The problems vary, but, locals say, they boil down to a single root cause: climate change.

“Climate change is linked with literally everything we do,” Agnes Leina, founder and head of a Kenyan non-profit that supports pastoralist women and girls, said at a conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this month.

“These girls getting married early is 100% because drought kills cows. Eighty percent of girls drop out of school because of drought; they don’t want their father to be laughed at,” she said.

These are the types of knock-on climate change effects that have crept to the present after decades of scientific warnings. While in rich countries the focus remains on reining in greenhouse gas emissions, for large parts of the world’s population the most pressing challenge is coping with their impact.

Climate Weekly: Eyes on new World Bank chief

Climate change is linked to water shortages in hydropower-reliant Ethiopia and Zambia; to the rising heat inside India’s tin-roofed homes; and to the growing trend of young child marriage in Kenya, Bangladesh and elsewhere. This variation and unpredictability makes an organised response very difficult.

There’s a set number of ways to reduce emissions around the world. They include the phase-out of fossil fuels for energy and transport and hydrofluorocarbons emitted from fridges and air conditioners, and the planting of trees to absorb carbon dioxide.

How to adapt, instead, depends on how changes are affecting local industries – from farming to fishing to tourism – and how those impacts trickle through cultural nuances, such as the role of women in growing food or collecting water. Forget talking on a global scale, even national governments struggle to respond to the real impacts felt by communities.

“Mitigation is very clear. For adaptation there are still confusions,” said Madan Pariyar, from the non-profit International Development Enterprises in Nepal. “We must talk of local action, rather than country-wide action, because the priorities differ from place to place.”

In Kenya, changes in climate are further destabilising the pastoralist tradition of roaming the drylands and taking care of cows, camels and land – without ownership. Modern property laws have already limited where they can go, while the increasingly erratic seasons make it harder to find water, grow food or feed livestock.

“I used to walk 15 minutes to get water from a stream. Then the stream dried up and we walked one hour, then two hours,” said Leina, who created the Ill’laramatak Community Concerns group in 2011. “That’s four hours of your day. Then you’ve not done the firewood, the washing, the cooking. How can a girl study too?”

Agnes Leina says the problems facing Kenya’s pastoralist women and girls all stem from the effects of climate change (Photo: Ill’laramatak Community Concerns)

Leina and her group, named after the Maasai word for “caregiver”, visit pastoralist families and urge them to send their daughters to boarding school. One school now has 720 girls, around 150 of whom were saved from female genital mutilation as early as nine years old and marriage soon after, she said.

Ill’laramatak also helps women build “alternative livelihoods”. It encourages them to make their traditional beaded jewellery to sell on its website, bought sewing machines for them to make school uniforms and teaches them to make cleaner biomass briquettes for cooking fuel.

This is one characteristic that community-focused programmes worldwide tend to share: they aim boost local development while also adapting to a changed climate.

In India’s heat-stressed Gujarat state, the non-profit Mahila Housing Sewa Trust is working to cool tin-roofed urban houses, where it can get 2-3C hotter than outside. It helped bring down the cost of replacements made from compressed plant fibres – to around 70% of the average monthly income – and worked with bankers to create affordable loans. The new roof allows people to work from their homes during the day.

“Why are people investing? Because their home is their livelihood,” said Siraz Hirani, from Mahila Housing Sewa Trust. “It’s not that the poor does not want to adopt technologies, it’s that the poor cannot afford the technology.”

Similarly, organisations for farmers in India’s Maharashtra state, Kenya and Uganda are helping farmers identify more durable seeds, for instance requiring less water, to feed themselves and to sell.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

But while local groups are finding ways to adapt and develop simultaneously, international aid is still hard to secure, especially to go beyond one-off, time-limited projects.

Developing countries said in their commitments to the Paris climate agreement that they will need $50bn a year for adaptation between 2020 and 2030, according to a UN Environment Programme report published in December.

The sums flowing so far are much smaller. Of the $17.4bn in approved public funding for climate change as of 2016, less than 10% – $1.5bn – was earmarked for locally focused projects, according to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), which organised the Addis Ababa conference. Out of those local projects, more than half appeared to be focused on adaptation and less than a quarter on mitigation, it said.

The world’s 47 least developed countries are now calling for an overhaul in the way adaptation aid is handed out.

The bloc, which negotiates together in UN climate talks, wants efforts on the ground to be linked more closely with public and private donors and is urging all governments to set out clearer adaptation plans when they submit their 2050 commitments to the Paris Agreement. The commitments are due by the end of 2020, but the bloc intends to exert pressure at the UN Secretary-General’s Summit this September.

“[The 2050 plans are] an opportunity for our countries, because we will be able to move from short-term planning to long-term,” said Gebru Jember Endalew, Ethiopia’s lead climate negotiator and former chair of the least developed group.

The call comes amid growing awareness of the extreme weather that is linked to climate change – such as this year’s deadly floods in Iran and Cyclone Idai in southern Africa, and the -50C chills across the US.

The concern in the developing world, however, is that new money will be driven by destruction in rich countries and directed towards emergency responses, rather than prevention.

“When things happen, like [Idai] in Mozambique, they come very quickly because they want to save lives,” said Constance Okollet, head of the Osukuru United Women Network, an umbrella for 1,200 small community groups. “But it is the small-scale farmer in the community down there who feeds the whole world. If they could see and help, these people would develop quickly. We try, but we can’t reach it because we do not see the money.”

