In the closing session of the two-week talks on Thursday evening, many countries expressed their disappointment and frustration at the lack of any outcome on the Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP), noting the urgency of stepping up efforts to curb greenhouse gas pollution this decade.

The co-chairs of the talks said those discussions had not reached any conclusion and would need to resume at the annual climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, unleashing a stream of disgruntled interventions from both developed and developing countries.

Samoa’s lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), emphasised that “we really can’t afford these failures”. “We have failed to show the world that we are responding with the purpose and urgency required to limit warming to 1.5 degrees,” she said.

Anne Rasmussen of Samoa, speaking on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Governments, from Latin America to Africa and Europe, lamented the lack of progress on the MWP because of its central role in keeping warming to the 1.5C temperature ceiling enshrined in the Paris Agreement.

Current policies to cut emissions are forecast to lead to warming of 2.7C, even as the world is already struggling with worsening floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels at global average temperatures around 1.3C higher than pre-industrial times.

Mitigation a taboo topic?

Despite the clear need to act fast, a deep sense of mistrust seeped into talks on the MWP in Bonn, with negotiators disagreeing fundamentally over its direction, according to sources in the room.

Developed countries and some developing ones said that the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs), led primarily by Saudi Arabia and China, as well as some members of the African Group, had refused to engage constructively in the discussions.

“The reason is that they fear this would put pressure on them to keep moving away from fossil fuels,” an EU delegate told Climate Home.

Bonn bulletin: Fossil fuel transition left homeless

Bolivia’s Diego Pacheco, speaking on behalf of the LMDCs, rejected that view in the final plenary session, while describing the atmosphere in the MWP talks as “strange and shocking”. He also accused developed countries of trying to bury data showing their emissions will rise rather than fall over the course of this decade.

The EU and Switzerland said it was incomprehensible that a body charged with cutting greenhouse gas emissions had not even been allowed to discuss them.

“Mitigation must not be taboo as a topic,” said Switzerland’s negotiator, adding that otherwise the outcome and credibility of the COP29 summit would be at risk.

Rows over process

Before MWP negotiations broke down in Bonn, its co-facilitators – Kay Harrison of New Zealand and Carlos Fuller of Belize – had made a last-ditch attempt to rescue some semblance of progress.

They produced draft conclusions calling for new inputs ahead of COP29 and an informal note summarising the diverging views aired during the fraught exchanges. For many delegates, the adoption of those documents would have provided a springboard for more meaningful discussions in Baku.

But the LMDC and Arab groups refused to consider this, arguing that the co-facilitators had no mandate to produce them and calling their legitimacy into question – a claim rebutted by the UN climate secretariat, according to observers. Frantic efforts to find common ground ultimately came to nothing.

A session of the Mitigation Work Programme in Bonn. Photo: IISD/ENB – Kiara Worth

Fernanda de Carvalho, climate and energy policy head for green group WWF, said the MWP discussions must advance if the world is to collectively reduce emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035 from 2019 levels, as scientists say is needed.

The MWP should be focused on supporting countries to deliver stronger national climate action plans (NDCs) – due by early next year – that set targets through to 2035, she said.

“Instead, we saw [government] Parties diverging way more than converging on hard discussions that never made it beyond process,” she added.

‘Collective amnesia’

Some developing countries, including the Africa Group, pushed back against what they saw as efforts by rich nations to force them to make bigger cuts in emissions while ducking their own responsibilities to move first and provide more finance to help poorer countries adopt clean energy.

Brazil – which will host the COP30 summit in 2025 – said the MWP was the main channel for the talks to be able to find solutions to put into practice the agreement struck at COP28 to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a fair way.

But to enable that, “we have to create a safe environment of trust that will leverage it as a cooperative laboratory”, he said, instead of the “courthouse” it has become “where we accuse and judge each other”.

Observers in Bonn pointed to the absence of discussions on implementing the COP28 deal on fossil fuels, which was hailed last December as “historic”.

“It seems like we have collective amnesia,” veteran watcher Alden Meyer, a senior associate at think-tank E3G, told journalists. “We’ve forgotten that we made that agreement. It’s taboo to talk about it in these halls.”

‘Detour on the road to Baku’

After the exchange of views, UN Climate Change executive secretary Simon Stiell noted that the Bonn talks had taken “modest steps forward” on issues like the global goal on adaptation, increased transparency of climate action and fixing the rules for a new global carbon market.

“But we took a detour on the road to Baku. Too many issues were left unresolved. Too many items are still on the table,” he added.

The closing plenary of the Bonn Climate Change Conference. Photo: Lucia Vasquez / UNFCCC

Another key area where the talks failed to make much progress was on producing clear options for ministers to negotiate a new post-2025 climate finance goal, as developed countries refused to discuss dollar amounts as demanded by the Africa and Arab groups, among others.

Bonn talks on climate finance goal end in stalemate on numbers

Developing nations also complained about this in the final session, while others expressed their concern that a separate track of the negotiations on scientific research had failed to address the topic in a rigorous enough manner.

In his closing speech, Stiell reminded countries that “we must uphold the science”, and urged them to accelerate their efforts to find common ground on key issues well ahead of COP29.

The next opportunities to move forward on the new finance goal – expected as the main outcome from the Baku summit – will be a “retreat” of heads of delegations in July followed by a technical meeting in October, including a high-level ministerial dialogue on the issue.

But several observers told Climate Home that highly contentious issues – such as the size of the funding pot and the list of donors – are beyond the remit of negotiators and are unlikely to be resolved until the political heavyweights, including ministers, take them up in Azerbaijan in November.

Rising costs of climate crisis

“Business-as-usual is a recipe for failure, on climate finance, and on many other fronts, in humanity’s climate fight,” Stiell said. “We can’t keep pushing this year’s issues off into the next year. The costs of the climate crisis – for every nation’s people and economy – are only getting worse.”

Mohamed Adow, director of Kenya-based energy and climate think-tank Power Shift Africa, warned that “multiple factors are setting us up for a terrible shock at COP29″, saying this “ticking disaster threatens to undermine” the NDCs and in turn the 1.5C warming limit.

North Africa’s disappearing nomads: Why my community needs climate finance

In comments posted on X, formerly Twitter, Adow called for justice for those dying from the impacts of climate change such as extreme heat in India and Sudan in recent days, arguing that climate finance remains “a vital part in securing a safe and secure future for us all”.

But, he said, Bonn did not deliver a beacon of hope for vulnerable people. “Developing countries are expected to slay the climate dragon with invisible swords, having gotten zero assurances on the long-term finance they need,” he added.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling and Matteo Civillini, editing by Joe Lo)

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His appeal has gone totally unanswered. Two and a half months later no country has updated its nationally determined contribution (NDC), the Paris Agreement-mandated blueprint to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

The deafening silence comes as the UN restates the urgency of stepping up action. More ambitious targets are needed as current NDCs are not collectively sufficient to limit warming to 1.5C, the Global Stocktake report said last month.

Tom Evans, a policy advisor at E3G, says it was always “quite unlikely” countries would submit updated NDCs before Cop28. “I don’t think there are tonnes of appetite among governments to revise their targets so often,” he told Climate Home News. “It’s challenging politically because these aren’t light decisions, and it’s challenging technically as it takes time with lots of modelling to do them properly.”

Ambition gap

Current NDCs are short of what is needed. If countries meet their 2030 emission targets in full, global heating could only be limited to 2.4-2.6C this century, according to the UN Emissions Gap report. Emissions need to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its latest report.

Global emissions pathways according to the IPCC. Credit:IISD/ENB -IPCC Synthesis Report

NDCs are an integral part of the “ratchet mechanism” built into the agreement: each climate plan should be stronger and more ambitious than the one that is replacing. In 2015 governments agreed to update the documents every five years, but since then many have called for more frequent reviews.

What is the global stocktake of climate action and why does it matter?

Like with Al Jaber’s plea, they have mostly gone unheeded. At Cop26 in Glasgow, governments agreed to “revisit and strengthen” their 2030 emission targets so that they are aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement by the end of 2022.

Only a handful of countries submitted new NDCs within that timeframe and, crucially, none of them produced one that is compatible with keeping global warming below 1.5°C, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Big emitters missing

“There is a bit of a deja vu”, says Mia Moisio, project lead at Climate Action Tracker, referring to Al Jaber’s call. “There is a clear sense of urgency in the scientific community but, unfortunately, that has not trickled down to decision-makers in the way we’d hope to see.”

Most of the world’s biggest polluters have not drafted new climate targets in years. European Union states last updated their NDCs in December 2020, the US, Canada, Japan and China did so in 2021. The UK submitted a new document in 2022, offering more transparency but no stronger targets.

New IEA net zero report leaves big polluters less room to hide

Mexico, one of the latest G20 nations to issue an update, has been accused of breaching the Paris Agreement’s commitment to step up targets over time. Its latest climate plan would lead to higher emission levels than the targets the Central American country had pledged in 2016.

Previously also accused of backsliding on commitments, Brazil announced two weeks ago it would go back to the stronger climate targets it drew up in 2015 while it works on new and improved ones.

E3G’s Evans said many governments are likely to be putting their efforts into preparing their new targets for 2035, which are due in two years’s time. “Despite the massive ambition gap, the focus is less on their current targets,” he added.

UAE’s new targets

Cop28 host United Arab Emirates is among the very few nations to have revised its national climate pledge this year – just days before Al Jaber’s appeal.

The oil-producing Gulf state, which has one of the world’s highest emissions per person, strengthened its reduction goal. It now plans to limit emissions to 182 MtCO2e by 2030, a 14% improvement compared to the previous target. The new strategy also provides more transparency, setting a clear 2019 baseline and moving away from the much-criticised “business as usual” scenario used before.

At UN climate summit big polluters’ absence speaks volumes

Climate Action Tracker’s Mia Moisio said it was a positive move for the UAE but questions remain. “In terms of communication, it was the right step for the Cop host to take the leadership on this issue,” she added. “But the target is not 1.5C-compatible and big question marks remain over how they would meet it”.

The nation is planning to significantly increase oil and fossil gas production in the next years, with a goal to become “gas self-sufficient” and increase exports. Its main energy company, Adnoc, has announced a $150 billion investment plan to boost oil and gas production capacity over the next four years. Sultan Al Jaber is the CEO of Adnoc.

The Cop28 organisers have been invited to comment.

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Ten multilateral development banks (MDBs) – including the World Bank – have defined a multi-step process to establish whether projects meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to “pursue efforts” to keep it under 1.5°C.

The principles, which make good on a commitment first made by MDBs in 2017, require projects to line up with national climate plans and include a list of acceptable activities.

But analysts and campaigners are sceptical whether the rules will divert public money away from polluting activities and prevent global warming. A key criticism is that the framework does not explicitly prohibit financing for fossil fuel activities.

Focus on national plans

For a proposed investment to be considered under the new principles, it needs to align with countries’ climate strategies submitted to the UN, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

If an activity – even a highly polluting one – appears in the relevant NDC, it will be waved through to the next step. The exceptions to this are support for coal mining, coal power plants and peat extraction, which are not considered Paris-aligned in any circumstance .

Laura Sabogal, policy advisor at E3G, considers it “very likely” that the banks’ portfolios will actually overshoot the Paris Agreement threshold because of the heavy reliance in the decision-making process on national climate plans that are “not robust enough”.

What does “unabated” fossil fuels mean?

“These documents are extremely vague, not uniform or comparable,” Sabogal told Climate Home News. “Many NDCs are not aligned with a 1.5C, or even 2C, trajectory. If you aggregate all of these investments it is very likely the banks are not actually aligning with the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

According to Climate Action Tracker, no country’s NDC is compatible with 1.5C of global warming.

The UN Environment Programme says the current pledges made collectively by countries in their NDCs put the world on track for a temperature rise of between 2.4C and 2.6C by the end of the century.

First step in reforms

MDBs hold over $1.8 trillion in assets, giving them an outsized influence over the direction of funding flows toward developing countries in particular. They have long been accused of continuing to fund polluting projects and not doing enough to support climate-friendly ones. A growing coalition of nations, gathered in Paris last week, has been calling for deep reforms.

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The new principles were agreed on by the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Council of Europe Development Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Inter-American Development Bank Group, Islamic Development Bank, New Development Bank and the World Bank Group.

Each lender will now have to adopt them into their own methodologies and use them in vetting investment proposals.

Across the ten lenders, the work to turn high-level principles into something tangible is at very different stages. At one end, the European Investment Bank says all its new investments have been Paris aligned since the start of 2021. Meanwhile, the African Development Bank hopes to reach that target by 2025.

If fully implemented, the new framework could mark a degree of progress toward more climate-friendly operations for some lenders.

Although mining and electricity generation from coal and peat are in an exclusion list of projects considered incompatible with the emission reduction goals of the Paris Agreement, this does not amount to an outright ban on investing in these activities. But experts believe it should further discourage development banks to fund them.

Multilateral banks’ investments in industrial livestock undermine their Paris climate commitments

Of the MDBs that signed up to this initiative, the Islamic Development Bank and the African Development Bank are the only ones without an explicit commitment to end coal finance. The African lender’s president Akinwumi Adesina pledged to scrap coal funding in 2019, but this has yet to be formally reflected in the bank’s energy policy.

Aki Kachi, an analyst at the New Climate Institute, told Climate Home News that “inevitably, it was always going to be the lowest common denominator between all the banks”.

“Some may go further and interpret it in a more ambitious way, others will use all of the flexibility to carry on almost with business as usual,” he added.

Campaigners pushing for MDBs to stop funding all fossil fuel operations were also left disappointed by the exclusion of any mention of oil and gas in the framework. “As they are not part of the exclusion list these will continue to be assessed on a case-by-case basis,” said Sabogal.

Political considerations

The document agreed on by the development banks draws a scenario in which a country is seeking funding for a fossil-fuel-powered technology. If, for instance, the country’s climate strategy states specifically that technology needs to be phased out by 2035, a project with a ten-year lifetime submitted in 2025 would not be considered aligned. But, if the NDC does not mention that fossil fuel activity at all, it will be allowed to progress to the next stage of assessment.

The other steps in the process look at the consistency with sector-specific decarbonisation pathways, the feasibility of cleaner alternatives and the risk of creating stranded assets.

Kachi said ultimately a lot would depend on the interpretation given by the banks’ officers, which is often driven by the political dynamics of their governance.

“We can’t assume this is merely a technical exercise,” he said. “It is very much a political one. The strategies are driven by political agendas within the banks’ management and shareholders. It’s only going to have an impact if the shareholders want that result.”

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Eight years after the Paris climate agreement was created, its Implementation and Compliance Committee (Paicc) issued its first reprimands this week.

Committee co-chair Christina Voigt said that two governments had been told that they were in breach of legally-binding aspects of the agreement and asked to explain themselves.

Today, the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) has – for the first time – notified two Parties of the initiation of consideration of issues, regarding Art. 4(2) and Art. 9(5) Paris Agreement, respectively.

With this, PAICC has become operational.

— Christina Voigt (@ChristinaVoigt2) May 9, 2023

No plan Vatican

Voigt would not tell Climate Home which governments were involved. She said one government failed to submit a climate plan and one failed to tell the United Nations what level of climate finance it expects to provide.

The Vatican City, the micro-state in Rome where the Pope lives, is the only government that has ratified the Paris Agreement but not submitted a climate plan, known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC).

It has a population of just 825 and only ratified the agreement in September 2022. Voigt told Climate Home the government the committee warned had joined the Paris Agreement “recently”.

Finance flows

The other reprimand was for breaching the Paris Agreement’s climate finance requirement. Developed countries need to tell the United Nations every two years how much money they expect to give developing countries to help them tackle and adapt to the climate crisis.

The Paris Agreement has no list of which countries are considered developed and Voigt said that had been a “difficult question” which “the committee had to get their 24 heads around”.

Nations split over fossil fuels and carbon capture

Governments that could be considered developed but which have not submitted this document, known as an article 9.5 communication, include Turkiye, Iceland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Turkiye has fiercely resisted being grouped together with rich nations in climate talks, a classification which implies governments should give and not receive climate finance.

Its government refused to ratify the Paris Agreement until 2021 over concerns it would be considered developed and only signed it specifying that it would implement it “as a developing country”.

The committee’s members represent different regional groups

Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are classified with other former Soviet Union countries as “economies in transition” in the UN climate rule-book which was drawn up at the first climate talks in 1992.

Wealthy countries like South Korea, Qatar and Israel were not listed as developed in this 1992 classification, which remains influential in UN climate diplomacy.

Compliance matters

Most provisions of the Paris Agreement are voluntary. But Voigt said it was important that the few legally-binding aspects were complied with as the agreement is the “minimum global consensus of what parties are supposed to do”.

She said that submitting NDC climate plans exerts “peer pressure to push up ambition to where is needed in order to address the climate crisis”.

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Governments must predict their climate finance, she said, because many developing countries plans are conditional on the level of climate finance they will receive so they need to know in order to “adjust their level of ambition”.

The committee has written to the two governments. Voigt expects to have a dialogue where the governments set out what they’re going to do to comply and for the situation to be “easily remedied”.

The names of the two governments may be revealed in late September or early October, she said, when the committee issues a regular report.

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This health check is known as the global stocktake and work toward it began at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021.

After a lot of hard work, it now entering the home stretch before taking centre stage when governments gather at the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai.

It will tell us whether enough is being done on cutting emissions, adapting to climate change, funding climate action and rolling-out technology.

The answer is widely expected to be a resounding ‘no’. But observers hope the latest wake-up call will prompt countries to correct course and raise their efforts.

For Simon Stiell, the head of the UN’s climate change arm, the stocktake will be a moment of truth. “It must tell us where we are, where we need to go, and how we’ll get there”, he said.

A two-year process

Its final report will be the culmination of an extensive two-year process. Thousands of documents have been analysed and distilled through hundreds of hours of discussions.

Analysts don’t expect the stocktake to  say anything particularly new. Report after report has already said the world is falling short.

But its findings will form the basis of the discussions at Cop28. Political leaders will reflect on them and may come up with a plan to fix their shortcomings.

German official sees ‘a chance’ Cop28 can agree to phase out fossil fuels

Tom Evans, climate diplomacy analyst at E3G, hopes the stocktake will be “a launchpad for action going forward”.

The Stockholm Environment Institue’s Richard Klein, who is involved in the process, says there is lots of curiosity about how countries will react. “Are they going to commit to greater ambition or simply express concern once again?” he asked

Why a stocktake?

The stocktake is the central tool of the Paris Agreement to hold countries accountable for their collective efforts to achieve the targets they set themselves in 2015.

It tracks progress made on the pact’s three pillars: cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C; strengthen resilience to climate impacts; and provide the necessary financial and technological means to make this happen.

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

The stocktake is a core component of the so-called ‘ratchet mechanism’ built into the agreement.

It was clear from the outset that initial climate pledges would not be sufficient to meet the goals set in Paris. So the agreement encourages countries to raise their ambitions over time.

A virtuous circle

Carried out every five years from 2023, the stocktake is meant to guide countries as they update and enhance their pledges to bring them in line with the agreement.

At the heart of the exercise are the Nationally determined contributions (NDCs): each country’s individual strategy to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

The process should create a virtuous circle. The collective analysis of all NDCs submitted by the 193 countries which signed the Paris agreement forms the basis for the stocktake’s findings. These will in turn inform the drafting of new and more robust NDCs.

The two-year stocktake is divided into three phases: the collection of source material; the technical assessment; the consideration of its output at a political level.

The first two phases – which overlap – are soon drawing to a close.

Information gathering

The volume of the material inputted into the exercise is massive. Countries and non-state actors have submitted thousands of documents.

The bulk of it is made up of the signatories’ NDCs, national adaptation plans, finance reports and technology needs assessments.

Add to this the IPCC scientific reports, technical analysis prepared by the UN climate change Secretariat and a long list of disparate contributions by NGOs.

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“Just considering the adaptation chapter, if we put together what countries have written over the past few years it adds up to 18,000 pages,” says Richard Klein. “No one is going to be able to read all of that.”

The UN climate change secretariat has a coordinating role in sifting through the vast mass of information and preparing briefings and synthesis reports.

Technical analysis

This material is then analysed and discussed during the technical assessment. This second phase of the stocktake will have lasted for one year when it formally ends at the annual Bonn climate talks in June.

The assessment culminates in a series of in-person meetings of country delegates and experts in an ‘open and transparent’ process. After reviewing the inputs, they are expected to come up with the key takeaways on the collective efforts to uphold the Paris Agreement.

Contributions to a Global Stocktake discussion are recorded on a flip chart. Photo: IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth

Each meeting produces a summary report which captures the nature of the discussions and gives hints on what the final stocktake will feature.

E3G’s Tom Evans says the assessment is already clear. “We’re not making progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement fast enough. We’re way off track across almost everything”, he added.

“Inadequate progress”

The latest summary report – published last month – does indeed say there has been “significant yet inadequate collective progress”. On both the cutting emissions and adaptating fronts, it says not only that the current plans are insufficient. But there are even problems in translating this inadequate ambition into real action, the so-called implementation gap.

After the final technical dialogue in June, the stocktake will enter its final, and most crucial, phase.

The recommendations featured in the final synthesis report will take center stage at Cop28 in Dubai. Here the technicians will hand the baton to the politicians. The goal is to ensure this lengthy exercise has a tangible real-world impact.

Enter the politicians

Leaders will kick off negotiations which should lead to a series of key political messages being featured in the Cop’s declaration. These will provide the guidance countries should follow to update their national plans.

“Every group and every country will have its own priorities and pet issues they would like to see reflected in the decision,” says Richard Klein. “They will all have their red lines.”

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Tom Evans says ultimately some “champions” will need to step forward and broker an ambitious deal.

This could be the UAE Presidency, which is keen to have a breakthrough moment in Dubai. Despite its reliance on fossil fuels, the country seems to be warming to the idea of a fossil fuel phase out.

