Environmental advocacy group Stand.earth accused the Vancouver-based apparel company of greenwashing in a “first-of-its-kind complaint” submitted to the French Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) days before the Olympics Games opening ceremony in Paris.

Stand.earth has called on the French regulator to investigate Lululemon’s “vague, disproportionate and ambiguous” environmental claims which, the green group said, constitute misleading commercial practices. In response, the company told Climate Home its publicity does not misrepresent its operations.

Through its “Be Planet” campaign unveiled in 2020, Lululemon tells customers that its “products and actions avoid environmental harm and contribute to restoring a healthy planet”.

A screengrab from Lululemon’s sustainability webpage

But the company’s latest impact report shows that emissions from Lululemon’s full supply chain – known as Scope 3 – nearly doubled to 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide between the campaign’s launch and 2022. That’s equivalent to powering 300,000 gasoline cars for a year.

Stand.earth’s complaint said Lululemon’s emissions are set to grow even further as it tries to hit a goal of doubling sales by 2026.

“Lululemon customers worldwide deserve to know the true impacts of the company’s climate pollution, not the greenwashed version it uses to sell products,” said Stand.earth Executive Director Todd Paglia.

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Earlier this year, Stand.earth filed a similar complaint against Lululemon in Canada that resulted in the country’s Competition Bureau opening a formal investigation into the retailer’s use of environmental claims. A separate complaint accusing Lululemon of greenwashing was brought in early July this year by a private citizen in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

A spokesperson for Lululemon said that Be Planet “is not a marketing campaign” but “a pillar” of the company’s impact strategy, and that the firm is confident the statements it makes to the public accurately reflect its impact goals and commitments.

“We are taking direct action and are committed to collaborating with industry partners to help address supply chain impacts on climate change,” the spokesperson added. “We welcome dialogue and remain focused on driving progress.”

Rising revenues, rising emissions

Lululemon is one of the world’s fastest-growing retailers of athletic apparel, with net revenues rising 19% to $9.6 billion in 2023. The company, which has more than 700 stores in 20 countries, is the official clothing provider for Team Canada at the Olympic Games whose opening ceremony takes place in Paris this Friday.

According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Paris 2024 Games are targeting a 50 percent reduction in carbon emissions compared to the average of the London Olympics in 2012 and Rio de Janeiro in 2016, including Scope 3 emissions such as from spectator travel. This means Paris 2024 will offer the first Olympic Games aligned with the Paris Agreement on climate change, the IOC says.

View of Lululemon name above its retail store in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, New York, NY, August 2, 2023. (Photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa USA)

Lululemon, meanwhile, has committed to reaching net zero emissions across its supply chain by 2050 through a target validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), widely seen as the gold standard in corporate accountability.

But the company has come under intense criticism from green advocates over its climate and environmental impacts caused by energy-intensive production, high consumption of natural resources like water and long-distance shipping of items around the globe.

Four-fifths of Lululemon’s manufacturers in 2022 were located in countries that are highly-dependent on fossil fuels like Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. The materials most commonly used by Lululemon in its clothes – polyester and nylon – are themselves produced from fossil fuels, according to the Stand.earth complaint.

EU greenwashing crackdown

The environmental group said the case will mark the first test of the French regulator’s readiness for a wave of new European greenwashing legislation.

The European Parliament approved a new directive in January requiring member states to introduce stricter rules surrounding the use of sustainability claims by companies and banning certain practices.

European lawmakers are currently working on a further piece of legislation that aims to define what kind of information companies must provide to justify their green marketing in the future. In its current form, the proposed regulation would require sustainability claims to be based on scientific evidence and checked by an independent and accredited verifier.

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The so-called “Green Claims” directive is currently going through a negotiation process between the European Parliament and the European Council – which brings together EU leaders – before a final text is agreed.

“For decades, companies have faced no consequences for deceptive practices aimed at misleading the public about their environmental and climate justice impacts,” said Stand.earth’s Paglia. “However, we’re now seeing a rising interest in holding these companies accountable for their claims, and a crackdown is beginning to happen from Europe to North America.”

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini; editing by Megan Rowling)

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Citizens up and down the UK are heading to the polls on July 4 – and though it has yet to feature as a campaign priority for the major parties, climate policy is a clear dividing line between the two main parties: the Conservatives and Labour.  

While the Conservatives have diluted existing climate policies and pushed ahead with more oil and gas extraction in the North Sea, Labour have said they will halt new licensing in the North Sea and set up a new entity, GB Energy, to scale up clean generation and drive down bills.  

Given this dividing line, the upcoming election is set to see a clash between the forces of climate obstructionism – those organisations, individuals and media outlets that seek to delay, derail or discredit climate policy – and those that advocate for it.  

Right-wing pushback on EU’s green laws misjudges rural views

But climate obstructionism is not a new phenomenon within the UK. Ever since climate change was put on the agenda of UK politics by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in a UN speech in 1989, there has been an orchestrated attempt to weaken and dilute measures to address global heating.  

The approach and strategies adopted by climate sceptic groups such as the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the Institute of Economic Affairs and key allies in the right-wing media, such as the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, have shifted from disputing the science of climate change to exaggerating the economic costs of climate action and downplaying the benefits. 

Influencing public perceptions 

Our research shows that climate obstructionism in the UK is highly dynamic and constantly adapting to a rapidly changing policy environment by seeking to shape public perceptions of the feasibility and desirability of climate policies.   

Those working to increase policy ambition on climate change must confront climate obstructionism in the run-up to the UK general election and beyond it. Ahead of July 4, this is what to watch out for.  

With our colleagues Dr Ruth McKie of De Montfort University and Dr James Painter of the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, we identified the main channels through which climate obstructionism operates in the UK and the organisations that maintain it for a recent publication for the Climate Change Social Science Network (CSSN).  

Climate obstructionism is ever-present across the UK media. Traditional media outlets, like the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail, have persistently opposed climate policy, providing platforms for individuals with direct links to fossil fuel firms or organised sceptic groups like the Global Warming Policy Foundation (now rebranded as Net Zero Watch) and giving voice to politicians who are part of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group.  

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More recently these outlets have peddled misinformation around key green technologies, such as wind and solar farms, heat pumps and electric vehicles, while demonising the campaigns of climate activists and seeking to discredit their supporters. Newer media outlets, such as GB News, often give a platform to climate deniers or airtime to misinformation and then share clips across social media.  

As July 4 draws closer, these outlets will scrutinise the main parties’ climate policies. We can anticipate that Labour’s policies will be painted as a threat to national security, jobs and to households already facing a cost-of-living crisis.  

Some Conservatives and the Reform Party will be given an opportunity to dispute the urgency and necessity of climate policy, in particular net zero emissions, given the latter has called for a national referendum about whether to abandon the goal altogether. More often than not, these lines of attack of prospective policies will reflect obstructionist talking points, which overstate the costs of climate action, while ignoring the costs of inaction, and downplay the UK’s role in the climate crisis relative to other countries such as China.  

Fossil fuel lobbying 

Climate obstructionism in the UK is also maintained through the political power of the fossil fuel industry which makes recurring threats of job losses or to move its investments elsewhere to avoid stronger policy. These often land with politicians due to the perceived centrality of these companies to growth and prosperity.  

Party donations – from fossil fuel firms or those who benefit from their expansion – to individual politicians or political parties are pivotal for providing access and a say in determining the shape and scope of policy. In 2022, the Conservatives received £3.5 million in donations from those with direct links to fossil fuel production while Labour has also accepted donations from large polluters. Tightening the regulations around party donations, and making them more transparent, could help curtail climate obstructionism.  

Climate obstructionism is also advanced through institutional channels. There are a myriad of opportunities for fossil fuel interests to gain access or shape policy outcomes in the UK. All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPGs) are effective fora for obstructionist actors to lobby politicians and shape policy – often without breaking any rules.  

Access is also secured through an ever-revolving door between industry and government and the use of secondments. Since 2011, an estimated 127 former oil and gas employees have gone into top government roles. The next government could introduce ‘cool off’ periods for those leaving government and seeking to enter it from industry to address this issue. 

UN chief calls on governments to ban fossil fuel ads

As the urgency of addressing the climate crisis becomes starker with each passing week, and the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels becomes ever clearer, those that benefit from maintaining the status quo will step up their obstructionism.  

Delivering a just transition to a net zero economy not only requires citizens to be able to engage in an informed manner with proposals to address the climate crisis, it also requires that the democratic process is not compromised by those interests that want to prolong dependence on the fossil fuels driving the climate crisis.  

Whichever party wins on July 4, they will have a critical role to play in ensuring the UK does its fair share in addressing the climate crisis within a closing window to deliver effective action. We cannot afford to allow climate obstructionists to jeopardise this vital opportunity to change path and raise ambition. 

The post UK general election: Watch out for climate obstructionism   appeared first on Climate Home News.

Aghali is a pioneering example of Azerbaijan’s plan for “green” reconstruction of the territories it captured after a long, bloody conflict with Armenia, centred on the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh mountainous enclave.

Hundreds of Azeris displaced from the region in the early 1990s have moved back to Aghali, a local government official told Climate Home.

“The emotional link to these territories is very strong even though 30 years have passed,” the official said. “Our people are happy to be back”.

The government says more than 100,000 Azeris will return to populate the 30 or so new towns and villages planned across the area by 2026, which are expected to run mainly on clean energy and aim for “net zero” emissions.

Yet a more troubled story lies beneath the shiny surface presented by the authorities – part of Azerbaijan’s efforts to polish its green credentials before the COP29 UN climate summit it will host in November.

Some 136,000 ethnic Armenians who had called Nagorno-Karabakh their homeland fled in a mass exodus during a two-part military offensive by Azerbaijan that started in 2020 and ended last autumn.

For Armenian authorities and some human rights and legal experts, the drive amounted to “ethnic cleansing” – a phrase used in a European Parliament resolution on the conflict. A spokesperson for COP29 told Climate Home the Azerbaijan authorities “categorically reject this view”.

With the fighting now over, the two sides are engaged in talks to build a lasting peace. They struck an initial agreement to establish border demarcations in April, but hopes of a swift breakthrough on a permanent solution remain slim.

Meanwhile, displaced Armenians have said publicly they fear the heritage sites and homes they hastily left behind will be erased under a giant construction effort. Evidence of this was seen last month by Climate Home on a press trip organised and sponsored by the COP29 Presidency team, which controlled access to locations and sources in the region.

‘Net zero’ vision

Azerbaijan has built its prowess, both on and off the battlefield, on the strength of its vast oil and gas reserves. Around 60 percent of the government’s budget is financed through the sale of fossil fuels, primarily via export to Europe.

Last month, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev called oil and gas “a gift from God” at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin, signalling continued investment in increased gas production. That is despite signing up, like all countries, to a global agreement to transition away from fossil fuels “in keeping with the science” at the COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai last December.

Nonetheless, as its capital Baku gears up to host COP29, Azerbaijan also wants to show off its efforts to adopt clean energy and cut planet-heating emissions to the outside world.

Nagorno-Karabakh, and the surrounding provinces, lie at the centre of this push. The government has declared a “green energy zone” here, adding a dozen hydropower plants, and seeking to attract foreign investment in solar and wind.

Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in front of a screw turbine hydro power plant in Zangilan, one of the territories recaptured in 2020. Photo: Azerbaijan Presidency

Across the country, the government wants renewables to make up 30 percent of its installed electricity capacity by 2030 – up from 7 percent in 2023. The main motivation is to reduce the use of gas in its own power stations so that more of it can be shipped to Europe, President Aliyev said during an event at ADA University in Baku in April.

Azerbaijan is also planning to achieve “net zero” carbon emissions in Karabakh by 2050, as outlined in its latest national climate action plan (NDC) submitted under the UN climate process. It says that “to revitalise the territories liberated from occupation”, the government will establish “smart” settlements, promote “green” energy zones, agriculture and transport, and reforest “thousands of hectares”.

For Anna Ohanyan, a senior scholar in the Russia and Eurasia programme at the US-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “it’s greenwashing of an ethnic cleansing, pure and simple”.

“Azerbaijan is putting a stamp on the territory as a way to legitimise the conquest of Nagorno-Karabakh and doing so under the pretence of helping fight climate change,” she told Climate Home.

The COP29 spokesperson said in emailed comments that this view “has no basis in fact”, adding that Azerbaijan is rebuilding houses for its citizens who were internally displaced during the conflict, “according to UN sustainability standards”.

Disputed territory

Territorial disputes over the Nagorno-Karabakh region have a long and complex history.

“Azerbaijan and Armenia – both are convinced this is historic patrimony of their people,” said Audrey Altstadt, a professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who specialises in Azerbaijan.

As the Soviet Union set about governing its far-flung provinces in the 1920s, then Commissar of Nationalities, Joseph Stalin, ruled that the region should be part of Soviet Azerbaijan, even though ethnic Armenians made up 94% of its population at the time.

In the 1980s, alongside the fall of the Soviet Union, tensions began to rise after Nagorno-Karabakh’s governing authorities declared their intention to join Armenia and Azerbaijan reacted by attempting to suppress separatists.

After the two sides gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, clashes between them escalated into an all-out war.

By the time fighting stopped three years later, Azerbaijan had suffered a crushing defeat, losing not just Nagorno-Karabakh but also a sizable chunk of territory around it. Ethnic Armenians declared a separatist republic in the region with the backing of Armenia.

Evolution of territorial control over Nagorno-Karabakh, and surrounding districts, from the aftermath of the 1994 war until today. Graphic: Fanis Kollias

Some 870,000 Azeris abandoned their homes in the captured area and Armenia itself, while around 300,000 ethnic Armenians fled Azerbaijan, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency.

For 15 years the conflict remained frozen, while international actors – led by the United States, France and Russia – tried, and failed, to find a peaceful resolution.  

Azerbaijan’s autocratic president, Aliyev, took matters into his own hands in September 2020, mounting a large-scale military offensive on Nagorno-Karabakh. Powered by more sophisticated weaponry, and backed by Türkiye, Azeri forces prevailed during a 44-day war that claimed the lives of at least 7,000 people – including over 100 civilians. 

Under a ceasefire agreement signed in November 2020, Azerbaijan gained a significant proportion of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the coveted town of Shushi – called Shusha by Azeris – as well as winning control of adjacent districts. 

Soon afterwards, Baku announced a colossal programme to rebuild and repopulate the region, establishing “green energy zones” in Nagorno-Karabakh and East Zangezur. 

Rebuilding ‘from scratch’

Deep behind a string of police checkpoints, the plan is proceeding apace. It includes Aghali, one of the “smart” villages created by the government to accommodate Azeri citizens displaced from the area three decades ago.

“Everything we build here, starting from houses to schools, is based on the element of solar,” said Vahid Hajiyev, special representative of the Azerbaijan presidency in Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan districts, addressing a group of international reporters.

“The whole area had been devastated,” added Hajiyev, saying it was largely abandoned and littered with mines after Armenia captured it. “We’re doing everything from scratch and that gives an opportunity to do it right.”

A view of Aghali, a “smart” village created by the Azerbaijani government in the territories retaken from Armenia, in April 2024. Photo: Matteo Civillini

A nearby screw hydro turbine provides electricity for the whole village, while homes are equipped with solar water heating systems, officials told Climate Home.

“Smart agriculture” projects are being developed to give work to the more than 860 people who, according to government figures, have already moved into the village, with hundreds more expected to join them soon, they added.

Climate Home was not able to talk to any of the residents, besides government officials, and was not shown around the homes.

Aghali offers a template for around 30 similar villages the Azeri government plans to erect across the captured regions. They are just one part of the mammoth construction drive in the Karabakh area, bankrolled by Baku to the tune of just under $2.5 billion a year – around 12% of total public spending.

While the official vision projects an eco-paradise, in Baku’s breakneck drive to put it into practice, the landscape currently resembles a sprawling construction site, as seen by Climate Home and shown by satellite images.

Travelling up the windy road to Shusha-Shushi just before midnight, the headlights of dump trucks and cement mixers pierced the near-total darkness.

They are the backbone of a giant effort to lay down thousands of kilometres of roads and railways and throw up brand-new airports, vast conference halls, hotels and apartments.

Globally, construction is among the most polluting industries, contributing around 10% of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2022, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

In March 2022, the Azerbaijan government invited observers from UNEP to assess the environmental situation in the territories it had gained, after accusing Armenians of large-scale destruction and contamination of the water and soil.

The UNEP team documented “chemical pollution of water” and “deforestation” as a result of activities in dozens of mines and quarries carried out by the Armenian administration “with inadequate environmental oversight and supervision”.

But it also found that Azerbaijan’s building drive, then still in its infancy, was already putting further strains on the environment, as well as causing climate-heating emissions, thereby “adversely impacting the zero-emission goal for the region”.

The construction of new roads was “having a significant impact on forest cover”, its report stated, while the infrastructure programme “placed a significant burden on finite natural raw materials” extracted from local quarries to make cement or asphalt.

The construction drive is altering the landscape in Nagorno-Karabakh. Photo: Matteo Civillini/April 2024

The COP29 spokesperson said Azerbaijan is following the recommendations of the UNEP report and that “a number of mitigation measures have been undertaken” to curb the environmental footprint of the works.

“We believe that the net impact of the reconstruction effort will actually contribute to Azerbaijan’s climate change and decarbonisation goal,” the spokesperson added.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s net zero target has yet to be extended to the rest of the country. Currently Azerbaijan has a goal to reduce emissions 40% by 2050 and has promised to submit a new NDC that is aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5C, which is due by early 2025.

Environmental blockade

In December 2022, environmental concerns became a weapon in the long-running dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijani eco-activists blocked the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting the region to the outside world and a vital supply line for food and medicines.

They were ostensibly demonstrating over the impact of mining in the breakaway region. But, according to close watchers of the conflict, the protesters had been sent there by Baku – a claim denied by the COP29 spokesperson.

At the time, one protester told Climate Home that representatives from the Ministry of the Environment were also present. On many other occasions, the Azerbaijan government has cracked down on political dissent, according to human rights groups.

When, four months later, Azerbaijan erected a permanent checkpoint on the road to “prevent the illegal transportation of manpower and weapons”, the sit-in ended. But the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh continued with only limited amounts of aid trickling in.

Shortages of food, medications and fuel plunged the region into a humanitarian crisis, according to UN human rights experts.

“In the end, it was hard to even find bread. There were women and kids queuing all night for a piece of bread,” recalled Siranush Sargsyan, an Armenian journalist from Nagorno-Karabakh, in an interview with Climate Home. “Even if they didn’t kill all of us, they were basically starving people.”

On September 19 2023, Azeri forces launched a lightning attack on the parts of Nagorno-Karabakh still controlled by ethnic Armenians in what Baku called “an anti-terrorist operation”. Within 24 hours, the de-facto government of the enclave surrendered and announced the republic would cease to exist the following January.

Fearing violence and persecution, over 100,000 ethnic Armenians – nearly the entire remaining population – fled their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh and sought refuge in Armenia.

Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh region arrive at the Armenian border in a truck in September 2023. REUTERS/Irakli Gedenidze

“[The] liberation of territories was a main goal of my political life. And I’m proud that these goals have been achieved,” President Aliyev, whose family has ruled over Azerbaijan for the past 31 years, said last December. “I think we brought peace. We brought peace by war.”

Now in full control of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan is doubling down on its efforts to reshape the region and move tens of thousands of Azeris there. “We will continue the ‘Great Return’ campaign until all those who were forced from their homes can go home,” the COP29 spokesperson said, referring to internally displaced Azeris.

Government officials told Climate Home that ethnic Armenians are also welcome to go back, but only if they stick to the conditions imposed by Baku.

Journalist Sargsyan said returning to Nagorno-Karabakh under Azeri control is out of the question as she fears for her safety. “I left everything there”, she said. “But I would rather die than end up in a prison in Azerbaijan.”

Heritage destruction

Meanwhile, ethnic Armenians fear the huge Azeri construction drive now underway will erase most, if not all, of their legacy.

Nijat Karimov, a special adviser to Azerbaijan’s presidency, told Climate Home that Baku had destroyed Armenian government buildings in Nagorno-Karabakh for “safety” reasons, without giving specifics. He added that Azerbaijan’s government had since “repaired and rehabilitated” the villages.

A day later, Climate Home travelled past what little remains of Karintak village (known as Dashalti in Azeri). Nestled in a gorge sitting just below Shusha-Shushi, it was home to a few hundred ethnic Armenians until Azeri forces took over at the end of 2020.

Now nearly the entire settlement appears to have been razed to the ground, as Climate Home witnessed. Mounds of disturbed soil surround a large mosque, under construction, and a church, one of the few original buildings left standing.

The village of Karintak (bottom right corner), as seen in April 2024 when Climate Home was taken through the region. Photo: Matteo Civillini

Climate Home asked the COP29 Presidency what had happened to the village. A spokesperson said government experts would need to examine the satellite images, buildings and sites referenced in Climate Home’s question “to get a complete answer”.

The case of Karintak is not an isolated one, according to Caucasus Heritage Watch, a research group led by archaeologists at Cornell and Purdue Universities. They have documented the destruction of at least eight Armenian cultural heritage sites – including churches and a cemetery – in the retaken territories since 2021.

Lucrative contracts

Baku says its grand vision is to repopulate Nagorno-Karabakh and the neighbouring areas, attract foreign business and eventually turn them into tourism destinations. But when Climate Home visited, most of what had been built appeared to be under-used, while access to the region is severely restricted.

Two international airports, completed in just 10-15 months a mere 70 km apart, have very little air traffic, except for the occasional charter flight, tracking data shows. A third airfield is now being erected nearby.

In Shusha-Shushi, a five-star spa hotel complex with sleek marble interiors was inaugurated just over a year ago. When Climate Home walked past last month, there was not a client in sight, with only wandering labourers headed to nearby construction sites.