Climate Home News’ reporting from Addis Ababa was supported by the Climate Justice Resilience Fund. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Republish this article

The post As climate fight enters new phase, local responses are starved of funding appeared first on Climate Home News.

The recommendations, agreed late on Thursday by a cross-party group of parliamentarians, would set legally-binding limits every five years and hike the carbon tax, while providing strong support for green jobs and agriculture.

The government will decide which, if any of the recommendations to put the policies into place. Irish climate action and environment minister Richard Bruton has said he intends to set climate targets across all government departments.

Setting a net-zero target would mark a significant step change for Ireland – a self-professed climate “laggard”, which is on track to miss its EU-mandated goals for 2020.

After six months of debate, the majority of the committee backed a set of policies that aim to strike a balance between pressure on Ireland to speed up its emissions reductions and political fear of public protests like the gilet jaunes movement in France.

Modelled on the UK’s climate change act, the committee’s report would create a new, independent Climate Action Council to monitor the government’s progress in reducing emissions.

Special investigation: NGO ignored warnings about bullying boss, before and after tragedy

With this higher goal, Dublin should “proactively” support a rise in the European Union’s emissions reduction target for 2030, the parliamentarians said. This would add Ireland to a group of countries including France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg and Denmark who are calling to hike the goal in line with limiting global warming to 1.5C, rather than 2C.

The committee also recommends gradually raising the Irish carbon tax on fossil fuels to at least €80 per tonne of CO2 by 2030, from €20 at present. The revenue should be ring-fenced until a public consultation on whether it should be dispersed equally to the public – as a carbon dividend – or put towards addressing fuel poverty and supporting climate measures.

And it calls to boost the share of renewable electricity in the mix to 70% by 2030, from around one-third in 2018.

Ireland is a testing ground for whether direct democracy can help governments bring in ambitious climate policy. Last year an assembly of 99 randomly selected citizens made recommendations that the committee then built on.

We need your help… Climate Home News is an independent news outlet dedicated to the most important global stories. If you can spare even a few dollars each month, it would make a huge difference to us. Our Patreon account is a safe and easy way to support our work.

Overall, the recommendations represent a “milestone” in Irish climate policy, said Sadhbh O’Neill, an expert adviser to the parliamentary committee and a PhD candidate on environmental policy at University College Dublin.

“The imposition of carbon budgets to meet a target of net zero emissions in 2050 will necessarily have a profound effect on policies and planned investments in transport, buildings and energy, especially given that Ireland’s emissions are increasing,” she said.

There will be disappointment that the committee did not propose specific measures to tackle emissions from Ireland’s large agriculture and land use sectors, such as a cap on the rising herd numbers.

However, the committee does call for a drastic change in the direction of  policies in favour of diversification, peatland restoration and sustainable afforestation, O’Neill added.

The recommendations focus on encouraging farmers to mitigate their greenhouse gases, including with incentives from the European Union’s common agricultural policy, and say the parliament should continue to study the potential for a new emissions tax.

“The committee was mindful, given the importance of agriculture to the rural economy, to propose recommendations which support on-farm measures to reduce emissions and improve the sustainability of farming in Ireland, including agricultural diversification,” the report states.

Republish this article

The post ‘Laggard’ Ireland takes step toward net-zero carbon goal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Energy Community aims to extend EU energy market rules to its “contracting parties” – Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Serbia and Ukraine.

That includes legal obligations to ban state aid that distorts or threatens competition – the way support for coal does in electricity markets, the Energy Community Secretariat said in a report that takes the closest look yet at their support for the fuel. “State aid authorities in the contracting parties systematically turn a blind eye to this issue.”

Coal power plants in nine neighbouring countries would face “significant losses” if their direct state aid were to be eliminated and a price imposed on their carbon emissions, the secretariat report said.

Leaders told to bring plans, not speeches to UN climate summit

This makes it hard for Energy Community members to follow the EU’s targets for reducing emissions, as well as the Paris climate agreement, it added.

“Due to the subsidisation of coal, the Energy Community contracting parties are not prepared to follow the EU in its decarbonisation pathway,” it said. “After neglecting the decarbonisation imperative on regional and national levels for years, the reform efforts in an already difficult social-economic environment would have to be increased considerably.”

The €2.4bn-a-year sum covers both direct and hidden, indirect subsidies between 2015 and 2017. Indirect support includes allowances, exemptions or waivers that helped power plant operators avoid paying for CO2 emissions or operate at low or negative levels of profitability. Direct subsidies amounted to €414m.

But eliminating the subsidies would be politically controversial – triggering a significant rise in household electricity prices across the community. The estimated increases range from as big as 49% in Serbia and 37% in Montenegro, to a smaller 23% in Kosovo, the report found. Industrial power consumers would face a 36% increase in Montenegro and 34% in North Macedonia, and a drop of 9% in Kosovo.

Russia floats first law to regulate CO2 emissions

By not pricing the CO2 emitted from power plants, Energy Community countries are missing out on a new source of revenue for the shift to clean energy, the secretariat noted.

Ukraine emits around 46 million tonnes a year of CO2, while the Western Balkans produce 45 million combined (half of it in Serbia). Based on the EU’s current carbon price of around €20 per tonne, that would amount to around €1 billion a year for Kiev alone and in total for the Western Balkan governments.

Climate change campaigners welcomed the findings and will now look to the European Commission to pressure the community’s members to make changes.

