavilions. Sources showed Climate Home screenshots of the ads on their phones.

“Decarbonisation day was a complete oil and gas trade show in the halls of Cop27,” Julia Levin, of Environmental Defence Canada, told Climate Home. “They are spending big bucks to shape the conversation here,” she said.

Phaseout agenda stalls

These commercial interests make it unlikely Sharm el-Sheikh will build on Glasgow’s groundbreaking call to phase down unabated coal power.

India is pushing to expand the statement to cover all fossil fuels. Coal remains an important fuel to big Asian economies and some felt it had been unfairly singled out. A much wider group of countries relies on oil and gas.

Costa Rica, which jointly launched the Beyond Oil and Gas Coalition with Denmark last year, is now distancing itself from the initiative.

The Climate Vulnerable Forum, representing those hardest hit by climate chaos, is more focused on finance for loss and damage. Asked at a press briefing if he supported a fossil fuel phaseout, Ghanaian chair Henry Kokufu fired back “for developed or developing countries?” Ghana has a petrochemicals industry, he noted.

‘Toxic cover-up’: UN blasts oil majors’ fake net zero pledges

UAE agenda

The emphasis on decarbonising – rather than reducing – fossil fuel use could permeate into Cop28, Levin said.

Host and oil and gas producer UAE, which brought the largest number of fossil fuel lobbyists to the summit, is a big backer of the technology. It is counting on CCS to achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) showcased Al Reyadah, which it claims to be “the region’s first commercial-scale carbon capture utilisation and storage facility”.

“The UAE is known as a responsible supplier of energy and will continue to play this role as long as the world needs oil and gas,” president Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told the leaders’ summit earlier this week.

The post ‘Oil and gas trade show’ promotes carbon capture at Cop27 appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Cop27 visit is a stopover to bigger business next week when Biden meets China’s Xi Jinping in Bali ahead of the G20 summit.

Beijing suspended climate talks with Washington after house speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August. Relations between the two superpowers could make or break the outcome of Cop27.

In Egypt, Biden came to show off his $370bn climate package – for the US – and promise deeper methane cuts in the oil and gas sector.

But there was little for the rest of world. On what matters for the “implementation Cop” – cash – Biden had his hands tied.

Without congressional agreement, Biden cannot put more money on the table. But he gave some details on how his administration will parcel out its existing budget – including to boost Egypt’s clean energy plans.

Senior US officials briefed in advance that Biden would press el-Sisi on human rights issues. Critically, the release of Alaa Abdel Fattah, the Egyptian-British activist on hunger strike, who stopped drinking water six days ago.

Egyptian authorities told his mother el-Fattah had undergone “medical intervention”. That could mean he is being force-fed but the family has no proof he is still alive.

The #FreeAlaa campaign has dominated the summit. El-Fattah’s fate could overshadow any climate legacy.

His family urged Biden not to leave the country without evidence el-Fattah lives. As the wheels of Airforce One left the tarmac, there was no word.

Young activists holding a banner briefly interrupt @POTUS speech at #COP27. Unlike in past climate meetings, protests have been severely curtailed, with no large marches around #Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh pic.twitter.com/UluJ5csNFv

— Laura Millan (@LauraMillanL) November 11, 2022

Latest stories

• German, US cash aims to cut Egypt’s gas use and boost exports
• Latin America closes ranks at Cop27 around climate finance
• UN cancels African energy finance initiative over fraudster’s role

Crumbs of support

Biden had to come to Cop27 with something to say about how the US will support developing countries to cope with worsening climate impacts. But political headwinds limit his options.

He has requested Congress approve $11bn in climate funding for the 2023 budget. That would make good on his annual $11.4bn climate finance pledge. But the results of the midterm elections could decide otherwise.

If Republicans win control of the House of Representatives, which is looking likely, they could gut the pledge. If the conservatives come out on top, Democrats have until the end of 2022 to pass the budget or see the commitments quashed.

Instead, Biden set out how he will spend leftover funding already appropriated by Congress. It includes a doubling of the US contribution to the Adaptation Fund from $50m to $100m and details for how it will spend $150m to help Africa prepare for climate impacts.

The dribs and drabs of funding announced today are a far cry from what developing countries have been calling for. Biden remained silent on loss and damage finance.

“President Biden is pulling nearly every lever available to him to deliver bold climate action at home. The inconvenient truth is that the United States is grossly underperforming on its international climate finance commitments,” said Ani Dasgupta, CEO of the World Resources Institute.

“Biden is throwing crumbs into lots of different pots. That might sound impressive but it’s not the help that is needed,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa.

Fact check of the day

Asked by the Guardian today if she felt personally responsible for climate disasters like flooding in Pakistan, the CEO of US oil company Occidental Vicki Hollub accepted that climate disasters are “a problem” but said she was no more responsible than people who fly in planes, have iPhones or wear nice clothes.

She added: “We are being much more aggressive around emissions. We have to be… We are doing this direct air capture quicker than anyone else because we know we need to address it quickly.”

It’s true that Occidental is doing direct air capture – sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere – quicker than anyone else. Funded by United Airlines, they are building the world’s biggest direct air capture facility.

When it opens in 2024, it will remove 0.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year. It aims to scale up the operation and capture 25Mt a year by 2032.

That should cover Occidental’s emissions from its operations, which were 25Mt in 2020.

But it’s nowhere near enough to cover the emissions from customers burning its oil, of around 200Mt a year – equivalent to Bangladesh and its 166 million inhabitants.