Governments failed to agree on that wording at last year’s summit, as fossil fuel producers Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran were opposed.

That language’s inclusion at Cop28 will give a strong sense of direction, particularly if the words “unabated”, which means without carbon capture technology, are not added.

But, ultimately, the success or failure of the stocktake will become evident in 2025 by which time governments are supposed to have released their next batch of NDCs.

Only then we will be able to see if countries have raised their game to finally deliver the Paris Agreement.

The post What is the global stocktake of climate action and why does it matter? appeared first on Climate Home News.

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.

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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?”

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Under the plan, Brazil pledged to cut emissions 50% between 2005 and 2030 – up from 43% previously. A goal of 37% emissions cuts by 2025 remains.

The document describes the plan as “one of the most ambitious in the world”. But a revision to the 2005 baseline means the updated plan allows higher emissions in 2030 than Brazil’s first Paris pledge. The difference is equivalent to the annual emissions of Colombia, the Talanoa Institute calculates.

This “is against the spirit of the Paris Agreement,” Caio Borges, of Brazil’s Climate and Society Institute told Climate Home News.

Under the 2015 Paris deal and last year’s Glasgow Pact, countries are expected to progressively strengthen their climate targets.

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Brazil’s environment minister Joaquim Leite announced the 50% target during Cop26 climate talks last November. A document confirming this was submitted to the UN following a visit by Cop26 president Alok Sharma at the end of March.

Brazil has been under pressure to step up its climate plan after a first update to its 2030 target in December 2020 effectively weakened the country’s ambition.

At the time, Brazil confirmed the previously indicative target of cutting emissions 43% by 2030, while inflating the emissions baseline for 2005. The higher baseline, largely due to changes in the way forest destruction was accounted for, meant that Brazil could continue to increase its emissions while still reaching its 2030 target.

Climate Action Tracker downgraded Brazil’s scoring from “insufficient” to “highly insufficient” to meet the Paris goals.

Source: Observatório do Clima

“The new target is a failed attempt by the Bolsonaro administration to fix the mess,” the Brazilian Climate Observatory, a coalition of NGOs, said in a statement.

While it increases the nominal goal to 50% of emissions cuts, the plan uses the most recent and accurate emissions inventory for 2005, which is lower than the one used in 2020 but higher than the one in 2015.

Although an improvement on the 2020 update, this would still allow Brazil’s emissions to rise beyond the goal it set itself in 2016.

“This is like having credit card debt and only paying part of the bill,” said Marcio Astrini, executive secretary of the Climate Observatory. “It’s still a step backwards, at a time when the United Nations is calling for countries to increase their ambitions.”

To match the ambition level of Brazil’s 2016 plan, taking into account the country’s latest inventory update, would require a commitment to cut emissions 49% by 2025 and 53% by 2030, according to the Talanoa Institute analysis.

Costa Rica’s ‘leave it in the ground’ policy in doubt after election

Sectoral pledges made at Cop26 on cutting methane emissions and achieving zero deforestation by 2030 are not reflected in the updated plan and civil society wasn’t consulted.

The Brazilian government argues that the same methodological modification that increased the 2005 baseline could also increase the volume of emissions in 2030. But “a systematic legal interpretation of the Paris Agreement reveals that nothing in the agreement indicates that a country is allowed to move backwards in its ambition,” Borges said.

The update to Brazil’s climate plan comes as deforestation is rising and the government is planning an expansion of oil and gas drilling across the country – emboldened by international sanctions on Russia and demand for alternative sources.

“Brazil is opening new oil frontiers such as the onshore exploration in the Amazon and offshore in the river mouth,” where it could take a decade for production to start, Ilan Zugman, 350.org’s Latin America managing director, told Climate Home.

On Wednesday, the National Petroleum Agency (ANP) opened the auction of 379 oil and gas exploration areas, against opposition from local fishing communities and indigenous people.

The auction is taking place in addition to a permanent bidding process for 1,068 drilling blocks covering 462,500 square kilometers – an area 15 times as big as Belgium.

The post Brazil accused of backsliding in updated climate pledge to UN appeared first on Climate Home News.

If countries meet their 2030 emission targets in full, global heating could be limited to 2.6-2.7C this century, according to the UN Emissions Gap report. Collective ambition needs to be seven times higher to align with the most ambitious 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement.

So the UK Cop26 presidency is considering a proposal for the final Glasgow outcome to demand another round of updated nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by 2023.

It is backed by Christiana Figueres, former head of UN Climate Change and architect of the Paris deal. “At Cop26… there has been to be a clear agreement that governments will come back in 2023… to guarantee that we are on a path to 1.5C,” she said in a press briefing.

But the idea is meeting resistance from emerging economies, who want more support to meet existing targets before rewriting them.

“This talk of another round of [climate plans] will just feed into the hot air which is already plenty in the Cop process,” Pakistan’s climate minister Malik Amin Aslam told Climate Home News.

“The huge gap between what is already in the NDCs and what is actually being implemented needs to be plugged instead of another round of updating NDCs. Let’s talk climate action and not bureaucratic and endless updating of meaningless NDCs.”

‘Chess game’ as negotiators seek elusive carbon market deal at Cop26

Under the Paris accord, countries agreed to ratchet up their plans, or nationally determined contributions (NDCs), every five years. But vulnerable and progressive nations argue that waiting until 2025 to step up ambition is too late to keep 1.5C in reach.

Instead, they argue that countries should revise their plans “as soon as possible and ahead of the global stocktake in 2023,” when UN Climate Change is due to formally take stock of all progress made in meeting the Paris goals.

The UK has made keeping 1.5C within reach this decade the overarching objective for Cop26. While the gap to 1.5C won’t be closed in Glasgow, the hosts want to emerge with a plan for further tightening ambition.

The issue has been gathering steam since a ministerial meeting in July. In a letter to all parties ahead of the Glasgow summit, Sharma said countries will need to agree on a “roadmap for strengthening 2030 NDCs as necessary ahead of, and through, the global stocktake in 2023.”

The Climate Vulnerable Forum, which represents 48 nations on the front line of climate impacts, is going even further with a call for annual updates to NDCs until 2025.

Jennifer Tollmann, a senior policy advisor at think tank E3G, told Climate Home News there is “a real-world need to improve NDCs before 2025,” explaining that “we need at least seven years to make the appropriate economic and investment decisions” to halve emissions this decade.

Australia is relying on offsets and future technology to meet 2050 net zero target

The UK recognised that asking countries to step up their carbon-cutting efforts again in the next two years also required action on adaptation and financial support to the developing world. That could include a commitment for climate finance to be evenly split between adaptation and mitigation for example.

In a policy note shared with leaders taking part in a high-level summit at Cop26, and seen by Climate Home, the UK called on heads of government to give negotiators “a clear direction” to agree on a pathway that accelerates action this decade.

But for Esther Tamara, a researcher at the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia, the lack of finance for developing countries will be “a huge stumbling block” to agree to more climate efforts.

On Monday wealthy nations announced that they won’t meet a long-overdue commitment to mobilise $100bn a year between 2020 and 2025 before 2023 –providing developing countries with no means or incentives to up their targets.

“I don’t think the Indonesian government will respond to another round of NDCs so soon positively. Even now, we can see Indonesia is dragging its feet to pursue transformational climate commitments and emissions reductions target,” Tamara told Climate Home.

Meanwhile the Indian government is unlike to agree to anything more ambitious until “it sees money on the table,” Navroz Dubash, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, told Climate Home.

Like Pakistan and Indonesia, India is a member of a group of “like-minded” developing countries that emphasises the historic responsibility of rich countries to cut emissions deeper and faster. In a statement last week, the group accused the Cop26 host of going “against climate justice” by calling on all to set mid century net zero targets.

The post To close 1.5C gap, countries face call for another round of climate pledges by 2023 appeared first on Climate Home News.

The move comes days after the government’s cabinet approved a goal to reach net zero emissions by 2053.

Ozlem Katisoz from Climate Action Network Europe told Climate Home News: “A new era begins. It’s a very positive development. We have a foundation now for ambitious climate action.”

Turkey’s ratification means just five countries have yet to ratify the agreement – Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Libya and Yemen.

But in a declaration approved by lawmakers alongside the text of the Paris climate treaty, Turkey unilaterally declared that it would implement the accord “as a developing country” despite its developed country status in the UN climate convention.

The dispute over Turkey’s status is the reason it held out formally endorsing the agreement. Although it signed up to the climate convention as a developed nation, the government has repeatedly argued that it is a developing country and therefore should be allowed to access climate finance – a privilege of the status.

Speaking at the UN general assembly last month, president Recep Erdoğan said Turkey hadn’t ratified the agreement “due to the injustices related to state obligations and burden sharing”.

But following “progress made within the framework of the [Paris] agreement recently”, Turkey would ratify the accord “in conformity with the positive steps which will be taken,” he told the assembly.

A source with knowledge of Turkey’s position told Climate Home News that increased efforts in aligning finance flows with the Paris Agreement eventually may have convinced Erdoğan that ratification could attract more funds for cutting emissions and building resilience than the country receives today.

While Turkey is currently unable to access multilateral climate finance from sources like the UN’s Green Climate Fund, it has received substantial funding from EU institutions. Between 2013 and 2016, Turkey was the main recipient of EU funding, receiving an average of €667 million ($770m) a year, according to data by ACT Alliance. This dropped to around €244m ($282m) in 2018.

The source added that the decision to ratify the accord may mitigate some adverse impacts of the EU’s planned carbon border tax.

But the issue of Turkey’s status remains unresolved. At Cop26, Turkey is expected to try and persuade other countries to support its categorisation being changed. “Finding support for this is still highly unlikely,” the source said.

In parallel to ratification, the Turkish cabinet has approved a goal to reach net zero emissions by 2053, a target which Turkey discussed with the UK, France and Germany on Saturday.

Climate Action Tracker analyst Ryan Wilson said the target was “definitely impressive” especially compared to the government’s current “woefully inadequate” climate plan.

Turkey’s deputy environment minister Mehmet Emin Birpinar told Climate Home the 2053 date was chosen because it marks the 130th anniversary of the Turkish Republic.

The strategy for meeting this target will be developed early next year, he said. “We have to know what to do. Which sector, which ministry, which NGO…We have to show them the pathway to the 2053 target”.

The vast majority of Turkey’s emissions are from its energy use. The country gets over a third of its electricity from burning coal and has one of the world’s largest order-books for new coal power stations.

Turkey gets over a third of its electricity from coal, in light blue (Photo: IEA/Screenshot)

Katisoz, of CAN, said: “Turkey can announce no new coal and can declare a date for coal exit. It is the quickest way to reduce emissions by 2030 and to get to the 2053 pathway”.

Analysis released last month by Ember found that building a new wind or solar park in Turkey is cheaper than any coal power plant which relies on imports.

WRI Turkey’s building expert Meltem Bayraktar said that most of Turkey’s buildings need renovating as they were constructed before energy codes were introduced in the 2000s.

About a quarter of Turkey’s energy use is from transport, mainly on the roads. WRI Turkey’s transport expert Celal Tolga Imamoglu said the government should encourage scrapping the sale of old diesel and petrol cars and encourage walking, cycling and public transport.

The post Turkey ratifies the Paris Agreement after approving a 2053 net zero goal appeared first on Climate Home News.

Delayed by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, heads of state, diplomats, business leaders, campaigners and journalists are due to meet in person in Glasgow, UK, from 31 October to 12 November.

The hosts are aiming to mobilise a step up in climate action and keep hope alive of meeting the tougher goal of the Paris Agreement: limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C.

That means curbing emissions deeper and faster, adapting to a new era of climate impacts and scaling up the financial support developing nations need to build low-carbon and resilient economies.

Here is what you need to know about the conference.

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First things first. What is a Cop? 

“Cop” is short for Conference of the Parties, which refers to the meeting of the 197 members to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, known as UN Climate Change.

The talks are hosted every year by a different country and bring together delegates from every national government to advance global efforts to prevent dangerous climate change.

Cop1 was held in Berlin, Germany, in 1995. This year, the 26^th session of the talks is known as Cop26.

At the core of the Cop are negotiations on the legal mechanisms for governments to hold each other accountable. Orbiting that core are politicians, business leaders, campaigners and journalists, engaged in a lively discourse on what climate action means in the real world.

Who is in charge at Cop26?

The UK and Italy are joint presidents of Cop26. As host of the main event, the UK government has the bigger role, in coordination with the devolved administration in Scotland. Italy is due to hold some pre-Cop meetings in Milan.

Alok Sharma, a politician with the UK’s ruling Conservative Party, was appointed Cop26 president in February 2020. For nearly a year, Sharma also served as business and energy minister before dropping ministerial responsibilities to focus exclusively on Cop26 preparations.

UN Climate Change is responsible for keeping the climate negotiating process running year to year, led by Mexican diplomat Patricia Espinosa.

Cop26 president designate Alok Sharma of the UK meets China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua in Tianjin, China (Photo: Alok Sharma/Twitter/Flickr)

How is ambition measured at Cop26? 

A key responsibility of the Cop26 presidency is to mobilise greater ambition from other nations. This is primarily measured against the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.

In 2015, in Paris, 197 countries agreed to collectively cut emissions to limit global temperature rise “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C. To meet this goal, every country was asked to contribute emissions reductions and set out targets for doing so by 2025 or 2030. These plans are known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

This bottom-up approach means governments decide how fast to decarbonise their economies. But the plans submitted so far will lead to a lot more than 1.5C of warming by the end of the century – 2.4C if implemented in full, according to analysis published by Climate Action Tracker in May.

UN Climate Change found that updated plans by the end of 2020 put the world on track to stabilise emissions by 2030. To halt heating at 1.5C, scientists say global emissions need to fall 45% from 2010 levels in that time.

Cop21 president Laurent Fabius holds up the text of the Paris Agreement (Photo: IISD/ENB/ Kiara Worth)

What needs to happen now? 

Under the Paris Agreement, every country agreed to update their NDCs every five years, with each plan more ambitious than the last and reflecting their “highest possible ambition”.

Cop26, which was due to take place in 2020, is the first test of this “ratchet mechanism”.

The US, Canada, the EU and the UK are among 110 countries, largely developing economies, to have formally submitted improved plans to the UN by the end of July. But many of the world’s largest emitters missed the repeatedly extended deadline. China, India and Saudi Arabia’s plans are notably absent from the list.

Others like Australia merely reaffirmed old targets with no increase in ambition. Brazil even weakened its commitment by changing its baseline.

Ahead of Cop26, the UK will need to use its diplomatic clout to get Beijing, New Delhi and others to commit to stronger targets.

What else are the organisers trying to achieve? 

UK prime minister Boris Johnson has summarised the host nation’s agenda for the conference as: “coal, cash, cars and trees”. Let’s unpack that.

Coal: The UK wants to make Cop26 the summit that “consigns coal to history”. The G7 agreed in May to end new direct government support for unabated coal power by the end of 2021 – but avoided setting an exit timeline for burning the fuel. Italy is trying to orchestrate a similar pledge from the G20, against resistance from members like China, Russia and India.

Cash: Developed countries agreed in 2009 to mobilise $100 billion a year in climate finance to the developing world by 2020. At the last count, they were $20bn short. Germany and Canada have been tasked with making a plan to plug the gap ahead of Cop26. This is critical to trust in the process for recipient nations. Negotiations are due to start on what the next collective finance goal beyond 2025 should look like. Then there are various initiatives to “shift the trillions” of private sector cash towards achieving global net zero emissions by mid-century.

Cars: The UK is hoping to speed up a switch to electric vehicles, proposing a 2040 deadline for selling the last petrol cars. It established a Zero Emission Vehicle Transition Council bringing together ministers and representatives of major car markets – although China was not on the list.

Trees: “Calling time on deforestation” is another Cop26 goal. Together with the US and Norway, the UK launched the Leaf Coalition, which aims to mobilise $1 billion of public and private finance in 2021 to cut emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Did they miss anything?

That four-word soundbite does not cover everybody’s priorities. The world’s poorest countries, which don’t have too many cars or coal plants to worry about, want to see more action to address the impacts of climate change they are already experiencing.

The Paris Agreement established a global goal on adaptation to climate impacts, but six years later it is still unclear what that means in practice. The agreement has a section on loss and damage, in recognition that people are already losing homes, lives and livelihoods to extreme weather turbocharged by the fossil fuel burning of the industrialised world, but practical support has been slow to follow.

With those climate vulnerabilities compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, the least developed countries are calling for a solidarity package that includes progress on these neglected topics.

It remains to be seen how progress on any of these elements will be packaged into a meeting outcome. Some climate thinkers are proposing a Glasgow PACT.

UN talks in Copenhagen in 2009 (Photo: UN Climate Change/Flickr)

What do negotiators need to agree on?

There are technical issues negotiators in Glasgow will need to address.

The Paris Agreement rulebook was due to be finalised three years ago at Cop24 in Katowice, Poland, but a number of contentious items remain unresolved.

These include the rules of a new global carbon market, under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. How to avoid double counting emissions reductions, the role of old credits from the Kyoto climate regime under the new system and whether to allocate a share of proceeds from the market to the Adaptation Fund are among the stickiest issues.

Negotiators will also need to find agreement on the transparency rules for reporting emissions reductions and whether countries’ future climate plans should all cover the same time period of 5 or 10 years.

A passenger has his temperature checked at Incheon airport, South Korea (Pic: Jens-Olaf Walter/Flickr)

What about the Covid-19 pandemic? 

The organisers are planning for around 20,000 people to attend Cop26 in person, despite the ongoing threat of Covid-19 infections. They insist the health and safety of participants and the host community is paramount.

But stark inequalities of the vaccine roll out between rich and poorer nations have raised serious concerns about participation from developing countries. As of 4 September, 64% of the UK population had been fully vaccinated. For many African countries, the figure was less than 5%.

While vaccines are not mandatory to attend the summit, the UK host “strongly encourages” all delegates to be vaccinated. With the UN, the UK government set up a Cop26 vaccination programme to provide jabs to delegates who aren’t able to access vaccines in their home country. The first doses are expected to reach delegates in September.

There are other financial and logistical barriers to participation. Delegates travelling from countries on the UK’s “red list” will need to isolate in a quarantine hotel facility for five days if they are vaccinated and 10 if they aren’t. The UK government has offered to foot the bill.

A Covid-19 protocol is also being put in place for the conference with regular testing, masks and social distancing.

The post What is Cop26 and why does it matter? Your guide to the Glasgow climate summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Countries had until midnight central European time on Friday to submit their plans to UN Climate Change, with emissions cutting targets for 2030.

Just over half of all parties to the Paris Agreement, 110, made the deadline with an estimated 40% of them from climate vulnerable nations – a tally UN Climate Change described as “far from satisfactory”.

There was a rush of submissions this week with Guinea, Israel, Oman, Zambia, Tanzania, Seychelles, Namibia, Nigeria, Malawi, Sri Lanka, Samoa, Malaysia, Barbados, Sao Tome and Principe, and Sierra Leone getting their plans in. US and Canada are among the major economies to have submitted since the last count.

But some of the world’s largest emitters, including China, India, Saudi Arabia and South Africa, have remained silent.

Alex Scott, think tank E3G’s climate diplomacy lead, told Climate Home News that leadership on 2030 emissions reductions plans was still coming from small island developing states and developing nations “whose emissions are towered by G20 countries”.

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Under the Paris Agreement, 2020 was the year countries were expected to present improved climate plans to UN Climate Change as part of a ratchet mechanism to meet the accord’s goals. But the coronavirus pandemic derailed the process.

A UN synthesis report published in February, which took into account updated plans submitted to the UN by the end of 2020, found that collective ambition was “very far” from putting the world on track to limit global heating to 1.5C.

At the time, only 75 countries covering around 30% of global emissions had submitted updated plans, including the EU and UK. Their pledges were estimated to reduce emissions by just 0.5% between 2010 and 2030.

Scott said the findings had come as a “reality check” and had helped “build a stronger political narrative for the outcome at Cop26 to be a pathway for how countries are going to act faster to keep 1.5C within reach”.

A backdrop of extreme heat in Northern America, devastating flooding in Europe and China and intense wildfires in Siberia and Turkey have further underlined the urgency for major emitters to curb emissions.

Around the world, climate change committees are steering government action

But despite some renewed political momentum, the picture isn’t likely to change much without enhanced action from emerging economies.

Niklas Höhne, a climate policy expert at the NewClimate Institute, told Climate Home News there remained a “gigantic gap” between current levels of emissions and the action needed by 2030.

Commitments made as of April would still lead to 2.4C of warming by the end of the century if implemented in full, according to Climate Action Tracker. 

“With all the pledges on the table we are basically stabilising global emissions by 2030 when we should be cutting them by half,” said Höhne.

Leading scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have said emissions should fall 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to limit temperatures to 1.5C by the end of the century.

The picture for long-term goals is slightly better. NewClimate Institute’s latest estimates found that if all net zero emissions goals are met, the world could limit temperatures to 2C, in the most optimistic scenario, by the end of the century, said Höhne.

“The long-term ambition has improved significantly in the last six months but it has not propagated to short-term ambition and short-term action,” he added.

Ethiopia to shift from beef to chicken production under updated climate plan

During a meeting of climate and ministers last week, all G20 countries agreed to “update or communicate ambitious NDCs by Cop26”.

Among those to have already submitted, Australia, Brazil, Mexico and Russia put forward emissions targets to the UN identical to or weaker than their previous versions, Climate Action Tracker found. Earlier this month, Indonesia updated its NDC, with unchanged headline targets but plans to peak emissions by 2030 and strengthened sectoral policies.

UN Climate Change head Patricia Espinosa said the UN had called on countries that have already presented their plans “to look at them again, and if possible, come up with revised NDCs”.  

China, which is responsible for around 27% of global emissions, is only proposing an incremental strengthening of its 2030 climate plan, which Climate Action Tracker rates as “highly insufficient” to meet the Paris goals.