The community requires its members to follow EU rules, but its punitive powers are limited, said Pippa Gallop, research coordinator at the NGO CEE Bankwatch Network. The hope of EU membership is the biggest incentive – and Serbia and Montenegro are seen as most advanced in the process.

“This is something definitely new and groundbreaking, and we hope it will be a good push for the European Commission to take this issue more seriously,” Gallop said.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

The post Southeast Europeans ignore EU rules with €2.4bn coal subsidies appeared first on Climate Home News.

However, both countries face significant domestic uncertainties that year, with the strong possibility of early general elections and economic and political problems.

In the UK, it’s not yet clear if the country will have left the European Union by then, be in the middle of a transition or even still locked in negotiations over leaving the bloc.

In Italy, current public opinion polls predict a full-out win for the right-wing League party, which now shares power with the populist 5 Star Movement.

“New elections before the Cop26 are important because they can change a government’s priorities,” said Luca Bergamaschi, an energy and climate change expert at the think-tanks E3G and Italian Institute for International Affairs. “Having a Cop26 potentially guided by the League raises strong doubts about whether Italy could guide a meeting which is very, very important.”

Germany ready to join global coal phase-out alliance: environment minister

While the UK government may still be consumed by Brexit or its fallout, Britain has “the diplomatic network to pull off the significant outreach that will be required of the Cop26 presidency”, said Jennifer Tollmann, a policy advisor also at E3G. “It has consistently driven the climate agenda within Europe and there are numerous cities that could host it.”

The government has also made an effort to show leadership in recent years. It partnered with Canada in 2017 to form an anti-coal alliance, started the process of strengthening its 2050 climate goals last year, and is now co-chairing talks on climate resilience for a special UN summit in September.

The annual Cop summits rotate between five regional groups. Britain and Italy sit with other Western European countries, the US, Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland.

Chile warns of 3-hour commutes, split venue at December climate talks

Both countries confirmed their bids during the Cop24 summit in Poland in December. The UK also wrote a letter to the regional group in February.

The group is now under pressure to choose a host at a June UN meeting in Bonn, ahead of the secretary-general’s September summit.

That New York meeting is meant to begin pushing countries to strengthen their commitments for tackling climate change up to 2030 and come out with plans for 2050, as the Paris Agreement calls on them to do by 2020. Cop26 will be the final stage for those changes – requiring heavy diplomatic muscle from its presidency.

“Cop26 in 2020 will be a pivotal moment to encourage and take stock of global ambition and prepare the ground for further action,” UK energy and clean growth minister Claire Perry said in a statement to the UN’s climate change secretariat in January. “It is for that reason that the UK expressed interest in hosting Cop26, continuing to show our global leadership in climate action. However, we note the interest of other countries and will engage with them on this matter.”

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Italy first floated the idea of hosting under the previous Democratic Party-led government early last year.

The country’s environment ministry is now run by the 5 Star Movement, which tends to advocate for stronger environmental and climate change measures.

The League has largely stayed out of environmental policy since the coalition government took over a year ago, except in supporting a controversial gas pipeline and other infrastructure projects. However, its European Parliament members – including now-party leader and interior minister Matteo Salvini – voted against ratifying the Paris accord in 2016.

A fight is also brewing over where the summit would be held in Italy.

The northern region of Lombardy, which includes Milan, wrote a letter to the government asking to be considered, even though environment minister Sergio Costa has mentioned his home city of Naples, the newspaper Il Denaro reported in February. Milan hosted the Cop9 in 2003, and was the Democratic Party’s preferred location.

The regional group is expected to decide on the winner later this year, either at talks in Bonn or at the Cop25 summit in Chile.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

The post UK and Italy bid for 2020 climate talks, amid political uncertainty for both appeared first on Climate Home News.

Switzerland withdrew its resolution at the summit in Kenya on Wednesday evening, after several failed attempts at compromise, the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), an observer organisation, reported in a summary of the talks.

The proposal would have directed the UN agency to study controversial geoengineering technologies, as a first step towards discussing if and how they should be regulated internationally.

But the US and Saudi Arabia opposed any move that could crimp their ability to tackle climate change through geoengineering – and continue producing fossil fuels, according to two sources observing the negotiations, who asked not to be named. Brazil also voiced opposition, but less forcibly, they said.

The Trump administration has teamed up with Riyadh to push back in a number of international climate change negotiations over the past year, including over a strategy to reduce emissions from the shipping sector and on a statement welcoming the latest UN climate science report.

Indonesia’s Agus Justianto, one of the facilitators of the talks in Kenya, “expressed regret that several delegations had been unable to accept the final compromise proposal, and anticipated further discussions beyond UNEA on this issue”, IISD reported.

New Zealand, Bolivia, Norway and the European Union “paid tribute” to Switzerland for its efforts, it added. A diverse group of countries backed the resolution, including Burkina Faso, Micronesia, Mali, Mexico, Montenegro, Niger and South Korea.

Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, said he was disappointed countries could not find consensus on a motion that would have kickstarted a much-needed international discussion.

“We will continue to work with different intergovernmental organisations and other international processes to try to raise the issue and expand the conversation,” said Pasztor, the former UN assistant secretary-general on climate change. “We’re actually very pleased with what happened in Nairobi in terms of engagement.”

Geoengineering refers to a number of techniques for modifying the climate system. The most controversial are untested ideas for dulling solar radiation, such as releasing aerosol particles into the sky to reflect sunlight away or spraying seawater drops into the clouds to make them more reflective. Others involve drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, including by planting forests.

There are significant uncertainties around how an intervention like solar radiation management would affect weather patterns.