To offset those emissions, Occidental would need to build hundreds of direct air capture plants. Removing a tonne of CO2 this way costs around $250 to $600. While casts are expected to come down, wouldn’t it be cheaper to leave that oil in the ground?

In brief…

‘Hands full with gas’ – BP Egypt has its “hands full with gas” and “won’t be a vehicle” for the green energy transition in the region, British ambassador to Egypt Gareth Bayley wrote in internal emails to colleagues, obtained from the UK Foreign Office under the Freedom of Information Act by Culture Unstained.

Green hydrogen hub – Africa could capture as much as 10% of green hydrogen market, helping to create 3.7m jobs and adding $120bn to the continent’s GDP, according to a report by Masdar, the UAE’s biggest clean energy firm.

Carbon wonk beef – Leading climate modeller Joeri Rogelj has accused the Global Carbon Project of inflating the remaining carbon budget for 1.5C in its latest analysis. This presents “a more lenient and forgiving picture”, he tweeted.

Every little counts – The EU can nudge its climate goal of cutting emissions by at least 55% to 57% by 2030 after reaching an agreement on forestry and land use regulations. The deal sets a target to increase the carbon sink from land use and forestry by 15%.

Trade and slavery – The US has blocked more than 1,000 shipments of solar energy components from China over concerns about the use of forced labour, Reuters reports. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson denied claims of abuse in Xinjiang province and said the blockade would hinder the global response to climate change.

Shell backs Bitcoin – Shell will launch a bitcoin mining initiative at the bitcoin conference In Miami in May, according to Bitcoin magazine, the event organiser. At the event, Shell will claim that it is using immersion cooling fluid to make Bitcoin greener and cut mining’s carbon footprint by up to 48%.

Come together – The UK delegation’s meeting rooms are named after Beatles’ songs. So far Hey Jude, Yellow Submarine and Blackbird have been spotted.

Smart farming? – The UAE-US-led Aim for Climate initiative has announced a doubling of investment for climate smart agriculture and innovating food systems to more than $8bn. An investigation by De Smog previously revealed the initiative has close ties with climate-denying meat industry groups.

Taiwan’s cover – It hurts China’s feelings when Taiwan asserts its sovereignty, so the democracy has to get creative to take part in multilateral forums. At the Cop27 venue, try the St Kitts and Nevis pavilion for information on Taiwan’s climate plans.

Green, Saudi-style – If you want to learn how to save the planet, the Saudi Green Initiative has you covered. Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi took its quiz, which includes questions on how you brush your teeth and deal with excess food. Why nothing on air travel or meat eating? Too radical, apparently.

The post Cop27 bulletin: Biden brings crumbs of support appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) has scrapped its flagship Team Energy Africa initiative after reviewing the involvement of the African Energy Chamber, a trade group headed by oil and gas lobbyist NJ Ayuk.

In 2007, Cameroonian-born lawyer Ayuk pleaded guilty to fraud in the US after impersonating a congressman to obtain visas for fellow Cameroonians. In 2015, he was investigated by Ghana’s central bank on suspicion of laundering $2.5 million.

“After reviewing its relationship with some of the private sector partners in Team Energy Africa, ECA has decided to cancel the initiative with immediate effect,” the commission’s climate director Jean-Paul Adam said in a short statement on Thursday evening.

He added that Uneca remains committed to working with the private sector to improve energy access through renewables across the continent and that the commission will “review the best mechanism to allow this to happen”.

UN gives platform to convicted fraudster lobbying for African gas

Team Energy Africa, a coalition of African investors and institutions, was created earlier this year to mobilise $500 billion of private sector investment into 250GW of “clean” energy across Africa by 2030.

The group was due to launch a dashboard at Cop27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, to showcase how African energy investments are being used. While the focus was on deploying renewable energy, it left space for some gas investments. Gas projects in Senegal were going to be part of the presentation.

‘Gas baby gas’

Ayuk had strongly argued that African countries should pursue gas extraction to spur Africa’s development. He came to the Cop27 climate summit with the motto: “Gas baby gas.”

Uneca has defended a role for gas to in the transition to clean energy in “very specific cases”.

Vulnerable nations publish climate spending wish-lists

Africa is behind the curve on deploying wind and solar power, while hundreds of millions of people have no electricity. Only 2% of global investments in renewable energy in the last two decades were made on the continent, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

One of the fiercest debates at Cop27 concerns whether fossil gas is part of the solution to energy poverty, or a trap African leaders should avoid.

For some developing countries with existing resource and infrastructure, gas “will play a major role in their transition to a net zero future,” said Uneca executive secretary Antonio Pedro. “For all others, developing new fossil fuel infrastructure would result in billions of stranded assets and debt for future generations.”

Ayuk has yet to respond directly to Climate Home’s request for comment. In an article published on the African Energy Chamber’s website, Ayuk made unfounded personal attacks on the messenger. He did not address his criminal record or the money laundering allegations.

The post UN cancels African energy finance initiative over fraudster’s role appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the Senate, Democrats won a contested Senate seat in Pennsylvania. Seats in Arizona and Nevada are too close to call. If the Democrats win them both, they keep control of the Senate. If they win neither, then Republicans win control.

As it did  two years ago, the outcome could come down to a runoff in Georgia, where the victor needs an outright majority, on 6 December.

In the House, there’s a lot more still up for grabs.

Whoever ends up on top, Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act is going to be hard to undo.