The 5-star Shusha Hotel appeared empty when Climate Home visited in April 2024. Photo: Matteo Civillini

Historian Altstadt said the reconstruction is being driven by multiple incentives. “Yes, it is to get people back to the land they left over 30 years ago, and it is also to put their stamp on it to show ‘this is our territory and we can do what we want’,” she told Climate Home. “But there is also a lot of money to be made by Azerbaijan’s oligarchs.”

Pasha Holding is a conglomerate controlled by the powerful Pashayev family of First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva. It is heavily involved in the rebuilding of Nagorno-Karabakh. It also manages huge tracts of agricultural land and new hotels, and is opening bank branches and supermarkets.

The vast amount of money – and assets – up for grabs is also attracting considerable foreign interest.

Turkish firm Kalyon – considered to have close ties to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to Reporters Without Borders – has won major construction contracts in the territories. And mining permits in Karabakh have been awarded to a group run by pro-Erdogan businessman Mehmet Cengiz.

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British architects Chapman Taylor are earning at least $2.3 million to map out the redevelopment of Shusha-Shushi – which thousands of ethnic Armenians fled following Azeri attacks in 2020 – and will also work on the urban design of other towns.

BP, meanwhile, is developing a 240-megawatt solar power plant in Jabrayil district, with construction expected to begin later this year. Speaking at Baku Energy Week in 2022, Gary Jones, the energy firm’s regional president for Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, praised Baku’s efforts to turn Karabakh into “the heart of sustainable development”.

Adopting contested terminology used by Azerbaijan, he said the “liberated territories” are “blessed with some of the country’s best solar and geothermal resources”, creating the “perfect opportunity for a fully net zero system” that “can be built fresh from a new start”.

BP and Chapman Taylor did not respond to Climate Home’s request for comment.

Special presidential representative Hajiyev told Climate Home that many international companies are interested in working in Karabakh. “It’s a huge investment opportunity because a lot of government incentives are provided here,” he said.

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini in Azerbaijan; editing by Megan Rowling and Joe Lo; fact-checking by Sebastian Rodriguez)

Matteo Civillini visited Nagorno-Karabakh, and the surrounding districts, as part of an “energy media tour” organised and sponsored by the COP29 Presidency.

The post In Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s net zero vision clashes with legacy of war appeared first on Climate Home News.

It must be said: it is impossible to imagine Nigeria’s path to decarbonization without imagining it being fully lined with trees. There is a critical need to address deforestation, transform agricultural practices, and harness nature-based solutions like afforestation and reforestation if Nigeria were serious about reaching net zero by 2060 – a commitment the Nigerian government made at COP26 in Glasgow.

Nigeria is an oil giant in Africa, and unsurprisingly, most of its plans on decarbonization focus on the transition to renewable energy. Previously, Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan had not considered the country’s emissions from the agriculture, forests, and land-use (AFOLU) sector.

However, our new report, which looks at different pathways for Nigeria to reach its net-zero-by-2060 goal, found Nigeria’s AFOLU sector has contributed the largest sectoral emissions at 30%, compared to the oil and gas sector at 29%. So while it is good that Nigeria has set its eyes on transforming the energy sector, it is also true that only in a renewable energy scenario that also transforms the AFOLU sector can Nigeria achieve its commitment of net zero by 2060 which will allow Nigeria’s economy to grow alongside reaching its sustainability goals.

“Two steps forward, two steps back” – Governments off course for forest protection target

One of the main drivers of Nigeria’s AFOLU emissions is land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF). The last decade has seen relentless deforestation in Nigeria, with Global Forest Watch data revealing that from 2010 to 2019, Nigeria lost 86,700 hectares of tropical forest. Alarming as this may be, without immediate action, an additional 25% of our remaining forests could vanish by 2060. The cause of deforestation is a confluence of different factors, including the population’s lack of access to electricity and increasing poverty rates.

The stark reality is that nearly one in three people in the country lack access to electricity. This energy disparity leads many to rely on traditional, polluting methods for energy generation, such as burning wood. Additionally, less than a quarter of Nigerians have access to “clean cooking,” forcing the majority—primarily women—to rely on inefficient and polluting cookstoves, using wood for fuel.

This reliance on wood for energy generation and fuel is a significant driver of deforestation in Nigeria, and is also a major contributing factor to residential emissions. Improving access to clean cooking is not only pivotal in reducing emissions but also a crucial step towards mitigating deforestation.

According to the World Bank, four in ten Nigerians – or about 80 million people – were living in poverty in 2019. A report by Mongabay revealed that with lack of available jobs, Nigerian forests are being lost to farming and logging. Here, the message is clear: we can only save our forests and be truly on our way to net zero if we address poverty and social inequalities.

Reversing deforestation is not an impossible feat, but it demands a commitment to reforestation efforts – a 2.3% annual reforestation rate – and addressing other root causes of the problem including access to electricity, job creation, and a reduction in poverty.  With reforestation efforts, Nigeria can not only halt the degradation but also bolster its carbon sink capacity, a crucial element in achieving the net-zero goal by 2060.

The commitment to net zero is not just an environmental pledge but a blueprint for economic growth and prosperity that aligns with our broader sustainability goals. It is time for Nigeria to seize the opportunity and lead the charge towards a greener, more resilient future.

The post Nigeria’s path to net zero should be fully lined with trees – and fairness appeared first on Climate Home News.

Nearly two years on, Climate Home News looks at how these commitments are holding up to the test of time.

• Methane Pledge
• Forest Pledge
• International Fossil Finance Pledge
• Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ)

METHANE PLEDGE

WHAT: Reduce human-made methane emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030. Cutting the amount of methane present in the atmosphere is important because it is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide despite having a shorter lifespan.

WHO: 104 countries, led by the US and the EU, signed up to the pledge when it was first announced at Cop26 in Glasgow. The number of signatories has since risen to 150. However, they only represent about half of global methane emissions as China, India and Russia – three of the world’s top four emitters – have not joined the coalition.

HOW IT IS GOING: The raw figures paint a fairly grim picture. Since Cop26, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere has kept rising fast and it is now more than two and a half times its pre-industrial level.

Over half of the emissions come from human activities, like fossil fuel extraction, farming and landfills, with the rest caused by natural sources. Under current trajectories, total human-made methane emissions could rise by up to 13% between 2020 and 2030 – the pledge’s timeframe.

This graph shows the globally-averaged, monthly atmospheric methane concentration since 1983. Image credit: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

Targeting the oil and gas sector is seen by many as the easiest and fastest way to bring down emissions in the near term. Experts say existing technologies already provide cheap and effective ways to plug leaky infrastructure like pipelines and gas storage tanks.

However, the technological developments have not yet been converted into real, widespread action. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), methane emissions from oil and gas remained “stubbornly high” in 2022 even as the energy companies’ bumper profits made actions to reduce them cheaper than ever. “There is just no excuse”, the IEA chief Fatih Birol commented.

Raft of initiatives

But judging the pledge’s progress on current numbers only tells half the story, argued Jonathan Banks, global director of the methane programme at the Clean Air Task Force (CATF). “Emissions are not going to turn around immediately,” he told Climate Home. “If you look at the work going into the pledge, building the funding and technical resources to bring emissions down, I think it could potentially be on track for success”.

A series of initiatives have been set up to help countries deliver on the pledge. The UN’s Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) is helping over 30 developed and developing countries to establish plans to achieve the 2030 target.

Canada has set out a strategy that it expects to reduce domestic methane emissions by “more than 35%” by 2030, compared to 2020.

Methane leaking from Chelmsford compressor station, UK on 15 October 2021, picked up by a special camera (Photo: Clean Air Task Force/ James Turitto)

The Global Methane Hub (GMH), a philanthropic organisation, is also supporting signatories of the methane pledge with technical assistance and funding. Carolina Urmeneta, a director at the GMH, told Climate Home News that over the last year, the group has focused its work on developing systems to monitor methane emissions rates from oil and gas and landfill installations using satellites.

She said reaching the 2030 target “is possible and cost-effective, but it is not easy. We need to improve data transparency and increase funding for projects with methane targets.”

Regulations drive

Some progress has also been made on the regulatory front. The USA introduced new rules to address methane emissions caused by oil and gas companies through the Inflation Reduction Act. Using a carrot-and-stick approach, it provides $1 billion in public subsidies to take action, while charging a fee for excessive emissions.

In May the European Parliament agreed on tougher measures to tackle methane emissions in the energy sector. The approved text calls for binding emission reduction targets, stronger obligations for fossil fuel operators to detect and repair leaky infrastructure and the application of the same measures to exporting countries outside of the bloc.

While the final rules are still being negotiated with the EU’s national governments, CATF’s Banks believes they could have a “huge global impact” if introduced in their current form. “The methane emissions associated with the gas Europe buys from the rest of the world is quite large, so such measures could really drive some change”.

New announcements are expected at Cop28 in Dubai, after the summit’s president Sultan Al Jaber set the phaseout of methane emissions in oil and gas by 2030 as one of his priorities. “More than 20 oil and gas companies have answered Cop28’s call,” he said this week. “And I see positive momentum as more are joining”. But the UAE has been accused of double standards as it failed to report methane emissions to the UN for a decade, as the Guardian reported.

While it has not signed the pledge, China is expected to announce its long-awaited methane plan at Cop28.

FOREST PLEDGE 

WHAT: End and reverse deforestation by 2030. Country leaders pledged to conserve forests, tackle wildfires, facilitate sustainable agriculture, support indigenous populations and “significantly” increase the provision of finance towards achieving those goals.

WHO: More than 140 countries joined the coalition. Signatories of the pledge – including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo – cover around 90% of the world’s forests. But major G20 powers such as India, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and rainforest nations like Bolivia and Venezuela did not join the group.

HOW IT IS GOING:  Countries remain off track to reach the goal of the Glasgow pledge and end deforestation by 2030, according to an assessment done by a coalition of NGOs.

Across the world, tree loss recorded in 2022 was 21% higher than the level needed to be on course to reach zero in seven years’ time, the report said.

Source: Forest Declaration Assessment

In fact, the situation is getting worse. Global deforestation grew 4% last year, wiping out 6.6 million hectares of forest, according to the study. That’s a tree-covered area nearly as big as Ireland disappearing in one year.

“The world’s forests are in crisis. All these promises have been made to halt deforestation, to fund forest protection. But the opportunity to make progress is passing us by year after year,” said Erin Matson, a lead author of the Forest Declaration Assessment.

Saving the Three Basins means stopping fossil fuel expansion

There are important regional differences, however. While tropical Asia is faring better, with Indonesia and Malaysia on track to hit their targets, Latin America and the Caribbean are farthest off track.

The election of President Lula da Silva in Brazil has led to a reversal in the skyrocketing deforestation rates in the country, which hosts most of the Amazon rainforets.

But efforts to create a regional forest protection coalition have failed. At the Amazon summit in August, eight South American countries failed to agree on a pledge to end deforestation by 2030 following opposition from Bolivia and Venezuela.

An aerial view shows deforestation near a forest on the border between Amazonia and Cerrado in Nova Xavantina, Mato Grosso state, Brazil in 2021 (REUTERS/Amanda Perobelli)

While it included a larger number of countries, the Cop26 commitment was not entirely new: it repeated promises previously made in the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which by then had already failed to achieve some of its core targets.

Keen to avoid the same fate, self-declared “high ambition” countries launched a new initiative designed to deliver the pledge.

“High ambition” efforts

Chaired by the USA and Ghana, the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) has promised to spur global action and provide accountability.

Only a fifth of the original 140 signatories have joined the group so far, with Russia and Indonesia among the most notable absentees.

Christine Dragisic, who leads the forest team at the US State Department, said the goal is to create a “high-level community” that brings together governments, indigenous people, philanthropies, civil society and the private sector to drive action forward and hit the 2030 target.

“Can we do it? Yes. Is it going to be hard? Definitely. Does it require everybody to be at the table? For sure”, Dragisic told Climate Home.

An Indonesian ranger patrols a forest protected through a carbon credit project. Photo: Dita Alangkara/CIFOR

Since its launch last year, the FCLP has worked on a number of initiatives offering technical and financial solutions to forest nations, looking at the role of carbon markets and the forest economy in averting tree loss.

Finance gaps

As with most climate actions, however, it ultimately comes down to the question of money. “The delivery of climate finance is very important to achieve a lot of these targets and that is still very much lacking”, Roselyn Fosuah Adjei, director of climate change at Ghana’s forestry commission and co-chair of the FCLP, told Climate Home.

“The kind of finance we need is not finance for today or tomorrow, it’s finance for yesterday. We are already behind schedule. If it gets delivered fast there’s lots that we can do to close the gap that is now quite wide,” she added.

The Cop26 pledge was accompanied by a commitment from a group of rich nations to provide $12 billion in forest-related climate finance between 2021 and 2025. The money should be channeled to developing countries enacting concrete steps to halt forest loss.

The donor countries reported last year that they had provided $2.6 billion – over a fifth of the target amount – in 2021. They are expected to provide an update at Cop28.

INTERNATIONAL FOSSIL FINANCE PLEDGE

WHAT: End new direct public support for the international unabated fossil fuel energy sector by the end of 2022, except in limited and clearly defined circumstances that are consistent with a 1.5°C warming limit and the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: 34 countries and five development banks – predominantly from wealthy cuontries – signed up to the pledge at Cop26. These included the G7 nations – with the exception of Japan – and most EU member states.

HOW IT IS GOING: Among the signatories that give lots of money to the energy sector, the vast majority have introduced policies in line with the promise made in Glasgow.

The United Kingdom, France, Denmark, New Zealand, Canada, Finland and Sweden have stopped providing loans and guarantees for oil and gas extraction and processing overseas through their export credit agencies.

Their actions have shifted at least $5.7 billion per year in public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean energy, according to analysis by Oil Change International and E3G.

On the other hand, however, the USA, Italy and Germany have continued funding international fossil fuel projects in 2023 in breach of the pledge.

They were supposed to stop funding foreign fossil fuels by December 2022. But since then, they collectively approved over $3 billion in financial support to oil and gas overseas programmes.

Most of the funding comes in the form of state-backed guarantees provided by export credit agencies. These products limit the risk taken by companies selling services and goods in other countries, influencing investment.

Among the projects receiving backing from the US and Italy was the expansion of an oil refining facility in Indonesia’s Borneo.

The US Export-Import Bank justified its backing of the project by claiming it would allow Indonesia to reduce its reliance on imported fossil fuels. The Italian agency did not provide a motivation for the decision.

Germany and the US have also poured hundreds of millions of dollars into projects aiming to boost the production and trade of liquified natural gas (LNG), which has been more sought after since Russia invaded Ukraine and Europe cut back on Russian gas.

Political splits and carve-outs

In the US, efforts to comply with the Glasgow pledge have caused a split among senior officials in the Biden administration and in the federal agencies charged with disbursing the money, as Politico revealed.

The White House has drafted guidance underpinning the investments - without making it public -, but the final decisions are made by agencies like the US Export-Import Bank (Exim).

“It is a struggle to get US Exim to comply, so far they’ve ignored the Cop26 commitment”, says Nina Pusic from Oil Change International. “It will require a lot of political weight from the Biden administration and Congress.”

Indonesia delays coal closure plans after finance row with rich nations

Italy looks likely to keep funding fossil fuels overseas for years to come. Its policy guidance lays out a "gradual dismission of public support to new requests of fossil fuel projects", seeing support for gas extraction and production run into 2026. Oil processing and distribution projects should be excluded from the beginning of next year.

But Italy has also carved out a wide range of exceptions that allow its export credit agency to keep greenlighting support for fossil fuel projects on "national energy security" and "energy efficiency" grounds.

The FSRU Toscana LNG regasfication platform off the coast of Italy (Photo: OLT Offshore LNG Toscana)

Germany's main export credit agency has just introduced this month new policies restricting support for fossil fuel projects. However, it allows for financing the development of new gas fields and related transport facilities until 2025 when justified by "national security and in compliance with the Paris Agreement targets".

Investment in new coal, oil and gas production is regarded as incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a large number of climate scientists.

"Germany has a vast amount of fossil fuel transactions pending approval", says Oil Change International's Pusic. "The success of the new policy will be judged on the decisions made on those projects".

GLASGOW FINANCIAL ALLIANCE FOR NET ZERO (GFANZ)

WHAT: Commit to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest by aligning their portfolios and investment practices with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

WHO: Over 650 institutions across the financial sector, including banks, insurers, asset owners, asset managers, financial service providers, and investment consultants. Gfanz members represent 40% of global private financial assets. They are grouped together under eight independent net-zero financial alliances focused on specific branches of finance.

HOW IT IS GOING: It is not easy to gauge the progress of a wide-ranging initiative with loosely defined targets and a constellation of constituent parts.

GFANZ says it has made progress over the last two years by raising the ambition of financial institutions and by providing tools and guidance to turn commitments into action.

"Two years ago, not a single bank had set a science-based 2030 target. Now nearly all global, systemically important banks have voluntarily and independently set 2030 targets for oil and gas", a GFANZ spokesperson said.

Above all, the mere fact that the alliance still exists at all is a first - albeit limited - marker of success, after an especially tumultuous year.

The prospect of ending up in legal hot waters in the US, where Republicans have driven an anti-climate investment backlash, has dampened the enthusiasm of many leading signatories. The result is that parts of the alliance have been hemorrhaging members, while other components have resorted to watering down their requirements to assuage concerns.

Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, launched GFANZ at Cop26. Photo: World Economic Forum/Valeriano Di Domenico

Troubles started brewing in mid-2022 when a group of leading US banks threatened to pull out over fears of being sued because of having decarbonisation policies imposed by external parties. That's after US Republican politicians had accused financial institutions of breaching antitrust rules by grouping together in a climate cartel that limits opportunities for investors.

A month later, in October 2022, Gfanz dropped a key requirement for its members to sign up to the UN Race to Zero initiative - a verification body for corporate and financial sector pledges - which had been seen as a way to prevent greenwashing.

GFANZ told Climate Home that the alliances are still working with Race to Zero and "continue to note" its advice and guidance.

Heading for the door

Those US banks eventually ended up staying in but, despite the less stringent criteria, other influential members began heading for the door in droves soon after.

Vanguard, one of the world's biggest asset managers, quit the Net Zero Asset Managers' initiative - part of Gfanz - saying it wanted to "provide clarity to investors" and "speak independently on matters of importance" to them.

But it's the insurers' coalition, known as NZIA, that has suffered the biggest - nearly fatal - wounds. The group has lost nearly two-thirds of its members since the start of the year, with leading firms like Allianz, Zurich, Munich Re and Lloyd's of London throwing in the towel.

Again a major driver for the mass exit was a letter written in May by 23 Republican attorney generals accusing signatories of advancing "an activists climate agenda" with "serious detrimental effects on the residents" of their states. The spark for this was the alliance's initial obligation to its members to set emission reduction targets by the end of July.

Staring at the real prospect of shutting down, the insurers' alliance again watered down its requirements, becoming effectively toothless.

To triple renewable energy, the Global South needs finance

"NZIA member companies have no obligation to set or publish targets", wrote the UN Environment Programme (Unep) - convener of the initiative -  in a clarification letter. "Each company who chooses to be a member of the NZIA unilaterally and independently decides on the steps on its path towards net zero."

Meanwhile, GFANZ says its members have submitted over 300 interim targets "representing clear progress in implementing commitments" to divert finance in line with net zero goals.

But while plans have been announced, many GFANZ members are also being accused of not putting their money where their mouth is. 161 members of the coalition have collectively invested hundreds of billions of dollars into the expansion of the coal, oil and gas industries since they joined the group, according to research by campaigning group Reclaim Finance.

A GFANZ spokesperson said "it’s clear a lot of work still needs to be done to ensure the world is deploying capital consistent with a 1.5C pathway".

"GFANZ is helping to support financial institutions to each set their own sectoral targets and develop transition plans and release guidance on their plan for a managed phaseout of fossil fuels," they added.

The article was amended on 6/11 to add comments from GFANZ received after publication

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The influential energy watchdog has downgraded the role of technofixes such as carbon capture and hydrogen in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. As their development is failing to live up to expectations – the IEA argues – countries should instead focus on the “most cost-effective” solutions, like ramping up renewables, energy efficiency and electrification.

The updated scenarios give less cover to the oil and gas industry and petrostates to promote these technologies for prolonging the use of fossil fuels.

“Removing carbon from the atmosphere is very costly. We must do everything possible to stop putting it there in the first place,” said IEA executive director Fatih Birol in a statement.

The IEA is also calling on all countries to bring forward their net zero plans.

It says rich nations should reach net zero emissions by 2045 under an “equitable pathway” that sees historical polluters take the lead. Only a handful of European countries, including Germany, are aiming to achieve that target.

Carbon capture hype

The report is the first update to the road map for the energy sector to reach net zero by 2050 debuted by the IEA in 2021. That landmark report relayed a stark message to the fossil fuel industry: development of oil, gas, and coal must stop to remain within acceptable global warming thresholds.

Since then, as discussions around the possibility of phasing out fossil fuels heated up, the sector has increasingly taken shelter behind technofixes.

Countries that produce or rely on fossil fuels particularly advocate the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to trap their emissions, rather than ending the use of such fuels completely. This debate is expected to take centre stage at the Cop28 climate summit in November.

‘Unmet expectations’

The latest IEA assessment pours cold water on such a notion. It says the history of CCS “has largely been one of unmet expectations”, marked by slow progress and flat deployment. Only 0.1% of total annual energy sector emissions are currently captured in this way.

Catherine Abreu from the campaign group Destination Zero told Climate Home News it makes sense that models see a reduced role for these technologies. “The results of the small, tremendously expensive CCS projects that already exist make it clear that these projects are just about extracting more fossil fuels, not about cutting climate pollution,” she said.

In its new forecasts, the Paris-based agency has slashed the contribution of CCS to emission reductions in the power sector by around 40% compared to its 2021 scenario. But it can reduce or eliminate emissions in areas where other options are limited, such as heavy industries, the IEA added.