One of the biggest concerns is that countries would use geoengineering as cover to keep polluting – and force the world to continue using the technologies or risk a catastrophic shock to the system.

Campaigners calling for tight governance of these technologies were also frustrated by the outcome in Kenya.

They’d hoped the UN Environment Assembly would build on limits already placed in other international agreements, including a moratorium set by the Convention on Biological Diversity.

“Deployment of geoengineering, including solar radiation management and carbon dioxide removal, would jeopardise not only ecosystems and livelihoods but also human rights, sustainable development goals and international security,” said Barbara Unmüßig, President of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

The post US and Saudi Arabia block geoengineering governance push appeared first on Climate Home News.

The first step is to set up tiny renewable generators independent of main power grids, often sold on pay-as-you-go schemes like mobile phones.

Once that basic energy supply is established – to charge phones, home lighting and other small appliances – it’s expected to fuel demand for a slew of new products and services, such as internet access, mobile banking, water pumps, mills, fridges, home batteries and cooking stoves. The reams of data on how these new customers use and pay for their energy will help companies decide their next moves.

It’s a potential bonanza that is drawing electricity, oil and gas, equipment-making and technology companies to invest in rural projects they once deemed too small and risky, especially in Africa. The interest is part of the industry’s broadening from large, centralised power plants and fossil fuels towards flexible, off-grid renewables.

Just under 1 billion people worldwide lacked access to electricity as of 2017, with around 600 million in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the International Energy Agency.

“Beyond the fact that there’s a moral duty to provide all these people with electricity, this may be considered also as a huge business, as the sort of famous billionth client that we are waiting for,” said Lamberto Dai Prà, Enel Green Power’s head of Africa, Asia and the Pacific. “It’s a huge market, but this market has still to be reached.”

Small-scale renewables cheapest for rural Africa, says Dutch report

For power utilities such as Italy’s Enel and Franco-Belgian Engie, investment in rural electricity seems like a natural offshoot of their pivot towards clean sources and digital technology that gives customers more say over how and when they use their energy.

But they’re not alone. Oil and gas majors, faced with predictions of peak oil demand and greater demand for zero-emissions electricity, are also undergoing reinvention.

Ango-Dutch Shell told Bloomberg Television this week that it aims to become the world’s biggest power company in the early 2030s, in addition to its plan to provide reliable power to 100 million people who currently lack it by 2030. France’s Total has invested in a number of solar panel, battery and other renewable energy companies in recent years.

And the most rural and undeveloped regions of the world provide a blank slate to test new ideas without too much competition.

In a sign of growing momentum, annual investment in energy access surpassed $500m for the first time in 2018, reaching $1.2bn total since early 2016, the consultancy Wood Mackenzie and NGO Energy 4 Impact found in a study published this month.

Among those investors were utilities Engie, EDF and Enel, Total and Shell, and equipment manufacturers Siemens, Schneider Electric and GE.

“The private sector sees there is a market for more than 600 million people who need reliable, affordable, clean energy, and that need is only going to get more pronounced,” said Rachel Kyte, chief executive of the UN secretary-general’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative.

“That’s why sustainable energy is called the ‘golden thread’. If you can provide sustainable energy, then you can have functioning health clinics, you can provide solar irrigation, you can increase farmer yields, you can increase income, you can increase economic productivity,” she added.

Engie made one of the biggest investments last year, with the full takeover of an African company that provides off-grid solar home systems to power phone chargers, TVs and radios. Customers pay for Fenix International’s lease-to-own power system over their mobile phones, with as little as $0.19 per day over two or three years. These payments generate credit scores, which then allow customers to upgrade their systems, buy appliances or apply for loans. Engie is also investing in less mature mini grids for small businesses, powering fridges in restaurants and mills on farms.

Enel is still assessing such small-scale projects, while building larger renewable plants that plug into grids and extending that supply to nearby unconnected villages.

Total is selling solar lamps and home systems from its retail petrol stations in South Africa and Ghana. Shell has since early 2018 invested in a company that operates mini grids in Asia and Africa, another that sets up solar energy for homes and businesses in East Africa, and an off-grid smart meter company working in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

For Total and Shell, it’s about figuring out how to “own the customer” on the electricity side, said Benjamin Attia, power and renewables analyst at Wood Mackenzie. Oil and gas companies traditionally track their end-users through petrol stations, whereas utilities have digital billing relationships.

While the prize in rural Africa could be significant, however, these investments represent early steps in what is still an uncertain market.

It can take companies 10 to 20 years to recoup the cost of setting up a mini grid, which means they still need financial support from European governments, development finance institutions or foundations, as well as predictable government regulation, said Raphael Tilot, in charge of innovation and new businesses at Engie.

And the market needs to be regulated in a way that ensures energy remains affordable and people are receiving good quality appliances, added Kyte.

So while solar home systems and mini grids could clear a new market for Engie’s LED lightbulbs, fridges, televisions and other appliances, it’s not guaranteed yet.

“We should not assume this is a gold rush,” Tilot said. “Economic development takes time.”

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

The post Energy and oil majors turn to rural Africa in grab for world’s next billion customers appeared first on Climate Home News.

UK environment policy is devolved to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments. The UK government’s draft Environment Bill is therefore limited to England – and risks leading to diverging rules and regulatory gaps once Britain leaves the European Union.

To avoid protection gaps, Northern Ireland has asked to be part of the bill, and is now talking to the UK government about how to apply it, according to a letter published by the House of Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee on Friday.