But Biden has so far failed to get US climate finance up to scratch. Control of Congress would give him some chance of delivering.

Despite the nail-biting back home, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was in Sharm el-Sheikh today and said that Biden had asked for the release of more climate funds. “We have a responsibility, we made a commitment.”

But, she said, “it is a challenge, and we haven’t succeeded yet, to get the global funding that we need to be good neighbours on this planet”.

Pelosi said it was hard to speak in the midterms on this subject because of “disagreements” between Democrats and Republicans. Some conservative still call climate change “a hoax”.

She brought two planes of US lawmakers with her and not one Republican came. “We have to get over that. I place my confidence in their children to teach them,” she said.

Speaking alongside Pelosi, Kathy Castor warned that the house select committee on the climate crisis – which she chairs – would be scrapped if Republicans win the house.

Latest stories

• Vulnerable nations publish climate spending wish-lists
• John Kerry’s offsets plan sets early test for UN net zero standards
• Vulnerable nations: Tax fossil fuels to rebuild after climate destruction

Investors on the rebound from Russian gas are jeopardising climate targets with a planned 235% increase in LNG capacity by 2030, Climate Action Tracker calculates. If all the proposed terminals are built, the oversupply of gas could emit 1.9Gt CO2e above the International Energy Agency’s net zero scenario. It undermines a handful of improvements in ambition since Glasgow. CAT’s global warming projection remains at 2.7C based on policies and action.

UN drops partnership with fraudster

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) has canceled Team Energy Africa, after Climate Home revealed that one of its coalition partners was led by a convicted fraudster and alleged money launderer.

The initiative aimed to mobilise $500 billion of private sector investment into 250GW of “clean” energy across Africa by 2030. But the involvement of NJ Ayuk, the oil and gas lobbyist in charge of African Energy Chamber, threatened its credibility.

Uneca will review the best way to partner with the private sector to roll out renewables across Africa, it said in a brief statement.

Separately, executive secretary Antonio Pedro clarified Uneca’s position on development. For some developing countries with existing resource and infrastructure, gas “will play a major role in their transition to a net zero future,” he said.

“For all others, developing new fossil fuel infrastructure would result in billions of stranded assets and debt for future generations.”

Climate impacts cost a pandemic a year

Losses and damages caused by climate change are costing Colombia the equivalent to one Covid-19 pandemic each year, shows a government report presented during COP27.

The country is the first in Latin America to quantify the impacts of extreme weather on climate victims and has estimated the costs at around $800 billion each year (4 trillion Colombian pesos), a figure similar to the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic in the country.

Most of the impacts are associated with wildfires, the report highlights, particularly due to loss of crops and ecosystem services.

Colombia’s environment minister, Susana Muhamad, said future governments from now on will have to face crises year after year and compared the situation to “a dog biting its own tail”, where money is being spent on restoring ecosystems that are being impacted by climate change.

“We need an immediate capacity to react. We cannot wait for the long conversations, committees and definitions (at climate talks), or keep getting indebted,” Muhamad said during the report launch.

 The country is backing a proposal by the group of vulnerable countries to obtain a percentage of debt relief to attend the costs of climate change.

Putting numbers to these impacts is the first step to enter that conversation, which makes Colombia’s report “emblematic” for the region, said Esperanza González, climate change specialist at the Interamerican Development Bank.

As more finance is directed to climate adaptation, the specialist said analyses such as Colombia’s are important to make the case for more loss and damage funds. González said the IDB is supporting similar cost analysis in Peru and Panama.

In brief…

Fossil fuel delegation – 636 oil and gas lobbyists have been registered to attend Cop27, analysis of the provisional list of attendees by NGOs shows. That’s 100 more than attended at Cop26 last year. If they were to form of delegation, it would be larger than any African one. Cop28 host UAE brought 70 delegates with fossil fuel interests – more than any other country.

No peak yet – Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels are set to increase 1% in 2022, rebounding slightly after a pandemic-driven drop, the Global Carbon Project predicts. This driven by India (up 6%), the US (1.5%) and international aviation.

Funds for the Amazon – Colombia’s vice-president, Francia Márquez, said she will discuss the creation of a new binational fund to protect the Amazon rainforest in a meeting with Brazil’s likely new environment minister, Marina Silva, at Cop27. “Lula’s win allows the two countries to lead” on a climate and racial justice agenda, Márquez said.

Get your vegan burger – Food outlets at the Lamborghini conference center have cut the price food in half and made water and soft drinks free. Delegates had grumbled at paying $11 for a sandwich.

Congo threat – The pace of deforestation in the Congo basin increased by 5% in 2021, according to Climate Focus. The Congo rainforest is the second-biggest in the world after the Amazon. On Monday, Germany committed to double its cash for forest conservation to €2bn ($2bn) in the period to 2025. Some of the funding is earmarked for the Congo Basin.

Bang for buck – To reduce emissions cost-effectively, philanthropists should focus on areas like clean electricity, electrifying light vehicles, saving peatland, shifting away from meat and cutting methane emissions, Ikea Foundation research says. Public transport, carbon capture and micro-grids offer less bang for buck.

Oil delayed – Equinor has shelved a planned Arctic oil field citing rising costs and supply industry constraints. The Norwegian state oil company is postponing the final investment decision for four years.

The post Cop27 bulletin: Everybody needs good neighbours appeared first on Climate Home News.

China’s Xie Zhenhua told a press briefing Kerry had not asked him directly during their informal meetings. (Relations are still frosty since US house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan “hurt China’s peoples’ feelings”.)