“Cop26 is the good faith actor test for China,” Li Shuo, of Greenpeace East Asia, told Climate Home News.

“Ultimately, there is going to be nowhere to hide at Cop26. Each of us will be in the spotlight,” warned Cop26 president designate Alok Sharma during a press conference on Monday.

The post China, India miss UN’s extended deadline for climate pledges appeared first on Climate Home News.

“Good ideas and good intentions aren’t good enough, we need to ensure that financing will be there to meet the moment on climate change,” the US president said at leaders’ climate summit he convened on Earth Day.

The increase in finance is set against the average climate finance delivered during Barack Obama’s second term, 2013-16. While no dollar figure is given in the plan, administration official Leonardo Martinez-Diaz told Climate Home News the baseline was around $2.8 billion, with $500 million of that going on adaptation. Adding in contributions to multilateral development banks and mobilised private finance, the total could reach around $15 billion a year, he said.

Joe Thwaites, of the World resources Institute, said the climate finance plan was “not particularly ambitious” after four years of US absence, during which time many other major donor countries doubled their climate finance pledges.

“The US has made an important start, but must do much more if it wants to become a leader on climate finance. Provision of finance to vulnerable countries is a central pillar of the Paris Agreement, and such investments are key to building credibility and influence to unlock more ambitious climate action from other countries, delivering benefits at home and abroad,” he said.

Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns at ActionAid USA, described the numbers as “very low” and far cry from the $800 billion this decade campaigners say would be a fair contribution from the US.

The finance package made no mention of replenishing the Green Climate Fund, the UN’s flagship climate finance initiative, which has been hit by whistleblower complaints of a “toxic” workplace and political interference. However, it affirmed a commitment to end public finance investment in support for “carbon-intensive fossil-fuel based energy projects”.

As it happened: US, Japan, Canada pledged deeper emissions cuts at Biden summit

At home, Biden pledged to cut emissions 50-52% by 2030, compared with 2005, in a heavily trailed target to restore US action after four lost years under Donald Trump.

“The signs are unmistakable. The science is undeniable but the cost of inaction keeps mounting and the United States isn’t waiting,” Biden said, urging countries to get on a path consistent with halting global heating to 1.5C.

The US’ 2030 climate goal is a significant step up in ambition and will close the global emissions gap by 5-10% by 2030, according to Climate Action Tracker.

However, it fails to put the US on track to meeting the 1.5C goal which would require emissions cuts of 57-70%, analysts say.

Biden had asked 40 world leaders from some of the largest emitting and most vulnerable nations to set out immediate climate action to curb emissions in the next 10 years.

While there were some new pledges, the summit failed to go beyond incremental increases in ambition by major emitters.

Hopes for a “50% club” of nations committing to halve their emissions fell flat. Japan pledged to reduce emissions 46% by 2030 compared with 2013 levels and did not announce an end to overseas coal financing, as some expected.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would cut emissions 40-45% between 2005 and 2030 – a far cry from campaigners’ call for a 60% emissions cuts.

South Korean president Moon Jae-in said he would announce an improved 2030 goal later this year, meanwhile promising to end the country’s significant investment in coal power internationally.

Very disappointed in Canada’s weak target of only 40-45%. They should do better as the 10th largest emitting country in the world!

— Jake Schmidt – NRDC (@jschmidtnrdc) April 22, 2021

President Xi Jinping said China would peak its coal consumption by 2025 and gradually reduce its coal reliance during the country’s next five-year economic planning cycle.

“Action on coal has never been explicitly linked to China’s climate ambition. Now President Xi is saying, ‘hey coal, this means you too!’,” said David Vance Wagner, vice president of Energy Foundation China and a former US official who led US-China dialogue on climate change under Barack Obama.

But Xi did not announce any increase in the ambition of China’s targets to peak emissions in 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060.

His statement left room for increasing coal consumption over the next five years, said Byford Tsang, who leads think tank E3G’s China work, and brings little clarity to the policies Beijing will put in place to meet its emissions goals.

China is projected to account for more than 50% of global growth in coal demand this year, according to the International Energy Agency. This has been driven by a coal-fired Covid recovery across some of the country’s provinces.

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Analyst say that to align policy with its long-term carbon neutrality goal, China needs to immediately stop building new coal-fired power plants and shut 364 gigawatts of coal capacity by 2030 – down from an estimated 1,095GW currently.

Li Shuo, senior climate and energy officer at Greenpeace East Asia, told Climate Home News “more ambitious actions” were needed from Beijing.

“The domestic conditions for faster emission reduction is becoming mature. It is in China’s self-interest to announce and implement further plans ahead of Cop26,” he said.

South Korea’s commitment to end overseas financing for coal-fired power plants will put pressure on Beijing and Tokyo to follow suit.

Between 2016 and 2018, China was the largest provider of public finance for fossil fuels overseas, while Japan spent an estimated $4.2bn a year on supporting coal projects abroad.

Large developing nations including Indonesia, South Africa and Bangladesh said richer nations needed to commit more climate finance for them to accelerate emissions cuts.

Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina said the country was already spending about $5 billion, or 2.5% of its GDP, every year on coping with the impacts of the climate crisis.

“Developing countries often suffer the most devastating impact of climate change. Consequently, developed economies have a responsibility to support developing economies, to support them to mitigate and adapt to climate change,” said South African president Cyril Ramaphosa.

The post US pledges to double international climate finance at Earth Day summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

The president’s office said that Oquist died on Monday night. Local media reported the cause of death was pulmonary embolism, a common complication of severe Covid-19 infection – although no positive diagnosis of the virus was made.

“Paul Oquist Kelley served the people, the families, all Nicaraguans with love, faithfulness, commitment and untiring bravery,” president Daniel Ortega said in a statement on Tuesday. 

“[He was] a brother, a colleague and I believe one of the most important and prominent people in this country, a true Nicaraguan, more Nicaraguan than many who were born in this country,” said Gustavo Porras, speaker of Nicaragua’s national assembly.

Climate watchers have described him as a “fighter for justice” and a  “complex figure in global climate negotiations”, with a sharp, analytical mind.

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Born in 1943 in California, Oquist attended university in the US before moving to Nicaragua where he held several positions in Ortega’s government in the 1980s and when he returned to power in 2007.

In the climate space, Oquist made waves by refusing to back the adoption of the Paris Agreement, arguing the deal did not go far enough to cut global emissions and protect developing countries from climate impacts.

“We’re not going to submit because voluntary responsibility is a path to failure,” Oquist told Climate Home at the time in a video interview on the sidelines of the UN climate talks in Paris in 2015. 

“We don’t want to be an accomplice to taking the world to 3 to 4C and the death and destruction that represents,” Oquist said. “It’s not a matter of being troublemakers, it’s a matter of the developing countries surviving.” 

Nicaragua, a country in central America described by the World Bank as a “renewable energy paradise”, is a tiny emitter, generating just 0.02% of global emissions. 

Nicaragua eventually joined the Paris Agreement in 2017 in a move president Ortega said was a show of solidarity to countries affected by climate disasters. 

Following this change of heart, Oquist was appointed co-chair of the multi-billion-dollar Green Climate Fund (GCF) board in 2018. In this role his main responsibility was steering the board meetings, where decisions are reached by consensus.

On the GCF board, Oquist called for stricter vetting of potential private sector partners. For example in 2019, he backed civil society concerns about a Chilean private equity firm specialised in wealth management and an Indian bank mired in financial instability. Both entities were accredited.

Joe Biden’s $1.2bn budget for Green Climate Fund falls short of campaigner demands

Oquist was a close political advisor of president Ortega and his defence of the government’s crackdown on political opponents resulted in financial sanctions from the Trump administration. 

Following news of his death, political leaders and climate experts paid tribute to Oquist on social media. 

Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro said in a statement that Oquist was known for his “inexhaustible energy, cheerful nature and dedication to reveal and defend, internationally and in any setting, the truth.”

South African GCF board member Zaheer Fakir described Oquist as a “fighter for justice and a steadfast and dedicated climate warrior”.

Sad to hear of the passing of a colleague, a comrade and a friend Dr Paul Ouquist. A fighter for justice and a steadfast and dedicated climate warrior. May his kind soul rest in eternal peace. HASTA LA VICTORIA SEMPRE! @theGCF @UNFCCC pic.twitter.com/9bUMe3LqV0

— Zaheer Fakir (@zaheer_fakir) April 13, 2021

Henning Wuester, director of the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency, wrote on Twitter: “With Paul Oquist the global climate process loses a very bright and engaged personality. He was difficult but very sharp and analytical – an important voice to carefully listen to. I will always remember some of his statements of the early days of the GCF.”

Rest in power, Paul Oquist. A complex figure in global climate negotiations, but I will always appreciate the clarity he brought in calling out dodgy private sector deals, backing up CSOs when other governments stayed silent. Classic example in the GCF:pic.twitter.com/WQlLwnrdGH

— Joe Thwaites (@joethw8s) April 13, 2021

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South Sudanese officials hope the world’s newest country can become carbon neutral by 2030, with a rollout of renewable energy and mass tree planting. But aid cuts, a slump in oil revenue and the legacy of civil war pose major hurdles to decarbonisation.

A draft plan seen by Climate Home News, which government aims to submit to the UN in early summer, hinges on international support. Of the estimated $100 billion cost by 2030, 90% would need to come from external sources.

“We are trying to be carbon neutral by 2030. If we have the funds, we will be able to make it happen. If the funds are not there, we will be looking at 2050,” South Sudan’s lead climate negotiator Joseph Bartel told Climate Home News from sweltering Juba, where temperature had risen above 40C.

“This country is really suffering from the impacts of climate change and we need to make sure that we are making our contribution to save our planet from this existential threat,” he said.

The draft plan shows quantifiable emissions reductions goals in seven sectors, including agriculture, transport, waste, energy and forestry, as well as emissions intensity targets for the oil industry. There is no explicit analysis of whether these add up to net zero emissions.

It includes developing nearly 3,000MW of hydropower projects, installing wind turbines, rolling out decentralised solar power and promoting biogas. In forestry, the plan is to plant 100 million trees over ten years, and sequester 45 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030 by reducing deforestation.

To adapt to intensifying heat and rainfall extremes, there are proposals to develop drought- and flood-resilient seeds, promote wetland management and diversify livelihoods away from subsistence farming.

China makes no shift away from coal in five-year plan as it ‘crawls’ to carbon neutrality

The UK host to the critical Cop26 climate talks scheduled to take place in Glasgow, in November, is slashing overseas development assistance from 0.7% to 0.5% of its national income.

Leaked documents from the UK’s foreign and development office obtained by openDemocracy show cuts are being planned across some of Africa’s most fragile states and climate vulnerable nations.

In South Sudan, UK aid could fall by nearly 60%, dropping from £110 million ($152m) in 2020-21 to just £45m in 2021-22.

Among the UK’s ongoing projects in the country is a seven-year programme to provide humanitarian assistance and build resilience to shocks from conflicts, droughts and flooding.

Bartel described the reported decision as “depressing” and “unwise”. “The humanitarian situation is dire,” he said, warning the UK was sending “the wrong signal” ahead of the climate summit and he hoped the government would reconsider.

“This trend of cutting aid and not getting to the $100bn [by 2020 pledged by rich governments in 2009] show we are on a very slippery slope. If we are not careful, we will fail to tackle climate change in countries like ours,” Bartel said.

UN suspends climate work with Myanmar government following military coup

With oil exports providing up to 80% of government revenues, the collapse in oil price induced by the pandemic sent the economy into “tailspin” said Bartel. Many civil servants in the country haven’t been paid for months.

Following South Sudan’s independence in 2011, the nation of 11 million people entered a six- year civil war that killed an estimated 400,000 people and displaced millions. It came to an official end when a peace agreement was signed in February 2020.

The nation is struggling to rebuild fragile political institutions. While a transitional coalition government was formed last year, parliament hasn’t been re-constituted since the peace deal was signed.

In a symptom of the instability, the country’s parliament ratified the Paris Agreement in 2017 but nobody sent the paperwork to the UN until last month.

South Sudan is among the most rapidly warming countries in the world, as average temperatures increased by 1-1.5C across large parts of the country in the last 60 years. It contributed 0.07% of global emissions in 2015.

Severe droughts followed by unpredictable and intense rainfall periodically destroy crops, in a country where the majority of the population is dependent on subsistence farming.

According to the World Food Programme, 60% of the population, or about seven million people are struggling to find enough food each day.

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In October 2020, floods displaced tens of thousands of people. Months later, 96,000 people are still living in camps and flooding is ongoing in the worst-affected areas, Payai John, climate change director in South Sudan’s government, told Climate Home.

Repeated flooding has heightened conflict in some parts of the country, where farmers and pastoralists are competing for shrinking land for grazing, he said.

A flooded displacement camp in Bor, Jonglei state, in eastern South Sudan. (Photo: UNMISS/Flickr)

“The priority should be adaptation, adaptation and adaptation,” Nhial Tiitmamer, of the Sudd Institut in Juba, told Climate Home. “The international community should pay more attention to the climate crisis in South Sudan.”

The government has identified 28 adaptation projects that would strengthen communities’ resilience but only three have secured funding from the Green Climate Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund.

“We cannot increase ambition when the funding is being reduced,” said John. “How will the UK Cop26 presidency mobilise funding when it is cutting its own?”

A spokesperson for the UK government said: “The seismic impact of the pandemic on the UK economy has forced us to take tough but necessary decisions, including temporarily reducing the overall amount we spend on aid. We are still working through what this means for individual programmes and decisions have not yet been made.”

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With the first tranche of updated national climate targets in, global emissions are set to fall by less than 1% between 2010 and 2030. The IPCC says 45% cuts are needed to hold temperature rise to 1.5C this century. It is a huge gap and one that the “ratchet” mechanism of the Paris Agreement was supposed to progressively close.

While Joe Biden’s presidency of the US creates a more favourable ambience for raising ambition, it meets ambivalence in India, Australia and Brazil. Recent net zero converts China, South Korea and Japan have yet to level up their short-term action. Many vulnerable countries are too mired in debt to invest in greenery.

This November’s Cop26 has been trailed as the most critical UN climate summit since Paris, but it remains unclear what outcome to expect.

At a political level, it will take a lot of heavy lifting in the next few months to strengthen national climate plans – and creative leadership to make them add up to a meaningful moment in Glasgow.

At a technical level, a stalemate over whether to take interim negotiations online threatens to further delay resolution of contentious issues – notably on the design of international carbon markets.

At a practical level, we have not been told how many delegates will be accredited for the summit, nor who takes priority if numbers are restricted.

What is clear is the credibility of the whole UN climate process is at stake. After 30 years of talking, there has to be more to show for it than this.

This week’s stories…

• China, US urged to step up as UN warns world ‘very far’ from meeting climate goals
• Bangladesh scraps nine coal power plants as overseas finance dries up
• Fragile countries call for investment in rooftop solar to expand energy access
• “Science-based” corporate climate targets are no such thing, says former advisor
• Hit by hurricanes and Covid, more Central Americans go hungry and plan to migrate
• EU spent €440 million on failed gas projects since 2013, study finds
• Mauritius oil spill: questions mount over ship fuel safety

The post The stakes for Cop26 couldn’t be higher – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

Patricia Espinosa warned that the collective ambition of national plans by the end of 2020 was “very far” from putting the world on track to meet its Paris Agreement goals of limiting global heating to “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C.

Her comments were based on analysis published by UN Climate Change on Friday of national climate plans submitted before 31 December 2020. Only 75 countries, including EU member states, met the deadline for updating their plans, accounting for about 30% of global emissions.

Their combined plans achieve less than 1% emissions reductions by 2030 compared to 2010 levels, Espinosa said. “And that simply is not good enough”.

“The message is extremely clear,” she told reporters. “We are collectively wondering into a minefield, blindfolded. The next step would mean disaster.”

Espinosa urged major emitters to “step up” and commit to “much more radical” emissions reductions cuts this year. China, the US and India – the world’s top three emitting countries – have yet to reveal their plans.

“I call on all parties, even on those who have submitted already their new updated [climate plans], to look at how they can increase their ambition. If this task was already urgent, it is crucial now,” she said.

Bangladesh scraps nine coal power plants as overseas finance dries up

The report found that new commitments would shave off 2.8% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 compared with previous pledges.

The projected impact of these new plans is an emissions reduction of just 0.7% compared with 1990 and 0.5% from 2010 levels. In the shorter term, emissions would rise by 2% between 1990 and 2025.

Leading scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have said emissions should fall 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 to limit temperatures to 1.5C by the end of the century.

“This report confirms the shocking lack of urgency, and genuine action,” said Aubrey Webson, of Antigua and Barbuda, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States. “We are flirting dangerously with the 1.5C warming limit that the world agreed we need to stay within. It is small island developing states like ours that will pay the ultimate price if we do not.”

UN chief António Guterres described the report as “a red alert” for the planet and urged nations to match their long-term ambition with short-term action. Cop26 president designate Alok Sharma, of the UK, backed the call for major emitters to submit ambitious 2030 targets this year.

Despite the opportunity offered by the Covid-19 recovery to put climate action at the heart of stimulus packages, “many nations are sticking to their business as usual approach,” Espinosa said. “It is a rare moment that cannot be lost.”

Fragile countries call for investment in rooftop solar to expand energy access

While countries were expected to submit improved national contributions to meet the Paris goals – known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) – before the end of 2020, fewer than half did so. Many nations experienced delays due to the coronavirus pandemic.

In total, 113 countries are yet to submit updated climate plans.

Among large emitters, the EU, the UK and Argentina stepped up their climate ambition last year. And overall, the report points to an improvement in the quality of countries’ climate goals.

More countries are adopting absolute emissions reduction targets, with most climate plans covering all sectors of the economy.

But a number of big emitters have failed to improve their plans. Brazil and Mexico even backslid on their commitments, with emissions set to rise compared to their previous plans, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Its analysis found that Australia, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland and Vietnam have submitted plans that do not add up to deeper emissions cuts.  Japan and New Zealand did not improve on their plans either but both promised to increase ambition ahead of Cop26 this year.

Meanwhile Indonesia has said it would not strengthen its ambition this year.

“Science-based” corporate climate targets are no such thing, says former advisor

A host of new climate plans could be announced on the 22 April, when the US is hosting a leaders’ climate summit as it revives the Major Economies Forum, a group of 17 large emitters.

Joe Biden reiterated this week that the US would have an improved 2030 climate plan “ready in advance of the summit” and he is under pressure to ensure the US does its fair share. Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau also said he would announce increased ambition by the meeting, according to a White House readout.

China provided a glimpse of its updated climate plan during a climate summit in December. Climate Action Tracker said the proposals would result in a modest increase in ambition compared to current policies.

Despite international pressure, it remains unclear what India is preparing to bring to Cop26.

With new plans expected during the course of the year, UN Climate Change will publish an updated report ahead of Cop26. It is expected to compare countries’ collective level of ambition with scenarios for meeting the 2C and 1.5C temperature goals.

In the meantime, climate campaigners have said the situation was alarming. Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, described it as “a nightmare” and urged governments to “come back with a better offer”.

“With their woefully weak climate targets big emitters like Japan, Australia and Brazil are weighing down overall global ambition when in fact they should be leading,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of Climate Action Network.

The story was amended on 26/02/21 to reflect the fact that updated climate plans submitted by 31 December 2020 would reduce emissions by less than 1% by 2030 compared with 2010 levels. Not the combined climate plans of all countries. 

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Bill Baue was among half a dozen people to start developing the concept behind the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) in 2012 and served on its technical advisory group until recently.

Last week, he submitted a formal complaint to the initiative’s executive board and published it on Medium, with a detailed critique of the framework used for major corporations to set climate targets.

“Science-Based Targets is not a science-based approach,” Baue told Climate Home News. “I believe in this instance that SBTi… are putting their own interest above the interests of the public.”

The Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) was launched in 2015 to set the standard for companies to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change and vet targets set by businesses.

More than 1,000 companies across 50 sectors are working with the SBTi to reduce their emissions, according to the initiative’s latest progress report. This includes household names like Siemens, Heineken and S&P Global.

These companies represent nearly 20% of global market capitalisation, or about $20.5 trillion. In recent months, the number of businesses joining the initiative has surged.

As companies trumpet their climate ambition, there is growing scrutiny of their plans and actions — and the opaque vetting process for the coveted “science-based” label.

“To quell the great public skepticism about this initiative, what’s needed is an additional emphasis on transparency and accountability, using the latest science to guide these targets, and for these companies to back up their targets with their investment plans,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director at Greenpeace International.

Central America: Hit by hurricanes and Covid, millions go hungry and plan to migrate

SBTi’s proposition is that it works with companies to develop and approve targets and strategies to cut emissions in line with 1.5C  — the toughest Paris goal.

That involves a number of hidden assumptions. The size of the global carbon budget for 1.5C depends on how much carbon dioxide you expect to remove from the atmosphere and the temperature “overshoot” tolerated mid-century. Then there are judgement calls about how to share the shrinking carbon budget between sectors and geographies.

Baue accused SBTi of “potential self-dealing and conflict of interest” for recommending two ways of calculating corporate targets that were developed by the initiative’s partners and excluding a method that could yield more robust emissions cuts.

There was no transparency over which route the companies chose, he added.

“[SBTi] are basically asking us, the world, to trust them to do this assessment and they are not going to reveal even the methodology that these companies use,” he said. “They are the lawyer, the judge and the jury in this situation.”

After raising these concerns internally for the past two years, he escalated them to the executive board, which is constituted of the heads of the UN Global Compact, of the World Resources Institute, of WWF and of CDP.

At the time of making his complaint, Baue still believed himself to be an advisor to SBTi. He only found that following publication of his concerns that the initiative had reconvened a new advisory group in October 2020 to improve gender, geographical and sectoral diversity – excluding him.

SBTi acknowledged that it failed to inform previous advisors of their expired membership “due to an internal miscommunication” and “greatly regret this lapse”.