The decision was based on concerns that Northern Ireland’s environmental protections would otherwise be weakened after Brexit, Northern Ireland’s permanent secretary for the environment Denis McMahon wrote. It would not be possible for Northern Ireland to fill those regulatory gaps with its own legislation because it has not had a sitting assembly since 2017, he added.

However, applying the environment law to Northern Ireland presents new complications: how to regulate free flowing air and water pollutants across a land border with the EU, and how to manage protected sites now shared between Northern Ireland and Ireland, the letter noted.

Belfast and London are looking at how these issues would affect the remit of the new watchdog, known as the Office for Environmental Protection.

The answer, according to Labour MP Mary Creagh, is a softer Brexit.

Adding Northern Ireland to the environment regime may require the rest of the UK to keep regulatory alignment with the EU under the Irish backstop arrangement – “effectively requiring the whole of the UK to stay within a customs union and single market”, said Creagh, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee.

However, there are still concerns that environmental protections in Scotland and Wales will diverge if London presses ahead with its Environment Bill rather than building a system with the devolved governments. Scotland opened a consultation on how to maintain environmental governance after Brexit in February, which closes in May, and Wales is expected to start one later this month.

 “It creates an anomaly for Scotland in terms of animal and plant protection and highlights the importance of our recommendations that the Office for Environmental Protection must be co-designed and co-owned by all the nations of the UK in order to be more resilient, independent and effective,” Creagh said.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Republish this article

The post Belfast’s bid to join UK environment law raises post-Brexit border issues appeared first on Climate Home News.

As a prominent advocate for leaving the European Union, Gove has long argued that Brexit will allow the UK to strengthen its environmental protections and set policies more effectively.

But when it comes to the commission’s role in making sure governments fulfil policies, the “easily understandable process” in Brussels sets a good example for Britain’s Environment Bill, he told the House of Commons’ Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee.

“There are lots of other things where we wish to do things differently,” Gove said. “But given that we will have had a degree of confidence in the process – whereby the commission can give an opinion and then if necessary go with infraction proceedings – people have a high degree of confidence that – whatever else are the defects of the EU – that is a good working model. And therefore we’ve sought to replicate it.”

The same goes for the government’s plan to establish environmental principles to guide policymaking.

The treaty that created the EU includes commitments to, for example, ensure that a polluter always pays. Legal experts told MPs last week that the UK’s draft would create loopholes for lawmakers to avoid following them.

Environmental advocates, MPs, the National Audit Office and others have expressed concerns that the draft Environment Bill fails to give the watchdog enough independence and power to hold the government to account for its shortfalls.

In response to criticism, Gove said repeatedly on Wednesday that his department is still “open to suggestions” and “open-minded” as it prepares to release the final version this year.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Republish this article

The post New UK green watchdog to be based on EU system, says Gove appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Environment Bill is to replace EU environment law after Brexit, addressing clean air, nature protection, waste management, resource efficiency, water and other areas, according to a draft released in December.

It would set up an independent watchdog, the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP), establish environmental principles for policymaking and make sure the government sets out long-term environment plans, publishes indicators and measures and reports on its progress.

The draft, however, creates “too many get-out-of-jail-free cards” around those environmental principles, Labour MP Mary Creagh, chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, said in response to expert testimony.

The principles should inspire and inform legislation across the government and the way courts interpret it – the way the EU’s principles, placed prominently in the treaty creating the bloc, trickles down into law. EU principles say the polluter should pay and precaution and prevention of pollution should be taken at the source, and then rectified there.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

The concern in Britain is that the principles would be limited to the environment law, with a narrow requirement on ministers to apply them in policy-making – and room for exemptions.

“You can put the principles into the legislation in a way that gives pretty powerful influence,” said Tim Buley, a barrister at Landmark Chambers, pointing to the UK’s human rights and air quality acts. “What you have here is not that, nor is it one or two steps away from that, it’s many, many steps away from that, because of the various ways in which the principles are downgraded.”

The Office of Environmental Protection, meanwhile, may not be able to hold the government accountable the way the European Commission does with member countries, Conservative MP Neil Parish, chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, said during a separate hearing.

“The commission, for all its faults, at the moment is separate from government,” he said. “And if we’re not careful, this OEP, is it going to be too close to government? Is it independent enough?” To be independent, the office should sit in a separate building, with a separate structure for resources, Parish added.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

According to the draft, however, the environment secretary (currently Michael Gove) would appoint the OEP’s chair and two to five other non-executive members. The chair would then have to consult the secretary before choosing a chief executive. The secretary would also fund the office and decide how much is “reasonably sufficient” to do its work.

“Everyone has to watch for that,” Richard Macrory, emeritus professor of environmental law at University College London, said of the system for appointing people. “They’ll start with an independent chair… and the next time you get a slightly more compliant chair.”

MPs should have the right to challenge the chair’s appointment, added Parish.

There is also strong concern that the draft Environment Bill doesn’t extend to enforcing climate change policy.

The UK’s existing Committee on Climate Change is an independent advisory body, so it cannot penalise the government for falling short of targets such as emissions reductions. The European Commission does that. The environment watchdog should therefore have the power to enforce climate obligations, as long as it first consults with the Committee on Climate Change, experts agreed.

The UK’s National Audit Office warned in January that the environmental oversight system should extend across policy areas such as business, transport and communities.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Republish this article

The post UK bill would weaken environmental law after Brexit, legal experts tell MPs appeared first on Climate Home News.