Warning against reopening the Paris Agreement, Xie said China made voluntary contributions through south-south cooperation and was under no obligation to do more.

“We hope…. that we can set up this new mechanism and then we can discuss how to resolve it in a more in depth way,” said Xie.

Meanwhile a few millions of dollars trickling in from the likes of New Zealand and Scotland won’t go far.

This stalemate has vulnerable nations looking for so-called “innovative finance”. That could mean anything from air passenger taxes to debt cancellation.

Barbados’ prime minister Mia Mottley is pushing a levy on fossil fuels – including during a phone call to John Kerry.

“It’s time for the private sector to stand up and we need to hold them accountable”, said Michai Robertson, the small island (Aosis) negotiator on loss and damage, on Wednesday.

Developed nations seem more open to this idea than to another demand on their public finances. Asked about it in a Cop27 press conference, after pausing for a plane to pass overhead, the EU’s Jacob Werksman said “we’re all looking for innovative finance”.

But it’s not going to be easy. Robertson said it was only in the “exploratory phase”. Getting buy-in from petrostates is an obvious obstacle.

Kerry’s offset plan is ‘raw cookie dough’

UN special climate envoy John Kerry came to Cop27 determined to have something to say about how to fund the transition from coal to clean energy.

Perhaps he recognises that the US’ $1 billion in loans for South Africa’s just energy transition deal didn’t cut the mustard. As he prepared for Cop27 the midterms were not looking promising for a climate-friendly majority to pass more support through Congress.

On Wednesday, Kerry sketched out a plan to use carbon credits to finance coal retirement and deploy solar, wind and geothermal energy in developing countries.

Philanthropic groups Rockefeller Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund are interested in the idea and have partnered with the US State Department to put flesh on the bones. It’s being called the Energy Transition Accelerator.

Kerry’s team “worked on this like crazy for a while,” he said. We first reported the idea at the start of November.

Yet the result “is not so much half-baked as it is raw cookie dough,” said Leo Roberts, of E3G’s coal transition team. There are virtually no details.

That makes it difficult to judge against the recommendations of UN chief António Guterres’ greenwashing taskforce, which set high standards for using offsets to meet net zero pledges.

Kerry promised “strong safeguards” and no repeating past mistakes, which allowed dodgy carbon credits to flourish.

A campaigner against the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline confronts an adviser to Japan’s MUFG bank at Cop27. According to 350.org, campaigners asked the bank to say they would not support the pipeline and the bankers replied they could not comment on individual cases. (Photo: 350.org)

In brief…

Distancing – Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) has pulled out of Team Energy Africa, a UN-backed initiative to mobilise private sector energy investments across Africa. The move comes after we reported on the involvement of NJ Ayuk, an oil and gas lobbyist and convicted fraudster.

Should China pay? – After reports that small islands (Aosis) want China to pay into loss and damage, Antigua and Barbuda’s prime minister and Aosis lead Gaston Browne told Climate Home: “All polluters, especially large ones, must contribute to the fund.” He added the “differentiated assessment” should include “historical emissions and the current level of development”.

Scramble for green hydrogen – Egypt and Norway have signed a deal to establish a 100 MW green hydrogen plant 100 MW in Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea. Egypt and Belgium also announced a green hydrogen project, Egypt Today reports.

Methane action – China has drawn up a draft national strategy on methane, its climate envoy Xie Zhenhua said at Cop27. The strategy will target the three main source of emissions – energy, agriculture and waste. They will set preliminary targets which are only preliminary because China has “rather weak statistical capability in this area”. He said public leveraged finance would be key.

Congress in balance – The Democrats are doing better than expected in the mid-term elections, winning Senate seats in Pennsylvania. At the time of writing, who will control the two chambers of Congress – the House and Senate – was unclear. Democratic control would improve prospects for climate finance.

Nature gets money – The Climate Investment Fund announced it will deploy over $350m for nature-based solutions, globally, starting in Egypt, the Dominican Republic, Fiji, Kenya. COP27 host Egypt is set to invest in adaptation of the Nile Delta area, which stands to lose 30% of its food production by 2030 as a result of climate change.

Latin America united – The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC in Spanish) issued a joint call for new climate finance through sovereign funds and debt-for-nature swaps. Colombia’s Environment minister, Susana Muhamad, said debt swaps could help unify the region at climate talks, which is usually divided in two groups: left-leaning Alba nations and right-leaning Ailac.

Petroleum financing – The African Development Bank (AfDB) signed an agreement with OPEC Fund to “to expand their partnership to support sustainable economic and social development”. OPEC has contributed more than $1 billion to projects co-financed by the AfDB.

UK ups adaptation – The UK will provide £200 million ($228m) to the African Development Bank Group’s climate action window, a new mechanism set up for adaptation finance.

Weather watching wonga – Spain has announced it will fund the Systematic Observations Financing Facility, which aims to bring early warning systems to more countries. Norway has increased its donation. The beneficiaries of the facility are mainly African nations or small islands.

The post Cop27 bulletin: Could polluter taxes fund loss and damage? appeared first on Climate Home News.

At the Cop27 climate summit, US special envoy John Kerry launched a proposal to use carbon credits to speed up the retirement of coal power and the roll out of renewables in developing countries.

The idea, first reported by Climate Home News earlier this month, is still in its infancy and most of the details remain to be worked out.