Hydrogen ‘problem’

The agency has also taken aim at hydrogen, describing it as “more of a climate problem than a climate solution” today. While demand for hydrogen has been rising, the overwhelming majority of it has been met with polluting production processes, mostly involving gas.

The IEA sees a diminished potential for hydrogen to decarbonise long-distance transport and iron and steel production, and only if it comes from “low-emission” sources such as renewables.

“Hydrogen was once considered a ‘wonderfuel’,” said Dave Jones from energy think tank Ember. “Now reality has hit home and there has been a real change in understanding of its limited uses.”

While CCS and hydrogen are underperforming expectations, the IEA keeps revising its projections for solar power and electric vehicles upwards. Cheaper renewables and stronger electrification prospects make them more appealing and viable options to reach net zero by 2050.

The IEA report comes at a time of rising tensions with oil producers. Two weeks ago Opec, the cartel of oil-producing nations, accused the agency of creating “dangerous” risks to energy security by stoking calls to end investment in fossil fuel projects.

Net zero acceleration

IEA’s Birol said “the pathway to 1.5C has narrowed in the past two years, but clean energy technologies are keeping it open”. He urged stronger international cooperation, ambition and implementation of climate plans.

The IEA’s roadmap to net zero in 2050

While calling on all governments to raise their net zero targets, the report offers a template for differentiated responsibilities around the world.

Advanced economies take the lead and reach net zero emissions by around 2045 in the IEA scenario. Germany is the only G20 country to have pledged such a target. The United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada are all aiming to get to that level by 2050.

China should get to net zero by 2050, according to the agency, bringing its plans forward by ten years. Poorer developing economies get there “well after” 2050 in this scenario.

Thomas Hale, professor of global public policy at Oxford University, said it was important for the IEA to underline the equity implications of getting the world to net zero by 2050.

“The fundamental question of who goes fastest and who follows is a challenge at the heart of current global climate politics,” he added. “The report shows governments there is a really attractive and achievable pathway to get there.”

He expected the IEA recommendations to be considered by governments when they update their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement by 2025.

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The Overshoot Commission was set up last year to examine ways of reducing risks if and when global heating surpasses 1.5C.

In a report published on Thursday, it called for an acceleration in emission reductions, more resources to adapt to the impact of climate change and scaling up technologies to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The Commission also called for international discussions and scientific research on solar radiation modification (SRM). The technology aims to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. This could be achieved by pumping aerosols into the high atmosphere or by whitening clouds.

The Overshoot Commission is talking about solar geoengineering. Not everyone thinks it should

Its proponents say it could be a relatively cheap and fast way to counter extreme heat. But it would only temporarily mask the impact of rising emissions, not tackle the root cause. The regional effects of manipulating the weather are hard to predict and risk worsening climate impacts in some places.

The report acknowledged the technology’s potential drawbacks, but refused to take the option off the table. “It would be imprudent not to investigate or discuss SRM because present evidence suggests the possibility it could complement other approaches,” the Commission wrote.

During a press conference, its president Pascal Lamy said appeals not to discuss solar geoengineering “feel fickle” and “not the way to go”.

A fractured debate

Scientists Climate Home News were divided on the wisdom of this approach.

“The report creates a sort of parity between acknowledging the need for emission reductions and elevating technologically uncertain or even dangerous management options,” said Ben Sanderson, a climate scientist at CICERO. “By expanding research, the idea of SRM gets increasingly normalised, while distracting from real climate mitigation”.

James Haywood, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Exeter, argued the Commission struck a reasonable balance between risks and opportunities. “Current conventional mitigation efforts are widely acknowledged to be insufficient to maintain global mean climate temperatures below 1.5C,” he said. “It therefore makes a great deal of sense to research whether SRM proposals could be used to reduce the worst impacts of climate change.”

‘No stone unturned’

Hosted by the Paris Peace Forum, the commission comprises 13 global leaders, including former presidents and ministers.

Its president Pascal Lamy said “we have to leave no stone unturned”, as the world is on track to exceed the 1.5C goal set by the Paris Agreement. Temperature rises of up to 2.6C can be expected based on current climate plans, according to the UN’s global stocktake report released last week.

As efforts to reduce emissions fall short, geoengineering options become increasingly tempting. Most are highly speculative and there are no global rules on what countries or companies can do.

A rogue SRM experiment conducted by a US startup in Mexico’s northern state of Baja California led the government to announce a ban on solar geoengineering.

Moratorium calls

The Commission said countries should introduce a moratorium on “the deployment or large-scale experiments” of SRM. The ban should apply to any activity with “risk of significant transboundary harm” and should stay in place until the scientific community gains a better understanding of the technology.

Chukwumerije Okereke, professor of Global Climate Governance and Public Policy at Bristol University, argues the moratorium is poorly defined and calls for a total pause on experiments. “What does large-scale mean? This could lead to rogue researchers making a test at a time when we don’t even know the full effects,” he added. “This is not a position that is ethical, sensible and recognises the dangers.”

G20 leaders strike renewables deal, stall on fossil fuels

Many scientists are concerned SRM could create damage the ozone layer or inequally distribute extreme weather events like droughts or flooding across the world.

There are also questions about how long this technology would be needed and what happens after it is stopped. Ben Sanderson says early modelling indicates that cessation could fast-track severe disruption, with the potential to experience decades’ worth of changes in a year. “We would live in a high-risk world,” he added.

Moral hazard

Central to the geoengineering debate is the so-called moral hazard argument: the idea that researching technologies to remove CO2 or mask its effects undermines support for existing climate policies.

The Commission says the priority is to accelerate emission cuts by replacing fossil fuels and transitioning to clean energy. It also says technologies like SRM and carbon removal should only be seen as additional measures.

Laurence Tubiana, one of the commission’s members, tweeted that “we cannot be fooled by the false promises of simple techno-fix solutions”.

The Climate Overshoot Commission, an independent high-level political group, launched its report on potential approaches to address overshoot
Our main takeaway: climate change impacts the most vulnerable & equitably accelerating deep emissions cuts remains the utmost priority 1/5

— Laurence Tubiana (@LaurenceTubiana) September 14, 2023

But Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, a scientist at Climate Analytics, believes simply putting the option on the table relieves pressure from the obligation to reduce emissions. “Giving it a prominent space on the agenda has a negative effect,” he said.

Carbon removal push

Alongside SRM, the Commission pushed for a faster development of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The term comprises a vast number of methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere: from natural activities like tree planting to technological ones such as direct air capture.

The report says governments should promote a rapid expansion of “higher quality CDR at scale” by incentivising innovation, including through subsidies.

UN says more needed ‘on all fronts’ to meet climate goals

The use of CDR is the subject of much debate in the climate policy world. Activities like tree planting need vast swathes of land and carry the risk of releasing pollutants back into the atmosphere in case of a forest fire.

Direct air capture is energy hungry and expensive at the moment.

The International Energy Agency estimates that removing a ton of carbon dioxide costs between $135 and $135 with DAC today – although this could drop to below $100 by 2030.

According to the IPCC scientists, this is far more expensive than reducing emissions with renewable energy or energy efficiency.

The post Overshoot Commission calls for research into solar geoengineering appeared first on Climate Home News.

The European Union has sought to be a climate leader and Germany has set itself more ambitious targets than the bloc as a whole, but in many countries politics and the economic crisis have pushed the climate crisis down the agenda.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, aims to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 65% by 2030 compared with 1990. Last year its CO2 levels were already 40% below the 1990 level, but the new reports said that was not enough.

“The expected overall reduction is probably overestimated,” Hans-Martin Henning, the chairman of a council of climate experts that advises the government said in a statement on Tuesday.

Ecuadorians reject Amazon oil drilling in historic referendum

Failing net zero plan

The German government has ordered 130 measures in various sectors. The buildings and transport sectors in particular are failing to implement them, the council of government climate advisers’ report said.

The buildings sector is expected to be 35 million tonnes of CO2 short of target by 2030, while the transport sector is expected to have excess emissions of between 117 million and 191 million tonnes compared with the government target.

Tuesday’s advisers’ report coincided with another from the UBA that found Germany cannot become climate neutral by 2045 on the basis of planned and existing government climate policy.

US sparks controversy by backing oil company’s carbon-sucking plans

It drafted two scenarios, one for current policy and one for planned, that found only 82% and 86% of targeted emissions cuts compared to 1990, would be achieved.

“According to the current status, Germany would still emit 229 million tonnes of climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions in the target year 2045,” the UBA report found.

Government promises

The economy ministry said policies it has implemented since the current government took office in late 2021 would cut around 80% of the surplus CO2 emissions it said were a legacy of policies by the previous government. It also said the coalition government would examine the council’s findings to try to get the country on target.

Under pressure from the pro-business FDP party, the ruling coalition in June agreed to dilute a bill to phase out oil and gas heating systems from 2024. The changes would contribute to the building sector missing its targets, the report found.

Devastating Beijing floods test China’s ‘sponge cities’

The transport sector accounts for two thirds of the emissions remaining to be cut, the UBA report showed.

The council said assumptions made by the transport ministry on the effectiveness of the planned and already implemented measures, such as a discounted national rail ticket, a CO2 surcharge on truck tolls and increased working from home, were also optimistic.

“Private vehicle individual transport is not addressed, so to speak. And that is ultimately a gap in the transport programme,” Brigitte Knopf, deputy chairwoman of the council, told a news conference presenting the report findings on Tuesday.

The transport ministry was not immediately available for comment.

In response to the reports, non-profit group Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) said an emergency climate programme was needed, especially for the transport sector.

It said it would take legal action to try to enforce a speed limit on German motorways, which currently have no limits on how fast motorists can drive, and to reduce government subsidies that harm the environment, such as tax relief for company cars.

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At COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, we proposed a clear set of principles for delivering on net zero pledges. The Hleg ‘standard’ seized on existing progress while also addressing the areas that badly need cleaning up.

The goal was to fix what was broken while energising what works. Its a challenging dual task, but what in the world of climate action isn’t double-sided in this way?.

Companies cannot claim, for instance, to be aligned with net zero while being a driving force for long-lived new fossil fuel infrastructure.

EU to push for fossil fuel phaseout ‘well ahead of 2050’ at Cop28

Nor can they be seen to have a credible commitment if they pack carbon offsets into their near-term emissions calculations. 

Our recommendations can be boiled down to two core principles: absolute emissions need to fall right away, and businesses, financial institutions, cities and regions need to use their significant influence outside of direct emissions to enable a just and sustainable pathway to achieve nearly zero emissions in just a few decades. 

No, it isn’t a small task. But we’re firmly past the mid-point of 2023, and I think it is fair to say that something feels different about corporate climate action. There’s next phase for net zero, and we’re seeing it take shape.

The first notable trend is the continued coalescence of what has previously been a broad and sometimes daunting array of differing standards, guidelines, alliances and initiatives around the solid centre of gravity provided by last year’s Hleg report.

Canada pledges US$340m to UN’s Green Climate Fund

For instance, the ‘Race to Zero’ campaign, which has successfully brought a vast number of companies to the startling line, was recently announced as due to fold into the UNFCCC’s ‘Recognition and Accountability’ framework, with the details due to be announced soon. 

The coalescing of standards was a key finding of Oxford University’s 2023 update of their sizable net-zero-tracking database. “The [net zero tracker] also evaluated the evolving voluntary standards landscape, particularly the convergence of the ecosystem of voluntary standards, guidelines and accountability frameworks, which have emerged to steer targets and plans toward the requirements of science”.

We are not at the net zero singularity quite yet – they also found inconsistencies among those who judge the quality of net zero targets, particularly around issues of offsetting, equitable target setting, financing and corrosive lobbying.

After “sleepless nights”, governments strike deal on Green Climate Fund strategy

A report just released by authors at Columbia University digs into financing and lobbying. Bottom-up design of voluntary initiatives have resulted in an inflated perception of climate action.

Metrics and targets are misaligned from what we know is needed to limit warming. Their findings are a dire listing of missed opportunities and fabricated success. We can’t afford those indulgences when heat records are broken four days in a row. 

The Columbia report also lays out a pathway for those in control of large amounts of capital to both align internally with net zero commitments but to also use their incredible power and influence to move beyond the spreadsheets and the megatonnes. They can move, if they want to.

As we move into the second half of the year, a clear narrative around offsets has emerged. There is a growing trend of companies opting to focus on real emissions reductions rather than carbon offsets.

Last year, an investigation by Bloomberg listed companies moving away from carbon offsets, including Lyft, Vattenfall, Etsy, Delivery Hero and Credit Suisse. Other examples include British construction company BAM, Airlines Easyjet and JetBlue, Ben & Jerrys, Lendlease, Ikea, Australian property fund manager EG, the global copper industry body, and major tech company Atlassian. 

The EU lacks ambition on Cop28 renewable targets

Just recently, Nestle announced they’ll no longer lean on claiming to be ‘carbon neutral’, and that they’ll move away from offsets too. Though companies like Nestle still secret their offsetting within their own value chain (‘insetting’), these are still positive steps towards a situation where we can look at the task of rapid emissions reductions more squarely in the face.

And another  signal of the shifting tide was the recent release of Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI)’s Claims Code, which essentially bars the use of offsets to falsely claim the neutralisation of ongoing company emissions.

“Carbon credits purchased and retired to make a VCMI Claim are not used for offsets”, Ana Carolina Szklo, VCMI’s Technical Director, told Environmental Finance. 

The number of legal cases over alleged corporate greenwash is on the rise (Grantham Institute)

The standards are tightening and the loopholes are dissipating. And those digging their heels in face regulation and legal action against greenwashing that doubled in 2021 and 2022. 

Are we in the next phase of net zero? We can’t say it with confidence quite yet. But the game has changed in a material way since the release of our guidelines last year.

What we know with high confidence is that the burden now falls onto companies to enact change that results in immediate, noticeable reductions in their climate footprint, while they pay increased attention to the way they wield their power outside of the company.

The cheats corporations have used to avoid facing the problem head on? They’re on the chopping block – that, we can say for sure.

Amanda Starbuck is Program Director at the Sunrise Project, and was a member of the UN Secretary General High-Level Expert Group on Net Zero Pledges. 

The post With corporate climate cheats on the chopping block, net zero is growing up appeared first on Climate Home News.

As governments met in Switzerland to approve the report, a group led by Saudi Arabia pushed for an emphasis on sucking carbon out of the atmosphere through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

But a group of mainly European nations pushed for the report to emphasise the role of wind and solar power in fighting climate change and note how much cheaper it has got recently.

Government influence

The IPCC synthesis report summarises the latest scientific knowledge on climate change.

Alongside the full report, the IPCC publishes a shorter document called the “summary for policy-makers” which is approved by governments at a week-long session in the Swiss city of Interlaken.

Nations fight to be called climate vulnerable in IPCC report

Although the scientists who wrote the report are in the room to push back, government negotiators regularly try to lobby for the inclusion of their priorities in the text. The report needs to be approved line-by-line.

Cost-effectiveness

A think tank called IISD is the only organisation allowed to report on the talks.

According to their summary, a group of European nations wanted the report to say that solar and wind electricity “is now cheaper than energy from fossil fuels in many regions”.

Germany said this sentence was of “paramount” importance but, according to IISD, Saudi Arabia “strongly opposed inclusion of the sentence”.

IPCC highlights rich nations’ failure to help developing world adapt to climate change

The Bahamas’ representative called for the report to say specifically that CCS technology, unlike wind and solar, is not getting cheaper.

But Saudi Arabia pushed back, saying that CCS and CDR are “in fact unavoidable”.

The paragraph they were debating ended up referring to “sustained decreases” in the cost of solar, wind and batteries without mentioning CCS or CDR.

Carbon capture

While CDR sucks carbon out of the general atmosphere, CCS sucks it out of a polluting source like a power plant’s smoke-stack.

Lili Fuhr, from the Center for International Environmental Law, told Climate Home that CCS was the “first line of defence” for the fossil fuel economy.

Saudi Arabia has a history of promoting CCS in IPCC reports and in UN climate talks.

In April 2022, it successfully lobbied for a stronger emphasis on CCS in the IPCC’s report on solutions to climate change.

Loss and damage committee ready to start talks following Asian nominations

When Germany tried to reduce the emphasis on CCS in one paragraph and called for the inclusion of more information on the limits of the technology, Saudi Arabia pushed back.

According to IISD, the oil-reliant nation said “any additional context on CCS should include benefits”.

In an extensive footnote, the final report notes that implementation of CCS currently faces “technological, economic, institutional, ecological-environmental and socio-cultural barriers”.

It describes CCS as a “mature technology” for gas processing and enhanced oil recovery, but less so in the power, cement and chemicals sectors “where it is a critical mitigation option”.

The report says CCS deployment should be sped up to help the world limit global warming to 1.5-2C.

Carbon removal role

CDR, which is less linked to high-carbon industry and fossil fuels than CCS, was supported by a broader range of countries.

IISD reports that France and Germany “cautioned that CDR deployment at scale is unproven and risky” and “asked for more detail on their limits and risks”. Mexico, Kenya and Bolivia also raised concerns about CDR’s role.

UN tells governments to ‘fast forward’ net zero targets

But Saudi Arabia and China fought to have the document describe the technology as necessary to remove more carbon from the atmosphere than humans are emitting.

Switzerland, which hosts CDR company Climeworks, argued that CDR may be required “for hard to reduce emissions”.

Japan, New Zealand and the Netherlands also defended the report’s emphasis on the role of CDR technology.

The final report says “CDR will be necessary to achieve net-negative Co2 emissions”.

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Duncan Mclaren is a climate intervention fellow at University College Los Angeles who has criticised previous reports for skirting over the limitations of CDR.

He said this report treats it better. But he said it still gives too great a sense of possibility of the future role of CDR, “even as it very clearly calls for accelerated, immediate emissions cuts”.

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Speaking at a press conference held to launch a major new climate science report, Antonio Guterres said he was launching an “all-hands-on-deck acceleration agenda” which “starts with parties immediately hitting the fast-forward button on their net zero deadlines to get to global net zero by 2050”.

Guterres described the IPCC’s latest report as a “how-to guide” to defuse the ticking climate time-bomb. “It is a survival guide for humanity. As it shows, the 1.5-degree limit is achievable. But it will take a quantum leap in climate action.”

To achieve this, he called on leaders of developed countries to reach net zero “as close as possible to 2040” and said emerging economies should aim for 2050. This was the first time he had made such a plea.

“This can be done,” Guterres said, since some governments have already set targets for these dates.

But the vast majority of G20 nations have set weaker targets; just four of the 19 are in line with Guterres' proposals.

These four - Argentina, Brazil, South Korea and South Africa - are emerging economies that have set 2050 net zero target dates.

China, the world's biggest polluter, aims to reach net zero by 2060, India aims for 2070 and Indonesia has not yet set a target.

Of the eight rich nations in the G20, none have set 2040 net zero targets. Germany is aiming for 2045 and the others for 2050.

Green Climate Fund credibility hangs over response to violence in Nicaragua project

The UK government's independent climate advisers concluded in 2019 that they "do not currently consider it credible to aim to reach net-zero emissions earlier than 2050".

But Greg Muttitt, who co-authored a recent paper on energy transition models, told Climate Home that Guterres's target dates are "certainly possible".

"There is certainly no physical or technical reason why not. And even the economic costs of faster transition are small compared to the costs of climate damage. The main barrier is political will", he said.

He said net zero by 2040 would lead some fossil fuel assets to be shut down earlier than planned, causing losses for their operators, but "they knowingly took on that risk" by building high-carbon facilities "in the face of climate change".

Loss and damage committee ready to start talks following Asian nominations

According to Net Zero Tracker, the world's soonest net zero target is Finland's date of 2035.

While most net zero targets are worked out based on how fast an economy can transition, Finland's was calculated based on the country's fair share of the amount of carbon dioxide that can still be emitted globally while keeping global warming to 1.5C.

The same analysis found that, in order to fairly limit global warming to 1.5C, Germany and the EU should reach net zero in the early to mid-2030s.

Guterres also called on countries to end all funding for new fossil fuels and to ensure net zero electricity generation by 2035 in developed countries and 2040 in the rest of the world.

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Seo-kyung is now a 21-year-old adult but the court has still not made any decisions about the case. “As individuals, there is not much we can do that is different from before,” she told a press conference on Monday. “I earnestly hope that the constitutional court can play a role while there is still something that can be done.”

In the three years since the lawsuit was filed, the Korean government and the national assembly have announced a target to be carbon neutral by 2050, passed a climate change law and strengthened the country’s nationally determined contribution under the UNFCCC.

The government is currently working on its first detailed carbon neutrality strategy, as required by the legislation, which is expected to be published at the end of the month.

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But campaigners are not satisfied. Climate Action Tracker deems the country’s progress “highly insufficient”, saying it lacks the necessary speed and stringency needed to be compatible with Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C temperature limit.

Most of Korea’s emissions come from the energy sector, which is highly dependent on fossil fuels for electricity generation. In 2021, the country was the third largest gas importer in the world, behind China and Japan.

Climate lawsuits

Youth4Climate’s petition in 2020 argued that the Korean government wasn’t doing enough to curb rising global temperatures and to protect their basic constitutional rights, including the right to life and pursuit of happiness, from the effects of climate change.

The group’s lawyers have sent ten further submissions to the constitutional court since, adding new information to their case. Among other things, they drew the court’s attention to landmark rulings in the Netherlands, Ireland, France, and Germany, all of which have recognised government responsibility to address climate change.

Yoon Se-jong, a lawyer for Plan 1.5 and one of the main legal representatives for the Youth4ClimateAction case, says German justices visited their Korean counterparts last November and climate litigation was one of the key topics under discussion.

A further three climate lawsuits have also been filed challenging the constitutionality of the government’s emission-cutting commitments. One, submitted last year, was fronted by a group of small children and what was then a 20-week-old foetus.

Swift ruling

Becoming increasingly frustrated at the court’s silence, Youth4ClimateAction campaigners delivered a letter earlier this week urging it to make a “swift ruling”, which was signed by more than 200 legal professionals from Korea and abroad.