Geoengineering techniques that reflect away sun rays and suck carbon from the atmosphere have long been talked about as last-resort solutions to stem the worst effects of climate change.

But as greenhouse gas emissions remain stubbornly high and geoengineering research gets underway, there is growing concern these technologies could be deployed without protections against their serious risks – and that the prospect of a technofix will be taken as a licence to keep on polluting.

To kickstart the conversation, Switzerland will introduce a resolution at the UN Environment Assembly in Kenya in mid-March, calling for an assessment of the potential methods and governance frameworks for each one by August 2020. It would be an early step towards an international system for regulating the suite of technologies.

“There is a risk that geoengineering could be applied by someone without any international control, and we are very concerned about that,” Franz Perrez, head of the international affairs division at Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment, told Climate Home News. “Some are already testing solar radiation management, scientific research is already going on. We cannot close our eyes anymore and say ‘This is only science fiction’.”

The resolution is backed by Burkina Faso, Micronesia, Georgia, Lichtenstein, Mali, Mexico, Montenegro, Niger, South Korea and Senegal, according to the latest version dated 25 February.

Geoengineering refers to a wide range of techniques for modifying the climate system, from planting trees to fiddling with clouds.

Untested technologies to manage solar radiation – essentially, dim the sun –  pose the biggest concerns. Ideas include releasing aerosol particles from airplanes to reflect sunlight away (mimicking the effects of volcanic eruptions) and spraying seawater drops into clouds to make them more reflective. But they could also change weather patterns, disrupting agriculture and exacerbating geopolitical tensions.

And if this is not accompanied by emissions reductions, more will be needed to sustain the temperature effect – “practically forever”, Douglas MacMartin, a leading geoengineering scientist working at Cornell University and Caltech, told a Chatham House conference in London last week.

Yet with government oversight, it may be preferable to runaway global warming. “You would not take chemotherapy drugs just for fun, you would not sit in your car and set off your airbags just for fun,” MacMartin said. “There are clearly serious challenges to solar geoengineering, but they only make sense to face in context with the challenges of climate change itself.”

Geoengineering: Poor country scientists to get support to study impacts

Better-known options, which remove CO2 from the air, include afforestation and combining biomass power plants with technology to catch and store their emissions (known as BECCS). But even simple interventions like tree-planting may call for international rules to ensure that emissions cuts in one place aren’t cancelled out somewhere else.

Attention to geoengineering is growing as the global temperature remains on course to rise by at least 3C compared to pre-industrial levels. The UN’s panel of climate scientists suggested last October it would be difficult to meet the Paris Agreement’s stretch limit of 1.5C without some of these more radical techniques.

“The reality is that [carbon dioxide removal] is no longer a question of whether or not [according to the UN science report]. It’s which one, which technology, how much, when do you start, who pays for it,” said Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative and the former UN assistant secretary-general on climate change.

“But there has been very little debate [about solar radiation management] in the circles beyond scientists… it’s still looked at as esoteric, science fiction, crazy, difficult, challenging – and all of those things apply,” he told CHN at the Chatham House conference.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

For some, however, geoengineering is so dangerous that it should be banned altogether.

It could worsen the climate, be weaponised and exacerbate geopolitical imbalances, said Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America director at ETC Group, an organisation that looks at socioeconomic and ecological issues around new technologies. “Investments in geoengineering are already providing justifications for high greenhouse gas emitters to continue emitting and postpone real reductions.”

The UN has so far taken a cautious, piecemeal approach. Th 190-plus parties to its Convention on Biological Diversity extended a moratorium on all climate-related technologies in 2016, while a 2013 convention on marine pollution prohibited geoengineering of the oceans. The UN’s climate change secretariat regulates global emissions accounting, including from forestry and bioenergy.

ETC Group worries the Swiss resolution implicitly assumes that geoengineering is acceptable and just needs international governance.

Perrez countered that the country wants the UN Environment Programme to assess the state of the science and the research gaps, the risks, benefits and uncertainties, the actors working on research and deployment, and how it could all be governed. Then, he said, countries can start talking about what to allow and how.

But the way emissions are going now, “it’s hard to say that it will not be needed”, Pasztor said, referring to CO2 removal. “The reality is that emissions reductions alone are no longer enough, because we have already put so much carbon into the atmosphere that even if we stop today we’re still going to keep this climate change for hundreds of years.”

Republish this article

The post Switzerland puts geoengineering governance on UN environment agenda appeared first on Climate Home News.

The strategy, presented by president Carlos Alvarado Quesada on Sunday evening, lays out 10 focus areas across economic sectors. Achieving these plans, it says, will require changes such as green tax reforms, digitalisation, a new approach to foreign direct investment and greater transparency and education.

“Costa Rica knows that decarbonization is the great task of our generation, and we want to be the first country in the world to achieve it. We are putting decarbonization at the heart of our national development, public investment and long term strategic plan,” said Alvarado Quesada.

It is not the first time Costa Rica has announced bold climate ambition: previous administrations promised to go carbon neutral by 2021. Two years out, while its electricity is 95% renewable – mostly hydropowered – cars still belch diesel fumes and industry is little changed.

The latest president’s plan avoids setting specific emissions targets, but outlines short, medium and long-term actions to boost green growth.

Costa Rican former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres called it “an excellent example for the rest of the world to follow”.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Electricity is to become the main source of energy for transport, residential, commercial and industrial sectors by 2050, drawn from a fully renewable grid from 2030.