On Wednesday, Kerry announced a partnership between the US State Department, philanthropic groups Rockefeller Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund to deliver the initiative, called the Energy Transition Accelerator.

Kerry insisted that the initiative would align with Guterres’ expert group’s recommendations that offsets should be high quality and used as a last resort, after a company has reduced its emission reductions.

But analysts are sceptic the barely fleshed out concept will meet the high bar of standards set out by Guterres’ expert group.

UN gives platform to convicted fraudster lobbying for African gas

The expert group’s standards “allow very little space for carbon offsets,” Teresa Anderson, global lead for climate justice at ActionAid International, told Climate Home. “It’s hard to see how Kerry can claim his initiative fulfils all the required criteria.”

The UN chief warned that all new voluntary carbon market initiatives must abide by the group’s recommendations. One of the key principles is that companies setting net zero goals must stop funding fossil fuels.

Kerry said that only companies with set science-based targets and commitments to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 would be able to take part. Fossil fuel companies would be excluded.

However, oil and gas companies are among the largest buyer group on the $2 billion voluntary carbon market.

“We have seen a consolidation over the last 24 hours of what net zero really means,” said Rachel Kyte, co-chair of the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative, which is also working on offsetting standards. “We can innovate… but we have got to meet the standards.”

What’s the noun for those who call for and support the establishment of a standard and then undermine it when it’s inconvenient? #COP27 #climate

— Rachel Kyte (@rkyte365) November 9, 2022

Kerry promised that “strong safeguards” will ensure the credits are aligned with best practice. The partnership will ensure “that we are not repeating the mistakes of the past: no double counting, no greenwash,” he said.

Broad principles agreed by the partnership include limiting the lifespan of the scheme to 2030 or 2035. Kerry suggested the number of credits for sale could also be limited.

Credits will be issued at the jurisdiction level, either by countries or at the sub-national level. Buyers “must use these credits to supplement and not substitute emission reductions,” Kerry said. “This is not in lieu of any other finance commitment.”

The US State Department’s press release states that companies could use credits to support emission cuts “above and beyond their interim targets”. But Kerry also suggested they could be used towards companies’ near-term targets or to address a limited share of the emissions from a company’s product use.

John Kerry: Carbon offsets can help wean developing countries off coal

In addition, 5% of the value of the credits would go towards supporting climate adaptation in developing countries. It is unclear whether the money would go to the Adaptation Fund or another institution.

The focus on accelerating the shift away from coal as the key purpose of the scheme is also unclear.

The partnership hailed interest from Chile and Nigeria in taking part in the initiative. But Nigeria isn’t reliant on coal for economic revenues or energy use.

“There are next to no details on how this would even work in practice. This is not so much half-baked as it is raw cookie dough,” said Leo Roberts, of E3G’s coal transition team.

Roberts told Climate Home the US had in its hands “much more impactful and much less reputationally damaging levers” for scaling up private finance for the transition.

Recommendations made to the G20 to reform the World Bank, in which the US is the largest shareholder, and multilateral development banks “could leverage a trillion in concessional finance,” he added.

Vulnerable nations: Tax fossil fuels to rebuild after climate destruction

The details will have to be worked out in broad consultations with stakeholders, with a plan more a more concrete proposal to be presented at Cop28 in Dubai next year, Kerry said.

According to the State Department, Bank of America, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and Standard Chartered Bank have said they are interesting in taking part and would like to be involved in the initiative’s development.

Angela Churie Kallhauge, executive vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund, told Climate Home: “This is about the importance of opening up for an inclusive process. It is now an opportunity where we can jointly be shaping this initiative rather than us come with a fully ready proposal that has not had a chance to be tested, discussed and debated.”

The post John Kerry’s offsets plan sets early test for UN net zero standards appeared first on Climate Home News.

Developing countries have long called for the rich countries which disproportionately caused climate change to pay to repair the damage caused.

While keeping up these calls, groups like the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) and the influential prime minister of Barbados Mia Mottley are now switching their focus more to polluting companies rather than governments.

Developed governments have long resisted setting aside funds to address loss and damage, for fear of being held legally responsible for their pollution. But they have been more open-minded about calls for private sector funds.

Michai Robertson, Aosis lead finance negotiator told Climate Home that there should be a universal tax on the fossil fuel and other carbon intensive industries. “It’s time for the private sector to stand up and we need to hold them accountable”, he said.

UN gives platform to convicted fraudster lobbying for African gas

Mottley made a similar call in her Cop27 opening speech. “It can not only be an issue of asking state parties to do the right thing,” she told leaders. “The oil and gas companies and those who facilitate them need to be brought into a special convocation between now and Cop28.”

She recently pitched the idea on the phone to US climate envoy John Kerry, according to her advisor Avinash Persaud.

Kerry later told reporters they “had a deep discussion” and “found a lot of agreement on where we’re heading and what we have to do here”. He did not go into details and the state department did not respond to a request for comment.

Asked about Mottley’s proposal, EU negotiator Jacob Werksman told Climate Home: “We’re all looking for innovative finance right…we’ve missed our $100bn goal, its proved to be much more of a stretch than we imagined.”

But, he said, “the idea of taxing oil companies is a very kind of headline notion. We’d have to know much more about the details of what that means in practice. The EU itself, in terms of the Commission, doesn’t have the authority to do that kind of taxation”.