Samoa: Concerns raised about Green Climate Fund flood defence project

Responding to Climate Home’s questions, the steering committee of the Science Based Targets initiative said: “A rigorous, science-based approach is at the very core of the SBTi’s work and we take extremely seriously our role in upholding this. This is why our methodologies undergo strict evaluation each year, to ensure they are in line with the latest climate science.

“Our mission is to drive down corporate emissions for a net-zero, 1.5C world, and this goal ultimately is at the heart of our decision-making.”

SBTi denied that it or partner organisations derived any benefits from the use of the methods it recommends. “It is not clear to us what other ‘interest’ this supposedly conflicts with.”

Baue’s complaint followed the publication of an independent study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The study assessed seven methods for setting corporate climate targets. It found that a target-setting methodology developed by the US-based Center for Sustainable Organizations (CSO), was aligned with the latest 1.5C climate science and offered the lowest risk of an under or overshoot of the global carbon budget.

While initially endorsed by SBTi, the CSO methodology was dropped from its toolkit in recent years.

“SBTi now finds itself in what we might call an ‘inconvenient’ position of recommending against the very methodology that is the most robust!” Baue wrote in his complaint.

SBTi said its reason for dropping the CSO methodology was its reliance on economic intensity as an input. That decision was based on concerns that economic performance indicators have “a weak and unstable link” to emissions at the company level.

The steering committee said it had intended to present these concerns formally in a research paper but this had been delayed because of resource constraints and competing priorities.

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Instead, SBTi recommends companies reduce emissions in line with 1.5C in a straight downward trajectory, known as the Absolute Contraction Approach (ACA).

The study in Environmental Research Letters found this method had a much larger risk of overshoot of the carbon budget to 2050 than other methods. SBTi said it used the method to help companies set 5-15 years targets, for which the method shows no or limited overshoot.

The second method recommended by SBTi, known as the Sectoral Decarbonisation Approach (SDA), only aligns with holding temperature “well below 2C” rather than 1.5C. Only power utilities can align with 1.5C using this method.

That is because the sectoral approach was initially developed using scenarios from the International Energy Agency aligned with 2C. The IEA has yet to release its 1.5C-aligned scenario, which is expected in May.

SBTI’s steering committee said the lack of 1.5C-aligned SDA pathway was an issue it took “very seriously” and described the delay in updating the model as “frustrating”. It said it did not rely solely on IEA data and was working to update the methodology.

Study: EU spent €440 million on failed gas projects since 2013

Anders Bjørn, co-author of the recent study from Concordia University in Montreal, told Climate Home he was “puzzled” by SBTi’s decision to only recommend two methodologies and that its rationale for doing so “lacked transparency”.

Bjørn called on SBTi to require more transparency from companies. Companies setting climate targets under SBTi don’t usually disclose what methods they have used to set their goals — something that should change, Bjørn said.

“There is not even a mention that there is a choice in the method,” he said, adding that companies should be honest about the fact their targets reflect a value judgment on how to share the global emissions budget.

Jed Davis, director of sustainability at Cabot Creamery Co-operative and a former SBTi advisory board member, told Climate Home: “There needs to be a deeper valuing of transparency in the process. This won’t serve anybody if it is a black box process.”

The post ‘Science-based’ corporate climate targets are no such thing, says former advisor appeared first on Climate Home News.

The European Union’s 27 member states and the UK were among 70 countries to submit updated national contributions by 31 December 2020 – in line with a five-year cycle to close the gap between action and the pact’s overall goal to limit global heating “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C.

Latin American countries including Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica and Peru met the end-of-year deadline and enhanced their ambition alongside nearly a dozen each of small island states and least developed countries.

Together, they account for 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Resources Institute’s tracker.

But none of the world’s other top polluters submitted tougher carbon-cutting plans to the UN, in a year defined by the coronavirus pandemic.

China was notably absent from a last-minute flurry of submissions, despite president Xi Jinping announcing incrementally stronger 2030 targets earlier in December and stressing his commitment to the Paris process.

2020 in review: Covid delayed climate action, but raised hopes of a green recovery

Niklas Höhne, founder of the NewClimate Institute, described the start of the new year as a “mixed picture” which looked “much better” than what was expected six month ago but left “a lot to be done in 2021”.

While many countries have failed to enhance their climate plan this year, a growing number of countries are subscribing to a mid-century net zero emissions goal, Höhne said – “a positive sign” that needs to translate into short-term action. “I am optimistic that we can get more ambition going in 2021,” he added.

China’s pledge in September to aim for carbon neutrality by 2060 was “the biggest announcement of the last 10 years of climate policy,” he told Climate Home.

But new 2030 measures to reduce the carbon intensity of its GDP by 65% from 2005 levels and increase the share of non-fossil fuel energy to 25% announced at a climate ambition summit last month fell short of aligning short-term action with Beijing’s long-term goal.

“China has an opportunity to do more than what it has laid out,” said David Waskow, international climate director at the World Resources Institute, adding that the country’s next five-year-plan expected in March could provide part of the basis for a more ambitious NDC.

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India, Canada, Indonesia, Iran and Saudi Arabia were among major emitters that didn’t submit an updated climate plan by the 2020 deadline.

Until president-elect Joe Biden brings the US back into the Paris accord, which he promised to do on his first day in office on 21 January, the US is not expected to present a climate plan.

Russia, Mexico, and Australia merely restated existing carbon-cutting commitments, with Canberra promising to publish a long-term decarbonisation strategy ahead of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow in November.

In its submission, Australia said it was on track to “meet and beat” its current 2030 goal “without relying on past overachievement” – suggesting it won’t use old Kyoto-era credits to meet its Paris commitment.

Brazil submitted a new plan at the start of December, which effectively weakened its 2030 emissions targets. It removed all reference to stopping illegal deforestation and restoring forests but included a goal to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

Japan and New Zealand reaffirmed their previous targets, while promising to present enhanced plans before the Glasgow summit. South Korea translated its 2030 goal into absolute emissions cuts and pledged to enhance its ambition “at the earliest possible time before 2025”.

Pakistan signals coal power exit, in potential model for China’s belt and road

The climate ambition summit co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement provided a spur for both the UK and the EU to agree deeper emissions cuts of respectively at least 68% and 55% between 1990 and 2030.

This “should enable others to follow,” said Höhne, calling on richer nations like the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand to step up their ambition in the months ahead.

“The critical question is what can countries do to strengthen action by Cop26. It’s nearly a year to go to Cop26 and there should be high expectations that these countries come back with something better by then,” Waskow, told Climate Home. So far, they had “little to show,” he added.

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75 world leaders along with the European Union and Pope Francis presented tougher carbon-cutting plans and commitments to adapt to climate impacts in a six-hour marathon event.

In total, 45 countries presented strengthened 2030 climate plans, with Japan and South Korea promising more ambitious targets next year. 24 leaders promised to cut emissions to net zero and 20 nations announced stronger adaptation and resilience plans.

While progress was made, a lot more is expected from countries to close the gap between the current level of ambition and what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Support for vulnerable nations to scale up their ambition at a time when Covid-19 has left them deep in debt was largely absent.

“We are at the beginning of the road. It’s a road of hope at the moment but we need to translate hope into reality,” UN secretary general António Guterres told reporters.

AS IT HAPPENED: World leaders upgrade climate commitments at Paris anniversary summit

Argentina’s commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 means more than half of G20 countries would be covered by a net zero goal if president elect Joe Biden follows through on his own election promise next year.

Jamaica, Panama, the Maldives, Malawi, Nepal, and the Vatican joined a growing club of nations aiming to cut emissions to net zero in the first half of the century.

Guterres warned a number of the world’s largest emitters were yet to demonstrate they were ready to step up.

Australia, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Brazil were among big emitters absent from the summit – failing to meet the ambition benchmark to participate.

China fell short of presenting a 2030 climate plan that reflects its long-term carbon neutrality goal. Instead, president Xi Jinping’s much-anticipated speech promised an incremental strengthening of China’s 2030 climate plan, with no mention of curbing coal.

China’s environment ministry floats ‘ban’ on coal power investment abroad

On that front, Pakistan stole the show announcing it would stop building new coal power plants and pivot to clean energy. It promised to generate 60% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

The commitment could cancel 6GW, which would have doubled Pakistan’s coal capacity, according to Chris Littlecott, associate director at think tank E3G.

In an honest reflection of the summit’s achievement, Cop26 president-designate Alok Sharma said that while “real progress” had been made, nations had not done enough to put the world on track to limit warming to 1.5C – the tougher goal of the Paris accord.

“As encouraging as all this ambition is, it is not enough. And the clock continues to tick,” he said.

Setting out his plan for the work that lies ahead, Sharma said “a step change” in carbon-cutting efforts was needed to reach the 1.5C. That needed to included policies like phasing out coal, he said.

Sharma added “strengthening adaptation” and “getting finance flowing” were key to brokering an agreement at Cop26 in Glasgow and promised to convened major economies to make progress on these issues through the UK’s G7 presidency next year.

Comment: Costa Rica and Denmark have set an end date for oil and gas production. The world should follow

In the day’s most hotly anticipated announcement, President Xi’s speech failed to replicate the enthusiasm of his last UN intervention in September.

He reaffirmed his commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and peak China’s emissions “before 2030” – dates which Guterres said the UN would work to bring forward in bilateral dialogue.

By 2030, Xi promised to reduce carbon intensity to “over 65%” from 2005 levels and boost the growth of wind and solar energy, promising to reach 1,200GW of capacity, up from 415GW at the end of 2019.

Speaking to reporters half way through the event, Guterres expressed disappointment at the absence of a Chinese commitment on curbing coal power generation or ending coal financing overseas.

“We go on insisting, there must be everywhere a commitment not to build new coal power plants,” he said.

Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told Climate Home the new targets were “largely an extension of current trends to 2030” and could allow for emissions to continue to rise at the same average rate they have over the past five years.

“China’s approach to realising the 2060 carbon neutrality target risks leaving the heavy lifting to the period after 2030,” he said.

Thom Woodroofe, of the Asia Society Policy Institute, said the new 2030 measures “fell a long way short” to align with Xi’s carbon neutrality by 2060 ambition.

Li Shuo, senior climate and energy policy officer at Greenpeace East Asia, said Xi’s announcement “demonstrates good will” and left space for greater ambition in 2021. “Making its emissions peak earlier than 2025 is still something it should strive for,” he said.

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Other large emitters appeared largely empty-handed. Prime minister Narendra Modi repeated existing commitments to increase renewable capacity to 175GW by 2022 and 450GW by 2030, saying the country was on track to exceed its targets.

Among the co-organisers, French president Emmanuel Macron fell short, promising to end export finance for oil in 2025 and for gas in 2035 – a poor effort in contrast to its UK neighbour’s announcement that it will end overseas fossil fuel financing in early 2021.

“Many countries contributing to the Climate Ambition Summit ignored the ‘ambition’ part and apparently still lack the moral courage to stand up to the fossil fuel industry,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International.

“Both in terms of national and international action, France is not honouring the legacy of the Cop21,” said Lucile Dufour, International Policy Officer, Réseau Action Climat France.

She added that France’s announcement it will maintain its current levels of climate finance over the next years without increasing them, was “clearly not enough to respond to the growing needs of the most vulnerable countries”.

Ballooning debt cripples poor countries’ hopes of green recovery from Covid

Overall, promises of new money were largely absent. Germany promised €500 million in climate finance and Italy €30 million to the Adaptation Fund – a far cry away from the what poor nations were hoping for.

At a time when climate impacts are reaching records, “the solidarity piece was not at the rendez-vous,” Yamide Dagnet, director of climate negotiations at the World Resources Institute, told Climate Home. “With too few exceptions, we still need to see developed countries honour their commitments on finance.

“During this summit, we have seen continuous leadership from vulnerable countries to decarbonise and make their economies more resilient. They need to be supported. Investments needs to flow to them now.”

Sharma urged donor countries to come forward with new commitments on climate finance and meet their commitments to mobilise $100bn per year from 2020 to support vulnerable nations.

“I have to say, if we can mobilise trillions overnight, rightly, to support our economies [in the coronavirus recovery], why can we not reach this $100 billion dollars goal?”

The post Countries signal greater climate ambition but ‘step change’ needed on road to Glasgow appeared first on Climate Home News.

The stakes could not be higher. The aim of the talks was to agree a global accord to limit global warming by the end of the century and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. This was the opportunity to demonstrate that multilateralism was the way to provide solutions to global problems.

It was my first time attending a UN climate conference. Although I had been involved in the climate diplomacy process before, the Paris conference was overwhelming with information and people.

More than 45,000 people participated in Cop21. The city was heavily policed not only because of the climate summit, but because two weeks before 130 people were killed in a terrorist attack, plunging the city of light into sadness.

It was an honour to support the Costa Rican delegation in the decisive negotiation that followed. Not only was I proud to support my country’s voice, but humbled to witness a small group of developing countries raise their flags to ensure the Paris Agreement became an ambitious accord.

Agripina Jenkins Rojas in Paris for the Cop21 climate talks. (Photo: Agripina Jenkins Rojas)

Costa Rica, as part of the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC), had a clear mission: to defend climate ambition and work for the inclusion of human rights and gender equality in the text. Both were included in its preamble.

After long and intense negotiations, the ambition was stamped in the accord’s goal of limiting the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – a target on which depends the survival of populations and biodiversity in countries worldwide.

This was the end of six years of negotiations. Less than six months before the talks, we had nothing that looked like a multilateral agreement.

After five years, here are five things the Paris Agreement achieved — and didn’t

Back in Costa Rica at the beginning of November 2015, I was greatly concerned about how we would solve the global challenge in front of us in just two weeks of negotiations, with countries holding positions that, at times, had nothing in common.

In the final hours on 12 December, I was still concerned we may fail to have an agreement robust enough to respond to the call of science and be the starting point for the transformational change of the global economy that was needed.

Besides the intensive technical work, the conference was the first time I had to be away from my daughter for so many days. She was three years old at the time.

She was, and continues to be, my inspiration in the most difficult moments of the negotiations, those moments of doubts. Until Cop21 president Laurent Fabius’s gavel came down on the agreement, we didn’t have a deal. Because in the UN climate convention nothing is decided until everything is decided.

In December 2015, we had an agreement. Not everything we wanted was included but the most relevant elements were, we returned home and got to work implementing it.

‘Looking for positivity’: Parisversaire party to revive momentum on climate

Five years on from that moment, we reflect on how the negotiation process could be improved. It should take less time to reach decisions, but fundamentally we should be more effective in translating those decisions into global action.

In recent years, Costa Rica has made great progress on the climate agenda and worked to mainstream the issue in public institutions and setting out a long-term strategy.

We are in the process of improving the communication of our climate agenda to the people of our country.  This remains a challenge: transforming commitments for climate action into society-wide projects that benefit people.

Something that was clear to me from the first moments of working on climate change is that we must show people how every aspect of life is affected by climate change, and how everyone has something to contribute from their own areas of expertise.

Brazil sets ‘indicative’ goal of carbon neutrality by 2060

Five years on some things have worked. Negotiations and dialogue continue to be the way to address this global problem. UN Climate Change and campaigns such as the Race to Zero create a framework to transform the world’s economies. And the private sector has been invited to join this dialogue.

For someone who was born and lives in a country without an army, multilateralism remains the way to seek solutions together and not have them imposed by one nation or a group of countries. Every voice needs to count.

Now the process must deliver action at the speed that science requires, otherwise the credibility of the Paris Agreement will be put in doubt.

At the climate ambition summit on Saturday, on the day of the anniversary of the Paris accord, world leaders will present high-quality climate plans to generate political momentum that is needed to Cop26 in Glasgow next year.

But above all, the spirit of the Paris Agreement and a commitment to continue to raise ambition needs to be respected. That way, my daughter will one day know that the implementation of the deal was a decision made by us to prioritise the well-being of her generation, of the one before her and of all those that will follow.

Agripina Jenkins Rojas is an advisor for the Climate Change Office of Costa Rica.

The post I am proud to have negotiated the Paris Agreement, at my first UN summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Coronavirus disrupted a lot of plans, but it also gave the summit organisers and governments around the world a much-needed extension on their homework — a chance for a green reset. Are they using that time wisely?

Tomorrow, on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, we will get a snapshot of their progress at a virtual summit.

Leaders were told to bring “bold” new commitments. Simply renouncing dodgy carbon accounting tricks (Australia) or gesturing at net zero while deforestation surges (Brazil) was not enough to make it onto the speaker list.

We will be live blogging the Parisversaire party. Join us to find out if China reveals details of near-term action to back up its net zero pledge, and if there will be any new climate finance for the vulnerable countries who so desperately need it.

This week’s stories…

• Parisversaire climate ambition summit: who’s in and who’s out
• EU leaders secure deal on raising 2030 climate ambition
• Poor nations call for more financial support to cope with climate impacts
• Brazil sets ‘indicative’ goal of carbon neutrality by 2060
• After five years, here are five things the Paris Agreement achieved — and didn’t
• Dispute over democratic values threatens to derail EU plans to raise 2030 climate ambition
• Malaysian bank to phase out coal finance, in a victory for campaigners
• ‘Looking for positivity’: Parisversaire party to revive momentum on climate
• Czech commission calls for coal phase-out by 2038

…and climate conversations

• 10 myths about net zero targets and carbon offsetting, busted – 41 scientists
• Christine Lagarde must change course to a green coronavirus recovery – Nick Bryer, 350

EU good to go

Despite worries early in the week it could be derailed by a separate dispute over democratic values, the EU’s upgraded 2030 climate target was signed off by national leaders on Friday morning.

After late-night talks, they endorsed at least 55% net emissions cut from 1990 levels, with assurances to eastern member states on financial support for the transition. It follows a Czech commission setting out a plan for the country to phase out coal by 2038.

While there is plenty in the detail for campaigners to haggle over, it comes in time for Ursula Von der Leyen to declare increased ambition at tomorrow’s summit.

Emerging from coal

CIMB may not be well known outside southeast Asia, but the Malaysian bank might just be a pioneer in divesting from coal.

After sinking $2.6 billion into coal mines and power plants last decade, it is changing course with a new strategy to exit coal by 2040.

Campaigners said it was the first major bank in an emerging market to announce a coal phaseout and could provide a template for others to follow.

The post Joyeux Parisversaire – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The event co-hosted by the UN, UK and France marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement and is a moment for countries to present stronger 2030 climate plans, long-term decarbonisation strategies, post-2020 climate finance and adaptation programmes.

Organisers stressed that only national leaders with the boldest plans made during the course of the year would be given a platform. Their pre-recorded video messages of up to two minutes will be interspersed with statements from business and civil society groups.

Around 30 leaders are expected to make net zero announcements and about 50 are tipped to present enhanced 2030 climate contributions to the Paris Agreement – also known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Pope Francis will bring a faith-based perspective.

Australia prime minister Scott Morrison, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro and South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa did not meet the ambition benchmark to showcase their climate plans.

The list of participants was still being finalised on Thursday afternoon, after last-minute negotiations over the level of ambition they could bring.

Analysis: After five years, here are five things the Paris Agreement achieved — and didn’t

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Archie Young, the UK’s lead climate negotiator, described “difficult and detailed conversations” with countries during the selection process.

“We want this summit to be focusing on the positive rather than focusing on who might not be present because I think it’s a huge opportunity for the world to come forward and see that countries from across the spectrum are committed to further ambition,” he said.

It comes at the end of a week of reality check on the state of the climate.

A major report by UN Environment Programme found that despite a 7% fall in emissions this year because of Covid-19 restrictions, the emissions gap to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming “well below 2” and strive for 1.5C continues to grow.

Countries would need to collectively increase their pace of emissions reduction this decade threefold to get on track to meet the 2C goal and more than fivefold for 1.5C, the report found. Current 2030 targets will lead to an estimated 3.2C of warming.

“If we postpone any climate action further it will become impossible to limit global warming to 1.5C,” said Anne Olhoff, head of climate policy and planning at UNEP DTU Partnership.

Here is a rundown of who has made the cut — and who hasn’t.

IN: 

China

Xi Jinping surprised the world at the UN in September when he announced China would aim to achieve net zero emissions by 2060. That alone would likely have qualified Beijing for a place at the summit.

But plenty of questions remain on whether China will accelerate emissions cuts in the short term. Chinese sources say Beijing is on track to submit its 2030 NDC to the UN before the end of year and some details could be revealed at the summit.

Observers and campaigners want to see Xi promise to peak emissions much earlier than 2030, and closer to 2025, and set out a clear pathway for curbing coal production.

European Union

European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen will announce the union’s new target to cut net emissions by at least 55% between 1990 and 2030 — up from 40% currently. She is expected to make a live intervention. European leaders approved the deeper cuts at a Council meeting on Friday morning after marathon talks through the night.

Among member states, summit co-host France is tipped to make an announcement on climate finance disclosures. Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden have also made the list.

India

India has made no major announcements on climate action this year, so premier Narendra Modi had better have a surprise up his sleeve.

The UK Cop26 hosts have worked with Indian officials in recent months and both co-organisers UK prime minister Boris Johnson and French president Emmanuel Macron have spoken to Modi about climate action in recent weeks.

In the absence of a new emissions target, India could present sectoral policies to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. It recently created a committee to manage the delivery of the Paris Agreement.

Other large Asian economies to speak include Pakistan, Iraq, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.

UK 

Boris Johnson will reiterate a government decision last week to cut emissions 68% from 1990 level by 2030. It is the UK’s first solo contribution to the Paris Agreement after leaving the EU, based on independent advice to get on track for net zero emissions by 2050.

As host to next year’s Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, the government sought to galvanise greater ambition by announcing its own enhanced climate plan ahead of the summit. However its decision to cut overseas development aid last month went down badly with the poorest countries.

Canada 

Last month, Justin Trudeau’s government presented a bill to parliament to enshrine a 2050 net zero emissions goal into law and set five-yearly carbon targets from 2030 to 2050. 