Signatories included Baek Bum-seok, professor at Kyung Hee University and a UN Human Rights Council advisory member, and So Byung-cheon, president of the Korean Environmental Law Association and a professor at Ajou University Law School.

Legal professionals from France, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Nepal also voiced their support, including Roda Verheyen, a lawyer involved in Germany’s landmark climate lawsuit.

Sejong said the delay was understandable given the gravity of the issue and the implications the court’s decision could have on Korean policy and law. “But what we are really emphasising is that every month and year we lose is a lost opportunity for litigation that we really, really need. Leaving this question to the political process is not going to be enough.”

Chinese coal boom a ‘direct threat’ to 1.5C goal, analysts warn

Youth climate campaigners filing the case who had initially been buoyed up by the idea of taking legal action were despondent at the press conference.

“When I first learned about the enormous problem of climate change, I felt that I had to do something, and I participated in the climate lawsuit with the hope of making a practical change,” said Oh Min-seo, a 17-year-old from Chuncheon city.

“However, over the past three years, as I witnessed people dying in unprecedented floods and the Soyang River drying up due to the worst drought, my fears about climate change became more tangible, and the feeling of powerlessness has been accumulating in my heart because politics and law don’t seem to exist for our benefit.”

Their legal team seems more optimistic. Sejong noted that abortion was only decriminalised in Korea two years ago only after the constitutional court deemed it was infringing people’s rights.

‘Fundamental obligation’

In December, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea said the government had a “fundamental obligation” to protect human rights from the climate crisis and must actively respond to it. “It is necessary to set higher national greenhouse gas reduction targets and also to set reduction obligations for the post-2030 period to protect the basic rights of future generations,” it concluded.

Lucy Maxwell, co-representative of the Climate Litigation Network, noted that the lawsuit was the first of its kind in East Asia and said it offers “a really important opportunity to clarify the governmental obligations to protect constitutional rights in the face of the climate crisis”.

She said affected communities and even courts in other countries would be looking to the court for a judgment.

The post Lawyers and activists build pressure on Korean court to rule on climate appeared first on Climate Home News.

But the island is important in its own right too. It is the 22nd biggest emitter in the world and is highly at risk from storms and sea level rise.

Taiwan’s government has made two big moves on climate recently, but these might not guarantee success unless the country cleans up its biggest source of emissions: industry.

Key moves

First, on December 28, it allocated US$30 billion for climate investments up to 2030.

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Known as the 12 key strategies, this money will be spent on renewable energy, hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, energy efficiency, mobilising lifestyle change and making the energy transition fair to workers.

Then, on January 10, the government passed the climate change response act. This made Taiwan the 18th country to set a legally binding net zero target. It aims to reach that target by 2050.

It introduced a carbon levy, bulked-up the country’s institutional capacity to adapt to cliamte change and established governing structures and funds for a just transition.

Industrial footprint

This is all progress. But it’s still insufficient to ensure that Taiwan meets its climate pledges.

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The biggest failure is that the 12 key strategies do not have a coherent action plan to decarbonise industry – despite the sector producing more than half of the country’s emissions.

Instead of a specific strategy, measures to cut emissions in difficult industries are just scattered across plans on hydrogen, energy efficiency, carbon capture and other areas.

On top of this, the funding isn’t guided by mission-oriented principles. It should focus on speeding up the market readiness of hydrogen – but it only provides $150m for the technology.

There’s flaws in the climate change response act too. It doesn’t set up an independent advisory body on climate, like the UK and at least 21 other nations have.

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It makes companies pay only part of the social cost of their emissions through the carbon levy. The proposed reforms of fossil fuel subsidies were scrapped because of the energy crisis and the finance ministry blocked broader tax reforms.

Finally, the introduction of climate litigation was blocked because of the judicial and administrative system’s lack of familiarity with the concept.

Carbon pricing

But there were wins for climate campaigners too. The criteria for carbon offsets were tightened in the carbon levy scheme and the share of revenues which goes back to large emitters was limited.

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The European Union’s proposal to tax polluting goods at the border from countries without carbon prices helped Taiwanese climate campaigners.

Taiwan is reliant on exports and the EU is a major customer. So polluting industries softened their traditional opposition to carbon pricing.

But industry is still lobbying for low levy rates, loose offset rules and subsidies.

So the government must develop more policies – like carbon contracts for diference and purchase commitments – to help industry transition to climate-friendly technologies.

The G7 group of big, wealthy countries is trying to speed up the cleaning up of industry through what it calls a climate club.

Those countries must set up hubs to help share knowledge with big manufacturers like Taiwan.

The post Taiwan’s failure to clean up industry endangers its net zero pledge appeared first on Climate Home News.

Yet there has been little discussion at an international level on how to handle “overshoot” of those goals. A high-powered commission due to launch in May aims to break the silence.

Climate diplomats are finalising a 15-strong lineup of former presidents, ministers and representatives of international organisations to explore options for deep adaptation, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and geoengineering, Climate Home News can reveal.

The Climate Overshoot Commission will address sensitive questions around the ethics and feasibility of potential ways to reverse warming that are problematic or unproven at large scale.

“The primary strategy to combat climate change should remain reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but it has also become necessary to explore additional strategies,” Jesse Reynolds, executive secretary of the commission, told Climate Home.

France’s Pascal Lamy, director general of the World Trade Organisation between 2005 and 2013, has been appointed as chair. He is president of the Paris Peace Forum, which will host the commission.

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The idea for a commission to assess climate engineering options was floated in 2017 by Edward Parson, professor of environmental law at the University of California.

Parson became one of 11 on a steering committee of politicians, policymakers and academics to shape what the commission should look like. Among them, five were from developing countries, including Cop27 host Egypt’s environment minister Yasmine Fouad, former Marshall Islands president Hilda Heine and Youba Sokona, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Paris Agreement architect Laurence Tubiana and Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance (C2G) Initiative, were other members.

“How will the world manage the risk of temperature overshoot? That is the question that nobody is talking about,” Pasztor told Climate Home. “There isn’t enough attention paid to the magnitude of the risk for removing the huge amount of carbon dioxide that will keep us to 1.5C.”

With the latest science showing overshoot of 1.5C, if not 2C, is highly likely, the moment for that conversation may have arrived.

Pakistan’s tree-planting ambition in doubt after Imran Khan’s exit

A paper published in Nature last week gives a 6-10% probability of reaching without exceeding the 1.5C threshold, even assuming all climate commitments to 2030 and mid-century are met.

In theory, global temperatures can be pulled back by sucking carbon out of the atmosphere through biological solutions such as reforestation and technological ones like direct air capture. But tree planting competes with food production for land and carbon capture technology is energy-hungry and expensive.

The latest report from the IPCC concluded sucking carbon dioxide from the air is “necessary” to achieve net zero emissions and “an essential element” to limit heating below 2C by the end of the century.

While no substitute for deep and urgent emissions cuts, carbon dioxide removals are needed to counterbalance residual emissions from hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, agriculture and some industrial processes.

Five billion tonnes of CO2 would need to be removed each year by 2050 for a 66% chance to limit warming below 2C, under one IPCC scenario, scaling up to 13bn by the end of the century. Any delay to cutting emissions will further increase reliance on removals to stabilise the climate.

A temporary overshoot of climate goals is dangerous for human societies and ecosystems. “Many human and natural systems will face additional severe risks, compared to remaining below 1.5C,” the IPCC’s impact report warned. Some impacts, such as ice sheet and glacier melt and sea level rise, “will be irreversible”.

Brazil accused of backsliding in updated climate pledge to UN

Despite the presence of CDR in all IPCC scenarios, efforts to scale up the technology are barely getting started.

An initiative co-led by the US, Canada and Saudi Arabia aims to enable a net reduction of 100 million metric tons of CO2 per year globally by 2030. And there are some efforts to support research in the US and in the UK, and develop methodologies to include removals in carbon accounting in the EU.

Silicon Valley is getting in on the act. Earlier this month, online payment processing platform Stripe launched a $925m fund to buy offsets from start-ups that permanently remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2030.

The Frontier fund is financed by Stripe together with Alphabet, Shopify, Meta and McKinsey. It aims to send a signal to researchers and investors that there is a growing market for these technologies.

Climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, Stripe’s climate research lead, told Climate Home that understanding what removal technologies could work at scale and driving their cost down was necessary if they are to be used in decades to come.

Elsewhere, Venture capital firm Lowercarbon Capital launched a $350m fund in invest in carbon removal start-ups and Swiss carbon removal company Climeworks raised $650m from institutional investors earlier this month.

“But the private sector can only push things so far,” said Hausfather, suggesting governments help fund research and development of CDR approaches.

Sweden set to be world’s first country to target consumption-based emission cuts

The issue has been largely ignored at UN Climate Change talks.

For Oliver Geden, a lead author of the IPCC report on mitigation and senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, that’s unlikely to change “until there is an acceptance that overshooting 1.5C is unavoidable”.

While “not a magic bullet,” Geden said countries have already said yes to CDR by adopting net zero emissions targets – the “net” being achieved by balancing sources and sinks of emissions.

“I’m of that bottom-up view that countries have a net zero target should and can explore CDR,” he told Climate Home. The alternative top-down approach of sharing out between nations the delivery of removals needed to meet global climate goals brings about considerations of equity and historic responsibility that many wealthy economies are seeking to avoid.

That conversation is uncomfortable for many climate campaigners, who are concerned that a focus on removals is at best a distraction from the need to phase out fossil fuels and roll out clean energy – and at worse a fig leaf for climate inaction.

“We urgently need the weight of global financing to invest in a radical overhaul of our polluting energy, food and industrial systems. But tech bros prefer to throw good money after bad into the carbon removal pipedream, letting polluters continue business-as-usual while appearing green,” Teresa Anderson, climate justice lead at Action Aid International, told Climate Home.

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For MJ Mace, a climate negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, there is “a real fear that the pressure comes off emissions reductions” if the issue of removals is pushed too forcefully in the public consciousness.

And yet, if emissions cuts are still lagging behind targets at the end of this decade, “we are going to end up having to rely on CDR on such a huge scale to meet these goals that we are not going to be able to pull it off” unless investment and planning start now, she said. “It’s such a dance.”

If removing carbon from the atmosphere is a sensitive subject, solar radiation management, or geoengineering, is even more so. Still largely in the realm of science fiction, the potential to block the sun’s warming effect by pumping aerosols into the high atmosphere is part of the commission’s mandate.

Pasztor said solar geoengineering is “unbelievably controversial” but leaders have to consider what risks they are willing to take to meet the 1.5C goal.

The Carnegie Climate Governance (C2G) Initiative, which he heads, is hoping to push a resolution on addressing the risks of overshoot at the UN general assembly by 2023.

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Within twelve months, the 16-member group is to publish recommendations on how to judge net zero commitments and translate them into national and international regulations.

It will be called the High-Level Expert Group on the Net-Zero Emissions Commitments of Non-State Entities (HLEG) and be supported by a small full-time staff at the UN’s New York headquarters.

Announcing the group, the UN’s secretary-general António Guterres said: “Governments have the lion’s share of responsibility to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. Especially the G20. But we also urgently need every business, investor, city, state and region to walk the talk on their net-zero promises.”

He added: “To avert a climate catastrophe, we need bold pledges matched by concrete action. Tougher net-zero standards and strengthened accountability around the implementation of these commitments can deliver real and immediate emissions cuts.”

Canadian government ducks fight with oil and gas industry

The group will be chaired by Catherine McKenna. She was Canada’s environment minister and infrastructure and communities minister under Justin Trudeau’s government before leaving politics last year to focus on “[her] kids and the climate”.

Commenting on her appointment, she said: “The recent avalanche of net-zero pledges by businesses, investors, cities and regions will be vital to keep 1.5C alive and to build towards a safe and healthy planet, but only if all pledges have transparent plans, robust near-term action, and are implemented in full.”

Climate scientist and campaigner Bill Hare, another member of the group, said: “Governments are being held to account, but for non-state actors the situation is a lot more murky, and without guidelines, many net zero claims risk being simply [public relation] campaigns without verification”.

The group’s 16 members include climate campaigners, scientists, energy analysts, businesspeople, economists, finance experts, bankers and former politicians and civil servants.

The group is deliberately gender-balanced with eight men and eight women. There are eight representatives from the developed world and eight from the developing world. Around 80% of the world’s population live in developing countries.

They will attempt to combat greenwashing, when corporations claim to be helping the environment without doing enough to align with international climate goals. In particular, the group will focus on the over-use of carbon offsets and unrealistic dependence on carbon removal technology.

At a press briefing on Thursday, the UN's special advisor on climate Selwin Hart criticised companies which set long-term net zero targets but do not have shorter-term interim targets. "Under no circumstances can that be credible," he said.

Asked by Climate Home if "scope three" emissions, from the use of a company's products, should be included in a company's emissions, McKenna said: "I don't want to get ahead of the working group but my view is yes."

She added: "There are some people who want to greenwash, so the more that we can have robust standards, clear standards - including I believe scope three - the more that we're going to be able to be ambitious on climate action and reach the goal of 1.5C [of global warming]".

Canadian government ducks fight with oil and gas industry

Oil and gas company Shell has recently appealed against a Dutch court ruling which ordered it to cut its emissions, including scope three, by 45% by 2030. Shell's chief executive Ben van Beurden argued it was not responsible for "reducing the emissions of its customers from the use of its products".

Hart said that the group will not be "naming and shaming individual companies". It's job is to ensure that standards and definitions are clear, not to enforce them, he said.

The most prominent benchmark for corporate net zero targets is the Science-Based Targets Initiative, which was set up by a coalition of green groups. But independent analysts accused the initiative of providing a "platform for greenwashing", noting that its revenue comes from the same multinational companies it validates.

The New Climate Institute found corporate net zero targets often rely on carbon offsets whose climate benefits are oversold while others use an anomalous baseline to make reaching targets easier.

Two taskforces have been set up to promote integrity in the market for carbon offsets. One, called the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market was set up by UN special envoy for climate action and finance Mark Carney. The other, called the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity initiative (VCMI) is co-chaired by former UN clean energy envoy Rachel Kyte.

This article was updated on 31/3/22 to include comments made by Catherine Mckenna and Selwin Hart at a press conference and to add extra context on the issues raised by these comments.

The post Canadian ex-minister Catherine McKenna named to head UN greenwash watchdog appeared first on Climate Home News.

The SBTi, which was formed by a coalition of green NGOs, was planning to unveil those criteria in 2021.

Instead, it announced this month it will no longer accept commitments from fossil fuel producers. The five firms it has removed include Russian oil company Tatneft, which is part-owned by the government of Tatarstan province.

SBTi’s technical director Cynthia Cummis told Climate Home: “We decided it was just a reputational risk for SBTi to continue to accept commitments from oil and gas companies when we don’t know when the method will be available to use.”

Campaigners welcomed the move. Oil Change International’s research director Kelly Trout said: “Science-based climate commitments from fossil fuel producers do not yet exist, and so it’s very welcome that SBTi is taking extra measures to make this clear in their policy”.

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But, she added: “SBTi is still developing an oil and gas sector target-setting standard, so it remains to be seen how ambitious that standard will be and how oil and gas companies will respond to it”.

After several years of on-and-off discussions, Cummis said SBTi had drafted criteria for oil and gas companies which needed to be checked internally by technical experts and then “peer reviewed” by an external group.

This group includes representatives of oil and gas producers like Shell, Total, BP and California Resources Corporation as well as NGOs like World Wildlife Fund, World Resource Institute, Carbon Tracker and academics and investors like HSBC and Aviva.

Commenting on fossil fuel firms’ involvement, Cummis said: “It’s critical to have the companies participate in these processes as well because you need to make sure that, while the standards are robust and aligned with science, they also have some degree of practicality so that they ultimately are adopted”.

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She added: “It would be great to develop really robust standards but if nobody adopts them then they’re not very useful… If they have some say in how they’re developed then you’re more likely to get them to buy into these standards and adopt them.” SBTi charges companies up to $14,500 to validate their targets.

But Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty told Climate Home that fossil fuel companies “are not going to design their own demise” and “investors and governments must stop falling for the distorted math and false promises of the industry that are fuelling the crisis with their delay tactics”.

SBTi was accused recently of offering a “platform for greenwashing”. In response, it said it “welcomes stronger scrutiny” and that most of the criticisms were based on its old methodology which had been tightened up in October 2021.

The draft criteria for oil and gas firms included both an absolute emissions reduction target and an intensity target, Cummis said. Carbon offsets would not be taken into account and it would cover the emissions from the wellhead to the tailpipe.

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The International Energy Agency has said that if the world is to limit warming to 1.5C then there should be “no new oil and gas fields approved”. A condition on new production is under consideration, Cummis said, but: “We don’t necessarily dictate what strategy a company uses to meet target. We dictate what is the level of ambition.”

No major oil and gas company has committed to stop new oil and gas production. Shell is aiming to reduce production by 1-2% a year – slower than the natural decline rate of around 4% for existing fields.

Krista Haltunnen researches oil and gas companies’ low-carbon transition plans at Imperial College London and was one of the experts consulted by SBTi. She told Climate Home: “To be compliant [with 1.5 or 2C of warming] your company needs to have a plan for eventually not being a fossil fuel company anymore.”

One company which has done this is Orsted. Formerly known as Dong, it drilled oil and gas in the North Sea before selling off its oil and gas assets to become the largest offshore wind power company in the world.

The post Science Based Targets initiative kicks out oil companies, delays validation criteria appeared first on Climate Home News.

The New Climate Institute examined the climate plans of 18 multinational corporations which SBTi had rubber-stamped as compatible with 1.5C or 2C of global warming.

“For at least 11 of those we find that their targets are highly contentious, due to subtle technicalities,” the report’s authors said.

Nestlé, Ikea and Unilever are among the brands with climate plans SBTi judged to meet the strongest 1.5C standard, but which NCI found to have “very low integrity”.

In response, SBTi’s managing director Alberto Carrilo Pineda said he “welcomes stronger scrutiny” and that many of the issues identified in the report had been solved by changes to its methodology in October 2021.

Of the 25 companies the New Climate Institute analysed, Pineda said only one had been validated against its new “net zero standard”.

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SBTi is the most prominent standard-setter for corporate climate targets globally, having endorsed more than a thousand as in line with international climate goals.

But NCI said it had a conflict of interest, as it is funded by the same companies whose plans it validates, charging them up to $14,500.  It also questioned whether SBTi had sufficient resources to find hidden flaws in corporate plans.

“Standard-setting initiatives should focus on the development of guidelines and standards, rather than pursuing the mass evaluation of individual companies with insufficient resources and conflicting incentives,” the report said. “This can otherwise lead to a platform for greenwashing; multiple examples are included in this report.”

An SBTi spokesperson told Climate Home that companies’ climate targets are analysed by two trained analysts and approved by the entire target validation team. Evaluating targets can take anywhere from ten to 35+ hours for SBTi.

Report author Thomas Day said he had been “quite astonished at how much time it took to understand the integrity of company’s claims; these kinds of initiatives need to be sufficiently resourced to do detailed critical analysis, to ensure that unambitious companies do not slip through the net”.

We now have 1143 validated #ScienceBasedTargets, and 2425 organizations committed to taking urgent #ClimateAction.

Find out more about how to do your part for our planet: https://t.co/OZrLdDmqLQ#SBTi

— Science Based Targets initiative (@sciencetargets) January 28, 2022

This is not the first time SBTi’s assessments have been criticised. In February 2021, one of its co-founders Bill Baue told Climate Home News: ““Science-Based Targets is not a science-based approach… I believe in this instance that SBTi… are putting their own interest above the interests of the public.”

SBTi does not publish its evaluation of a company’s climate targets in full. It just releases a ranking of their “near term”, “long term” and “net-zero” ambitions.

These are ranked on a scale of 1.5C to 2C or “committed”, which means the company has promised to set a target within two years.

The Science-Based Targets initiative’s dashboard
(Photo: SBTi)

SBTi give Swiss food and drink firm Nestlé’s near-term target top score, compatible with 1.5C of global warming. But the report’s authors gave it their worst rating, “very low” for transparency and integrity.

While at the parent company level, Nestlé claims it does not use carbon offsets to meet its emissions reduction targets, its brands like KitKat chocolate bars and Nescafe coffee say they will use offsets.

Like many brands, KitKat’s offsets include planting trees. The carbon benefits of these projects are often overstated because to suck in all the carbon the planters say they will, the trees have to be kept alive for a long time.

Benjamin Ware, Nestlé’s head of climate delivery and sustainable sourcing, replied that offsetting “is not our core, neither for the parent company nor for the brands”.

Like Nestlé, Ikea is given the top 1.5C ranking by SBTi but the carbon offsets it uses were also criticised. The Swedish furniture firm claims it is generating carbon offsets by selling solar modules to customers and that this can be used to offset the firm’s emissions.

“In reality,” the report said, “this transaction cannot lead to an additional avoided emission impact if the customer is purchasing these products rather than being supported to take a measure that they would not otherwise have taken. The company is simply serving the demand of an existing market.”

An Ikea spokesperson said they welcomed dialogue and scrutiny and the report was a “constructive addition to this”. The company will update its climate goals to align with SBTi’s new methodology in this financial year, they said.

European Commission endorses fossil gas as ‘transition’ fuel for private investment

Another trick allegedly missed by SBTi is when corporations manipulate the baseline for emissions cuts.

For example, American healthcare company CVS Health is 1.5c rated by SBTi. It uses a 2019 baseline. Emissions in this year were 70-80% higher than 2017, 2018 or 2020.

The use of this anomalously high-emitting baseline year makes its target, a 47% reduction by 2030, easy to reach.

In response, Pinera said that, when SBTi validates targets, it uses the year which the company submitted its plans to SBTi as the base year.

It allows for “flexibility” in the selection of the base year that companies use publicly, he said, as “there are many legitimate reasons for a company’s base year having higher emissions than surrounding years”.