‘Toxic cover-up’: UN blasts oil majors’ fake net zero pledges

Asked about a fossil fuel levy for loss and damage, the African Group’s lead loss and damage negotiator Alpha Kaloga told Climate Home: “This is something that we should explore”. He added: “We do support innovative sources of finance such as revenue from divestment from fossil fuel subsidies by developed countries, debt cancellation, Tobin taxes on [financial] transaction and air passenger levels, based on the historical responsibility of developed countries”.

A recent NGO report found that over the last decade, climate-induced economic losses suffered by a group of 58 vulnerable nations, known as the Vulnerable 20, amounted to just 1.7% of the fossil fuel industry’s profits.

Robertson said Aosis’ proposal was just at an “exploratory phase” and that there are “limitations” on the authority of the UN’s climate talks. If a Cop meeting reaches consensus, it can ask all governments to do things like set taxes but they cannot order them to.

Persaud said Mottley’s proposal is that, to avoid raising the cost of living, the levy would start at zero on today’s prices. But every time, the price of coal, oil and gas dropped by 10 percentage points, a 1% levy would go to a loss and damage financing facility.

As Glasgow forest pledge turns to action, most signatories drop out

When an independent agency declares a climate disaster or event in a country then money, perhaps based as a percentage of GDP, would be disbursed to the government to spend as needed, Persaud said.

He suggested the fund could be based on a similar model to the International Maritime Organisation’s oil pollution compensation funds. Those funds are financed by contributions paid by entities that receive certain types of oil by sea. The contributions are based on the amount of oil received and cover expected claims and the costs of administering the funds.

Details around the governance structure still need to be worked out but Persaud said the mechanism must be “dedicated and simple”.

“Every mechanism that requires a lot of institutional development, a lot of boards and flawed structures tend not to favour the powerless,” he said.

As Cop27 kicks off, where are the coal to clean deals at?

While he wanted more details on a fossil fuel levy, the EU’s Werksman said that there were “interesting examples” of innovative finance from specific sectors.

He mentioned the UN aviation body’s (Icao) rules which mean airlines have to buy offsets to cover emissions above a certain cap and the cap on shipping sector emissions which the UN’s shipping body is considering.

In September, United Nations secretary general António Guterres called for a windfall tax on oil and gas profits to fund loss and damage and to help people struggling with high food and energy prices. “Polluters must pay,” he said.

This article was updated on 9/11 to clarify Antonio Guterres proposal and on 11/11 to update Alpha Kaloga’s comments.

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Njock Ayuk Eyong, better known as NJ Ayuk, is chairman of the African Energy Chamber, a trade group that connects oil and gas executives with government officials.

The Cameroon-born lawyer describes himself on his website as “an internationally-acclaimed thought leader, lawyer, thinker, speaker and entrepreneur, who advises major companies on corporate strategies with a focus on investing in Africa’s future”.

Behind Ayuk’s slick appearance and gushing marketing prospectus is a murkier past.

Court documents seen by Climate Home News show Ayuk was convicted of fraud in the US for impersonating a congressman. In connection with his law firm Centurion Law Group, which brokers oil and gas deals across the continent, he was investigated for money laundering by Ghana’s central bank.

This hasn’t stopped the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) from giving him a prime platform to promote gas extraction in Africa during the Cop27 climate summit.

Sustainable Energy For All (SEforAll), which works with the UN to ensure access to sustainable energy worldwide, was part of the initiative spearheaded by Uneca. Following Climate Home’s reporting, SEforAll pulled out of the alliance on Wednesday, citing the African Energy Chamber’s involvement.

Fraud conviction

In 2007, Ayuk pleaded guilty to illegally using congressman Donald Payne’s stationery and signature stamp to obtain visas to the US for 11 people from Cameroon while an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland. He was sentenced to 18 months’ probation and expelled from the country.

In 2015, The Finder newspaper reported allegations that Ayuk was involved in laundering $2.5 million in Ghana and repatriating $1m to Equatorial Guinea, where he lived. The director of Centurion’s subsidiary in Ghana was arrested and detained during the investigation. GT Bank told investigators that Ayuk showed up at a branch with two bags containing $2.5m in cash, to deposit in a Centurion company account.

Ayuk reportedly told the bank that the funds were for legal expenses related to Centurion’s activities in Ghana. The case appears to have stalled.

Climate Home reached out by email to NJ Ayuk for comment but did not receive a response.

After publication of the story, in a lengthy response published on the African Energy Chamber’s website, Ayuk accused Climate Home of having an anti-Africa agenda. He did not address his criminal record or the money laundering allegations.

Ayuk wrote: “We are proud about the work we do at the African Energy Chamber and our work to make energy poverty history.”

Earlier this year, the African Energy Chamber partnered with the UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) to create Team Energy Africa. At the time, SEforAll was part of the initiative.

A brochure describes it as “an informal coalition of like-minded African investors and institutions keen on investing in, and championing Africa’s energy transformation”.

The initiative aims to unlock $500bn of private investment to deploy 250GW of clean energy by 2030, bring electricity to 600 million Africans and spur economic development.

‘Toxic cover-up’: UN blasts oil majors’ fake net zero pledges

For the team, gas, of which there are large reserves across the continent, has a role to play to eradicate energy poverty. Both the heads of Uneca and SEforAll have previously supported gas as a “transition fuel” from dirtier coal and oil to renewable energy.

“One conversation will be around gas. We need to go to Cop27 to talk about this. We need a team with the private sector in the room, ” Vera Songwe, who headed Uneca until September, said of the initiative.