But the bill made no mention of increasing Canada’s 2030 target to cut emissions by 30% from 2005 levels, which despite a dip in emissions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the government may not be on track to meet, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Japan

Prime minister Yoshihide Suga announced plans for Japan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 in October. In a speech to lawmakers, he promised to “fundamentally shift” the country’s coal policy but how this translates into action is yet to be seen.

In March, Japan reaffirmed its existing 2030 target of cutting emissions 26% by 2030 from 2013 levels without an enhancement. A revision of the country’s energy plan is expected to lead to an updated NDC in 2021 and ahead of Cop26.

South Korea

The government committed earlier this year to meet carbon neutrality by 2050. Like Japan, South Korea is under pressure to fully end the financing of coal projects abroad.

Chile

Due to be the host of last year’s UN climate summit, Chile was aiming to come out with its enhanced NDC at the event. Major protests at home forced them to move the COP to Madrid at the last minute and delay the national plan. It was presented instead by videolink in March 2020, promising to peaking emissions by 2025.

Colombia

President Iván Duque announced at the end of November a 2030 climate plan to cut emissions 51% compared with business as usual by 2030 – a significant jump from the previous 20% target. A further nine Latin American countries made the cut including Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Suriname.

African countries

Nine African heads of state are due to take part in the summit. This includes Rwanda, which was the first African nation to submit a tougher climate plan to the UN in May.

The Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria and Zimbabwe are listed to talk at the event.

Island states

15 leaders of small island nations are listed as participants. A total of 17 small island nations are expected to submit enhanced climate plans before the end of the year, with announcements expected on Saturday. Tonga submitted its plan to the UN on Wednesday but is not expected to speak.

Jamaica was the first Caribbean nation to increase the scale and scope of its emissions cuts in June.

Their speeches will highlight how extreme weather and rising seas are already costing lives and livelihoods.

OUT: 

Australia

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been widely reported to be about to announce that Australia will not use carry-over credits from the Kyoto-era to meet its 2030 target. Australia was the only country in the world to have proposed using credits from the previous climate regime to meet their commitments under Paris.

Last month, Morrison told the Business Council of Australia: “My government’s ambition is that we will not need them. And we are working to this as our goal, consistent with our record of over delivering in these areas. And I am confident that our policies will get this job done… Now, I hope to have more to say about this before the end of the year.”

But abandoning carbon accounting tricks is the minimum for Australia to fulfill its existing climate pledges and does not represent a step up in ambition.

Russia

Earlier this year, president Vladimir Putin signed an executive order to reduce emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2030. That is the more ambitious end of its previous target to cut reduce emissions 25-30% by 2030.

The updated target still allows emissions to rise significantly, as Russia’s emissions remain at about half the level they were in 1990 before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Climate Action Tracker ranks the target as “critically insufficient” to meet the Paris goal and consistent with a pathway towards 4C of warming by the end of the century. The move was not considered “bold” enough to make the cut.

Brazil

Environment minister Ricardo Salles announced this week that Brazil was seeking to join the net zero club, aiming to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. This was an “indicative” target in its updated NDC submitted this week, while the 2030 goal was unchanged.

Campaigners slammed the net zero goal as meaningless without nearer-term action and a distraction from president Jair Bolsonaro’s destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which has surged to a 12-year high.

South Africa

In September, the government approved a goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. But that was not reflected in the detail of the plan, which forecast 5,000 MW of coal power capacity would still be operating in 2050.

Progress would be a coherent plan to phase out coal, with support for workers in the transition.

New Zealand

In April, the government reaffirmed its existing climate plan to cut emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. In its submission to the UN, it said it was waiting for recommendations from its independent Climate Change Commission in early 2021 on how to align its current 2030 plan with its carbon neutrality commitments and the 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement.

At the start of December, the parliament declared “a climate emergency” and prime minister Jacinda Ardern committed to make all government department and institutions carbon neutral by 2025. Amping up the rhetoric was not enough to overcome the timetabling slip.

Saudi Arabia

Middle eastern petrostates do not typically present themselves as climate leaders, so it is no great surprise that Arabian Gulf countries are not listed.

However, it underscores a disconnect between increasingly ambitious carbon-cutting goals elsewhere and continued government plans to expand fossil fuel production.

USA

President-elect Joe Biden made climate action central to his election campaign, but is prohibited from speaking on the world stage before inauguration.

The lame duck in the White House, Donald Trump, showed his contempt for international climate cooperation by pulling out of the Paris Agreement.

Instead, the governors of Massachusetts and Michigan, and mayor of Los Angeles will represent the “we’re still in” camp in the slots reserved for civil society.

The post Parisversaire climate ambition summit: who’s in and who’s out appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate campaigners, negotiators and journalists were letting off steam, after a fortnight of intense negotiations had yielded a long overdue international climate pact.

The Costa Rican diplomat who led the UN climate body was greeted as a hero. Arms around each other’s shoulders, the throng belted out the Queen hit “We are the champions”.

Those self-proclaimed champions of the climate did not always look like they were winning in the five years that followed.

Yet as the anniversary of the Paris Agreement rolls around, there is a sense of renewed hope in multilateralism to close the gaps between ambition and action.

Here are five things the Paris Agreement has achieved — and five things still to work for.

1) Political resilience

There is no doubt that president Donald Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement was a body blow.

For his four-year term, the world’s second highest emitter would not pull its weight in carbon cuts, giving cover to others to slack off.

But the move did not, as some feared it would, lead to an exodus of like-minded nationalists from the pact. Even Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s deforester-in-chief, was persuaded to stay in. The US stood alone — and is set to rejoin under president-elect Joe Biden.

The structure of voluntary national contributions and a common accountability framework, with an ambition “ratchet” every five years, is working more or less as intended.

In parallel, the French presidency of Cop21 made a big deal of engaging with business and subnational leaders, who in some cases made up for a lack of national action.

2) Normalising 1.5C

One of the biggest surprises of Paris was the inclusion of 1.5C as an aspirational limit on global temperature rise.

Long demanded by the most vulnerable island states as essential to their survival, 1.5C had previously been brushed aside as infeasible by bigger powers. 2C was the moderate, reasonable target.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was invited to produce a special report on the science of 1.5C. Published in 2018, it reinforced the difference half a degree would make to millions of lives.

Official recognition of 1.5C did not make it any less of a long shot to get there. But it shifted the onus away from proponents of 1.5C having to defend its feasibility, to proponents of 2C having to defend sacrificing vulnerable communities.

3) Normalising net zero

Net zero emissions is fast becoming a buzzword of 2020, with China, Japan and South Korea joining the EU and UK in setting carbon neutrality goals.

This trend has its roots in the Paris Agreement. It got less attention than the temperature goal at the time, obscured as it was by jargon, but signatories did agree to ultimately go carbon neutral.

The aim is “to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks … in the second half of the century”.

It translates the global warming limit into a more practical milestone, with implications for investments today.

If you are aiming for zero in 30 years, it makes no sense to build a polluting coal plant, oil pipeline or LNG terminal with a typical lifespan of 40 years or more.

4) Clean energy shift

The financing landscape has shifted decisively in favour of clean energy.

Paris sent the signal that clean technology improvements were a worthwhile — and safe — investment, while fossil fuels were increasingly risky. This year’s coronavirus crisis reinforced the message.

In spring 2015, former UN climate chief Yvo de Boer said coal plants were still the “logical choice” for developing countries. In 2020, the notoriously conservative International Energy Agency hailed wind and solar power as more resilient than fossil fuels to a Covid-induced demand slump.

Asian financial institutions are starting to follow their western counterparts in blacklisting coal, a stance recently endorsed by China’s environment ministry.

Clean energy supermajors are overtaking oil companies in terms of market value. Forecasters are naming earlier dates for peak oil demand, with some in the industry entertaining the idea demand may never return to pre-pandemic levels.

5) Institutional change

The Paris Agreement has no central enforcement mechanism. That does not mean it is unenforceable.

Institutions ranging from financial regulators to city authorities are embedding the deal’s targets and principles in their policies, creating new avenues for accountability.

More than 400 public development banks committed to align their activities with the Paris deal and a handful of Asian hold-outs are under increasing pressure to follow suit.

The EU has made compliance with Paris a condition of every free trade agreement struck since 2015 — and Brazil’s backsliding on deforestation is a potential barrier to ratification of its deal with the Mercosur bloc.

Lawyers are citing the deal in court cases around the world. And in the UK, they are testing whether it can be used to block the expansion of Heathrow Airport.

But. Any sense of optimism about the progress driven by the Paris deal must be tempered by the harsh reality of how far there is to go. Here is what has yet to change.

1) Rising emissions

Global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to grow, with a billion tonnes of CO2 added to annual figures between 2015 and 2018.

The trend is dominated by emerging economies in Asia, as incumbent energy industries meet a hunger for development by any means.

A plateau in China’s emissions from 2014-16 raised hopes of decoupling its economic growth from pollution, but the numbers then resumed their rise.

Advanced economies are not cutting emissions fast or consistently enough to offset growth elsewhere.

A drastic reduction in travel and economic activity across much of the world for several months of 2020, to curb the spread of coronavirus, is only projected to cut global energy-related CO2 emissions by 7% year-on-year.

That pace would need to be sustained in the absence of a deadly pandemic to meet the 1.5C goal.

2) Rising temperatures

As emissions rise, so too do temperatures. 2020 is set to be 1.2C warmer than pre-industrial times and among the three hottest years on record, despite the cooling effect of La Nina.

The word “unprecedented” keeps coming up in weather coverage. Wildfires in the Arctic. Cyclones hitting parts of Africa that are not prepared. Droughts and floods confounding subsistence farmers the world over.

Scientists have got more confident and assertive about attributing these extremes to global heating. In the case of one deadly Japanese heatwave in 2019, modellers found it simply would not have happened without human influence on the climate.

The atmosphere will keep serving up new records for generations. Temperatures will not stabilise until emissions reach net zero, because carbon dioxide builds up in the air.

3) Rising fossil fuel production

The phrase “fossil fuels” does not appear in the Paris Agreement. Nor do the words “coal”, “oil” or “[methane] gas”.

To meet the Paris goals, the vast majority of hydrocarbons need to stay in the ground — but that was too blunt a reality to concede for countries economically reliant on them.

While the coronavirus crisis has cast considerable uncertainty over the future for coal, oil and gas markets, many governments are doubling down on polluting sectors.

Producers have a perverse incentive to exploit their reserves quickly while they still can — a clearance sale. That carries risks for workers, communities and citizens dependent on oil revenues, as well as for the climate.

With Paris ill-equipped to address this dynamic, some are calling for an Opec-style deal for a managed decline of fossil fuel production.

4) The vulnerable suffer

Within and between countries, it is poor and marginalised people who are most exposed to the climate crisis.

The Paris Agreement is not all about cutting emissions. It covers adapting to the impacts of climate change and acknowledges that some people will experience loss and damage that cannot be mitigated against or adapted to. It calls on developed countries to support poorer nations with finance, technology and training.

Climate finance flows from rich governments have increased on the face of it. But the majority is delivered as loans, not grants, adding to the debt burden of developing countries. Greening growth in middle income countries eternally takes priority over protecting the poorest from a problem not of their making.

There is no compensation for victims of climate disaster, only talking shops and insurance schemes they must pay the premiums for.

More solidarity is needed to make the deal work for vulnerable communities.

5) International transport gets away

Early drafts of the Paris Agreement explicitly called on the UN bodies responsible for international aviation and shipping to set sectoral emission reduction targets and policies to deliver them. That text did not make the final cut.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao) and International Maritime Organization went on to negotiate climate deals, but neither are aligned with a 1.5C or 2C global warming limit.

Initial steps to implement those deals further watered down ambition, while ICAO lashed out at climate critics on social media.

In both forums, industry dominates while civil society observers and media operate under tight restrictions. Policymakers belong to the same elite class as frequent flyers, while shipping is out of sight, out of mind.

The two sectors’ carbon footprint, currently around 5-6% of global emissions, is set to grow and will increasingly stand out in the absence of stronger action.

The post After five years, here are five things the Paris Agreement achieved — and didn’t appeared first on Climate Home News.

EU leaders are expected to agree on cutting collective emissions by at least 55% from 1990 levels, up from 40% currently, at a critical two-day Council meeting starting Thursday.

Member states are under pressure to approve the new target ahead of a virtual climate ambition summit on Saturday co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France to celebrate five years since the Paris Agreement was signed.

“The EU’s leadership and competitiveness are at stake,” said Manon Dufour, head of think tank E3G’s office in Brussels, adding that EU Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen could not arrive empty-handed at the summit.

While the proposed climate target is relatively uncontroversial, it risks becoming a victim of heated negotiations over a €1.8 trillion financial package, which includes €750 billion in coronavirus recovery funds.

The European Commission has proposed making access to the funds conditional on respecting the EU’s rule of law principles.

The clause could cost Poland and Hungary billions of euros, with both countries accused of backsliding on democratic standards enshrined in the EU’s founding treaties, including on the independence of the judicial system, the media and other institutions.

They have threatened to veto the budget, which would hold up funds to support countries meet the enhanced 2030 climate target. This includes support for communities dependent on the fossil fuel industry to transition to new sectors of employment, which would benefit workers in both countries.

“It’s possible that if there is no deal on the rule of law, there is no deal on the climate target,” Dufour told Climate Home News.

‘Looking for positivity’: Parisversaire party to revive momentum on climate

In a joint declaration, Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán said they respected common European values but that neither country “will accept any proposal that is deemed unacceptable by the other”.

Writing in Euractiv, Morawiecki said the current proposal threatened “the future of the entire union” at “a time of great test for Europe”.

They are heading for a showdown with more liberal member states and Commission officials on Thursday.

“The level of negotiations between Brussels and Warsaw has never been as high as it is now,” said Justyna Piszczatowska, a Polish financial journalist specialising in the energy sector.

The absence of an EU announcement at Saturday’s ambition summit would dampen momentum for climate action and be deeply embarrassing for the union.

Both Von der Leyen and German chancellor Angela Merkel, who holds the EU Council’s rotating presidency, have made achieving a climate deal at the meeting a top priority. The increased 2030 target would put the EU on a credible path towards its 2050 climate neutrality goal and drive green investments for the next decade.

“It will be a very bad look for the EU not to agree on a new target if the EU fails where the UK has succeeded,” Dufour said, citing the UK’s recent pledge to deepen emissions cuts to 68% between 1990 and 2030.

Marcel Beukeboom, climate envoy for the Netherlands, told Climate Home the EU “wants to shine” on the global stage as the incoming US administration is about to reverse four years of retreat of climate action under Donald Trump.

Malaysian bank to phase out coal finance, in a victory for campaigners

As Poland and Hungary focus their political capital on fighting the conditionality to accessing EU funds, observers fear it will leave little time to negotiate on the climate issues.

In private, European negotiators have expressed confidence a resolution can be found and leaders will approve enhanced 2030 ambition.

The latest draft on the 2030 climate target presented to member states on Monday, recommended the EU Council adopt a “binding” 2030 target of “net domestic reduction of at least 55%” from 1990 level – reflecting the Commission’s proposal earlier this year.

While there is widespread support for cutting emissions by 55%, including from eastern European countries, Poland, Czechia and Hungary have pushed back on the inclusion of “at least” in the target and called for additional financial support to meet it.

In an annotated version of the Council’s draft conclusion, seen by Climate Home, the three countries demand the extension of EU funds to support their energy transition beyond 2027 and full flexibility over how the money is spent.

They argue nuclear energy and methane gas should be recognised as “mid-term low carbon transition” energy sources.

Meanwhile, a small alliance of progressive member states are opposing the “net” in the target, which would count carbon sucked from the atmosphere and stored by forests and soils towards meeting the 55% reduction goal. This could reduce real emissions cuts needed from energy and industrial sectors by five or more percentage points, according to some estimates.

The post Poland, Hungary threaten to derail EU plans to raise 2030 climate ambition appeared first on Climate Home News.

More than 70 heads of state, plus business and civil society leaders, will take the stage of a virtual climate summit on 12 December – five years after countries agreed in Paris to limit global heating “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C by the end of the century.

The event is the first test of the Paris deal, under which countries agreed to ramp up their – collectively insufficient – contributions every five years to meet the temperature goals.

Since then, emissions have continued to rise and climate impacts have intensified. Many governments were already running late with their climate planning when the Covid crisis hit, diverting resources into healthcare, social security and business bailouts.

With no UN climate negotiations being held this year and the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, postponed to November 2021, the UN, the UK and France, with support from Chile and Italy, are co-hosting the summit to galvanise political leadership.

“Many people are looking for positivity… and a look forward to 2021 as a year of change for the better,” Marcel Beukeboom, climate envoy for the Netherlands, told Climate Home News, in anticipation of the event.

“We need political momentum… that is what is much needed,” added Agripina Jenkins, a climate diplomat for Costa Rica.

Guterres: UN will build global coalition for carbon neutrality in 2021

While every national leader has been invited to submit a pre-recorded speech of up to two minutes, only those that can demonstrate increased ambition will be guaranteed a slot, with priority going to the most transformative announcements.

That could mean a strengthened 2030 target, a net zero commitment, post-2020 climate finance pledge or more robust programme to adapt to climate impacts. “There will be no space for general statements,” according to a logistical note seen by Climate Home.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries are expected to submit new or improved 2030 climate plans and publish long-term decarbonisation strategies before the end of the year.

As of Monday, only 16 countries representing 4.6% of global emissions had formally submitted a new or updated 2030 target to the UN, according to the World Resources Institute.

A number of countries are expected to come forward with enhanced climate ambition at the summit and edge the world closer to its climate goals. Formal submissions to the UN could follow in the next few weeks.

UK announces stronger 2030 emissions target, setting the bar for ambition summit

There has been movement from key players on long-term commitments in recent months.

China set its sights on carbon neutrality by 2060, while Japan and South Korea unveiled 2050 net zero goals. Joe Biden was elected as US president on a platform to decarbonise the world’s largest economy by 2050.

If those promises are followed through, global warming could be limited to 2.1C by the end of the century, according to analysis by Climate Action Tracker, putting the Paris goals within striking distance.

Sébastien Treyer, executive director of the French climate think-tank Iddri, described “cautious hope” at signs the deal signed in Paris was delivering greater emissions cuts “at the slow pace of change that characterises international relations but also with sudden accelerations like the one that we have seen in the last six months”.

This long-term ambition is yet to be reflected into the world’s largest emitters’ shorter-term targets, he noted, adding the political dynamic for enhancing ambition was “fragile” and much more work was need to make these pledges “an economic reality”.

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While a host of announcements are expected throughout the five-hour summit, its success rests on what large emitters are ready to deliver.

The EU is on a tight schedule to agree on cutting emissions by at least 55% from 1990 to 2030, up from 40% currently, at a Council meeting starting two days before the summit. Thorny discussions on the union’s recovery package risk derailing the climate agenda.

Chinese sources have told Climate Home Beijing is on track to present its updated 2030 climate plan before the end of the year, but it is not clear whether president Xi Jinping will reveal further details at this forum or simply reiterate the net zero pledge.

Last week, the UK Cop26 host accepted the recommendation of its climate advisors and agreed to cut emissions 68% between 1990 and 2030.“We’re going to challenge world leaders not only to match our ambition but to set out exactly how they plan to do so,” prime minister Boris Johnson said in a video message ahead of the summit.

While Donald Trump is not expected to be part of the event, and Biden is not able to participate as president-elect, US sub-national players and incoming members of the new administration may make an appearance.

Czech commission calls for coal phase-out by 2038

Among some climate campaigners, there is skepticism another leaders’ summit will deliver anything else than a string of promises and speeches.

Sriram Madhusoodanan, deputy campaigns director at Corporate Accountability told Climate Home: “We’ve seen a number of big fanfare summit since Paris with cycle of speeches by heads of states but not really anything meaningful come out in terms of the demands that civil society has been talking about to stay at 1.5C.”

Without the possibility for civil society to directly respond to leader’s announcements, the summit could be a space for greenwashing, he added.

While the event may draw attention to “hopeful signs,” “we are not transitioning at the pace required to meet our goal,”  Yamide Dagnet, director of climate negotiations at the World Resources Institute, told Climate Home. Countries havee yet to deliver coherent action that includes emissions cuts, adaptation and support for vulnerable nations, she said.

The Cop26 unit has asked donor countries to bring new finance pledges, but there are few signs of that materialising. The UK is cutting its own aid budget in the wake of the pandemic.

“This is where I am more worried and disappointed,” said Dagnet. “At a time when inequality and poverty are increasing… we are falling short on solidarity.”

The post ‘Looking for positivity’: Parisversaire party to revive momentum on climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

That is the warning of the Production Gap report, a major UN-backed analysis published on Wednesday, which calls on countries to coordinate an equitable and managed wind-down of fossil fuel production.

The coronavirus pandemic and restrictions to halt its spread have led to significant short-term drops in coal, oil and gas production this year, with global fossil fuel output falling by an estimated 7% from 2019 to 2020.

But while the pandemic cast uncertainty over long-term government planning, countries’ pre-Covid-19 plans and their stimulus packages point to a wide gap between projected fossil fuel production and action needed to meet global climate goals.

To be consistent with a 1.5C pathway – the tougher goal of the Paris climate agreement – global fossil fuel production would have to decline 6% per year between 2020 and 2030, and 2% annually to align with 2C, according to the report.

That means global coal production would need to fall by 11% annually, oil by 4% and gas by 3% in the next decade to keep to the 1.5C temperature target. Instead, countries’ projected fossil fuel production points to an average annual increase of 2% in the next nine years.

WMO: Siberian heatwave put 2020 among three hottest years on record

On that trajectory, by 2030, fossil fuel production would be more than double levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C – in line with projections made in 2019.

UN chief Antonio Guterres cited the findings in a “state of the planet” speech at Columbia University, describing the post-pandemic stimulus as a “moral test”.