For example, one year could have “unusual activity” because of the Covid-19 pandemic, mergers and acquisitions and business expansion, Pinera added.

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Other firms rated as 1.5C-compatible by SBTi but as “very low integrity” by the New Climate Institute report include Accenture, BMW Group, Novartis and Unilever.

Pinera said SBTi’s technical experts will look carefully at the report and consider potential actions to take and publish a full response.

Asked if SBTi had rejected any climate targets as inadequate, a spokesperson said that they could not answer this question because of non-disclosure agreements. Companies whose targets are rejected still have to pay, the spokesperson said.

The post Science Based Targets initiative accused of providing a ‘platform for greenwashing’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

He increased the ambition of India’s renewable and economic carbon intensity targets while calling on rich countries to provide more climate finance to the developing world.

Modi described the announcements as five “elixirs” that will deliver “an unprecedented contribution from India for climate action”.

“Today, India is moving forward with a great deal of courage and ambition on the subject of climate,” he said.

Dispute over coal exit set to dominate G20 leaders’ summit

One new target was to reach 500 GW of installed renewable energy capacity by 2030. This target includes small hydropower plants and is an increase on India’s previous 450 GW target.

He said India would get 50% of its energy from renewables by 2030. India set a 40% by 2030 target in 2016 which was nearly achieved in June this year.

Modi promised India would reduce carbon intensity by 45% by 2030, up from a previous target of 33% set in 2016. These targets are based on 2005 levels.

Finally, the prime minister said that India would reduce its projected total carbon emissions by 1 billion tonnes by 2030.

Charu Lata, an clean energy expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Climate Home News the carbon neutrality goal was “a big and good surprise” which was “nowhere in the picture” in the run-up to the Cop26 summit.

“Announcing the target is a good start but a lot more needs to be done on implementation and hopefully that will follow,” she said.

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

Indian climate analysts told Climate Home the announcement marked a clear increase in ambition. However, they agreed clarification was needed on some of the targets, including on a goal for India to “fulfil 50% of its energy requirements from renewable energy sources by 2030”.

“Reaching 50% of renewable energy by 2030 is not possible,” said Swati D’Souza, research lead for climate action at the National Foundation for India. She suggested Modi misspoke and that the target is designed for electricity generation rather than energy.

On reaching 2070 net zero emissions, D’Souza said: “If that’s the ambition, it’s time for India to act on coal mine closures. The time is here and the time is now,” she said, adding that coal regions have historically taken 40-50 years to phase out the fossil fuel.

Experts Climate Home News spoke to agreed that generating half of the country’s electricity by 2030 is the most ambitious goal.

How we as European climate envoys are backing action on adaptation finance

One Indian official in Glasgow told Climate Home News: “we don’t just set distant targets, we deliver them,” adding that the country “will punch above its weight”.

The pledges made by Modi are expected to be formalised in a nationally determined contribution (NDC) to be submitted to the United Nations soon.

The announcement came after Modi held bilateral meetings with US president Joe Biden, French president Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Rome, Italy.

There has been significant diplomatic pressure on Modi to raise India’s ambition at the summit. But Delhi has been resisting increasing its climate plan until now, calling for financial help and technological support to accelerate its climate ambition.

Treating Russia as a climate change spoiler undermines global action

In his Cop26 speech, Modi said that this increase in ambition should be matched by increases in climate finance and the transfer of low-carbon technologies from developed countries to developing countries.

He said he expects wealthy countries to make $1trillion available as soon as possible. “India understands and shares the pain of other developing countries,” Modi said.

Rich countries promised in 2009 to collectively mobilise $100bn a year in climate finance by 2020, but are not on track to meet the milestone until 2023.

“India has clearly put the ball in the court of the developed world. This is real climate action,” said Arunabha Ghosh, head of the New Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW). “Now, India demands $1 trillion of climate finance as soon as possible and will monitor not just climate action, but delivered climate finance.”

According to CEEW analysis, India needs 5,900GW of solar power to achieve net zero by 2050.

In recent months, India has been involved in a number of initiatives to boost its renewable energy roll out. These include a partnership with the US to accelerate the deployment of clean energy.

China reaffirms existing climate targets in submission to UN ahead of Cop26

On Tuesday, Modi is due to join prime minister Boris Johnson in announcing a green grids initiative to accelerate the integration of solar and wind power on international grids by connecting energy-rich locations such as sunny deserts and windy coastlines with urban centres.

The initiative will be coordinated by a ministerial steering group including France, India, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Government spokesperson Asif Bhamla said the initiative aimed to “connect the world’s solar energy via one grid” as “critical” for India to accelerate its clean energy transition.

The post India strengthens climate targets, aiming for net zero by 2070 appeared first on Climate Home News.

According to the modelling – which the government has yet to release – gross national income will be 1.6% higher, and 62,000 new regional mining and heavy industry jobs will be created under the plan.

Scott Morrison and energy minister Angus Taylor released the plan and a “projection” of up to 35% for emissions reduction by 2030. The prime minister will take the plan to the Glasgow climate conference next week.

Morrison reiterated Australia would not make this a “target”, but would stick with its present 2030 target of reducing emissions by 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2030.

The expected overshoot is being driven by three factors: the rapid uptake of renewables, especially solar; business and household energy efficiency using new and emerging technology, and changes in land use.

Saudi Arabia pledges net zero by 2060, but no oil exit plan

Morrison said the target had been an election commitment, while also saying Australia “may even achieve better” than the 35% reduction. He ruled out promising a bigger medium term figure before the election.

But, unexpectedly, the government has not accompanied the plan’s release with a list of what the Nationals won in their agreement to sign up to the 2050 target. The only measure announced was that the Productivity Commission would review progress every five years, starting in 2023, looking at the socioeconomic impacts.

The government says existing priority technologies enabled by the plan would get Australia 85% of the way to net zero by 2050. The gap would be closed by emerging technologies.

The breakdown of the sources of abatement in the plan is: reductions already made up to 2020, 20%; the technology investment roadmap, 40%; global technology trends, 15%; international and domestic offsets, 10-20%; and further technology breakthroughs, 15%.

The government’s plan for net zero at 2050.

Asked about the total cost of the plan, Morrison avoided the question. He said the government would release the modelling underpinning the policy “soon”.

He stressed the economic side of the plan, acknowledging but placing less emphasis on the environmental need to get to net zero by 2050.

The plan was “uniquely Australian”, Morrison said. “It is an energy, trade, an economic plan, not just an environmental plan. It’s about delivering results through technology, not taxes.”

It worked by “enabling” rather than legislating or mandating.

The plan would “not shut down our coal or gas production or exports.

“It will not impact households, businesses or the broader economy with new
costs or taxes imposed by the initiatives that we are undertaking.

“It will not cost jobs, not in farming, mining or gas, because what we are
doing in this plan is positive things, enabling things. It will not increase energy bills.

“It is not a revolution but a careful evolution.”

Morrison said the plan was removing any blockage to investment in technologies, saying: “We are going to do this. If you want to do this thing with us then we’re the place you want to do it.”

He said Australians “understand and they support the need to take action on climate change. So do I. So does our government.”

Morrison indicated he will spruik Australia’s record at Glasgow. “There will be lots of words in Glasgow but I’ll be able to point to the actions of Australia and the achievements of Australia.”

He argued other countries could learn from Australia. “The Australian way shows a way for other countries to follow. The challenges that we face here in Australia, particularly with the nature of our economy are not that dissimilar to those being faced in Indonesia or in Vietnam or in India or places like that or indeed China.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese said Morrison had announced “a vibe rather than a target”.

Labor’s climate spokesman Chris Bowen said: “I’ve seen more detail on fortune cookies than on the documents released by the government.”

Michelle Grattan is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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One week ahead of Cop26, the Gulf state announced it will slash its emissions to net zero by 2060 and strengthen its carbon target this decade – subject to revenue from exporting oil and gas.

Neither target counts the emissions from the burning of huge amounts of oil that Saudi Arabia exports to other countries, leaving climate watchers unimpressed. The Gulf state pumps one in 10 oil barrels consumed each day in the world.

Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman announced he would invest 700 billion riyals ($187 billion) in climate action this decade and stressed that Saudi Arabia would continue producing oil and gas. The targets would be achieved “while preserving and reinforcing the kingdom’s leading role in the security and stability of global energy markets, with the availability and maturity of required technologies to manage and reduce emissions,” he said at an environment summit in Riyadh on Saturday, before meeting with US climate envoy John Kerry on Monday.

In its submission to the UN, the Kingdom said that by 2030 it would reduce, avoid and remove 278 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year. That is more than double its previous target of 130 million tonnes, which was ranked “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker.

Observers at the Riyadh event tweeted that this amounted to a 35% reduction in emissions from business as usual.

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Half of the country’s electricity in 2030 will come from renewables, according to the updated plan. Today less than 1% of Saudi Arabia’s power comes from solar, with the rest generated by burning oil and gas. The Kingdom said in March that it would plant 10 billion trees over the coming decades to combat desertification and reduce emissions. 

To cut its emissions, the government said it would use a “circular carbon economy” approach, which means relying on carbon capture and storage to allow continued use of fossil fuels.

Following the government announcement, state oil firm Saudi Aramco said it would cut emissions from its operations to net zero by 2050. That applies to oil production and processing, known as scope 1 and 2, but not the much higher emissions when the fuel is consumed, scope 3.

In its new climate plan, the Kingdom signed up to a global methane pledge, joining more than 30 countries aiming to cut methane emissions 30% by 2030. At the same time, Aramco is considering an increase its oil production from 12 million to 13 million barrels a day.

“The Saudis see robust long-term demand for their crude oil, even as global oil demand shrinks. Saudi Arabia has enormous resources as well as the world’s lowest production costs. As non-Opec supply gradually declines, their comparative advantage will be clear and their market share should grow,” Ben Cahill, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Climate Home News. “At the same time, the net-zero pledge raises the pressure for Saudi Arabia to decarbonise its oil and gas production.”

“Saudi Arabia makes no plan to reduce its fossil fuel exports. In fact the Saudi announcement makes its climate commitments conditional on its ability to maintain its fossil fuel exports,” Karim Elgendy, associate fellow in the environment and society programme at Chatham House, told Climate Home News.

Revealed: Cop26 sponsor National Grid spewing methane across England

Climate campaigners said to be truly ambitious, Saudi Arabia needed to phase down oil production.

“We question the seriousness of this announcement, as it comes in parallel with plans for the Kingdom to increase its oil production to 13 million barrels per day,” Greenpeace Middle East and North Africa campaigns manager Ahmad El Droubi said in a statement. “[It] seems to simply be a strategic move to alleviate political pressure ahead of COP26,” he added.

“Scopes 1, 2 and 3 and then there is Scope Saudi,” Rachel Kyte, former adviser to the UN secretary general on sustainable energy, wrote on Twitter. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that investors should not fund new oil, gas and coal supply projects beyond this year if the world is to meet net zero by 2050, in line with a 1.5C global warming limit. Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman previously mocked the IEA’s 2050 target, calling it “a sequel to [the] ‘La La Land’ movie”.

The target depends on using oil revenues to diversify the economy. The climate plan outlines two scenarios. In one, oil export revenues are used to build high value industries like financial services, tourism and clean energy. In the other, oil and gas are used at home as a feedstock for petrochemicals or energy source for heavy industry. The speed and extent of economic diversification could depend on oil prices and export revenues, said Elgendy.

According to analysis by the state-backed think tank Kapsarc, oil’s share of Saudi Arabia’s total GDP has declined from 65% in 1991 to 42% in 2019.

Jim Krane, energy geopolitics expert at Rice University in Houston, said: “Saudi Arabia is serious about cutting emissions and fossil fuel use, but mostly inside its own borders. For the Saudi net zero goal to succeed, Riyadh needs the world to continue buying and burning its oil.”

Saudi Arabia and UAE, which made a similar commitment earlier this month, are using their goals to “buy influence in climate talks,” said Krane.

The post Saudi Arabia pledges net zero by 2060, but no oil exit plan appeared first on Climate Home News.

The 368-page document was published on Tuesday alongside a Treasury review of how to pay for the transition, less than two weeks before the UK welcomes world leaders to the start of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow.

In a foreword, prime minister Boris Johnson said the UK will “unleash the unique creative power of capitalism to drive the innovation that will bring down the costs of going green”.

“We set an example to the world by showing that reaching net zero is entirely possible, so the likes of China and Russia are following our lead with their own net zero targets, as prices tumble and green tech becomes the global norm,” he wrote.

The policy package is a test of the UK’s credibility as it pushes other nations to step up their climate ambition and commit to net zero emissions ahead of the Glasgow summit.

It includes investment in carbon capture and storage, hydrogen technologies and nuclear energy, an end to sales of gas boilers by 2035 and targets for manufacturers to deliver net zero vehicles.

‘Breakthrough’: IMF develops fund to help debt-laden nations address climate risks

Analysts welcomed the plan, but said more public investment would be needed to put it into action.

Chris Venables, head of politics at the Green Alliance, told Climate Home News: “It’s a real boost for UK climate leadership ahead of Cop26 but the jury is out on whether this genuinely closes the gap. The questions around the scale of funding throw serious doubt on that.”

The UK was the first major economy to set a 2050 net zero goal in law. Between 1990 and 2019, the country’s emissions fell by 44%, with two-thirds of cuts coming from the power sector.

Earlier this year, the UK’s official climate advisors, the Climate Change Committee, warned the government the country was not on track to net zero and that it needed to “get real on delivery”.

“We didn’t have a plan before, now we do,” Chris Stark, chief executive of the CCC, said in response to the report, describing the strategy as “a substantial step forward”.

“The critical next step is turning words into deeds,” he said.

The UK’s emissions between 1960 and 2018. Source: World Bank

The net zero strategy sets out a pathway to cut emissions across different sectors to meet its sixth carbon budgets covering the period 2033-2037.

Remaining emissions are accounted for by capturing carbon out of the atmosphere either by planting trees or by using removal technologies such as carbon capture.

To achieve 2050 carbon neutrality, the UK said it will decarbonise its power sector fully by 2035. It promised to roll out renewables, including 40GW of offshore wind, and spend £120m ($166m) on nuclear projects.

Gas with carbon capture and storage and scaled-up production of hydrogen and biofuels also play a role. The UK is providing £140m ($193m) to accelerate industrial carbon capture and hydrogen.

The strategy on transport includes investments for the electrification of vehicles and their supply chains, money for railways, buses and cycling and a goal to make 10% of aviation fuels from household waste, flue gases from industry, carbon captured from the atmosphere by 2030.

There is £124m ($171m) for nature to go towards a goal of restoring 280,000 hectares of peatland in England by 2050.

The government says the plan will create up to 440,000 jobs and mobilise up to £90bn ($124bn) of private investment by 2030.

Comment: UK and EU must not abet the theft of indigenous territory in Brazil

Alyssa Gilbert, of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, said the strategy was “impressive” and gave credibility to the government’s commitment to cut emissions.

“It gives a really strong signal ahead of Cop26. Whether you think it could go further faster, there is a serious amount of money being invested and that is significant in the Covid era,” she told Climate Home.

Ed Matthew, campaigns director at think tank E3G, was less impressed.

A plan to offer £5,000 grants ($6,900) for households to replace old gas boilers with low-carbon heat pumps has been allocated a £450m pot over three years. But the budget is only expected to stretch to 90,000 heat pumps over three years, far short of government’s pledge to install 600,000 a year by 2028.

E3G estimated £4bn ($5.5bn) was a more realistic budget over the three-year period to get on track for 2050 carbon neutrality.

“The policy ambition is quite strong but the plan is underpowered financially. It’s very disappointing,” Matthew said. “Why is the Treasury blocking the level of investment needed two weeks before the start of an incredibly important climate summit?”

Once a vital feature of climate talks, has the huddle had its day?

The Climate Change Committee estimates the cost of hitting net zero emissions by 2050 at less than 1% of the UK’s GDP over the next 30 years.

But the question of costs has agitated some backbench Conservative lawmakers in recent months, who argue climate policies will be disruptive to consumers and businesses.

This has led to a rift between Number 10 and the Treasury on how much public finance to invest in the goal.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s office is warning of serious economic damage and future tax rises if the UK overspends on, or misdirects, green investment, the Guardian reports.

E3G accused the Treasury of largely ignoring the economic benefits meeting the net zero goal will yield in terms of job creation and return on investment. As a result, it said the review presented a one-sided picture.

A spending review next week could be a moment for the government to bolster investments behind its climate plan.

The post UK sets out economy-wide strategy to meet 2050 net zero goal appeared first on Climate Home News.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the oil-producing nation’s leader, declared today that the country adopted a goal to reach net zero by 2050.

He tweeted: “Our development model will take into account this goal and all institutions will work as one team to achieve it.”

أعلنت دولة الإمارات اليوم عن هدفها لتحقيق الحياد المناخي بحلول عام 2050 ..نموذجنا التنموي سيراعي هذا الهدف وجميع المؤسسات ستعمل كفريق واحد لتحقيقه..ودولة الإمارات ستستثمر أكثر من 600 مليار درهم في الطاقة النظيفة والمتجددة حتى 2050 وستقوم بدورها العالمي في مكافحة التغير المناخي pic.twitter.com/qZtJe6P9BY

— HH Sheikh Mohammed (@HHShkMohd) October 7, 2021

Maktoum pledged to invest 600bn dirhams ($163 billion) in “clean and renewable” energy until 2050. That works out at around 21bn dirhams ($6bn) a year.

The UAE previously committed to reduce its emissions 23.5% by 2030, compared to a business-as-usual baseline and to get 50% of its electricity from renewables and nuclear by 2050.

The United Arab Emirates is hoping to host the Cop28 climate talks in 2023. Only South Korea has put in a rival bid.

UN carbon accounting rules mean that emissions from fossil fuels are counted where they are burned, not where they are produced.

Turkey ratifies the Paris Agreement after approving a 2053 net zero goal

This means that the UAE, the world’s eighth-biggest oil producer in absolute terms and the second-biggest per capita, does not necessarily have to reduce the amount of oil it produces to meet its goal.

But the process of producing oil does emit significant amounts of greenhouse gas and these are counted towards the UAE’s figures.

Emissions from oil production can be reduced through measures like monitoring for gas leaks, repairing them and investing in cleaner machinery.

A map of flares, where gas is deliberately burnt as a waste product during the oil and gas production process, across the UAE and wider region (Photo: Capterio/FlareIntel)

Like other oil-producing nations, the UAE has been trying to diversify its economy to prepare for a future after fossil fuels.

The UAE joins a number of advanced economies, and a few developing ones, in setting a 2050 net zero target.

Of those, the US, UK and Canada have promised to decarbonise their electricity systems by 2035. It is currently unclear whether the UAE plans to update its energy strategy to reflect its new 2050 goal.

Further details on the plan may be announced at the Middle East Green Initative summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on 25 October.

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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.

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This has triggered an important discussion on how useful they are, how scientifically robust they are – and their real-world impact.

Well designed and ambitious net zero targets can play a key role in reducing global carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions to net zero around 2050 and 2070, respectively, to keep to the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming limit.

However, net zero targets can distract from the urgent need for deep emissions reductions. Specifically, governments may “hide” behind aspirational net zero targets to avoid setting ambitious 2030 targets and taking short-term climate action. Unless governments start acting now, their chances of achieving net zero will be slim.

There are many uncertainties in estimating the potential impact of net zero targets: underlying assumptions may not be clear, they may not be comprehensive, or their legal status and likelihood of being fully implemented uncertain. This underlines a clear need for a nuanced assessment of national net zero targets. There is a risk that poorly backed up net zero claims could render the term meaningless.

Germany raises ambition to net zero by 2045 after landmark court ruling

The Climate Action Tracker has developed a method for evaluating government net zero targets: it is applicable only to net zero targets by national governments, not other subnational or non-state actors, especially corporations, whose whose different emissions boundaries and, in many cases, reliance on creative accounting methods to claim net zero, warrant special attention.

We have identified ten key elements to assess whether a net zero target’s scope, architecture, and transparency meet what we define as good practice.

1. Target year: Governments should communicate their target year, or short period (such as a five-year interval), for achieving net zero.
2. Emissions coverage: Net zero targets should cover all greenhouse gases, all sources, and all economic sectors
3. International aviation and shipping: net zero targets should cover emissions from international aviation and international shipping.
4. Reductions or removals outside of own borders: the most transparent and comprehensive net zero targets explicitly state that the country will reach net zero emissions within its own borders.
5. Legal status: net zero targets should be enshrined in national law.
6. Separate reduction and removal targets: including separate sub-targets for emission reductions and removals creates transparency and makes it easier to track progress.
7. Review process: a legally binding, regular review and revision of the target, and progress against it.
8. Carbon dioxide removal: transparent assumptions on the role of the land use, land-use change, and forestry (LuluCF) sector and separate assumptions of technical carbon dioxide removal (CDR) options provide clarity on how a country wants to achieve net zero. Removals cannot replace deep emission reductions, and should be used to balance emissions that cannot be rapidly abated and to realise net negative emissions after achieving net zero. Particular caution should be taken over the use of forest and other ecosystem-based removals because of their high uncertainties and risk of carbon re-release from increasingly adverse climatic conditions.
9. Comprehensive planning: a comprehensive planning process and actionable short and medium-term measures to reach net zero increase the chances of a target’s successful implementation.
10. Clarity on fairness of target: a government should explain why its target is a ‘fair’ contribution to the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5˚C. Developed countries in particular should explain how they will make up for any difference between what would be a fair contribution and what would be a realistic contribution, for example by supporting other countries in decarbonising their economies without claiming credits for use towards their own targets.

We will use these ten elements for those targets with enough information available to give countries an overall assessment of ‘acceptable’, ‘average’, or ‘poor’. Our ratings of net zero targets will roll out in the near future along with the CAT’s new rating methodology.