In transport, the government wants 60% of all light vehicles on the road to be zero-emission by 2050, and all new sales. A quarter of the fleet should be electric by 2035. It also aims to reduce emissions from freight transport by 20% by 2050, compared to 2018.

All new buildings should be designed and built for low emissions by 2030, while the energy-intensive industrial sector should decouple its growth from its pollution by 2050.

The government also aims to have solutions to collect, separate, reuse and dispose of all waste by 2050, and will put out a strategy on technological options for reducing methane from waste by 2022.

For agriculture and land use, Costa Rica plans to pick up the most advanced technologies and methods for producing food and managing livestock. It also aims to increase its forest cover from 52% to 60% and expand green areas in cities.

Costa Rica is one of the few developing countries to have submitted an absolute and unconditional target for cutting emissions by 2030 under the Paris climate agreement, according to Climate Action Tracker. It aims to keep net emissions below 9.37 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2030, which would amount to a 25% reduction from 2012 levels.

Alvarado Queseda promised when he was elected last April to phase petrol and diesel out of the country’s transport system and promote clean fuels.

Costa Rica will host this year’s pre-Cop meeting of ministers to prepare for the UN’s Cop25 climate summit in Chile.

Republish this article

The post Costa Rica targets electric cars and forest growth in 2050 climate strategy appeared first on Climate Home News.

Case in point this week: the EU once again made ambitious promises and called on others to follow its lead – first in a meeting between foreign ministers, then in response to the green movement’s newest poster child, Greta Thunberg.

But when it comes to translating those promises into, say, trade agreements, the change can be harder to spot… at least in the face of American threats of tariffs.

A European Parliament committee endorsed opening talks for two trade agreements with the US, contrary to the bloc’s pledges to only strike deals with countries committed to the Paris Agreement, Natalie Sauer reports. New agreements with Mexico and Japan do refer to the climate accord.

Nonetheless, commission president Jean-Claude Juncker criticised Donald Trump for suggesting climate change isn’t real when speaking alongside Swedish teenager Thunberg on Thursday.

The EU will put money behind its promises, Juncker added: “From 2021 to 2027, every fourth euro spent within the EU budget will go towards action to mitigate climate change,” Reuters reported.

Quote of the week 

“If the president comes here with soldiers, I have my arrow” – Elisa da Silva, a cowgirl in Brazil’s Amazon, on Jair Bolsonaro’s threats to re-open indigenous lands

Brazil’s indigenous defence

When indigenous leader and congresswoman Joênia Wapichana first encountered Brazil’s now-president Jair Bolsonaro, her side came away with a win. The Supreme Court ruled in favour of demarcating the Raposa/Serra do Sol Indigenous Land (TIRSS) for its 25,000 inhabitants – against the Bolsonaro-backed white farmers.

A decade later, that indigenous victory is threatened, Fabiano Maisonnave reports from the TIRSS.

Bolsonaro has appointed a cattle rancher who until recently headed a far-right group opposed to land demarcation to revise the TIRSS and other demarcations.

Climate conversations

Alberta’s oil production cut shows the Keystone XL protest worked – Michael Dobson, New School for Social Research

Lessons from talking climate with Albertan oil workers – Karl Dudman, Climate Outreach

The Irish example

In Ireland, climate change is a political hot potato that governments have tended to kick down the road – wary of disrupting signs of economic revival such as increased driving and dairy cows.

Now an assembly of 99 citizens could push Dublin to take on expensive measures such as carbon taxing. It remains to be seen what the government does. But Ireland’s bottom-up approach to policymaking is in the vanguard of a trend towards more participatory democracies aimed at building consensus on thorny issues such as Brexit, French tax reforms, and climate change.

South Africa’s tax

South Africa moved ahead this week with a long-awaited Carbon Tax Bill and the restructure of its ailing state-owned utility Eskom, which owns most of the country’s coal plants.

The changes at Eskom will allow for the expansion of renewables, finance minister Tito Mboweni said. That’s in a country where coal now supplies 90% of power. The carbon tax should take effect on 1 June, once it’s rubber-stamped.

Climate experts said the immediate effects of the carbon tax would be limited.

‘Imperialist’ Oz

Tensions between Australia and its Pacific neighbours flared after former prime minister Kevin Rudd suggested Australia could take residents from islands sunk by climate change – in exchange for maritime and other resources.

Tuvalu prime minister Enele Sopoaga described Rudd’s comments as “imperial thinking”.

Australia is frequently tangled between its refusal to quit coal and the visible effects of climate change in the country and its region. Without touching coal or other resources, Canberra has made two recent overtures.

First, it will aim to plant a billion trees by 2050. (That’s expected to remove 18m tonnes of greenhouse gas per year by 2030, out of the country’s current 500m tonnes of annual emissions, Bloomberg noted). Next, Canberra is putting the finishing touches on a plan to add A$1bn to its Emissions Reduction Fund, according to The Australian.

The post Climate Weekly: Europe’s struggle to walk the talk appeared first on Climate Home News.

That makes it a political hot potato that Irish governments have tended to kick down the road – until it came to an assembly of 99 randomly selected citizens, tasked with weighing in on some of the country’s most contentious social issues.

The Citizens’ Assembly spearheaded Ireland’s vote to overturn an abortion ban in 2018, after a similar public consultation led to the vote to allow same-sex marriage in 2015. Now, the assembly could force Dublin’s hand on divisive and expensive new measures to tackle climate change, including raising the carbon tax on road fuels and extending it to agricultural emissions.