“The trillions of dollars needed for Covid recovery is money that we are borrowing from future generations. Every last penny,” Guterres said. “We cannot use those resources to lock in policies that burden them with a mountain of debt on a broken planet.”

The analysis by four major research organisations and the UN Environment Programme is based on government data from eight major fossil fuel producing countries accounting for 60% of global supply: Australia, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Norway, Russia and the US. All but India updated their production plans ahead of the pandemic.

Several countries not counted in the headline figures also signalled an intention to increase oil production: Mexico anticipated 50% growth to 2030, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates each planned for a 70% increase, and Argentina aimed for a 130% rise. Data for Saudi Arabia was not available.

As climate policy has been “near-exclusively” focused on reducing fossil fuel demand, it has created “a deep disconnect” between countries’ climate goals and net zero commitments, and their plans for energy production, the report finds.

Ballooning debt cripples poor countries’ hopes of green recovery from Covid

With trillions of dollars pumped into the Covid-19 recovery, the report calls on governments to plan for “a deliberate and managed wind-down of fossil fuel production… in a sustainable and equitable way”.

Instead, the world’s 20 largest economies have committed $235 billion of Covid-19 stimulus money to sectors that support fossil fuel production and consumption, including airlines and car manufacturers. In contrast, $151bn was earmarked for clean energy measures.

Governments that heavily subsidised coal, oil or gas production prior to the pandemic largely doubled down on support to those sectors this year.

Ivetta Gerasimchuk, a lead author from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, said the economic shock of the pandemic had demonstrated the vulnerability of many fossil fuel-dependent regions and communities.

Developing countries bore the brunt of a fall in energy demand, slashing government spending in Nigeria by 25% for example.

Comment: Rich countries, remember your $100bn climate commitment to the world’s poor

A managed decline of fossil fuel production requires international cooperation and support for poorer countries that are most dependent on oil revenues, such as Angola, Venezuela, Nigeria and Iraq, the report says.

Richer nations with more diverse economies, such as Australia, Canada and the US, could be expected to take more rapid action.

A coordinated global approach would minimize the social costs of the transition, ensure market stability and give a clear signal to producers, consumers and investors, the authors argue. The EU’s Just Transition Mechanism is cited as a potential model.

UN Climate Change would be an obvious forum for “an alliance of first movers” on supply-side climate policy, Cleo Verkuijl, a lead author and research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute, told Climate Home News.

This could build on the work of the Powering Past Coal alliance, which is working to advance the transition from unabated coal power generation to clean energy, she added. A global stocktake in 2023 could also take stock of progress made towards ending support for coal, oil and gas production.

‘Inverse Opec’: Kamala Harris plan to wind down oil production awaits its moment

And as countries are expected to present tougher climate plans at the end of the year and ahead of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, in November 2021, “they have the opportunity to incorporate targets and measures to decrease fossil fuel production into their plans,” Verkuijl said.

Nick Mabey, chief executive of think-tank E3G, told Climate Home that Cop26 had to mark “the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel economy” and “the beginning of the architecture of the clean economy”.

That, he said, will require an end to the global pipeline of coal projects and for a significant number of major economies’ financial institutions either banning fossil fuel finance or aligning it to Paris-compliant pathways.

In recent years, researchers have explored the potential for new multilateral fora to create a space for coordinated a global transition, with ideas such as an “inverse Opec” and a fossil-fuel non-proliferation treaty.

During the Democratic primary, US vice president-elect Kamala Harris proposed to host “the first-ever global negotiation of the cooperative managed decline of fossil fuel production”. The idea was not taken forward in the Biden-Harris platform.

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In a major speech to Columbia University in New York on Wednesday, Guterres elevated climate action and the restoration of nature to one of the most important tasks for the international community and the multilateral order that underpins the UN’s work.

“We are facing a devastating pandemic, new heights of global heating, new lows of ecological degradation and new setbacks in our work towards global goals for more equitable, inclusive and sustainable development. To put it simply, the state of the planet is broken,” he said.

Humanity’s assault on the planet, he said, is jeopardising progress eliminating poverty, threatening food security and making the UN’s peace effort more difficult.

“Making peace with nature is the defining task of the 21st century. It must be the top, top priority for everyone, everywhere,” he said, adding that the recovery from Covid-19 was “an epic policy… and moral test”.

To that end, “the central objective of the United Nations for 2021 is to build a truly global coalition for carbon neutrality. I firmly believe that 2021 can be a new kind of leap year — the year of a quantum leap towards carbon neutrality,” he said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found global emissions needed to fall 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2050 to keep the world on track to limit global heating to 1.5C – the tougher goal of the Paris accord.

WMO: Siberian heatwave put 2020 among three hottest years on record

Guterres’ speech comes as a growing number of countries, states and businesses are setting net zero emissions goals. China, Japan, South Korea, South Africa and Canada have all announced net zero commitments this year.

The EU has already committed to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050 and Joe Biden was last month elected president in the US promising to set the same goal.

Analysis by Climate Action Tracker, an independent group of researchers and scientists, found that if all governments meet their carbon neutrality pledges, including China and Biden’s incoming administration, warming could be limited to 2.1C by 2100 — within striking distance of the Paris temperature target. Current policies set a course for 2.9C.

In total, 127 countries, responsible for around 63% of emissions are considering, or have adopted, net zero targets.

“We must turn this momentum into a movement,” Guterres said.

Guterres called on every country, city, financial institution and company to adopt plans to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and cut emissions 45% by 2030.

But he warned pledges “must pass a credibility test,” singling out the shipping sector for failing to set policies in line with the ambition needed. Earlier this month, countries approved a package of fuel efficiency measures expected to shave just 1% off shipping emissions this decade.

UK scrambles to decide first post-Brexit climate pledge to the Paris Agreement

But while momentum is growing for achieving climate neutrality in the next three decades, short-term plans to 2030 are not reflecting that ambition and emissions are still growing.

Two major reports by the World Meteorological Organisation and UN Environment Programme published on Wednesday found that while 2020 is on track to be among the three hottest years on record, governments are supporting fossil fuel sectors.

To stay within reach of the 1.5C goal, fossil fuel production needs to fall by average 6% every year in the next decade, according to the Production Gap report. Instead, before Covid-19, fossil-fuel producing countries planned to increase their output by a global annual average of 2% to 2030 — heading the world “in the opposite direction,” Guterres said.

In recent years, the UN secretary general has taken it upon himself to raise climate action to the very top of the global agenda, taking a stand against rising nationalism and maintaining momentum in the wake of the US retreat from the Paris climate agreement.

He has rocked traditional UN processes, pointing the finger at governments with unusually prescriptive demands for a UN chief: tax carbon, stop subsiding fossil fuels and stop building new coal plants.

The world’s major emitters failed to answer his call to bring concrete plans, not speeches to cut emissions to net zero during a special UN summit for climate action in New York last year. But leaders are expected to show more progress at a summit co-hosted by the UN on 12 December, and in the run-up to next year’s Cop26 negotiations in the UK.

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Host to the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow in November 2021, the UK is expected to announce a 2030 climate target ahead of a virtual event it is co-hosting with the UN and France to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement.

The UK has asked world leaders to present tougher commitments on cutting emissions, adapting to climate impacts and providing climate finance at the summit. Only countries that have announced new and ambitious action in 2020 will be given a platform.

“And yes, the UK will be setting out its own nationally determined contribution metric ahead of 12 December,” Cop26 president designate and the UK’s business minister Alok Sharma, told an event held by London-based think-tank Green Alliance on Friday.

Having previously submitted a joint “nationally determined contribution” (NDC) to Paris as part of the EU, Brexit Britain is now going alone.

The timing has given the government a headache. Official advice from the Climate Change Committee was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and is due to land on 9 December – just three days before the summit.

The Committee is expected to recommend an emissions reduction target in the high sixties, with sources close to the process discussing cuts of at least 68% from 1990 to 2030. The government is not obliged to adopt the Committee’s number but would have a lot of explaining to do if it went against the independent advice.

Comment: Rich countries, remember your $100bn climate commitment to the world’s poor

Progressive EU member states are urging the UK to announce its new climate plan ahead of a meeting of the European Council 10-11 December, to put pressure on the bloc’s laggards to agree a new goal of cutting emissions to at least 55% from 1990 levels by 2030, up from 40% currently.

If the UK is to use its leverage as Cop26 host to raise ambition, it will need to demonstrate its 2030 target represents a real progression of its carbon-cutting efforts.

While a rapid phaseout of coal power has allowed the UK to stay within its carbon budgets to 2022, a policy gap opens up later this decade. The Committee has previously warned the UK is off pace for its old target of 80% emissions cuts by 2050, let alone the recently adopted net zero goal. Action is needed across sectors including transport, buildings and heavy industry to get back on track.

London-based think tank Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit found that if the UK simply translated its existing carbon budgets into an emissions target, it would be a 64% cut from 1990 levels by 2030.

A headline target in the high sixties would represent a strengthening of that trajectory, but by some analysis stop short of compatibility with a 1.5C global warming limit – the Paris accord’s most ambitious goal.

Ryan Wilson, a climate and energy policy analyst at Climate Analytics, a Climate Action Tracker partner organisation, told Climate Home that to align with 1.5C, the UK should cut domestic emissions around 70% by 2030.

Taking into account the UK’s historic responsibility in causing climate change and its capability to act, Wilson said the UK’s contribution needed to be equivalent to achieving net zero emissions by around 2030. Some of that could be delivered through finance or “other means of support to achieve emission reductions abroad beyond those required at the domestic level”.

Boris Johnson has further to go on climate to show true leadership

Earlier this month, the Labour opposition’s shadow climate minister Matthew Pennycook told Climate Home the UK Treasury was considering a range of 61-68% for a 2030 target. He added that anything below the high 60s would be insufficient.

Campaigners have demanded more. WWF has called for the UK to reduce its emissions “at least in the region of 70%” by 2030 and Greenpeace for 75% cuts.

Business groups, young people, faith leaders, academics and health professionals wrote to Prime Minister Boris Johnson last month to demand he set a 2030 goal that is line with global efforts to limit global heating by 1.5C.

On Saturday, Scotland pledged to publish an indicative climate plan to reduce emissions 75% by 2030. Scotland, where nationalists have revived a debate about independence, will be covered by a UK-wide NDC but has set its own goal to cut emissions to net zero by 2045.

For the whole of the UK, the government has yet to publish a comprehensive decarbonisation strategy.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson outlined a 10-point plan to spur a “green industrial revolution”. The measures sent a political signal but were not enough to put the UK on track to meet its 2050 goal. Instead, it closed just over half the emissions gap to stay within the UK’s carbon budgets to 2032, according to analysis by Carbon Brief.

A spending review last week did little to boost the £3-4 billion of additional funding pledged within Johnson’s £12bn package of measures. In his speech, chancellor Rishi Sunak barely mentioned climate change, pushed ahead with a £27bn road-building programme and announced cuts to overseas aid.

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On Wednesday, UK chancellor Rishi Sunak announced plans to slash the aid budget to 0.5% of national income from next year until “the fiscal situation allows” the country to return to its previous 0.7% commitment.

Sunak told parliament “sticking rigidly” to the 0.7% pledge was “difficult to justify to the British people… during a domestic fiscal emergency, when we need to prioritise our limited resources on jobs and public services”. Of the 30 developed countries, mostly in Europe, signed up to spend 0.7% of income on aid, the UK was one of only five to meet the target last year.

A commitment to spend £11.6 billion on climate finance for developing countries over 2021-25 will be protected, according to an accompanying document.

Nonetheless, the move went down badly with poorer nations, many of which are struggling to fund basic services as their debts mount during the coronavirus crisis.

Sonam Wangdi, of Bhutan and chair of a group of 47 least developed countries (LDCs), tweeted that vulnerable countries needed more, not less, support.

In a time when #LDCs need support more than ever, #ODAfunding cuts take us in the wrong direction. With global problems of #COVID & #climatechange, we need more solidarity – not less. As @COP26 President, we call on the UK to lead, not retreat @hmtreasury @FCDOGovUK

— LDC Chair (@LDCChairUNFCCC) November 24, 2020

Under the Paris Agreement, donor countries are expected to submit information about their climate finance pledges beyond 2020 by the end of the year. Next November’s Cop26 in Glasgow, UK, will also launch negotiations on a new collective finance goal to be agreed before 2025.

Developing countries need at least $400 billion a year to cut emissions and cope with intensifying climate impacts, Dipak Dasgupta, a former Indian climate negotiator and distinguished fellow at The Energy and Resource Institute, told Climate Home News.

Boris Johnson has further to go on climate to show true leadership

More than a decade ago, rich countries agreed to collectively mobilise at least $100 billion a year from 2020 to help developing countries green their growth and cope with the impacts of climate change. The latest data compiled by OECD from 2018 put the figure delivered at $78.9 billion.

The report found developing nations were expected to pay back nearly three quarters of the money, leading to concerns over the role climate finance in contributing to some countries’ unsustainable debt levels. Anti-poverty charity Oxfam described it as “an overlooked scandal”.

At Cop26, donor countries will be held to account for the $100bn and called on to multiply their support.

“We are at a crucial moment when the conversation on the public and private finance is reaching a tipping point,” said Dasgupta. “$100bn [annually] is no longer the relevant number. The scale of finance that we need is so much bigger.”

“The new climate finance goal must be based on science and reflect the actual needs of developing countries,” Sonam Wangdi, of Bhutan and chair of a group of 47 Least Developed Countries (LDCs), told Climate Home by email. “With Cop26 delayed a year, these discussions will need to progress quickly.”

LDCs alone require $93.7bn per year to fully fund their climate plans, Wangdi added. “Considering only 14% of climate finance is currently going to LDCs, the existing $100bn goal is clearly far from enough, even if it was being met.”

Sustainable Energy for All’s latest report found that “chronic underinvestment” in energy access was putting the world decades off track to ensure access to affordable and sustainable energy for the world’s poorest by 2030.

Only one third of annual investments needed to achieve electricity supply to all homes were tracked in 2018 and less than 3% of the finance needed to ensure global clean cooking access, the report found.

In Bangladesh, the marginalised Munda face extra barriers to climate adaptation

As Cop26 host, it falls to the UK to move the dial on climate finance and rally donor countries to commit to more funding beyond 2020.

Speaking at finance summit hosted by France earlier this month, Alok Sharma, Cop26 president designate and UK’s business minister, said there was “much further to go” to meet the $100bn goal and urged donor countries to “match [the UK’s] ambition”.

Dharshan Wignarajah, deputy director for the finance and resilience work of the Cop26 team, said last week the UK was making “a strong diplomatic push” to encourage the top 16 donor countries to come forward with new pledges at an ambition summit on 12 December, co-hosted by the UK.

With just over two weeks before the event, which marks the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, Tom Evans, of think tank E3G, said the UK aid cut was “a major strategic mistake” and would erode the trust between the Cop26 host and developing countries.

Andrew Norton, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, agreed it sent the wrong signal to climate vulnerable countries.

The UK is “deeply damaging its fight against the climate crisis and nature loss” and risks “undermining its capacity to provide global leadership as it prepares to take over the G7 presidency and host the UN climate summit next year,” he said. 

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Lorena Gonzalez, a climate finance expert at the World Resources Institute, told Climate Home there was “a leadership vacuum in the climate finance space”.

The return of the US to climate cooperation under Joe Biden “will bring positive dynamics,” she said, but the UK needed to do more to ensure countries deliver on the full financial architecture to implement the Paris Agreement.

Dasgupta said the UK “could be playing a leadership role” in changing the conversation on climate finance to reflect the scale of investments needed to finance the energy transition.

“There may not be new finance commitments [this year] but we need to recognise that much more finance is needed and donor countries need to step up,” he said.

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The world’s largest emitter is reviewing a proposal for enhancing its 2030 climate plan – also known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC) – ahead of a UN deadline for countries to present new or improved plans.

President Xi Jinping took the world by surprise in September by announcing China would aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and peak its emissions before 2030.

Speaking at a BRICS summit alongside Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa this week, Xi said: “Recently, I announced at the UN China’s initiative to scale up its nationally determined contribution…. You can count on China to keep its promise.

“To tackle climate change, we must never relax our efforts. We must implement the Paris Agreement in good faith, stick to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and provide more help to developing countries.”

Bolsonaro’s attack on the Amazon breaches Brazil’s constitution, climate lawyers argue

“There is a strong likelihood that China will present [its NDC] by the end of the year,” Li Shuo, senior climate and energy officer at Greenpeace East Asia, told Climate Home News, adding that the timing of the announcement and level of ambition remained uncertain.

To drive momentum ahead of the Cop26 climate talks in November 2021, countries have been invited to present “bold” climate plans at a summit co-hosted by the UN, the UK and France to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on 12 December.

Only leaders that can demonstrate new commitments to cut emissions and prepare for intensifying climate impacts will be allowed a platform. The UK Cop26 presidency has also called for donor countries to come with new finance pledges.

China’s climate neutrality announcement alone would meet the threshold for President Xi to take one of a dozen two-minute slots for leaders to showcase their ambition.

To match its long-term ambition for carbon neutrality, Beijing should announce a 2030 plan that steps up action in the near term and peaks emissions closer to 2025, Li said.

“For President’s Xi recent [carbon neutrality] announcement to be seen credibly, China must also do more in the short term,” said Kevin Rudd, president of the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Next month’s anniversary summit for the Paris Agreement provides an opportunity for Beijing to further clarify its position.”

Peaking emissions by 2025 and rapidly reducing them thereafter would put China on a decarbonisation pathway compatible with the 1.5C goal of Paris Agreement, according to analysis by the Asia Society Policy Institute and Climate Analytics published earlier this week.

Russia resists tougher climate targets in dash for Arctic gas

This would imply phasing out coal-fired power entirely by 2040 and strengthening a number of components in China’s 2030 climate plan, including its carbon intensity target.

Based on current GDP projections, the study estimates carbon intensity would need to be reduced by 87-93% from 2005 levels by 2030 – up from the current 60-65% target.

China is already on track to overachieve its current target and peak emissions before 2030. A study in the journal Nature Communications found that China could probably peak its emissions in 2026 based on existing policies.

The NDC is being developed in tandem with the next five-year plan, which determines the direction of China’s economic development to 2025.

A study co-published by Draworld, an independent energy research organisation and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air on Friday, found that to align its policy with its long-term carbon neutrality goal, China needs to stop building new coal-fired power plants after 2020.

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Instead, the rate of wind and solar power expansion should at least double to more than 100GW annually in the next 10 years. The power sector, the country’s largest source of CO2 emissions, will need need to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Many provincial governments are backing new coal plants to create construction jobs, even in places where there is excess power capacity on the network.

The report found that around 130GW of China’s total 1,000GW coal-fired capacity is redundant, yet power industry players are calling for at least 300GW of additional coal capacity to come online by 2030.

Zhang Shuwei, lead author and chief economist of the Draworld Environment Research Center, said the proposed expansion of the coal sector, which is “riddled with overcapacity and low returns on assets” will result in more than $300 billion of stranded assets.

The medium-term expansion of the coal power sector threatens China’s ability to ensure a managed decline of coal and a transition to renewable and would require “a cliff fall of coal power generation after 2030,”  Zhang said.

The post China is set to meet UN climate deadline, experts say, but coal pathway is uncertain appeared first on Climate Home News.

It was only in September last year that Vladimir Putin used executive powers to formally endorse the Paris climate agreement, under which countries have committed to limit global heating “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C by the end of the century.

Since then, Moscow has done little to align its climate plan with the Paris deal. Instead, it has continued to support fossil fuel expansion, spending $8.4 billion to prop up its oil and gas industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Earlier this month, Putin signed another executive order to reduce emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2030. That is the more ambitious end of its existing target but still allows emissions to rise significantly, as Russia’s emissions plummeted following the collapse of the Soviet Union and remain at about half the level they were in 1990.

Climate Action Tracker ranks the target as “critically insufficient” to meet the Paris goal and consistent with a pathway towards 4C of warming by the end of the century.

With China, Japan and South Korea recently joining the club of nations aiming to cut their emissions to net zero by the middle of the century, Russia could be one of the last major developed economies to decarbonise, Ryan Wilson, a climate and energy policy analyst at Climate Analytics, told Climate Home News.

EIB approves €1 trillion green investment plan to become ‘climate bank’

A draft long-term climate strategy published in March shows the government is considering reducing its emissions by up to 48% from 1990 levels by 2050 under an “intensive scenario”. This would allow Russia’s emissions to continue to rise for at least another nine years before reducing them just above 2017 levels — far from the 2050 net zero goal demanded by the UN.

Russia would achieve carbon neutrality “in the second half of the 21^st century, closer to its end,” the draft said.

Under a baseline scenario proposed for adoption, emissions would fall by 36% compared to 1990 levels – equivalent to 26% above 2017 levels. Emissions cuts would be achieved by boosting energy efficiency and reducing forest clearance.

Russia’s draft long term decarbonisation strategy published in March. Analysis of Skolkovo Energy Centre, Moscow. 

The country is not on track to meet its 2024 target of generating 4.5% of its energy from renewables, excluding hydropower – one of the lowest targets in the world, Wilson said.

Russia “has shown the least interest in taking the kind of action that most of the rest of the world has agreed to. It sits outside the spirit and intent of the Paris Agreement,” he added.

“There has been a lack of pressure [on Russia] as a result of their intransigence on this issue. The expectations are just so low. They are doing the bare minimum.”

Tracker: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

While political pressure may be lacking, a move away from fossil fuels in the European Union, Russia’s biggest gas export market, poses an economic threat. Brussels is considering a carbon border tax on imports and no longer considers gas power to be a “sustainable” or “transition” investment.

“There is an existential threat to Russia’s gas industry regarding the European energy transition,” Sergey Kapitonov, gas analyst at the Skolkovo Energy Center in Moscow, told CHN. “Coal is not the only evil now. Natural gas [demand] has already started to decline in some places.”

In response, Russia is turning its attention east. With large Asian economies expected to turn away from coal to meet their net zero goals, Russia, the world’s top energy exporter, is banking on a surge in natural gas demand.