Frederic Hans and Silke Mooldijk are climate policy analysts with NewClimate Institute;  Claire Fyson is a climate policy analyst with Climate Analytics. Together, the two research organisations collaborate on the Climate Action Tracker project.

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At a Brussels summit on Monday, the leaders of Nato countries asked Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to “assess the feasibility” of such a target.

The target will apply to Nato’s operations around the world, mainly in Europe with some in Turkey, Afghanistan and the USA. It will not apply to member countries’ militaries, but could provide a blueprint for similar action.

Doug Weir, research and policy director of the Conflict and Environment Observatory said: “Nato deserves some credit for this. It’s great that the issue of military emissions is finally on the international agenda. It’s a topic that has been ignored for too long.”

Janani Vivekenda, head of climate diplomacy and security at Adelphi, told Climate Home News: “The reason Nato was able to do this was the US administration. This would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. It’s a huge game-changer.”

While some environmentalists had hoped for a net zero target, Vivekenda said a feasibility study was a less glamorous but more practical announcement. “You need to bring the troops along, quite literally,” she said.

G7 offers ‘peanuts’ to developing world, putting climate ambition in doubt

The Nato leaders’ communique stressed that emissions reduction should not impair “personnel safety, operational effectiveness and our deterrence and defence posture”.

Under the Paris Agreement, there is no specific requirement to cut emissions from military operations. Many countries fail to report them and estimates are hard to come by.

Analysts at Brown University have used data about the US military’s fuel use to calculate that, in 2017, its military had annual emissions of around 59 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent, similar to Morocco.

Scientists for Global Responsibility have estimated the EU’s military carbon footprint at 25 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year and the UK’s at 11 million tonnes.

Nato was created as a bloc to counter the power of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Its members include Canada and Turkey as well as most European countries.

Militaries can reduce emissions through measures like switching their bases and vehicles to renewable energy and by rewilding land they control.

Swiss public reject climate law over cost of living fears

This can have military as well as environmental advantages. In Afghanistan, convoys of fuel tankers were often attacked by opponents of Nato forces. “You can literally put a human cost on every gallon of fuel that was reaching the camps,” Vivekanda said.

Attacks on fuel tankers inspired energy efficiency measures, such as better-insulated tents which reduced the need for air conditioning, she said.

The UK has suggested that its military aircraft could run partly on biofuels. The environmental credentials of biofuels have been questioned, as they can come from unsustainable sources.

US President Joe Biden has asked Congress for $200m to develop less polluting weapons and $153m to improve energy efficiency for its vehicles. His administration is also seeking funding to protect military camps against extreme weather.

The Nato communique recognised climate change as a “threat multiplier” and “one of the defining challenges of our times”.

Nato asks its members to spend at least 2% of their GDP on their militaries. Weir said: “If Nato and its member states are serious about reducing their emissions, it is inescapable that they will also need to address the role of growing military expenditure and particular military postures in driving them.”

This article was amended to remove a reference to the Royal Air Force’s net zero by 2050 target, as there is no such target. The Scientists for Global Responsiblity’s estimate of the UK military’s emissions was amended, for clarity and ease of comparison, from 6-11 million tonnes to 11 million tonnes.

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Five major oil companies, Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial, MEG Energy and Suncor Energy, which extract some of the world’s most carbon-intensive oil, announced they had formed the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero alliance on Wednesday.

The companies, which together operate about 90% of Canada’s tar sands, said they will work with the Canadian government and the provincial government of Alberta to roll out technologies that will enable them to cut emissions from their extraction and production process.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau has committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. In 2018, the oil and gas sector was the largest source of Canada’s emissions, accounting for 26% of its total, according to government data.

Tar sands companies said the alliance aims to “develop an actionable approach” to cut emissions while “preserving the more than $3 trillion in oil sands contribution” to Canada’s economy to 2050.

But they made no mention of phasing out production. The “net zero” strategy does not extend to emissions from consumers burning the oil, which are many times larger than those from the extraction process.

Tar sands executive named as Canadian ‘climate champion’ ahead of Cop26

In fact, planned oil production in Canada would lead to a 17% expansion between 2019 and 2030, according to recent analysis by Stockholm Environment Institute.

This goes against modelling by the International Energy Agency (IEA), which found that new investments in expanding oil and gas production must stop by the end of the year for the sector to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.

“This kind of greenwash is worse than meaningless – it’s dangerous,” Alex Doukas, senior consultant at the Denmark-based KR Foundation, said of the alliance. “It fails to cover emissions associated with the tar sands products themselves. Nobody should cheer this nonsense.”

Laurie van der Burg, campaigner at Oil Change International, told Climate Home News: “These plans lack the one and only action that is most vital to cutting emissions: cutting dirty oil and gas production.

“If the Canadian tar sands net-zero alliance cared about climate action it would have committed to cut production by 2030.”

Van der Burg added that tar sands producers risked facing litigation over the plans, citing a court ruling against oil giant Shell, which established that real emissions reductions were necessary for oil and gas companies to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement.

According to the UN Environment Programme, global oil production must fall by 4% every year between now and 2030 to maintain a chance of staying below 1.5C of warming.

New Zealand climate plan criticised over ‘cow-shaped hole’

Because it is thick and viscous, oil from tar sands takes a lot of energy to extract and refine, making its production three to four times more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional crude oil.

To meet the goal, the alliance plans to create a corridor to link oil sands facilities from Fort McMurray to the Cold Lake regions and channel CO2 to a carbon sequestration hub.

Energy efficiency measures, electrification of operations, producing hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technology would be deployed requiring “significant investment” from both the industry and government, the companies said.

The alliance said “internationally recognised forecasts” indicate fossil fuel will continue to be part of the energy mix to 2050 to justify the initiative – contrary to the latest IEA net zero report.

“Every credible energy forecast indicates that oil will be a major contributor to the energy mix in the decades ahead and even beyond 2050,” said Sonya Savage, Alberta’s minister of energy, claiming this would lead to the production of “net zero barrels of oil”.

Net-zero latest

“Canadian oil sands producers said on Wednesday they would form an alliance to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from their operations by 2050”https://t.co/WjuVD53quZ pic.twitter.com/bTyUKwHk4m

— Simon Evans (@DrSimEvans) June 9, 2021

Under the IEA’s first comprehensive 1.5C scenario, the agency projects a drop in oil demand of 75% between 2020 and 2050, with fossil fuels supplying slightly over one-fifth of total energy by 2050.

Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, described the alliance as “absurd”. In a tweet, she said measures to reduce emission intensity and develop carbon capture and storage were “clearly not enough” to help the world meet its climate goal.

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One of the main checks on tar sands producers’ bullishness is organised opposition to infrastructure projects to connect Alberta to key export markets.

On Wednesday, TC Energy abandoned plans for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have transported 830,000 barrels of oil a day to refineries along the US’ Gulf Coast. The decision comes after Joe Biden revoked permits for the pipeline expansion in January.

It was hailed a victory by climate campaigners and indigenous communities who fought the project for a decade.

“Keystone XL is now the most famous fossil fuel project killed by the climate movement, but it won’t be the last,” said Jamie Henn, co-founder of 350.org. “Now it’s time to go a step further and say no to all new fossil fuel projects everywhere.”

On Thursday, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative published research warning that ending the expansion of the fossil fuel sector was not enough to keep the 1.5C within reach, and an exit strategy from existing production is required.

The study, from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology in Sydney, found that carbon emissions from existing fossil fuel projects would lead to 66% more emissions in 2030 than is compatible with a 1.5C trajectory.

Professor Sven Teske, who led the research, said: “National governments must establish binding limits for the extraction volumes for coal, oil and gas,” adding that new investments risked becoming stranded because of the falling prices of renewable energy.

The post Tar sands companies aim for ‘net zero’ by 2050 – with no plan to extract less oil appeared first on Climate Home News.

Cop26 president designate Alok Sharma has been on a three-day visit to Indonesia, as part of a tour of South East Asian countries, to discuss how the country can achieve net zero emissions and transition from coal power to renewable energy.

Speaking to the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) on Wednesday, Sharma said: “Every G7 nation has agreed to ambitious 2030 emissions reductions target, the net zero by 2050. But what we need is for everyone to move forward on that, and clearly we need G20 countries, including Indonesia, to move forward.”

“We want countries to set up their long-term strategy, to actually get to net zero by the middle of the century,” he added.

Indonesia, the world’s largest exporter of coal in volume, is due to take over the rotating presidency of the G20 group of major economies in 2022.

Discussions on reaching net zero emissions have risen up the political agenda in recent months. In March, the government announced a goal to reach net zero emissions by 2070 but the target’s formal approval by president Joko Widodo was suspended after campaigners said this was far too late.  

FPCI is campaigning for Indonesia to cut its emissions 50% by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.

Insightful meeting yesterday with Minister Luhut

I welcome his commitment & leadership in tackling #ClimateChange, and look forward to further work together to raise Indonesia’s climate ambition and role as a regional climate leader ahead of #COP26
@UKinIndonesia pic.twitter.com/Gj4AeRmjGw

— Alok Sharma (@AlokSharma_RDG) June 1, 2021

During his visit, Sharma met with a flurry of ministers in the capital Jakarta. These included the energy, environment and finance ministers, as well as coordinating minister for maritime affairs and investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, an ex-general and coal mine owner, who has emerged as President Widodo’s right- hand man.  

FPCI foreign policy analyst Esther Tamara told Climate Home News Minister Luhut has championed the net zero goal in Widodo’s administration, opening up the possibility of reaching net zero faster than 2070.

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In a statement published last month, Luhut said Indonesia would continue to strive to increase the share of renewables in the energy mix and meet carbon neutrality by 2060 or sooner, depending on international support.

“From how ‘comfortable’ and often Luhut is mentioning net zero by 2060 or faster, it seems reasonable to expect a new net zero target to be announced soon or at least before Cop26,” Tamara said. She added the new target will need to be announced by the minister of environment or the president himself to become official.

Not every ministry agrees on the timeline for decarbonisation.

In April, during a Net Zero summit organised by FPCI, minister of national development planning Suharso Monoarfa presented government modelling for reaching net zero in 2045, 2050, 2060 and 2070.

The document shows that reaching net zero by 2045 would lead to greater economic growth over the next 10 years than if Indonesia reached carbon neutrality later than 2045.

Under each of the scenarios, coal power would peak in 2025 before rapidly declining during the 2030s to be replaced with wind, solar and geothermal energy as well as nuclear capacity.

At the time, Mmnister Suharso said meeting net zero by 2045, the centenary of Indonesia’s independence, will demonstrate “a firm commitment to green recovery and low-carbon development” and help Indonesia escape “the middle-income trap” to achieve a developed country status.

With Indonesia’s answer to Elon Musk in jail, electric vehicles are going nowhere

But disagreements on when to reach net zero became apparent last week when state-owned utility PLN, unveiled a roadmap to retire coal plants in line with net zero emissions by 2060 – backtracking from a previous announcement to be carbon neutral by 2050.

“Indonesia can reach the target sooner, but it is a question of political willingness and availability of international support at this point,” said Tamara. “The government is looking at the US to provide this support, as it will open doors for other G7 countries to follow suit.”

For now, Indonesia’s climate plan to cut emissions 29% below business as usual by 2030 is “highly insufficient” to meet global climate goals, according to Climate Action Tracker.

As part of a carbon-intensive recovery to Covid-19, Indonesia was one of only five countries that started new coal plant construction in 2020 and has the fourth largest coal pipeline in the world.

NASA launches mission to better predict climate impacts

By 2022, the energy sector is forecast to overtake forestry and land use change as Indonesia’s largest share of emissions.

Utility PLN has pledged to stop building coal power plants beyond the current pipeline.

But the plan would still allow an estimated 15GW of planned coal capacity “under construction” and projects that have reached financial close to enter the energy system, according to early analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (Ieefa).

Putra Adhiguna, an energy analyst at Ieefa, told Climate Home News the definition of “under construction” remained ambiguous and Ieefa was working to establish how much coal could come still come online from this year onwards.

“At this stage we do not believe the goal is a sufficiently ambitious one, as all the coal plant retirement is essentially business-as-usual plant retirements,” he said.

Adhiguna added that if the power sector in Indonesia only reached net zero by 2060 it would delay economy-wide efforts to achieve carbon neutrality.

“Indonesia could do better if it stopped those not-needed coal plants in the pipeline and examined other avenues for renewable and grid investments.”

The post UK calls on Indonesia to set out roadmap to net zero emissions appeared first on Climate Home News.

They’re also among the first to identify a major problem with Shell’s plan, which science suggests is better seen as a defence of their core gas and oil business rather than a genuine energy transition. Some have already announced their intention to reject the plan, and more are likely to follow.

These shareholders are part of a bigger story. As the integrity of Shell’s plan struggles to weather scrutiny, it highlights our collective need to equip investors, governments, and businesses with the scientific tools they need to assess the necessary and realistic pathways to limit global warming to 1.5C.

A failure to look clear-eyed at the science behind these transition plans will be disastrous for the planet. The likelihood of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C is vanishingly small already. If other businesses follow Shell’s lead and go unchallenged, our chances of tempering the most catastrophic effects of climate change will disappear altogether.

IEA: End fossil fuel expansion now for net zero energy emissions by 2050

As climate scientists, we watched Shell’s latest pledge to reach net zero by 2050 with interest. Recently, we analysed the Shell Sky Scenario – its previous climate change scenario – as part of a study evaluating the hundreds of proposed pathways to mitigate climate change this century to stabilise temperature rise to 1.5C.

Each pathway makes different assumptions about climate policies, energy demand, reforestation, technologies for carbon dioxide removal, and renewables take-up. A general challenge with climate scenarios is whether they are based on realistic assumptions, and our analysis aims to transparently separate feasible from fantasy scenarios.

In a rigorous peer-reviewed analysis by 16 scientists, we found serious problems with the feasibility of Shell’s pathway. Among the over 400 climate scenarios included in the IPCC 1.5C report, only 50 scenarios take us towards a 1.5C future, with no or limited overshoot.

Among these 50, only 20 are based on realistic assumptions that global emissions must bend around 2020 at the latest to reach close to zero around 2050. We included Shell’s Sky Scenario as an additional reference, and it was by far, the one that most clearly lies outside the feasibility corridor to limit temperature rise to 1.5C. If the world emits as much greenhouse gas as Shell’s scenario suggests, it would lead to global temperatures rising well beyond the agreed Paris range.

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When Shell announced its updated 1.5C Sky Scenario centered around a net zero target 20 years earlier than planned, we wondered what radical emission reductions it had priced in – only to find there weren’t any. Analysis of the latest plans show the company will attempt to meet their self-declared targets while freezing emissions at more or less the same level as today. In fact, it’s currently forecasting an increase in gas production and gas exports to global markets.

Rather than reducing its emissions, Shell plans to offset gigatonnes of emissions by planting trees to capture carbon. It says that reforestation and other nature-based technology will be enough to allow its expanding operations. But Shell’s Sky scenario requires a forest the size of Brazil to offset the volume of carbon it intends to continue pumping out.

Offsetting carbon emissions with forest growth at this scale is a dangerous fantasy. There’s limited land and water available for tree planting: if Shell plants this many trees, it risks diverting land we need to feed a growing population. And science tells us it is simply not possible to substitute carbon emissions from coal, oil and gas, with unstable ‘green’ carbon sinks in trees and soil.

While offsetting with nature-based solutions and techniques for carbon dioxide removal is necessary, it should only be used to offset residual, difficult to abate sectors like agriculture and aviation.

Spain to end fossil fuel production by 2042 under new climate law

Instead Shell’s focus must be on cutting emissions by half each decade and investing in keeping natural carbon stocks intact, maintaining vital resilience in forests, soils, permafrost, and freshwater and ocean systems. This investment cannot be double counted as offsets, and should receive funding as additional nature-based solutions.

In short, betting on tree planting to reach net-zero by 2050 is taking colossal risks with our common future.

It’d be easy pickings for Shell to find a profitable energy business away from fossil fuels, because the energy sector is ripe for innovation – we’ve already seen revolutionary transformation in electricity generation from renewables. But if it insists on maintaining a business as usual strategy it will need to play an outsized role in carbon trading markets to offset those emissions.

That would be bad news for other sectors which have few other options to decarbonise, and more legitimate reasons to offset. It could also be bad for Shell’s shareholders: if Shell is too firmly hedged on the side of oil and gas, shareholders may lose out in an eventual energy transition.

A plan based on questionable science, betting on unproven technology, and fantasising about planting a forest as big as Brazil isn’t corporate leadership, it’s corporate malfeasance on an unprecedented scale with fallout stretching many, many generations into the future.

If Shell pursues this plan, it should have no role with the UK presidency at Cop26, or in the Race to Zero campaign. Institutions like the Science Museum should ensure that Shell does not finance environmental exhibits as a way of greenwashing its reputation. Lastly, Shell should be removed as a member of the main committee for Mark Carney’s taskforce of scaling voluntary carbon markets, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Cop26.

Shell sees oil and gas playing a role in our global economy for many decades to come. Science says that is simply not feasible if we want to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown. Shell is asking its shareholders to believe in unicorns not science.

Johan Rockström, is a professor in environmental science at the Stockholm Resilience Center, at Stockholm University; Gail Whiteman is director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, at Lancaster University. 

The post Shell’s net zero plan will be judged on science, not spin appeared first on Climate Home News.

So says the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its first ever comprehensive scenario to align energy development with a 1.5C limit on global heating, the strongest goal in the Paris Agreement.

The special report published on Tuesday states “beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required”. “Net zero means a huge decline in the use of fossil fuels,” the agency said.

The IEA described the pathway to building a net zero energy sector in the next 30 years as “viable” but “narrow and extremely challenging” and one that “requires an unprecedented transformation of how energy is produced, transported and used globally”.

Long criticised for underestimating renewable energy and overstating the role of fossil fuels, the agency’s net zero scenario has been welcomed by analysts and campaigners as a break from its previous modelling.

“This is a very significant moment. It’s the first time the IEA has released a scenario that is properly aligned with the Paris [Agreement] goals,” Greg Muttitt, senior policy advisor on energy supply at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, told Climate Home News.

“It’s a huge shift to have the IEA joining global calls for ending fossil fuel extraction,” Kelly Trout, senior research analyst at Oil Change International. “Oil companies have previously used IEA scenarios to justify ongoing fossil fuel expansion. The fossil fuel industry is losing one of its biggest sources of shelter,” she told Climate Home.

Spain to end fossil fuel production by 2042 under new climate law

To decarbonise the power sector by 2050, the IEA expects richer nations to reach carbon neutrality in their energy sector before developing countries.

By 2050, the IEA assumes global energy use will shrink by around 8% while serving an additional two billion people and a global economy it anticipates to be twice as big.

Under this scenario, sales of new internal combustion engine cars would end by 2035 and the global electricity sector would achieve net zero emissions by 2040.

Renewable sources, including wind, solar, bioenergy, geothermal and hydro energy, replace fossil fuels in the power system to provide two-thirds of total energy supply and almost 90% of electricity generation by 2050. Wind and solar panels alone account for around 70% of electricity generation by 2050.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel use falls from providing almost four-fifths of total energy supply today to slightly over one-fifth by 2050. Oil and gas continue to be used in the manufacturing of carbon-intensive goods such as plastics, cement and steel, in facilities fitted with carbon capture technology.

Unabated coal power generation ends in advanced economies by 2030 and everywhere else in 2040, when unabated oil plants are also be phased out.

By 2050, the IEA projects a drop in oil demand of 75% and gas of 55% from 2020 levels.

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Established in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis to ensure the security of oil supplies, the IEA has sought to make itself relevant to the energy transition while continuing to appeal to its oil-producing funders.

For Muttitt, this has created a conflicting identity at the core of the IEA’s mission. “You can’t protect the role of international oil companies at the same time as achieving the Paris goals,” he said.

“Now that the IEA is taking the Paris goals seriously, it is running into the [fact] that there is no room for oil, gas and coal. This is a fundamental break from what the IEA has said before.”

Under the IEA’s net zero scenario, oil and methane gas production becomes concentrated among a small number of low-cost producers, with “far-reaching” economic and social implications.

Oil and gas producing economies see their annual per capita income fall by about 75% by the 2030s. While new sources of revenue will be needed, “these are unlikely to compensate fully for the drop in and oil and gas income,” the report said.

Countries like Angola, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan are among the most vulnerable countries to declines in oil and gas revenues in coming decades, according to analysis by Carbon Tracker.  In Equatorial Guinea, 81% of government revenues come from oil and gas.

“Wealthy producers that are relatively less dependent on oil revenues should be moving first and fastest to help countries that will have a tougher time with this,” said Trout. “It’s imperative that countries like the UK, Norway, the US, Canada and Australia take this as a wake up call to think about their role in a global equitable phase out of fossil fuel production.”

UK calls on leaders to ‘consign coal to history’ at Cop26

The IEA’s scenario includes a rapid deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in the 2030s that allows some oil and particularly gas to remain in the power system by 2050 –  continuing the world’s reliance on “polluting” energy sources, Trout said.

Pointing to the technology’s slow deployment, Trout said the pace of CCS roll out set out by the IEA “appears widely optimistic”.

Joeri Rogelj, a scientist at Imperial College and a lead author on the International Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 1.5C report, told Climate Home that if the IEA’s projected levels of carbon capture couldn’t be delivered, the amount of gas in the power system by 2050 would need to be lowered.

“Can technology infrastructure be scaled up rapidly and efficiently? That is the key to the discussion that we need to have,” he said.

The IEA has promised to make its net zero scenario an “integral part” of its flagship annual publication, the World Energy Outlook (WEO), which guides policymakers and investors.

“I hope that this marks a permanent shift at the IEA and that this is not just a one off,” said Muttitt.

The post IEA: End fossil fuel expansion now for net zero energy emissions by 2050 appeared first on Climate Home News.

The sudden shift follows a landmark court ruling in favour of youth plaintiffs and reflects rising public demand for green policies ahead of September’s election.