‘Gas baby gas’

“Drill baby drill: that should be Africa’s message to the world. If you want to solve energy poverty, gas baby gas,” Ayuk told Africa Energy Week in South Africa last month. “We need to go to Cop27, backing up our energy producers. We should not be apologizing for our energy sector.”

In a comment piece he published from Sharm el-Sheikh, Ayuk argued that African governments “must push back on the attempts by certain global interest groups and financiers” to prevent the continent from developing its gas reserves.

“This leads us to believe that Africa cannot rely on international partners,” he said.

Oil and natural gas will be playing an ongoing role in Africa’s energy mix for years to come. Renewables are expensive, unreliable and can’t do the heavy lifting for now. We need to drill for Gas and Make Energy Poverty History while fighting Climate Change. #cop27egypt #COP27 pic.twitter.com/RYx8hssMvl

— NJ Ayuk (@nj_ayuk) November 5, 2022

Team Energy Africa formally launched at the Africa Energy Week organised by Ayuk’s Africa Energy Chamber in South Africa last month.

Photos of the presentation seen by Climate Home show that a “natural gas expert group” is planned alongside a “renewable expert” one.

The team will be crucial in “driving private sector investments to boost energy sector growth in Africa whilst ensuring the continent does not continue begging for funding from international parties,” Ayuk said.

The event trailed a dashboard to showcase how African energy investments are being utilised. It included gas projects in Senegal. Climate Home understands it is due to be launched at the SEforAll pavilion at Cop27 on Tuesday 15 November. A senior Uneca official told Climate Home this was “a flagship Uneca initiative”.

Jean-Paul Adam, climate director at Uneca, told Climate Home the initiative was about “African investors channeling their own resources into investments across the continent”.

Uneca “is working with a range of private-sector partners to support this initiative. The major focus of these investments will be in renewable energy,” he said.

However, after being approached by Climate Home for comment, SEforAll decided to pull out from Team Energy Africa.

Tracey Crowe, chief of staff at SEforAll, said: “The initiative was first envisioned as a UN vehicle to serve as a catalyst for transformative private sector investments in clean energy. With the inclusion of a new partner that does not share our views on a clean and just energy transition for all countries, we are no longer a part of this programme.”

‘Pure folly’

While proponents argue Africa must use all resources at its disposal to lift people out of energy poverty, critics warn fossil fuel investments are a risky bet.

“Far be it for global north nations to tell global south actors what to do with their assets. Whether it’s a good idea for economic reasons is another question,” said Kaya Axxelsson, research assistant at Oxford University’s Smith School. “In some places it may not be wise to build new gas infrastructure that gets stranded and locks them into a cycle of debt, especially when renewables may be a cheaper and safer option.”

The majority of gas projects under development across the continent are destined for export, not alleviating energy poverty. European nations are seeking extra supplies in the short term to replace Russian imports, but this demand may not last as they scale up renewables.

The Don’t Gas Africa coalition is urging African leaders at Cop27 to back wind and solar energy instead.

“The African dash for gas is pure folly and will only bring more climate harm to the people of Africa,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa. “It’s horrifying to see an African Cop used to promote fossil fuels and exacerbate the climate suffering of African people. What is especially galling is that most of the gas being proposed will be sent to be burned by Europeans.”

The story was updated after publication on 09/11/2022 to include SEforAll’s decision to pull out of Team Energy Africa and NJ Ayuk’s blog post. 

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Njock Ayuk Eyong, better known as NJ Ayuk, is fronting a UN-backed alliance called Team Energy Africa to unlock private investment in “clean” energy, bring electricity to 600 million Africans and spur economic development.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) are behind the initiative.

NJ Ayuk (Pic: Wikimedia Commons)

The Cameroonian-born lawyer describes himself on his website as “an internationally-acclaimed thought leader, lawyer, thinker, speaker and entrepreneur, who advises major companies on corporate strategies with a focus on investing in Africa’s future”.

But behind Ayuk’s slick appearance and gushing marketing prospectus is a murkier past.

In 2007, Ayuk pleaded guilty to illegally using a US congressman’s stationery and signature stamp to obtain visas to the US for 11 people from Cameroon. He was sentenced to 18 months’ probation and expelled from the country.

In connection with law firm Centurion Law Group, which brokers oil and gas deals across the continent, he was investigated for money laundering by Ghana’s central bank.

At Cop27, Ayuk is on a mission for gas deals.

“Drill baby drill: that should be Africa’s message to the world. If you want to solve energy poverty, gas baby gas,” Ayuk told Africa Energy Week in South Africa last month. “We need to go to Cop27, backing up our energy producers. We should not be apologizing for our energy sector.”

Ayuk did not respond to a request for comment at time of publication.

Jean Paul Adam, climate director at Uneca, said the commission “is working with a range of private-sector partners to support this initiative. The major focus of these investments will be in renewable energy.”

Tracey Crowe, senior director at SEforAll, said: “We do not support any view that does not champion a sustainable energy transition.”

Today at #COP27 Alaa Abd El Fattah’s sister Sana was speaking at a press briefing addressing the unjust incarceration of her brother and demanding his immediate release
She was confronted directly by an Egyptian government rep who had to be escorted out by UN security #FreeAlaa pic.twitter.com/Xm28c9IHKy

— Dharini (@dharinipart) November 8, 2022

An Egyptian lawmaker was escorted away by UN security after confronting Sanaa Seif, sister of imprisoned activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, at a press conference. Amr Darwish, a real estate businessman and youth coordinator for the government, harangued her in Arabic and denied that el-Fattah was a political prisoner.