The vast majority of Russia’s gas reserves are located above the Arctic circle, a region that is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, with temperatures reaching a scorching 38C in June.

The government plans to grow its liquified natural gas (LNG) production in the Arctic ten-fold between 2018 and 2035, according to its 2035 Arctic strategy published last month, with the Yamal peninsula in northwest Siberia the focus of recent LNG developments.

The melting Arctic sea ice will  allow to ships to export LNG to Asian markets across the Northern sea route. By 2035, Russia hopes to increase the volume of maritime cargo transportation in the Arctic more than four-fold.

First named Cop26 sponsors are big investors in offshore wind – and a gas plant

“In the mind of Russian policy makers, gas is still destined to play a huge role. They say that coal is the fuel of the past and natural gas is the fuel of tomorrow,” Kapitonov said.

“It’s a risky game… Russia has to play” to monetise its huge gas reserves, he added. “It’s the destiny of these resource-production nations.”

LNG exports to China are already on the rise and gas exports are expected to grow by 10% during the 2020-2021 heating season, according to Chinese state-owned oil and gas company Sinopec.

In anticipation of growing demand, Russian state-owned Gazprom has started a feasibility study for the construction of a second gas pipeline between eastern Siberia and China.

“If China opens its domestic market to Russian gas, it could become its biggest market,” said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace Russia’s energy programme. But Russia faces competition from wind and solar power, as well as Australian and Qatari LNG, he added.

Investing in greenfield oil and gas Arctic projects is “economically suicidal,” said Chuprov. “It means Russia is still in the 20th century and doesn’t understand that it needs its own green deal.”

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Indra Øverland, head of the Centre for Energy Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, told Climate Home “Russia’s dependence on oil and gas exports is leaving them vulnerable” to an international move away from fossil fuels.

“Russia still has its head in the sand,” he said, describing it as Russia’s “Kodak moment,” blind to the impact global climate policies will have on its economy.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this month, energy minister Alexander Novak – since promoted to deputy prime minister – said Russia planned to become a global leader in producing “clean burning hydrogen”.

At present, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels in a process that emits carbon dioxide. Russia is working on technology to capture the CO2, Novak said, and can also produce hydrogen by hydrolysis using renewable energy.

Yuriy Melnikov, senior analyst on the power sector at the Skolkovo Energy Center in Moscow, was sceptical. He told Climate Home that in the absence of ambitious climate targets, Russian businesses had little incentive to invest in green hydrogen.

For Chuprov, of Greenpeace, Putin’s support for the oil and gas industry allows him to exert political control over the handful of oligarchs that runs it – and is therefore unlikely to change. “Phasing out oil and gas is phasing out that political system,” he said.

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But regardless of his domestic emissions performance, the diplomatic weight of the US presidency could put pressure climate laggards on the international stage to step up.

Biden threatened to “name and shame global climate outlaws” if he won the White House. That could usher in a more confrontational era of climate diplomacy.

Outgoing president Donald Trump’s dismissal of the climate threat gave cover to governments slow-walking climate action. In contrast, Biden has committed to use “every tool of American foreign policy to push the rest of the world to raise their ambitions alongside the United States”.

In his climate platform, Biden said his administration would publish a “Global Climate Change Report” ranking countries’ climate performances.

The report overseen by the US State Department would “hold countries to account for meeting, or failing to meet, their Paris commitments and for other steps that promote or undermine global climate solutions”.

Biden will have to put his own house in order, if the US is not to top the list, as the only country to exit the Paris Agreement. But as the Biden administration settles in, a number of nations could soon be feeling the heat.

Australia

Australian firefighters tackling bushfires in the state of Victoria (Photo: Robdownunder/Flickr)

The US is a longstanding economic and diplomatic ally of Australia against mounting Chinese influence in the Pacific region.

But Scott Morrison has repeatedly refused to step up the country’s climate ambition, putting him on a collision course with a Biden administration.

As China, Japan and South Korea – three of Australia’s largest coal export markets – pledge to cut emissions to net zero and UK prime minister Boris Johnson urges him to bring a “bold” climate plan to next year’s Cop26 summit, Morrison is increasingly isolated on climate policy.

Besides, Australia is the only country in the world to have mooted using old Kyoto-era carbon credits to meet its climate goal under the Paris Agreement regime.

Experts say the move would be inconsistent with international law and risk setting a precedent for other nations to “exploit loopholes or reserve their right not to comply with the Paris Agreement”.

According to his foreign affairs advisor Jake Sullivan, Biden won’t pull any punches with allies such as Australia when it comes to addressing climate change.

Brazil

An member of the environmental protection agency Ibama inspects an illegally deforested site (Photo: Felipe Werneck/Ibama/Flickr)

If President Jair Bolsonaro was once emboldened by Trump’s mocking of climate policy, the US-Brazil relationship is about to change dramatically.

Brazilian media is reporting Bolsonaro could sack his controversial environment minister Ricardo Salles to smooth over relations with the incoming US administration and appease opponents in his own party. A reshuffle is tipped for February 2021.

Biden took aim at Bolsonaro’s roll-back of forest protection policies and opening up the Amazon to commercial interests during the first presidential debate in September.

He promised to mobilise $20 billion in private and public money to stop “tearing down” the Amazon, warning of “significant economic consequences” otherwise — comments slammed by Bolsonaro as “disastrous and unnecessary”.

Emissions from deforestation are on the rise in Brazil after more than a decade of decline, putting the country further off track to meet its carbon-cutting goal.

Under the Paris Agreement, Brazil has committed to achieve zero illegal deforestation by 2030 and restore and reforest 12 million hectare of forests.

China

A coal-fired power plant in Anyang City, Henan province, China (Photo: Movilh Chile/Flickr)

Throughout the campaign, Biden promised to take an assertive stance towards Beijing and “stop China from subsiding coal exports and outsourcing carbon pollution,” particularly through its massive overseas investment drive, known as the belt and road initiative.

Biden said he would “hold China accountable to high environmental standards” in its overseas investment projects. He promised to make any future bilateral climate agreements contingent on “China eliminating unjustified export subsidies for coal and other high-emissions technologies and making verifiable progress in reducing the carbon footprint of projects connected to the belt and road initiative”.

While President Xi Jinping forestalled criticism by pledging to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2060, Biden is expected to push for stronger short- and medium-term commitments.

China’s net zero goal may have started a conversation about the world’s largest emitter ending its contribution to climate change, “but what happens in the next five years is more important for 2030 than carbon neutrality,” Jake Schmidt, of the US-based National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund, told Climate Home News.

Indonesia 

Mulia Harapan Utama coal mine in East Kalimantan, Indonesia (Photo: Cassidy K. / ILO/Flickr)

The south-east Asian country is focusing on traditional energy-intensive infrastructure projects to reboot its economy following Covid-19, missing an opportunity to accelerate a shift towards renewable energy.

Since the start of the pandemic, the government has spent $6.76 billion on supporting fossil fuels and less than $240 million on clean energy, according to the Energy Policy Tracker. This included bailing out the coal-heavy state-owned power company Perusahaan Listrik Negara.

The government plans to install an additional 27GW of coal-fired electricity capacity by 2028, making it the country with the fourth largest pipeline of coal plants under development worldwide. Climate Action Tracker ranks Indonesia’s climate plan as “highly insufficient” and consistent with warming between 3-4C by the end of the century.

At the same time, the government has passed a bill revising 79 laws and weakening environmental regulations in favour of business development, which has been met with mass demonstrations across the country.

Indonesia is tipped to present an updated climate plan before the end of the year but a draft plan circulated earlier this year suggested maintaining the current goal of reducing emissions by 29% below business as usual by 2030, the Jakarta Post reported.

Mexico

Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Photo: Mabel Lemoniel/Presidencia República Dominicana/Flickr

Biden has promised to strengthen climate collaboration and ambition across the American continents. From North to South America, Biden said he wants to create a framework to limit emissions related to land use change, forestry and agriculture and support major investment in clean energy.

This puts Biden at odds with Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has rolled back support for renewable energy since his election in December 2018. Instead, he favoured fossil fuels, citing energy security concerns.

Recent policies have thwarted the development of clean energy projects and given priority to dirtier energy to be dispatched by the national grid.

In its response to Covid-19, the government spent $3.02 billion in propping up the country’s oil and gas industry. In contrast, $913 million went to support clean energy, according to the Energy Policy Tracker.

These policies have put Mexico’s emissions “on a worryingly upwards path,” says Climate Action Tracker, and put it off track to meet its 2020 and 2030 climate goals.

Biden has committed to work in partnership with Mexico on a range of issues, including immigration. Climate action could become another pillar of the US’ renewed relations with its neighbour.

Russia

LNG terminals are being developed in the city of Murmansk close to the Arctic circle to export Russian gas (Photo: Marcel Crozet / ILO/Flickr)

Russia formally endorsed the Paris Agreement in September last year, but has done little since to strengthen its relatively weak climate plan which allows emissions to continue to rise.

The country is still coasting on the emissions cuts that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union, making little effort to invest in clean energy.

On the contrary, Moscow continues to support the expansion of the country’s fossil fuel production, particularly in the Arctic region, where it is banking on the melting of the sea ice to boost oil and gas exports to Asia.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, it has spent an estimated $8.44 billion to prop up its oil and gas industry and not a single dollar on supporting clean energy, according to the Energy Policy Tracker.

Climate Action Tracker ranked Russia’s climate plan as “critically insufficient,” which means that if all countries adopted the same level of ambition, global temperature would soar by more than 4C.

Biden has said he will use the Arctic Council to put a spotlight on Moscow’s oil and gas extraction activities and will pursue a global moratorium on offshore drilling.

Saudi Arabia

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (Photo: Prachatai/Flickr)

Declining global oil demand caused by Covid-19 restrictions has had a profound impact on Saudi Arabia, which is dependent on oil exports for revenues. As host of this year’s G20 summit, the country had a key role to play in shaping a green recovery to Covid-19.

Instead, under its leadership, G20 energy ministers endorsed fossil fuel bailouts, in a statement that focused on stabilising the oil market and made no mention of climate change.

Earlier this year, the G20 Saudi leadership sought to remove the term “fossil fuel subsidies” from independent policy briefs due to inform the political discussion and replace it with “fossil fuel incentives”.

In 2009, the G20 promised to phase out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” but limited progress has been made to meet the goal.

Saudi Arabia sells petroleum products to citizens at an internal price higher than production costs but lower than international market rates, denying that this constitutes a subsidy.

This could come under scrutiny as Biden plans to secure a global commitment to eliminate all fossil fuel subsidies by the end of his first term.

The post Biden promised to expose ‘climate outlaws’. Here’s who could make his list appeared first on Climate Home News.

The election was called for Biden on Saturday, as his lead in the swing state of Pennsylvania – where he was born – with 98% of the vote counted put the result beyond dispute. Biden was also pulling ahead in Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, putting him on track to win 306 electoral college votes, comfortably above the 270 needed to secure the US presidency.

“[Voters] have given us a mandate for action on Covid and the economy and climate change and systemic racism,” Biden tweeted in anticipation of victory.

It marks the end of a four-year assault on environmental protections from the White House under Donald Trump.

Elected on the most ambitious climate platform ever presented by a presidential candidate, Biden promised a $2 trillion clean energy revolution.

He will govern with Kamala Harris as vice president, who has a track record of suing oil companies as former attorney general of California.

But their ability to deliver emissions cuts will be hampered by a disappointing performance for the Democrats in the Senate race. Control of the upper house is expected to come down to two run-offs in Georgia in January.

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Biden has promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement — which the US formally left on Wednesday — on his first day in office on 21 January.

Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it. https://t.co/L8UJimS6v2

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 5, 2020

The pact requires all countries to present new or improved 2030 climate targets to the UN. As the world’s second highest emitter, the US is critical to meeting the Paris goal of limiting global heating “well below 2C”.

Biden promised to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035 and put the US on track to cut emissions to net zero by 2050. According to Climate Action Tracker, if the US achieves this goal, it will shave 0.1C off global warming by 2100.

The US would follow major Asian emitters China, Japan and South Korea in aiming for net zero, bringing 62% of global CO2 emissions and nearly three quarters of GDP under a carbon neutrality goal.

“Taken together, the US and China going to net zero emissions would reduce our estimate of end-of-century warming to 2.3-2.4C,” said Niklas Höhne of NewClimate Institute, a Climate Action Tracker partner organisation.

As Joe Biden nears White House victory, his climate plan hinges on the Senate race

The race for the control of the Senate is critical. If the Republicans retain a majority, it will present a serious curb on Biden’s climate ambition, including on setting tougher carbon-cutting goals.

Although Biden won’t rush out with a 2030 emissions target, his timeline is tight. Governments are expected to submit new or improved climate goals ahead of the Cop26 UN climate negotiations in Glasgow, UK, November 2021.

The UK and UN are hoping many leaders will reveal their pledges at an online summit on 12 December, the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement. That leaves the US playing catch-up.

“China and the EU will not wait long before demanding the United States get back on track to act on climate. They will look to the US to put forward a nationally determined contribution that is both ambitious and credible – meaning in the range of a 50% reduction by 2030,” Kelley Kizzier, former EU climate negotiator and associate vice president for climate at EDF action, the advocacy partner for the Environmental Defense Fund, told Climate Home.

Climate observers anticipate Biden will try to present his plan around the third quarter of 2021 for a chance to leverage greater ambition from other large emitters, including China, ahead of the Cop26 summit.

Under Barack Obama, the US committed to slashing emissions by 26-28% by 2025, compared to 2005 levels — a target which it is not on track to meet.

Factcheck: Where are US emissions after four years of President Trump?

On the world stage, if Biden is to “lead a major diplomatic push” for raising climate ambition, he will have to work closely with the EU, China and the UK Cop26 host.

Outgoing president Trump’s dismissal of the climate threat gave cover to governments slow-walking climate action. By returning to the climate negotiation table, a Biden administration will expose the climate laggards. Australia, Brazil, Russia and Mexico are among those nations which could soon feel the heat.

The White House could also pressure China, Japan and South Korea to squeeze the finance pipeline for fossil infrastructure.

“There will be a more difficult relationship with China,” said Peter Betts, former EU and UK lead climate negotiator and an associate fellow at Chatham House.

He added the US and China may find a way to cooperate on debt, given the fact that China is now the biggest creditor in the world, or they may opt for a more combative relationship “where they both compete for international plaudits and influence in developing countries through climate action”.

In the run-up to the Paris Agreement, the US and China announced their emissions reduction targets together — a sign of Washington’s influence over Beijing. China’s net zero pledge in September sent a clear signal that Beijing is working closely with the EU and will not wait for the US to move forward on climate, Betts said.

A Biden victory could spur global climate action, but the US has much to prove

With the EU, Biden could pave the way for cooperation on a global green recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, according to think tank E3G. His climate platform states that he will work with international financial institutions to provide “green debt relief” to developing countries. 

“The biggest practical contribution Biden could make to Cop26 is to stop the US blocking new global funding for green Covid-19 recoveries at the IMF and World Bank,” said Nick Mabey, chief executive of E3G.

Biden said he would deliver $2 billion promised to the Green Climate Fund under the Obama administration, which Trump refused to pay. However that could be difficult if the Democrats fail to take control of the Senate, Alden Meyer, a long-time strategist on US and global climate policy, told Climate Home.

The post Joe Biden wins the White House, in pivotal moment for global climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.

Biden made climate change a cornerstone of his vision to recover the American economy from the impacts of Covid-19, with a $2 trillion plan to drive green investments and create jobs.

But the blue wave Democrats hoped for in the Senate has failed to materialise, dampening Biden’s prospects of passing climate legislation.

While Democrats are confident they will retain control of the House of Representatives, the Senate election is down to the wire, with both sides having 48 seats as of Friday.

The contest is so tight, the Senate majority could be determined on 5 January in a hotly contested special election for at least one, and maybe two seats in Georgia.

‘Count every vote’ demand US climate activists, after Trump false victory claim

Even with a slim majority in the Senate, Biden would need some Republican support to pass climate legislation. Under US Senate rules, policy changes beyond spending and taxation require at least 60 of the 100 senators to agree to move the issue to a vote.

Bipartisan backing will be required to introduce a clean electricity standard, for example, which would mandate a transition to zero carbon electricity generation by 2035 and help deliver on a campaign promise. So would a carbon pricing mechanism.

“Control of the Senate will have a huge impact on climate policy in the US,” Jamie Henn, cofounder of US environmental group 350.org, told Climate Home News.

“There’s little hope for passing sweeping climate legislation if [Republican majority leader] Mitch McConnell keeps his claws on the gavel. There’s a lot the president can do through executive authority, but to really rise to the scale of this crisis, we need the votes in the Senate.”

Without congressional backing, “a sweeping economic regeneration policy… will not happen in the next two years,” said Nathan Hultman, director of the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland. “Then we have to look at it as a stage process.”

US has officially left the Paris Agreement, amid election to determine climate future

With 22 Senate seats held by Republicans up for re-election in 2022, including in swing states, and only 12 held by Democrats, a Biden administration would have another chance to take control of the Senate.

That could be significant in helping to push through climate policy in the second half of his term.

If the Republicans retained control of the Senate, the task would be “much more difficult for Biden,” said Alden Meyer, a strategist with veteran experience on US and global climate policy. “It changes the dynamics dramatically.”

Meyer said: “You don’t control the committees, you don’t control the floor process, confirming nominees is more complicated, new legislation on a clean energy standards, tax reform and massive infrastructure package would likely be off the table.”

That could affect the ambition of a 2030 emission reduction target, Meyer added. As part of re-joining the Paris climate agreement, Biden will be expected to put forward a 2030 climate plan before the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, UK, in November 2021.

Without a policy framework in place, Biden could submit a “stretch” climate plan with the confidence he will be able to push through some climate policy. A two-tier 2030 target with an upper goal conditional on support from Congress could also “help square the disconnect between the level of ambition expected and the administration’s ability to deliver it,” Meyer said.

5 ways climate issues played out in the US election

With or without a Senate majority, Biden would soon face pressure at home and abroad to step up carbon-cutting efforts.

“Joe Biden has a climate mandate and we want him to do everything in his power in the next weeks and months,” Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, said in briefing with reporters on Thursday.

Andrew Light, a former senior climate official in Obama’s State Department, told Climate Home the Biden administration will not be betting on a single climate law to implement its climate plan, but use “a patchwork of policies,” legislative and executive tools to proof its plan from partisan attacks.

A large stimulus package to recover the US economy from the impacts of Covid-19 will be a priority for the Biden government and help push through carbon-cutting measures, he said.

“How much will the Senate be willing to cooperate on climate policy will be seen in its response to the stimulus package,” he added.

With millions of Americans waiting for financial relief to weather the economic and social impacts of the pandemic, Republicans like Democrats will be under pressure to vote through a recovery package.

It could include large-scale infrastructure investments which are needed to reboot the economy, said Hultman, who helped develop the US’ 2025 climate goal under Obama. Clean, green investments could attract bipartisan support and create the building blocks for 2030 emissions cuts.

“In the near term that is going to be incredibly helpful to keep us moving on the climate front,” he told Climate Home News. “It’s not an all or nothing game. It’s about what we can deliver now.”

A Biden victory could spur global climate action, but the US has much to prove

Scaling up climate action at the sub-national level could reduce emissions by up to 37% from 2005 levels by 2030 with or without federal support, according to analysis by America’s Pledge.

But to get to the 45-50% emissions cuts by 2030 climate analysts are calling for, “you need to have Congress on board,” said Meyer.

There are a number of tools a Biden administration could use to bypass Senate stalemate.

Budgetary procedures, which requite a majority of 50+1 in the Senate, could be used to muscle through climate spending and tax policy. Sectoral packages on agriculture and transport could create the vehicle for bipartisan support, and measures to boost states’ climate resilience.

“Republicans have shown to be more polarised on the reality and science of climate change rather than on the solutions,” Meyer said. “There are Republicans who support renewable energy, electric vehicle and energy efficiency.”

The Democrats will be wary of repeating Obama’s approach, who bypassed a hostile congress to push through climate policies like his clean power plan by executive order, only for Trump to dismantle them.

But a Biden administration would have to use executive powers and work with federal agencies, including the Environment Protection Agency, to push through regulations using the existing legal framework.

“That is a long and fraught process,” said Light.

The post Joe Biden’s climate plan hinges on a tight Senate race appeared first on Climate Home News.

As results came in from across the country on Wednesday, it became clear that it would be a close race. With record numbers of votes cast by post due to the coronavirus pandemic, some counts are taking longer than usual.

Democrat Joe Biden assured his supporters around 12:30am Eastern Time “we are on track to win”, even as the path to victory looked narrower than pollsters predicted. Republican incumbent Donald Trump then baselessly accused his opponent of trying to “steal” the election, setting the scene for an ugly fight that could drag on for days or weeks.

The fight will centre on postal ballots received after election day, which are expected to favour the Democrats — and can be counted under some states’ regulations. Trump said: “We will be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any new ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”

Grassroots activists promised to defend those ballots. “We are holding the line and demanding that officials count every single vote,” said Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, North America director at campaign network 350.org, in a statement. “No matter the results, we are here for the fight ahead… It ain’t over til it’s over.”

Tracker: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

It comes as the US officially leaves the Paris Agreement, three years after Donald Trump first announced his intention to do so. The country keeps a seat at UN climate talks, whatever the outcome of the election, but surrenders the right to take decisions on the implementation of the Paris deal.

Trump’s exit did not, as some feared, lead to a wave of countries quitting the pact. China, Japan and South Korea signalled renewed commitment to climate action in the last two months by declaring net zero emissions targets. The EU is expected in December to increase its 2030 emissions reduction target to at least 55% from 1990 levels.

“The US has effectively been a no-show under this administration, and the rest of the world has responded accordingly: by moving on,” Kelley Kizzier, former EU climate negotiator and associate vice president for climate at EDF action, the advocacy partner for the Environmental Defense Fund, told Climate Home News.