Finance minister Olaf Scholz and environment minister Svenja Schulze announced the proposed targets to press in Berlin on Tuesday: a 65% emissions reduction by 2030, 85-90% by 2040 and net zero emissions by 2045, all compared to 1990 levels. Previously, the goals were 55% by 2030 and climate neutrality by 2050. 

If adopted by the cabinet next week, Germany would have the second deepest 2030 emissions reduction target of any major emitter, compared to 1990 levels, after the UK. It would be the biggest economy to match Sweden’s 2045 net zero ambition.

The move reignites an intense debate around Germany’s coal exit and carbon price on fuel for transport and buildings – two issues which could now dominate the election.

Top court rules German climate law falls short, in ‘historic’ victory for youth

Germany’s top court ruled last week that the country’s climate law is partly unconstitutional and ordered the government to draw up clear emissions reduction targets after 2030. The case was brought by youth climate activists who argued that the law violated their right to a humane future as it did not go far enough to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C.

The current 2030 target of 55%, compared to 2010, has been ranked as “highly insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker. 

Germany’s plan to increase its targets came as a “big surprise”, Felix Heilmann, a researcher at the climate think tank E3G, told Climate Home News.

There had been talk of Germany increasings it targets, especially after EU leaders agreed to raise the bloc’s 2030 target from 40-55%, but this was not expected for another year, after a new government had been formed, he said.

“This wouldn’t have happened now without the supreme court ruling,” he said. “The government has been very positive of their climate achievements and never questioned the climate law which included those targets.”

How youth climate court cases became a global trend

After the supreme court ruling, the government is facing “a lot of pressure to leave on a high note with regards to their climate policy. The cornerstone of that policy was the climate law,” he said. 

There was no real urgency for the government to respond to the court ruling, Niklas Höhne of the New Climate Institute told Climate Home News. The government has until the end of 2022 to announce a new target for after 2030.

But the upcoming election has put pressure on all parties to raise their ambition and show they are leading on climate. Recent polls put the Greens ahead of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union. 

“After coronavirus, climate is the second biggest issue this election,” Höhne said. “Every party has climate change in their programme. It is a spiral to the top.” 

To achieve the new targets, Germany must rapidly phase out coal. The country currently does not plan on ending coal until 2038, which campaigners say is a decade too late to limit global warming to well below 2C.

“The picture is crystal clear; the new climate targets cannot be achieved if we don’t phase out coal by 2030,” Heilmann said.

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Besides ending coal, the new government must speed up the transition to electric mobility by investing in more charging stations and increase the carbon price on fuels used for transport and heating buildings, Höhne said.

Merkel is tipped to announce a new climate finance goal for 2025 at this week’s Petersberg Dialogue. Climate watchers say Germany should double its annual climate finance by 2025 if it is to do its fair share.

“It’s great to see Germany move ahead – but if they don’t step up international support in lockstep then we risk green recovery and low carbon transition remaining a luxury development pathway,” said Jennifer Tollmann, policy advisor at think tank E3G.

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In grist to the discourse mill, we reported on a “Net Zero Producers Forum” launched by the US, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Norway and Qatar, promising a “pragmatic” approach to meeting the goal.

“Pragmatic,” as always, is code for not threatening vested interests. The agenda includes the low hanging fruit that should have been picked by now (plugging methane leaks) and technology fix that is eternally on the horizon (carbon capture and storage). Not mentioned is the most obvious route to zero: leaving oil in the ground.

Greta Thunberg cited it as yet another example of net zero targets being “used as excuses to postpone real action.”

If you can’t see that “net zero targets” risk leading to these things, then you either don’t understand the problem or you have a very clear agenda.
The problem is of course not the “net zero targets” themselves, but that they’re being used as excuses to postpone real action.

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) April 27, 2021

As a net zero emissions target becomes the benchmark for seriousness on climate action, it is absolutely right to read the small print. We should also recognise this framework as an improvement on what came before.

Would-be climate leaders used to say their targets were aligned with a 2C global warming limit, a less ambitious claim based on many hidden – and questionable – assumptions.

The concept of net zero was embedded in the Paris Agreement not by fossil fuel shills, but British-Pakistani climate advocate Farhana Yamin – later found supergluing herself to Shell headquarters – and a network of high-powered activists. Thanks to British climate science professor Simon Lewis for reminding me we have a long read on the target’s origins.

The intention was to translate the temperature goal into something more tangible, for governments and companies to act on. “Zero” gives clarity on investment decisions that was previously lacking. The “net” was a concession to some genuinely hard-to-decarbonise sectors, and a recognition of the important role of restoring natural carbon sinks.

This week’s stories

• Top court rules German climate law falls short, in ‘historic’ victory for youth
• UK aid cuts hit developing cities’ plans to protect against floods and fires
• Putin sounds methane alarm, under satellite surveillance and EU pressure
• Saudi, US net zero oil producer initiative meets sceptical response
• UK faces legal action over public finance for Mozambique gas project
• US, UK and Norway launch $1bn initiative to protect tropical forests

There are plenty of examples of net zero goals leading to tighter short-term targets and stronger policies. Take the UK or Unilever.

There are also examples of abuse of the “net”: buying a few dubious carbon offsets to justify business as usual. Putting a “net zero” label on a talking shop with vague aspirations to reduce fugitive emissions from oil and gas is clearly stretching it.

In the case of oil producing countries, though, the deeper issue is that emissions are counted at the tailpipe, not the wellhead. That accounting convention predates the net zero wave, long allowing petrostates to duck responsibility for the climate impact of their main source of revenue.

They cannot ignore reality forever. Oil and gas use needs to shrink to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, net or no net.

Arguably, some kind of climate club for oil and gas producers could help to manage that decline. A support group for petrodollar addicts, if you like. Whether the Net Zero Producers Forum is it remains to be seen.

Will Justin Trudeau end support for oil pipelines? Will Erna Solberg stop issuing new drilling licences? Will Mohamed bin Salman push for tighter production curbs through Opec? Those actions would speak louder than any number of CCS joint ventures.

The Conversation article sets out a number of flaws in the technocratic assumptions underlying net zero, which merit attention. But it has little to say on the powerful interests that benefitted from those flawed assumptions.

Ditching net zero is not the answer. To speed up climate action, strengthening the policy framework must go hand in hand with changing the geopolitical dynamics.

The post In defence of net zero – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

At Joe Biden’s climate summit on Friday, the US, Canada, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Qatar – together responsible for 40% of global oil and gas production – set up a forum “that will develop pragmatic net-zero emission strategies”.

Strategies could include stopping methane leaks and flaring, deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies, diversification from reliance on hydrocarbon revenues, and “other measures in line with each country’s national circumstances”, according to the joint statement.

There was no mention of leaving oil in the ground, an omission climate advocates were quick to criticise.

Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty campaign, said in a statement: “[This] is worrying because all of these countries continue to expand fossil fuel production and pour billions of dollars into technologies to reduce emissions ‘per barrel’ rather than to manage an equitable decline of overall emissions and production. If your house is on fire you don’t add more fuel.”

US-based climate strategist Tamara Toles O’Laughlin agreed: “There’s no such thing as a net zero oil producer. It belies the concept. We have to get to zero emissions to survive which means we literally need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This forum will only be useful if it leads to a transparent, fair, and accelerated phaseout of fossil fuel production.”

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

Chatham House energy analyst Glada Lahn told Climate Home News that the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar weren’t politically ready to talk about a managed decline of the oil sector.

But Canada and Norway  “could go a lot further”, she said, “given their more sophisticated capacities for economic diversification”. Planning a fair transition away from fossil fuels takes a long time, she said, so it’s best to start early.

Denmark is the largest oil producing country – 39 in the world – to have announced an exit plan, with the last barrel to be extracted before 2050. On Friday, California governor Gavin Newsom directed his administration to take steps to phase out oil and gas production by 2045.

While long-term vision may be lacking, the forum could deliver quick wins by tackling emissions of methane, a more potent warming gas than carbon dioxide.

Oil and gas sector methane emissions. (Graph: The International Energy Agency)

Oil and gas producers vent or flare methane gas when it’s uneconomic or impractical to sell it. Methane can also leak into the atmosphere during extraction, refining and transport processes. Before the pandemic, methane emissions from the oil and gas sector globally were rising.

Jonathan Banks is the methane director at the Clean Air Task Force. He told Climate Home News: “Reducing oil and gas methane is by far the simplest and biggest thing we could do in the next few years to dramatically reduce global warming. It’s not rocket science. We don’t have to build any fancy new technology. It’s basically plumbing.”

Technologies like vapour recovery units, gas blowdowns and infra-red cameras can detect and fix methane leaks. According to the IEA, many of these technologies quickly pay for themselves as they reduce the wastage of gas.

Banks said that that the main motivation for Norway was its desire to signal to the EU that its energy is clean. The EU gets 7% of its oil and 18% of its gas from Norway.

US gas companies also see Europe as a market for their gas, Banks said. “In the US, we have tons of basically free gas – that’s just being flared and vented and even going into the pipelines basically at zero cost.”

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Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been trying to diversify their economies away from oil for several years. “They know where things are heading,” said Lahn.

According to the World Bank, between 2012 and 2018, the hydrocarbon sector went from 45% of GDP to 42% in Saudi Arabia and from 58% to 47% in Qatar.

The joint statement uses the phrase “circular carbon economy” (CCE), suggesting Saudi influence over the text.

CCE is a concept promoted by the Saudi government at international forums like the G20. It emphasises the use of technologies such as carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) and hydrogen.

CCUS involves capturing carbon dioxide emissions from power stations or industrial processes and pumping it into underground storage – often helping to extract more oil from reservoirs in the process. Its proponents say it is a practical way to curb emissions, while critics say it is expensive and enables continued oil and gas production.

The post Saudi, US net zero oil producer initiative meets sceptical response appeared first on Climate Home News.

After a long night that finished around 5am on Wednesday, negotiators from the European parliament and EU member states reached an agreement on the European Climate Law that will enshrine the EU’s commitment to reaching climate neutrality by 2050.

As expected, the 2030 target was the big political fight of the night, but parties reached an agreement to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by “at least 55%” by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. That objective will therefore also become a legal obligation for the EU and its member states.

While the 55% target is lower than the 60% that Parliament had earlier voted for, member states made a concession to European lawmakers by agreeing to cap the contribution of carbon removals from land use, agriculture and forestry.

In addition, the European Commission agreed to consider increasing the contribution of carbon sinks in order to bump up the EU’s climate ambition to 57%, although this is not written in the law.

#EUClimateLaw @2021PortugalEU @EUCouncil and @Europarl_EN reached today a provisional political agreement setting into law the objective of a climate-neutral EU by 2050. The EU climate law sets the frame for the EU’s climate action in the long term #EU2021PT pic.twitter.com/ZQa718CO7J

— 2021Portugal.eu (@2021PortugalEU) April 21, 2021

Bowing to parliament’s demands, EU negotiators also decided to establish an independent scientific advisory body, the European Scientific Advisory Board, to advise policymakers on the alignment of EU policies with the bloc’s climate neutrality goal.

The new body will consist of 15 members from across Europe, each nominated for a four-year mandate. It will provide scientific advice and report on existing and proposed policy measures and targets as well as greenhouse gas budgets. The European Environment Agency will act as its secretariat.

“We raised the ambition of the 2030 net target to almost 57%, we got the greenhouse gas-budget and the advisory board. We wanted more, but this is a good first step towards climate neutrality,” said Jytte Guteland, parliament’s lead negotiator.

Poland seeks to nationalise coal plants so firms can finance green investments

As a result, the EU’s 2030 target translates into a “gross” reduction of 52.8% without carbon removals from agriculture and forestry.

The inclusion of carbon sinks into the EU’s climate goal caused jitters among the Greens who denounced the move as an “accounting trick” to meet the 55% goal for 2030.

“By failing to establish a serious climate target without accounting tricks in the European Climate Law, the Green Deal fails to live up to the big speeches of the Ursula von der Leyen Commission,” said Michael Bloss, the lead negotiator for the Greens in the European Parliament.

The centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which backed the “net” target for 2030, was more positive: “A 55% net target for 2030 is very ambitious,” said German Christian Democrat MEP Peter Liese, who hailed a “historical agreement”.

A win for parliament came on the 2040 target, which will be informed by a greenhouse gas budget, which determines how much carbon the EU can emit up to 2050 before it breaches the Paris Agreement. This will have separate calculations for emissions and carbon sinks.

The 2040 target will be proposed alongside the indicative greenhouse gas budget within six months of the first global stock-take of the Paris Agreement in 2023, at the latest.

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Beyond 2050, EU negotiators agreed to strive towards reaching negative emissions.

However, national representatives in the Council of Ministers did not agree to make the 2050 goal a legal obligation for every EU nation . Instead, the 2050 climate goal will remain an objective for the EU to attain as a group, meaning some countries will be allowed to reach the objective later if others manage to decarbonise their economies sooner.

“Unfortunately, the Council was not ready to accept climate neutrality for every member state. It will remain a collective target,” Liese said.

EU negotiations also agreed that the European Commission would help create road maps for decarbonisation for industrial sectors that make a request for it. The EU executive will then facilitate dialogue, share best practices, and monitor progress.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the announcement, saying she was “delighted” that a deal has been reached on the climate law.

I warmly welcome the agreement on the Climate Law.

Our political commitment to becoming the 1st climate neutral continent by 2050 is now also a legal one.

The Climate Law sets the EU on a green path for a generation. It is our binding pledge to our children and grandchildren.

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) April 21, 2021

Frans Timmermans, the Commission’s executive vice-president in charge of the European Green Deal, was equally cheerful, saying: “This is a landmark moment for the EU. We have reached an ambitious agreement to write our climate neutrality target into binding legislation, as a guide to our policies for the next 30 years. The Climate Law will shape the EU’s green recovery and ensure a socially just green transition.”

“Today’s agreement also reinforces our global position as a leader in tackling the climate crisis. When world leaders gather on Earth Day, the EU will come to the table with this positive news, which we hope will inspire our international partners. This is a good day for our people and our planet,” he continued, pointing to the value of the agreement for the EU on the world stage.

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Pascal Canfin, the chairman of the European parliament’s environment committee, said the deal “: “Today, Europe confirms its leadership in the fight against climate change. Twenty-four hours before the climate leaders’ summit, we are further strengthening our European climate objectives thanks to a reduction in our emissions which will reach nearly 57% compared to 1990. Parliament was obviously ready to go even further, but the compromise found is ambitious: we are going to do two and a half times more in nine years than what we have done in the last 10 years in Europe.”

João Pedro Matos Fernandes, the Portuguese minister of environment and climate action, said: “We can be proud to have set in stone an ambitious climate goal that can get everyone’s support. With this agreement we send a strong signal to the world – right ahead of the leader’s climate summit on 22 April – and pave the way for the Commission to propose its “fit-for-55″ climate package in June,” he said.

The agreement will now be fine tuned by legal experts and submitted to a final approval from the Council and the parliament.

This story was produced by Climate Home News’ media partner Euractiv. 

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Raj Kumar Singh described net zero goals as “pie in the sky” during a global summit hosted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) designed to create global momentum for achieving net zero emissions by the middle of the century.

The virtual ministerial dialogue was attended by more than 40 ministers from large emitting nations.

“You have countries whose per capita emissions are four times, five times, six times, 12 times the world average,” Singh said during a panel discussion with China’s energy minister Zhang Jianhua, US climate envoy John Kerry and the EU’s Frans Timmermans, which have all backed net zero goals. 

“Now the question is when are [emissions] going to come down. What we hear is that ‘by 2050 or by 2060 we will become carbon neutral’.” But “2060 is far away,” Singh said in reference to China’s own net zero goal.

“If by that time people continue to emit at the rate at which they are emitting, the world won’t survive. So what are you going to do in the next five years, we want to know that, the world wants to know that. What are you going to do in the next 10 years?” he asked.

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Singh’s comments come as India is facing mounting diplomatic pressure to set its own net zero goal ahead of the Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow, UK, in November.

Opening the meeting, Cop26 president designate Alok Sharma called “on all countries to commit to a net zero world”. “Not enough is being done to meet that net zero target,” he told ministers. “We must do much more now to turn remote targets into immediate action. We simply cannot afford another decade of deliberation,” he added, insisting on the need for short-term ambition.

Speculation on Indian plans for net zero has been rife. Recent reports suggested government officials close to Modi were considering setting a net zero goal for 2050 or 2047. But earlier this week, government sources told Reuters that India is unlikely to bind itself to a net zero target by 2050. 

“That speech by RK Singh Power Minister at the IEA #NetZeroSummit should put all speculations on India and net zero to rest,” tweeted Swati Dsouza, a Delhi-based energy consultant.

Net zero targets have come under growing scrutiny from experts and campaigners, who have denounced commitments made 30 years into the future that don’t include transformative action to cut emissions in the short term.

Isn’t it funny that the same people who are calling us naive for believing change is possible are the ones who believe fossil fuel companies, big polluters and oil producing nations will ”fix” the climate- and ecological crisis with their vague, distant ”net zero” commitments…?

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) March 24, 2021

Sunil Dahiya, analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, told Climate Home News that it was important that countries’ net zero strategies included interim targets for the next five and 10 years. 

“Without that it’s difficult to gauge the progress towards net zero and hold countries accountable towards these ambitious targets,” he said. 

Writing in Nature, Joeri Rogelj, one of lead authors of the 1.5C IPCC report, warned against setting “vague” net zero targets. “The stakes are too high to take comfort in mere announcements. Without more clarity, strategies behind net-zero targets cannot be understood; nor can their impact be evaluated,” he wrote.

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Minister Singh argued that developing countries could not be expected to commit to net zero when they have contributed very little to historic emissions and are heavily reliant on carbon-intensive sectors such as steel and cement to grow their economies. 

“The developed world has occupied almost 80% of the carbon space already. You can’t say that [developing countries] have to come to net zero. No, sorry – they have to develop,” he said. 

In response, Timmermans said that there is huge potential for developing nations such as India to leapfrog polluting technologies and meet their energy needs, without increasing their carbon emissions. 

“Some countries are resisting [decarbonisation] despite the fact that we’re looking at the biggest job market the world has ever known,” Kerry said. “This is the greatest economic opportunity we’ve ever had to build our countries.”

The world’s third largest emitting country after China and the US, India has so far resisted setting a more ambitious 2030 climate goal despite pressure from the UN and UK Cop26 host for every nation to improve its climate plan ahead of Glasgow. 

Kerry said the US would announce a “strong” 2030 target on 22 April, when president Joe Biden is hosting a leaders’ climate summit. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is among 40 world leaders invited. The US said it had urged participants to use the summit as an opportunity to outline how they will contribute to stronger climate ambition.

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“As far as we are concerned, we have one of the fastest growing renewable capacity in the world. We are well on the way to achieving what we have set out to do,” Singh said.

India is on track to exceed its target of delivering 450GW of renewable energy by the end of the decade but it continues to expand its coal capacity, recently holding an auction for new coal blocks. 

For its climate plans to be compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C, India would need to abandon plans to build new coal power plants and phase out all coal generation by 2040, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Dsouza told Climate Home News India requires “substantial financial and technological aid” if it is to decarbonise rapidly. 

“We will need global finance to mitigate the negative impacts of the transition on livelihoods and to bring costs of new technology lower. This is true for India and for all developing countries,” she said. 

The post India calls out rich nations for setting net zero goals over robust short-term targets appeared first on Climate Home News.

The proposed law would commit Ireland to cutting its emissions by 51% between 2018 and 2030 and to net zero no later than 2050. Government is pushing it through parliament as priority legislation.

The country’s environment minister Eamon Ryan previously said Ireland would match EU emissions targets. EU environment ministers continue to push for a 2030 reduction target of at least 55% from 1990 levels.

Ireland’s 2030 goal works out at a 45% reduction if the baseline is set t0 1990, according to campaign group Friends of the Irish Environment.

Ireland formed a three-party coalition government in June, including the Republican party Fianna Fáil, the more liberal Fine Gael party and the Green Party. The coalition agreed to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by an average 7% per year, in line with Paris Agreement commitments. 

The bill was first presented in December to the country’s committee on climate action, which suggested 78 recommendations to the draft legislation after hearing expert testimony. The strengthened bill was approved by the coalition this week. 

The new law will require the government to adopt a series of five-year carbon budgets across all sectors over the next 15 years. Ministers will be required to appear before a climate committee each year to report on how individual sectors have performed. Ireland will introduce its first carbon budget later this year.

Scientists push to add “huge” fish trawling emissions to national inventories

Sectors such as transport and agriculture will require significant reform if they are to halve their emissions by 2030. Agriculture accounts for 33% of Ireland’s carbon emissions and is especially challenging to reform given the high methane output of livestock farming. 

Micheál Martin, Ireland’s prime minister, or Taoiseach, warned this week that “there will be difficult annual phases of engagement with different stakeholders”. 

“But by hard-wiring it into legislation we do create an added imperative to drive change”, Martin said.

One contentious issue is the scale of beef and dairy farming.

Green leader and environment minister Eamon Ryan said that farmers would play an important role in the transition to net zero, adding there would be fewer cattle in future but farmers would earn more for their product.

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However, Martin said his focus was on “stabilising the herd number” rather than reducing it. Ireland’s deputy prime minister Leo Varadkar said it would be difficult to lower emissions without reducing the size of the herd.

Climate groups welcomed the approval of the new bill, describing the proposed legislation as a “historic moment” for Irish climate action. 

“This climate bill is a big step in the right direction. The first draft had too many loopholes. Now, the targets are tighter, the duty to act is stronger, and the language is clearer,” Friends of the Earth director Oisín Coghlan said. 

Last year the Irish Supreme Court ruled that the government’s emissions mitigation strategy fell “well short” of what was needed to meet the country’s climate commitments and ordered it to draw up a more ambitious plan. 

The post Ireland’s government agrees on climate bill to set 2050 net zero goal in law appeared first on Climate Home News.