Greenwash-busters, assemble!

The wild west of corporate net zero targets now has set of laws – well guidelines. And Big Oil’s marketing departments aren’t going to like them.

In a packed-out meeting room in Sharm el-Sheikh, self-described “recovering politician” Catherine McKenna laid out the findings of her 16-person, globe-spanning panel on what net zero means for corporations, cities and regions.

“You cannot be a net zero leader while continuing to build or invest in fossil fuel supply”, she said, to applause from the audience. That rules out every oil major and a lot of banks and pension funds.

The report had been commissioned by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres and he came along to bless the findings.

After shaking hands with the panel members in the front row, he said: “Using bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cover up massive fossil fuel expansion is reprehensible. It is rank deception. This toxic cover-up could push our world over the climate cliff. The sham must end.”

No wonder McKenna introduced him as “the best plain talker on climate that I know”.

The taskforce set other stringent rules: reduce emissions before you buy offsets, set interim targets and don’t lobby (either directly or through a trade association) against climate action.

So if a company like Shell wants to get the UN’s seal of approval for its net zero alignment then it must stop investing in new fossil fuels and leave groups like the American Petroleum Institute.

One sharply-suited man in the audience was overheard to say: “It’s going to be hard for my people. We will be out of compliance.” Perhaps that’s the best endorsement the taskforce could get.

Global finance reforms gain momentum

No nation has suffered more from climate disaster this year than Pakistan, where floods have killed and displaced thousands. But, as Pakistan’s pavilion warns in bold letters: “What happens in Pakistan won’t stay in Pakistan.”

The country’s prime minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Tuesday: “Imagine on one hand we have to cater for our food security for the common man by spending billions of dollars and on the other we have to spend billions of dollars to protect flood affected people from further miseries and difficulties. How on earth can one expect from us that we will undertake this gigantic task on our own?”

Barbados’ Mia Mottley said countries should not have to choose between education, health and reconstruction. She called the inclusion of loss and damage on the official agenda a “significant achievement. One that we have been fighting for for many years”.

South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa threw his weight behind Mottley’s Bridgetown Agenda. “Multilateral development banks (MDBs) and institutions need to transform,” he said. “At present multilateral support is out of reach for the majority of the world’s population due to funding that is risk averse as well as conditionalities.”

That’s a reference to the Indonesian G20-led review of MDBs’ “capital adequacy framework”. That controls how much they invest and how much they keep in the bank just in case. The review said the ratio should shifted to the former. If that was spent on the climate, it would be a game-changer.

On Sunday, the MDBs joint statement asked for “more lending capacity”, which was interpreted as an endorsement of the review.

Fact check of the day

Climate envoy from the world’s biggest historical emitter John Kerry, on the missing climate money from rich countries:

“Everyone is upset that the $100bn has not been fulfilled.”

“Its at $90-something…when I got 90-something on a test at school I felt pretty good.”#COP27 pic.twitter.com/efZ42qrvK7

— Josh Gabbatiss (@Josh_Gabbatiss) November 8, 2022

US climate envoy John Kerry said yesterday: “Everyone is upset that the $100bn has not been fulfilled. “Its at $90-something… when I got 90-something on a test at school I felt pretty good.”

He was talking about the $100 billion climate finance target, set in 2009, was not a maximum level to be aimed at like a test score.

It was the rich world’s promise to developing countries to help them deal with a crisis they barely caused. Lots of climate action by developing countries depends on it. So does goodwill.

Unlike a test score, it is in developed countries’ power to meet the target. They can just sign the cheques. Although the US’s separation of powers means the president needs congressional support for some spending.

Climate finance is also not at “$90-something”. According to the OECD’s statistics, it was at $83.3 billion in 2020. The US is responsible for the vast majority of that shortfall.

If you exclude money from the private sector which governments take credit for, known as “mobilised private finance”, it was $68.3 billion.

Oxfam calculates the real figure at more like $21-24.5 billion. Rich countries count concessional loans at face value. Oxfam argues they should only take credit for the added value compared to a commercial loan.

To extend the dodgy analogy, a score in the twenties would have got Kerry kicked out of Yale.

In brief…

Adaptation agenda – The Cop27 presidency has released a set of 2030 goals which form the “adaptation agenda”. They include adaptation finance, access to clean cooking, early warning systems and investing $4 billion to secure the future of 15 million hectares of mangroves.

Loss and damage pledge – Austria has pledged €50m ($50m) for “loss and damage” over the next four years, the climate minister Leonore Gewessler tweeted.

Free Alaa – UK prime minister Rishi Sunak raised the case of political prisoner Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who stopped drinking water on Sunday, with Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi during a bilateral meeting, the UK said. Egypt’s readout does not mention the issue. His sister Sanaa Seif pleaded for his release at Cop27 during an overcrowded event Tuesday.

Midterms misinformation – Amazon has made campaign contributions worth $138,000 to 25 climate deniers standing in the US midterm elections, journalist Michael Thomas reports. The e-commerce giant positions itself as a climate leader. The outcome of Tuesday’s poll will affect how far Congress supports climate action.

Africa’s renewable leader – Germany wants to help Kenya get from 90% renewables to 100%, its BMZ development ministry says. The two countries have announced a partnership at Cop27, with the details to be fleshed out in December. After Kenya’s power needs are met, it can use the electricity to make green hydrogen, BMZ said.

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