“We’re all in agreement that a Biden scenario would be smoother, but even under a Trump scenario climate action will still proceed,” Peter Betts, former EU and UK lead climate negotiator and an associate fellow at Chatham House, said in a pre-election media briefing. “Nobody will follow Trump out of Paris [and] the EU and China will go ahead [with their climate plans]. Diplomatically it is not the end of the line,” he said.

Fact check: Where are US emissions after four years of President Trump?

But the US is responsible for 15% of global carbon dioxide emissions and a quarter of the world’s economy: its participation is critical to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

If we give Donald Trump another four years in the White House, our planet will never recover.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 3, 2020

If Biden secures the White House, he is promising to rejoin the Paris Agreement on his first day in office and to “fully integrate climate change” into both domestic and international security strategies.

In the most ambitious climate platform ever presented by a presidential candidate, Biden is pitching for net zero emissions by 2050 and 100% clean electricity by 2035, backed by a $2 trillion green investment drive. His proposals include building 1.5 million energy efficient homes and improving the energy efficiency of 4 million buildings.

He has yet to determine an emissions reduction target for 2030, which is key to rejoining the Paris Agreement. The level of ambition would depend on what the Democrats could get through Congress.

Under Barack Obama, the US committed to slashing emissions by 26-28% by 2025, compared to 2005 levels – a target which it is not on track to meet.

According to Climate Action Tracker, the US should reduce its emissions by at least 52% by 2030 to do its fair share towards meeting the Paris Agreement goals. The America’s Pledge initiative projects a 49% cut is achievable with robust federal policies, or up to 37% if a coalition of willing states and cities take action without federal backing.

Analysis: Who will build the world’s last coal plant?

“States, cities, and companies all over America are taking action, and have committed themselves to doing their part to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. They are showing that while Donald Trump can pull the US out of the Paris Agreement, he doesn’t speak for the majority of Americans who demand climate action,” said Kizzier.

In 2019, 62% of US electricity generation came from natural gas, coal, and petroleum, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. This will need to be replaced by nuclear and renewables if Biden is to make the grid “100% clean” by 2035.

The transition to clean energy is already well under way in the US, experts say. Both Democratic and Republican states are embracing renewable technologies and investing in wind and solar power. 

“Coal is on its way out at rapid pace,” said Rachel Kyte, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and former adviser to the UN secretary general on sustainable energy. Despite President Trump’s efforts to revive the coal industry, coal use for primary energy production fell by 3%, while renewables rose 11%, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. 

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The US’ wind power capacity increased from 82 GW in 2016 to 106 GW in 2019, making the country the second-largest wind market after China. 

Texas, the heartland of US oil and gas, has the largest number of solar projects in the pipeline of any US state, with 25,738 MW of new capacity planned by the end of 2024.

Trump’s watchword of the last four years has been “energy dominance”, with a focus on defending jobs in coal, oil and gas sectors.

In the event of Trump winning enough swing states to stay in the White House, his lack of clean energy or carbon-cutting policies could put the US at a competitive disadvantage, Kyte said. The EU is working to introduce a levy on carbon-intensive imports at the border.

“If everybody else is putting a border tax adjustment on carbon, if everybody else is treating carbon as a bad, how do you in a global economy still operate with success if you are not doing anything to diminish your energy intensification?” Kyte asked.

The post US has officially left the Paris Agreement, amid election to determine climate future appeared first on Climate Home News.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries have agreed to create a new carbon trading system to cut emissions at lower cost. But designing a common set of rules has proved contentious in recent rounds of climate talks and remains one of the last unresolved issues of the Paris Agreement rulebook.

Australia and Brazil have continued to push for a trading system with loopholes that would allow initial double counting of emissions reductions and trading of Kyoto-era credits — red lines for many other countries.

After failing to land a compromise at the last UN climate talks in Madrid, Spain, last year, negotiators are under pressure to resolve the issue at the Cop26 summit in Glasgow, UK, in November 2021.

Although no climate talks are being held this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, diplomats are hoping to drive progress on the issue during informal consultations next month as part of a UN Climate Change catch-up plan.

“There is a deal possible,” Archie Young, who leads the UK’s climate negotiating team, told Climate Home News, saying “genuine progress was made in Madrid”.

As lead negotiator for the host nation, Young has a key role in brokering a compromise. “We will do everything that we can to bring parties together to enable and facilitate those conversations using our full diplomatic network,” he said.

“But achieving that deal is not simply the responsibility of the UK as an incoming presidency. It’s the responsibility of all the parties that hold strong views on the issue to work together to understand each other’s positions, find compromises, and identify where the right resolution lies.”

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Young said ambitious commitments made by a growing number of countries to cut their emissions to net zero were made possible by progress in the multilateral system that underpins the climate discussions.

“The negotiations are not an end in themselves, they’re an end to encouraging greater international ambition,” he said.

As nations continue to scramble to respond to the health emergency and resulting economic downturn, Covid-19 has hit governments and their climate negotiations teams. In the UK, “we had people in the team really hit hard by Covid and I know everybody has,” Young said.

“Reordering a multilateral process in this way is unprecedented,” he added.

To work towards resolutions in the negotiations on carbon markets and a number of other issues, the Cop26 team is raising the matters in bilateral meetings and multilateral events, Young said.

At the same time, UK prime minister Boris Johnson has asked world leaders to bring “bold” new climate targets to an online event marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement.

“The approach is one that very much gives the time and space to resolving the negotiations issues but also has to be part of a broader diplomatic [strategy],” said Young, to enable countries to “feel emboldened to make greater progress on climate action”.

South Korea formally commits to cutting emissions to net zero by 2050

Starting on 23 November, UN Climate Change in collaboration with the UK and Chile are organising a fortnight of online climate events to “maintain momentum in the intergovernmental climate change process”.

Known as the climate dialogues, they include technical events and workshops which were mandated to take place in 2020 — the equivalent of seven days of full time negotiations, Marianne Karlsen, Norwegian chair of UN Climate Change’s implementation body, told Climate Home.

Participants will also take stock of progress made despite the pandemic and continue discussions on key negotiations issues such as carbon markets, adaptation and finance.

Together with Congolese climate diplomat Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, who chairs UN Climate Change’s technical body, the incoming UK Cop26 presidency team has developed a joint plan to find resolution on carbon markets, Young said.

Through two sets of informal consultations, which are not negotiations, diplomats will be able to exchange views and learn about other countries’ positions in a more relaxed setting.

Heads of delegations and coordinators of regional groups will be able to exchange their views before a second set of more technical meetings to drill down into ensuring carbon trading enables real and additional emissions cuts.

“I am sure that [these meetings] will be useful for a build-up of better understanding among parties on where solutions to unresolved issues can be found,” Mpanu Mpanu told Climate Home in an email.

Analysis: Who will build the world’s last coal plant?

Learning from previous virtual events held by UN Climate Change earlier this year, countries urged the secretariat to ensure this virtual catch-up session did not turn into an online negotiation and that transparency, balance and inclusivity were respected.

“This is uncharted territory,” Karlsen said. “The workload to 2021 is quite substantial. We will have to work to our best ability in the current circumstances.”

The dialogues will take place through a new online tool designed to make discussions as “interactive as possible,” she said, adding work had been done to ensure gender and geographical balance for every event. Some translation will be made and a number of events have been scheduled to accommodate negotiators in the Pacific region, whose working hours are directly opposite to Europe’s.

Despite the uncertainty around the health crisis, Young hopes a series of events on finance and climate ambition scheduled from November to the end of the year and a global summit on adaptation early next year will help propel momentum to “the next level” into 2021.

Preparations are still being made for climate talks to take place in person next year. Despite growing willingness to take climate work online, a majority of countries oppose formal negotiations to take place in a virtual setting, citing inclusivity and connectivity concerns.

Countries have agreed to review the situation as it evolves in consultation with the UN Climate Change bureau, which represents all parties in the climate talks.

“We recognise that there are constraints on virtual working but equally we cannot sit on our hands – we need to take advantage of the tools that are at our disposal. Who knows what next year holds,” Young said.

The post UK negotiator: Countries must resolve carbon market dispute to step up ambition appeared first on Climate Home News.

Suga is expected to lay out his policy priorities in first address to lawmakers since taking office last month in a speech to the Diet, Japan’s parliament.

He is expected to announce plans to cut all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 and present measures to boost the deployment of renewable energy, according to Japanese newspaper Nikkei, which broke the story on Wednesday.

A carbon removal package is anticipated, which could include support for carbon capture and storage, and green hydrogen.

“This is very important and great news,” Takeshi Kuramochi, climate policy researcher at NewClimate Institute, told Climate Home News.

“It’s a significant step forward… that could create a step change in domestic policy decisions and among businesses and financial institutions,” agreed Kimiko Hirata, international director of the Kiko network, a Japanese environmental NGO.

Poland’s largest utility announces pivot from coal to renewables

Japan’s previous long-term climate strategy was to cut emissions by 80% by 2050 from 2010 levels and achieve carbon neutrality “at the earliest possible time in the latter half of this century”.

Last year’s climate strategy heavily relied on technological solutions to curb emissions and provided little detail on addressing Japan’s coal dependency, with the government committing to use carbon capture and storage in coal-fired power generation by 2030.

After president Xi Jinping’s surprise announcement last month that China will aim for carbon neutrality by 2060 and South Korea’s similar plans earlier this year, Japan was under pressure to clarify its long term ambition.

A flurry of commitments from Asian investors and development banks to strengthen their climate plans and end coal financing added to the momentum behind a 2050 net zero target, which in recent years has become the benchmark for climate ambition.

The 2050 goal will inform a revision of Japan’s 2030 energy plan, due to be presented by mid-2021. Under the current plan, renewables are expected to provide 22-24% of power generation, nuclear around 22-20% with coal, oil and gas still accounting for 56% of the energy mix.

Japan sticks to 2030 climate goals, accused of a ‘disappointing’ lack of ambition

“It will be easier for us to push for coal phase-out and renewable deployment” under the new long-term strategy, said Hirata. “If Japan does not have a coal phase-out date then it’s not going to be possible to meet net zero by 2050. The government needs to face that reality.”

“The coal-phase out certainly needs to much earlier than what the government has been discussing,” Kuramochi agreed, citing recent plans for closing inefficient coal plants to help the country meet its 2030 target of reducing coal’s share in the power generation mix to 26%.

To meet net zero emissions by 2050, the government will have to reduce coal’s share “well beyond” the 26% target and address emissions in the industrial sector as a whole, he added.

Earlier this year Keidanren, Japan’s largest business association and lobby group whose members include carbon-intensive sectors such as steel and automotive production, has been encouraging its members to develop innovative technology to help Japan achieve carbon neutrality.

But for all its talk of technological innovation, the industrial sector has been “lagging behind” the country’s decarbonisation efforts, Kuramochi said.

Plans to bolster research and development are falling short of the scale needed to achieve carbon neutrality, he added, warning there had “hardly been any discussion on decarbonising steel” for example.

The post Japan set to announce 2050 net zero emissions target – report appeared first on Climate Home News.

A “factsheet” published by China’s ministry of foreign affairs on Monday described the US as being “widely viewed as a consensus-breaker and a troublemaker”. It accused Washington of having “seriously undermined global climate governance and cooperation” for failing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and withdrawing from the Paris Agreement – two global treaties designed to cut emissions.

The fact sheet on “environmental damage by the US” was backed by a more extensive report on “US damage to global environmental governance”.

In a sign of the rapidly deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington, the documents published by the Chinese government appear to be a response to the US State Department’s fact sheet on “China’s environmental abuses” published last month.

The US document accused Beijing of threatening the global economy and global health “by unsustainably exploiting natural resources and exporting its willful disregard for the environment through its One Belt One Road initiative” – China’s overseas investment drive.

It accused China of deliberately using its developing country status to “avoid shouldering more responsibility for reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions”.

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Referring to Donald Trump’s record in the White House, Beijing said the US  had “not only backpedaled on its domestic environmental protection policies but also seriously undermined the fairness, efficiency and effectiveness of global environmental governance”.

By calling global heating a “hoax”, Trump undermined the multilateral order that underpinned progress on climate change in forums such as the G20, it said.

“With regard to what it has done to the environment, the US has yet to justify itself to its own people and to other people in the world,” it added, suggesting that even if Joe Biden wins the election on 3 November, a Democratic administration would have to face up to the consequences of the US retreat from climate action.

Biden, who is leading in the polls, has promised to “lead a major diplomatic push” to raise countries’ climate ambition and put the US “back in the driver’s seat” with a set of domestic policies putting the country on track to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

A Biden victory could spur global climate action, but the US has much to prove

While rejoining the Paris Agreement is an easy first step, a Biden administration will have to balance domestic and international pressures to ensure it toughens its carbon-cutting efforts at home and delivers on a promise to increase international climate finance to galvanize momentum for action abroad.

For Li Shuo, Beijing-based senior climate and energy officer at Greenpeace East Asia, China’s statement “represents the bilateral war of words extending to a new era”. He said in a tweet: “Will this US bashing continue after the election? We will see.”

Biden has said he would hold China to account for its climate impact, particularly for outsourcing pollution to other countries through its “belt and road” investment initiative. Experts hope to see renewed cooperation on climate change between Beijing and Washington if Biden makes it to the White House, but with both sides talking tough that could be challenging.

The statement on US shortcomings follows a bid for the moral high ground from Beijing at last month’s UN general assembly. President Xi Jinping unexpectedly announced China would aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, shortly after Trump lashed out at “rampant pollution” by Beijing.

Earlier this month, the Chinese-based Tsinghua University Institute for Climate Change and Sustainable Development (ICCSD) published new scenarios and policy recommendations for meeting the 2060 carbon neutrality goal. The research assumed China’s target included all greenhouse gases and not just carbon dioxide – one of the key questions raised by Xi’s announcement. However, this is yet to be confirmed by the government.

New Zealanders vote for climate ambition of Jacinda Ardern and Greens

In the fact sheet, China criticised the US for repeated failure to uphold its climate commitments at home. While China is the world’s largest emitter today, the fact sheet noted the US was responsible for the biggest historic emissions.

Beijing confronted Washington’s failure to honour its climate finance commitments, including $2 billion to the Green Climate Fund, which President Trump has refused to pay. It accused the US of having “repeatedly blocked projects for developing countries citing unfounded reasons such as human trafficking and human rights violations, thus seriously undermining the developing countries’ right to use the funding”.

It cited objections to several China-related projects in recent years as well as opposition to projects in Cuba, Burundi, Sudan, Equatorial Guinea,, Mauritania, The Gambia, Comoros, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Laos, Eritrea, and Venezuela.

The Chinese government also took aim to the US for staying “completely outside the global biodiversity conservation cooperation system” ahead of major UN biodiversity talks in Kunming, China, in 2021. It added the US has not ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Both statements go on to outline the US’ “poor track record” in protecting endangered species, on wildlife trafficking, water management, combating desertification, forest management, illegal logging and methane leaks, with pointed statistics highlighting when the US was a worse offender than China.

The story was updated on 20/10/20 to add context about the US fact sheet on China’s environmental record. 

The post China hits out at US climate record, in pointed message ahead of election appeared first on Climate Home News.

Joe Biden has promised to “lead a major diplomatic push” to raise countries’ climate ambition and put the US “back in the driver’s seat”. His opponent, Donald Trump, has repeatedly dismissed climate science.

With Biden consistently leading in national polls and Trump suffering from Covid-19, attention is turning to how that diplomatic push could look. At time of publication, analysis site FiveThirtyEight gave an 86% chance of a Biden victory.

If he wins the election, the Democratic candidate will still face a steep climb to present a credible climate strategy to the rest of the world.

Biden has committed to rejoin the Paris Agreement – which the US will formally leave on 4 November – on his first day in office and to “fully integrate climate change” into US foreign and national security strategies.

A Biden victory would trigger “huge pressure from the international community” for the US to step into a leading climate role, Nat Keohane, senior vice president at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), told Climate Home.

The timeline for action is tight, as governments are expected to update or enhance their climate goals ahead of the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow, in November 2021 – only a year after American voters go to the polls.

Bangladesh urges countries to ramp up climate ambition by 2020 deadline

Biden is “going to have to be moving right out of the box with a whole range of national actions,” Todd Stern, senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and former special envoy for climate change at the State Department under Obama, told a Chatham House conference earlier this month.

“The US is going to have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk,” he said. Re-joining the Paris Agreement is the easy bit.

From cutting emissions to net zero no later than 2050 to 100% clean electricity by 2035, Biden is running on the most ambitious climate platform presented by a presidential candidate.

But to convince other nations that after four years of retreat from climate diplomacy the US is back at the table, it will need to adopt an emissions reduction target for 2030 – a requirement for all countries under the Paris accord.

On this, Biden has been silent.

Under Obama, the US committed to reduce emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 – a target which it is not on track to meet.

While no number has yet emerged from the Biden camp, climate analysts argue the US could increase emissions cuts to 45-50% by 2030 with robust federal policies in place.

Climate Action Tracker estimates to do its fair share to limit global heating below 2C, the minimum goal of the Paris Agreement, the US should reduce its emissions by at least 52% by 2030 through domestic action. That would go alongside increased climate finance to the developing world.

Where are US emissions after four years of President Trump?

Andrew Light, a former senior climate official in Obama’s State Department, said it was “deliberate and defensible” for the Biden team not to announce a 2030 target – or nationally determined contribution (NDC) – during the campaign. It leaves space for consultation if Biden is elected.

“In the Obama administration we got a lot of flak that the process for creating an NDC was done without a lot of consultative input,” he told Climate Home. “It could have been more transparent and the Biden team will be sensitive to that. I expect a much broader conversation to ensure more buy-in.”

But there is also a sense of urgency for the US to announce its 2030 climate plan to leverage increased commitment from other large emitters including China and India ahead of Cop26.

It will take a careful balancing act between domestic imperatives and global expectations to get it right, said Claire Healy, Washington-based director of think tank E3G’s climate diplomacy programme.

Analysts agree a Biden administration would be unlikely to announce a 2030 climate global before the third quarter of 2021. Waiting any longer risks undermining the US capacity to convince other nations to bring more ambitious climate plans to Cop26.

If Biden is elected, “there will be a sprint between the election results and inauguration” on 20 January to make progress on the issue, said Jake Schmidt, senior director at the US-based National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Action Fund.

For Keohane, of EDF, this could make the 2030 climate goal a key driver of the administration’s policy agenda in its first few weeks.

“To get to the ambition level that the US is going to have to put on the table, it’s going to become very clear very quickly that a whole-government approach orchestrated by the White House will be needed,” he said.

‘Inverse Opec’: Kamala Harris plan to wind down oil production awaits its moment

Observers will be watching how the Biden camp organises itself in the White House to elevate climate action to the top of government.

A National Climate Council inside the White House led by a “climate czar”, an idea pushed by former Obama-administration officials Stern and John Podesta, is reportedly under consideration.

John Kerry, former secretary of state who has been advising Biden on climate issues, is among those tipped to lead the council and coordinate climate action both at home and on the world stage.

This could include delivering on a Biden promise to convene a summit of the world’s major emitters to persuade them to strengthen their climate pledges in his first 100 days in office – an important milestone for the administration to set out its priorities.

But the timing is awkward, with the US unlikely to be ready with its own target by mid-April. And leaders have already been invited to submit tougher plans at an event marking the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement a few months earlier on 12 December.

“A summit to leverage ambition only works if you have an NDC in hand, or at least a top line number,” said Light, suggesting the US could convene a leaders’ summit beyond the 100-day mark.

For Healy, of E3G, the summit could focus on greening the recovery to Covid-19 and help underpin major emitters’ climate plans.

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To this end, Stern has called on Biden to revive something akin to the Major Economies Forum on energy and climate change. Launched by the Obama administration, the forum gathered 17 major economies and aimed to generate high-level leadership and collaboration on climate action.

If elected, Biden would have to “revive key diplomatic relationships around the world starting with the EU… and China,” he said.

President Xi Jinping’s announcement that China will peak its emissions before 2030 and aim for carbon neutrality by 2060 scored political points against the Trump administration.

It also left wiggle room for potential negotiations on raising ambition with a Biden administration, said Fang Zhang, of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, Massachusetts.

Citing her own research, she told CHN China could probably peak its emissions in 2026 based on existing policies. “Not giving a specific date for peaking leaves space and time [to do more],” she said.

Climate change could be a key point of collaboration between the world’s two largest emitters amid a complicated and deteriorating relationship on issues such as trade, human rights and military influence, analysts say.

But renewed cooperation on climate change will look very different from the Obama-Xi deal that underpinned the signing of the Paris Agreement.

Comment: To reach net zero emissions mid-century, start today

Biden has promised to hold Beijing “accountable” for outsourcing pollution in its massive foreign investment drive known as the belt and road initiative (BRI). He committed to work with allies such as the EU to offer “alternative sources of development financing for lower-carbon energy investments” in BRI countries.

And Biden’s global climate strategy won’t be defined by its relations with China alone. “If you have climate change as a top foreign strategy it means the machine needs to be working on multiple gears at the same time,” said Schmidt.

In India, a Biden administration should “show that climate action is good for economic development and work to accelerate investments in solar energy,” said Nigel Purvis, a former US climate negotiator and CEO of Climate Advisers.

In Australia and Japan, Biden could leverage economic and security relations to confront Canberra and Tokyo’s support for fossil fuels exports and financing overseas – a strategy already suggested by one Biden advisor.

And in Brazil and Indonesia, Biden has suggested he will take a strong stance on tackling deforestation. He pledged to mobilise $20bn from public and private funds to protect the Amazon – a move slammed by President Jair Bolsonaro as “disastrous and unnecessary”.

If he wins, “there won’t be answers to all these questions before or on January 20,” Purvis said. “The message for the inauguration will be America is coming back. The specifics and policy details will take time to develop.”

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