Officials tell Climate Home News they would like to go faster, but do not know where the money will come from.

While its GDP per capita is significantly lower than the global average, Ukraine is classed as a developed country in the UN climate process, making it ineligible for support from the Green Climate Fund. Nor does it benefit from EU membership like many of its neighbours.

Irina Stavchuk, deputy minister of energy and environmental protection, told Climate Home News investments would have to triple in the 2040s to get near to climate neutrality by 2050. That is based on modelling by the London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Ukraine’s Institute for Economics and Forecasting.

“Having these economic calculations, it’s very difficult for the government just to make promise without understanding how the investments would actually come and be delivered,” she said.

Anna Ackermann, a campaigner from Kiev-based Eco Action, said 2050 was possible, at least in the energy sector. An Eco Action study with the Institute of Economic Forecasting in Ukraine showed a transition to 91% renewable energy by 2050 was “economically feasible” with existing technology.

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Oleksii Riabchyn is a climate adviser to deputy prime minister Olga Stefanishyna and environment and natural resources minister Roman Abramovsky.

He said Ukraine was trying to reach net zero as fast as possible but was in a “different league” to the EU when it comes to climate finance. “We are Shakhtar Donetsk in the Ukrainian Premier League and they are Real Madrid,” he said.

At UN climate talks, Ukraine has lobbied for access to GCF finance – so far without success.

Riabchyn said the country was “stuck in the middle” and “cut off from the finance when we are in a very hard situation when we have a war, economic recession and modernising our economy trying to do a very painful reform”.

After Ukraine’s pro-EU 2014 revolution, Russia invaded parts of the east of Ukraine. Their forces continue to occupy these areas and the conflict, which has killed over 10,000 people and displaced over 1.5 million, continues.

Ukraine’s GDP per capita is the lowest in Europe and less than countries like Cuba, Bahrain and Botswana that have received GCF funding.

As it is not a member of the EU, Ukraine is not eligible for initiatives like the €17.5bn Just Transition Fund, which is helping coal-reliant countries like Poland to move away from fossil fuels fairly.

“It’s very easy to decide to close a mine. But it’s a very sophisticated policy what you do with the coal-mining region – how you retrain the workers, there needs to be a just transition,” said Riabchyn, “and what resources are available for this?”

Scientists push to add “huge” fish trawling emissions to national inventories

Ukraine can get support from the Global Environment Facility, which has funded several climate change programmes. And the EU offers some support under its neighbourhood policy.

Another potential source of revenue is Ukraine’s carbon tax, although at less than a dollar a tonne, it is the lowest carbon price in the world. It currently goes into the general budget but could be earmarked for a climate fund co-financed by international donors, Stavchuk suggested.

Stavchuk said one priority of the Ukrainian Green Deal would be to invest in energy efficiency. The country is one of the least energy efficient in the world.

Most Ukrainians have their heating bills subsidised so energy efficiency would save the government and residents money, Stavchuk said.

For electricity, Ukraine relies mostly on nuclear and coal power plants. Stavchuk said these plants are “getting very old” and the country needs renewable energy and modern balancing facilities.

Ukraine’s main energy company DTEK plans to phase out coal by 2040 and the government has applied to the Powering Past Coal alliance with a 2050 phase-out date, she said.

The country has large polluting industries like steel and cement. Exports of these products to the EU are threatened by the bloc’s proposed carbon border adjustment mechanism which would tax them at the border.

Economy minister Igor Petrashko is calling for an exemption from the border tax, on the basis Ukraine is working to align with EU climate standards including a 2050 net zero goal.

Ukraine has high hopes to develop hydrogen, for domestic use and for export. “Europe has a romance with hydrogen and we are anticipating this will end with a marriage not, as usual, a divorce,” said Riabchyn.

But Ackerman is sceptical. “There are many unrealistic assumptions about the role of hydrogen that is considered to be so huge now to transform transport, heating, industries and everything. It should not be the priority.”

The post Stuck in the middle: Ukraine aims for net zero but struggles to access finance appeared first on Climate Home News.

Jayant Sinha, a lawmaker representing the coal producing Hazaribagh district in Jharkhand, north east India, submitted the bill to the Lok Sabha, parliament’s lower house earlier this week.

The bill, obtained by Climate Home News, aims to provide a framework “by which India can develop and implement clear and stable climate change policies” under the Paris Agreement.

Modelled on New Zealand’s climate law, it would require the government to establish emissions budgets every five years, starting in 2022.  An independent climate change commission would be created to drive policy recommendations and monitor progress towards achieving the net zero target.

“My objective was to start the discussion in India about a net zero target. And what would be the means and mechanisms to achieve it and start fostering a dialogue on this topic,” Sinha told Climate Home News.

My view: India can create crores of high-paying jobs and save the world by declaring Net Zero by 2050 target. (1/2) https://t.co/4fvvlKgkJZ pic.twitter.com/agFvL9R7s5

— Jayant Sinha (@jayantsinha) March 12, 2021

In practice, it is “very rare” for a private member’s bill to become law in India as the government is unlikely to support legislation that it hasn’t proposed, he said.

But Sinha, who chairs the parliament’s standing committee on finance, hopes the bill will drive the issue to the top of India’s political agenda.

“We are not going to get to 2C or 1.5C unless India completely changes its trajectory and gets to net zero as soon as possible,” he said.

In recent months, prime minister Narendra Modi has come under growing diplomatic pressure to set a net zero goal after some of the world’s biggest polluters announced carbon neutrality commitments, including China.

Government officials close to Modi are reportedly working with senior bureaucrats and foreign advisors to consider setting a net zero goal for 2050 or 2047, the centenary of the country’s independence from the UK.

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Under the bill, the climate change commission would be tasked with helping to prepare emissions budgets and report on progress in meeting them. Should the government fail to meet its goals, the commission would have the power to levy penalty fines.

Navroz Dubash, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research, who is working on proposals to develop robust climate institutions in India, welcomed the prospect of an Indian climate law.

But Sinha’s commission proposal does not reflect India’s approach to cutting emissions, which is focused on transforming key sectors in line with a low-carbon development pathway, Dubash told Climate Home News.

“A climate change commission is useful, but not one articulated solely or even mostly around carbon budgets. Meeting carbon budgets does not animate Indian politics and policy, transformational sectoral change does,” he said in an email.

“The proposed bill copies a little too readily from international experience, without making the effort to design institutions that will work most effectively within India. India deserves more than cut and paste.”

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Despite growing chatter over the possibility of India setting a net zero goal, analysts have previously told Climate Home News that while some modelling work and sectoral analysis was being carried out by researchers, this was not part of a detailed cross-ministerial process.

One coal analyst described the net zero discourse in India as “vague and aspirational”.

Swati D’souza, a Delhi-based energy consultant, said that “going straight to net zero will be a major shift in policy, particularly since we have just auctioned new coal blocks”.

In June 2020, Modi launched an auction of 41 coal mining blocks to private companies. Adani Enterprises won the bid for the Gondulpara coal mine in Sinha’s constituency of Hazaribagh.

For its climate action to be compatible with limiting temperature rise to 1.5C, India would need to abandon plans to build new coal power plants and phase out all coal power generation by 2040, according to Climate Action Tracker.

Sinha defended recent coal auctions as part of Modi’s strategy to build a self-reliant India. “Ultimately,” he wrote in an opinion piece last year, it “is about making India truly globally competitive, so that we build up our economic strength and can control our own destiny”.

Scientists push to add “huge” fish trawling emissions to national inventories

Speaking to Climate Home News, Sinha said there were “a range of technological solutions” to cut emissions from coal, including through carbon capture, that would allow some coal production to continue under a 2050 net zero pathway.

While achieving carbon neutrality would require significant investments, Sinha said setting the target would make funding opportunities flow.

“If India takes a proactive position on net zero, we will get so much support from the world. It would be a tremendous boost for the economy,” he said.

As long as India continues to expand its renewable and coal capacity in parallel, D’souza said it remained to be seen how the country could mobilise the resources to achieve net zero by 2050.

“It is possible with political backing, but it will mean that the government needs to start looking at issues related to ‘just transitions’ now, rather than 10 years in the future,” she said.

The post Indian lawmaker submits private bill to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Six months ago, the idea of carbon neutrality was hardly on the agenda in India. But a number of major international climate announcements have driven net zero to the forefront.

Analysts say the issue is starting to be discussed in climate circles since China’s 2060 carbon neutrality pledge, Joe Biden’s election victory in the US and the UK’s diplomatic push to ramp up climate ambition ahead of Cop26.

In private, analysts said they wouldn’t be surprised if the government set a carbon neutrality goal within the course of the year, with any decision expected to come directly from the top. But in many ways, the country is not ready to set a hard deadline to end its contribution to climate change.

“There is a lot of chattering about net zero but that discussion is not anchored in policy development and policy analysis,” Thomas Spencer, who works on the decarbonisation of the Indian power sector at The Energy and Resources Institute in Mumbai, told Climate Home News.

While some detailed modelling work, largely focused on sectorial analysis, is being carried out by research groups and academics, it is not part of a detailed cross-ministerial process.

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In a report published earlier this month, the International Energy Agency suggested India could get on a path to net zero emissions by the mid-2060s.

“How meaningful is that? That is as far away from the present as 1975 was in the past – a time of pre-internet and pre-oil shocks,” said Navroz Dubash, professor at the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

“The diplomatic political gain [of setting a net zero goal] is greater than the domestic cost but it would be a shame if that’s all [the target] does,” Dubash told Climate Home News.

“We have absolutely no idea if setting a net zero goal will dampen development prospects,” he said, citing the lack of domestic studies on the issue. In a blog post, he warned that an unplanned target could “derail a carefully built momentum toward low-carbon focused development actions”.

Sharma’s visit to India this week is part of the UK’s diplomatic push for countries to improve their 2030 climate goals ahead of the Cop26 climate talks in November and aim for net zero greenhouse gas emissions towards the middle of the century.

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During a meeting with prime minister Narendra Modi, Sharma outlined the UK’s 2050 net zero goal and said its tougher 2030 target “sent a clear message to the world” of the ambition needed, according to a readout of the meeting.

“I firmly believe that powerful action from India will be a catalyst for change, encouraging others to be more ambitious in their approaches to protecting both people and planet,” Sharma said in a statement before leaving the country.

US presidential climate envoy John Kerry told an Indian conference earlier this month that striving towards carbon neutrality by mid-century was “a critical commitment at this point in time”.

Pleased to meet with COP26 President-designate @AlokSharma_RDG today. We discussed India-UK cooperation on climate change agenda and COP26.
My best wishes to UK for successful organisation of the climate summit. pic.twitter.com/ZLACrYtR5n

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) February 16, 2021

 

Sharma’s visit coincided with the arrest of 22-year-old climate activist Disha Ravi, who was charged with sedition and accused of editing a toolkit shared by Greta Thunberg on how to support the Indian farmers’ protests. She was arrested in her home in Bangalore and flown to Delhi, where she remains in police custody.

In 2019, India committed to deliver 450GW of renewable energy by 2030 – a target Modi says India is on track to exceed.

According to Climate Action Tracker, India could become a global climate leader if it enhances its 2030 target, abandons plans to build new coal power plants and phases out all coal production by 2040.

But Delhi has so far resisted setting a tougher 2030 climate goal. Speaking at the climate ambition summit in December, Modi reminded world leaders of India’s small historic contribution to global carbon emissions.

“In 2047, India will celebrate a hundred years as a modern, independent nation,” he said, promising the country would “not only meet its own target but will also exceed your expectations”.

Will India set a goal of achieving #netzero by 2047?

I think they could and several business leaders that were part of this #WSDS21 seemed to agree.

Thanks to @teriin for inviting me to speak at the World Sustainable Development Summit.@mendiluce #RaceToZero pic.twitter.com/JeCa8hDh5k

— Nigel Topping (@topnigel) February 12, 2021

“There is no doubt that in the domestic policy debate there is a broad understanding that India can go much further than it has committed to do,” Spencer said.

But India must overcome major hurdles in its transition to net zero, analysts say. While the country could easily decarbonise half of its power supply network through renewables and electrify passenger transport, addressing carbon-intensive sectors such as steel and cement, where Indian per capita consumption is forecast to grow significantly, will be much more difficult, Spencer said.

“Until humanity can collectively invest in these hard-to-abate decarbonisation challenges, there is no way that India can commit by itself to a net zero target given its expected demand growth in these sectors,” he told Climate Home.

Instead, a net zero goal should be framed as an aspiration and used to drive a conversation on the domestic actions and international innovation and support needed to turn the goal into reality, he said.

For Dubash, India pursuing a carbon neutrality goal would require building the institutional capacity to hold the government accountable to its pledge and oversee its implementation. “This is not a small ask,” he said.

The post Under diplomatic pressure, India considers net zero – but major hurdles remain appeared first on Climate Home News.

Last month, the government was criticised by environmental campaigners and lawmakers for not blocking the construction of a new coal mine in Cumbria, northwest England. They said that the coal project weakened the UK’s leadership credentials ahead of hosting the Cop26 climate summit in November. 

The £165 million West Cumbria Mining project is to extract coking coal from below the Irish Sea for steel production, which will emit an estimated 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year when burned.

In response to mounting criticism, the ministry of housing, communities and local government said in a statement that the planning application should be determined by the local council. 

Cumbria county council said this week that it would reconsider permission in light of “new evidence”, citing guidance from the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) published in December that recommends that the use of coking coal should be curbed by 2035 if the UK is to meet its 2050 net-zero target. 

West Cumbria Mining said in its application that the mine would be closed by the end of 2049.

Cop26 dream team: The people setting the climate agenda on seven key issues

Last month the CCC wrote a letter to minister of housing and communities Robert Jenrick urging the government to reconsider all new coal developments. 

“The opening of a new deep coking coal mine in Cumbria will increase global emissions and have an appreciable impact on the UK’s legally binding carbon budgets,” Lord Deben, head of the CCC, wrote. 

“It is also important to note that this decision gives a negative impression of the UK’s climate priorities in the year of COP26,” he added. 

In the letter, the CCC offered to help frame guidance for local councillors and planners who are involved in making decisions with climate implications.

The Cumbria Council decision to backtrack on a new coal mine has nothing to do with ‘new information’ and everything to do with the power of people getting organised

— Ellen Gibson (@ellenrgibson) February 9, 2021

Rebecca Willis, professor in practice at Lancaster University, told Climate Home News the review did not necessarily mean the council would cancel the project.

Councillors had seen “plenty of independent expert evidence” on the climate impacts before approving the mine, she said. But the CCC advice was harder to ignore and doing so could lay them open to legal challenge.

The local authority is under “huge political pressure” and “trying to look for a face-saving way out,” she said. 

“It’s a really bad look for a government who claims to be a climate leader and who is hosting the most important climate summit ever to be telling other governments what to do and then supporting a coal mine in its own backyard. At best that’s confusing and at worst it’s hypocritical.”

In a letter sent to Jenrick in October, 13 independent climate experts argued that a 2049 end date was “wholly inappropriate” and would “hinder the ability of UK industry, particularly the steel industry, to innovate and decarbonise.”

Fatal Himalayan glacial lake outburst highlights destabilising effect of warming

Unbelievably excellent news!! The power of climate change political commitments to actually prevent new high carbon major infrastructure projects from going ahead may at last be reaching the levels needed (ref Heathrow).

Next up, the £27bn road building programme https://t.co/U5DUpHq4CA

— Leo Murray @crisortunity@urbanists.social (@crisortunity) February 9, 2021

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg questioned the UK’s net zero commitment after the government refused to intervene last month.

“This really shows the true meaning of so called ‘net zero 2050.’ These vague, insufficient targets long into the future basically mean nothing today,” she said. 

Jill Perry, chair of a local green party in Cumbria, welcomed the council’s decision to review the application. 

“If the mine goes ahead it risks not just blowing the government’s sixth carbon budget out of the water but also Cumbria’s net zero goal,” she told Climate Home News, adding that besides increasing emissions, the mine posed a serious risk to local woodland and wildlife.

Indian farmers head for showdown with government over agricultural reform

West Cumbria Mining has said that the mine will create 500 jobs in a region struggling with high unemployment. 

“There’s no doubt that the area needs jobs, but jobs in clean industries would provide a much more certain future for the area,” said Perry.

Labour lawmaker and former energy minister Ed Miliband also welcomed the council’s announcement this week. 

“The government now has a second chance to do the right thing and call it in. The UK cannot claim to be a climate leader whilst opening a new coal mine and ministers must realise that by doing so they undermine our credibility both at home and abroad,” he said in a statement. 

The post Plans for UK coal mine suspended after criticism of net zero commitment appeared first on Climate Home News.

To reach their full potential as climate leaders, the three global players will need to take part in three-way cooperation. They influence economic pathways – and therefore emissions trajectories – far beyond their national borders.

And some of the key decarbonisation policies need smart and proactive international cooperation to withstand the rough winds of geopolitical competition.

We suggest three areas for intensified trilateral dialogue between the US, China and the EU in 2021 to kick off a global transformation towards net zero and to make economic recovery post-pandemic work for the climate.

Green finance

The transition towards climate neutrality and climate resilience as well as safeguarding our natural system requires shifting trillions of dollars in financial flows and mobilising the private sector. The EU, China and, to a lesser extent, the US have taken initial steps to transform the financial sector.

The EU is developing its taxonomy regulation for sustainable activities. China has been working on a national green finance policy framework, has issued guidance on climate finance overseas and is promoting nature-based solutions. The Biden administration has promised to push environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) reporting and climate risk disclosure.

The three countries should accelerate their domestic efforts and work together on internationally accepted rules to make the global financial landscape and architecture compatible with a net-zero future.

First, they should all join existing initiatives such as the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, the International Platform for Sustainable Finance and the Network for Greening the Financial System.

Comment: Surprisingly, climate is presenting an early test of Biden’s China doctrine

In addition, they should establish a common working framework on green and sustainable finance and build a coalition to move the issue forward in international fora. The G20 is a unique platform for this, as its members account for 80% of energy-related CO₂ emissions.

Building on previous work, such as the Green Finance Study Group set up by the Chinese 2016 presidency, the big three emitters should work with the UK and other upcoming presidencies to build a strong ‘finance for climate and energy transformation pillar’ under the G20.

There, they have the ability to bring environment, finance and energy ministers together and bridge different work streams and political tracks to drive progress.

Climate-compatible diplomacy 

Decarbonisation prospects around the world hinge on the trade diplomacy, international connectivity and business agendas of private and public actors from China, the EU and US.

While the three powers try to secure their perceived core interests and spheres of influence, trilateral dialogue could tremendously improve the chances of climate goals gaining an equal weight to other imperatives of economic diplomacy.

The lack of coordination in a competitive geopolitical setting is much more likely to cause a high-carbon lock-in as it is the current default option for most sectors, with the possible exception of electricity.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a prominent case in point. An overseas investment strategy that mixes foreign policy and economic aspirations, it will affect the decarbonisation prospects of countries around the world through infrastructure finance.

In the energy sector, BRI investments have been fossil-heavy (though renewables have been spreading in the portfolio as well). Importantly, it also impacts sectors such as international transportation and energy-intensive industries that are yet to find scalable decarbonisation solutions.

Climate veteran Xie Zhenhua returns as China’s special envoy

Europe and the US are pursuing their own connectivity agendas in Asia and Africa by investing in transport links, digital and energy networks, which raises questions of climate compatibility.

The three powers need to start a dialogue on how to make sure their respective overseas economic agendas do not threaten the goals of the Paris Agreement. Increasing the transparency of the climate impacts of these plans and exploring comparable standards for sustainable investment and trade could be part of this dialogue.

While systemic rivalry thinking hardly subsided overnight, the new US administration could provide more openings for such conversations.

A carbon club

Growing trade competitiveness between China, the EU and the US and carbon leakage concerns are some of the main barriers to more ambitious domestic policies such as carbon pricing.

In other words, businesses should not transfer production to countries with laxer policies due to increasing costs on pollution at home, as this could drive emissions globally.

As a possible solution, a carbon border adjustment mechanism is being discussed intensively in Europe. It is a form of carbon pricing on imports that aims to compensate for potential disadvantages from international competitors which do not have to pay for emitting carbon.

As China and the US are crafting a new policy trajectory to deliver their net-zero ambition, all of the three powers are – at least in theory – concerned about carbon leakage. This carbon border tax discussion can be used strategically to forge a three-party dialogue on a ‘climate ambition club’. This could see the big three, as well as other major players, join forces for increasing climate ambition domestically.

In addition, they can use the revenues raised by a joint carbon border adjustment mechanism to further invest in decarbonisation and build resilience in disadvantaged communities domestically and in developing and emerging economies.

This club might start with focusing on sectors such as the steel or cement industry. End product taxes of goods and services could be an alternative option.

Domestically, a ‘carbon club’ may have a positive effect to justify ambitious climate policy measures. Globally, it could become a powerful new instrument for mobilising major emitters to fill the financial gap for the net-zero transformation.

As US renews climate relations with EU and China, carbon pricing raises tensions

In 2021, China, the EU and the US can use collaboration on these agendas as a springboard to increase climate ambition. They should set a clear path towards domestic neutrality goals while kicking off an irreversible net zero transformation globally.

The leader’s summit announced by US president Joe Biden on 22 April offers a chance for joint initiatives. In addition, fora such as the G20 or the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change, initially established under the Barack Obama administration, are complementing platforms to the global climate negotiations where the groundwork can be carried out.

Finally, the three players need to embrace network diplomacy beyond the official channels and (online) summits, in particular business stakeholders and civil society need to be involved in all of these agendas.

Dennis Tänzler is director and head of programme Climate Policy, Lina Li is a manager of the Carbon Markets and Pricing programme and Daria Ivleva is a senior advisor of the Climate Policy programme at adelphi. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not represent the institutions they work with.

The post Three ways the EU, China and US should deepen cooperation on climate in 2021 appeared first on Climate Home News.