How closely the government sticks to the citizens’ 13 recommendations on climate change remains to be seen in the next few months. But Ireland’s bottom-up approach to policymaking is at the vanguard of a trend towards more participatory, consultative democracies aimed at building consensus – and political cover – on thorny issues such as Brexit and French tax reforms.

The key: strip out the party politics and arm the public with information.

Youth climate strike: ‘If not us, who?’

“Politicians are looking over their shoulders the whole time at the next elections,” said Mike Loughnane, one of the Irish assembly’s members, from Dublin. “If the model is constructive, in such a way that encourages honest and open debate, then honest and open debate will result. If you bring in less baggage, there’s less contention.”

British politicians, including former prime minister Gordon Brown, are pointing to the Irish example in calling for a series of citizen assemblies on Brexit. This would lead to “constructive reconsideration by parliament of our relations with Europe”, Brown wrote in a Guardian op-ed last month.

It could also help build support for climate change efforts, as the focus spreads from big industries such as fossil fuels to sectors that touch the wider public, such as transport, home heating, food and farming.

The UN’s intergovernmental panel of climate scientists said as much in its report on limiting global warming to 1.5C last October. Education, information and community approaches can accelerate changes in behaviour, as long as the changes are seen to be distributed fairly, it said.

Perhaps taking that cue, French president Emmanuel Macron launched a ‘great national debate’ in January on four issues, including climate change, in an effort to quell the gilets jaunes protests sparked by his attempt at raising the diesel tax.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

The Irish government, on the other hand, points to those French protests to explain why it is treading more carefully.

“As the taoiseach [Leo Varadkar] has indicated, we need to get this right – we need to bring people with us,” MP Hildegarde Naughton, from Varadkar’s centre-right Fine Gael party, told a Dublin City University conference this month. “Taxing or carbon pricing or whatever you want to call it – it’s not an easy issue in any country, and we saw what happened in France in relation to the protests.”

Naughton chairs the cross-party parliamentary committee that is debating the Citizens’ Assembly’s recommendations on climate change. It expects to publish a report at the end of February. Climate action and environment minister Richard Bruton said he will then set out climate targets across all government departments.

Irish climate advocates were initially sceptical about giving such a touchy, broad and complex issue to the Citizens’ Assembly. Then they were surprised by the strength of recommendations published last April.

The citizens backed a higher and wider carbon tax – something Varadkar chose not to announce in his October budget, saying he wanted to ensure there was cross-party support. They also favoured incentives for electric vehicles, especially in rural areas; an end to subsidies for peat extraction while protecting workers’ rights; and the expansion of public transport and bus and cycle lanes.

These would be significant changes for one of Europe’s worst performers on climate change.

Ireland has won praise for its renewable electricity growth and the parliament’s vote last summer to make it the first country to fully divest from fossil fuels. But its biggest problem is with farming, cars and industries like cement, food and aviation, not energy.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

The country is on track to miss an EU-mandated emissions reduction goal for 2020, according to the Irish Environmental Protection Agency. Agricultural emissions edged up in 2017 due to more dairy cows. Transport emissions slipped for the first time in four years, but that was attributed to a Brexit-related anomaly: fewer drivers crossed from Northern Ireland to buy fuel, because the British pound was cheaper. The number of Irish drivers still increased.

The question now is whether policymakers take up the citizens’ mantel. Naughton said the cross-party committee has not yet decided which sectors should pay a carbon tax, but stressed that farmers will need to reduce their emissions while increasing and diversifying their food production.

Members of the Citizens’ Assembly vote on the wording of ballot questions at a meeting in Dublin
(Pic: Citizens Assembly/Maxwells)

Touted as an “exercise in deliberative democracy”, the Citizens’ Assembly started in late 2016 with members chosen at random and varying in age, gender, social class and location.

They were tasked with weighing in on five policy issues including abortion, how to deal with an ageing population, and climate change, and met over 12 weekends until it wrapped up in mid-2018. They listened to experts, broke out into discussion groups, and voted on recommendations.

“The Citizens’ Assembly showed that if you structure the debate around information, discussion, questions and answers, and allow citizens to really thrash things out with expert advice – in a manner that is intelligible to them – very often people will shift their positions,” said Sadhbh O’Neill, an expert adviser to Naughton’s parliamentary committee and a PhD candidate on environmental policy at University College Dublin.

Given that success, Ireland should now make this people power an institutionalised fixture that works “hand-in-glove” with the government, said Loughnane.

“The capacity of your average citizen to tackle such things, including myself to a large degree – I was hugely impressed,” he said. “Politicians can fob things off, they can go back to their political agendas, they’re looking over their shoulders for elections. They’re kicking the can down the road.”

Republish this article

The post Ireland’s democratic experiment lays the ground for stronger climate action appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ireland imports all of its oil and around a third of its natural gas – mostly from the UK – and the gas imports are set to rise as the country’s offshore Corrib reserve runs out over the next 12 years, according to the Irish Offshore Operators’ Association (IOOA).

Now, uncertainty around Britain’s future relationship with the EU is adding urgency to the industry’s calls for drilling and infrastructure projects that can bolster Ireland’s energy independence.

“Ireland’s geographical location at the edge of Europe makes us extremely vulnerable to any potential disruption to energy supplies,” Pat Shannon, the IOOA’s chairman, told Climate Home News. “Brexit increases energy security concerns, and post-Brexit, Ireland will not have a direct connection to the main EU energy infrastructure.”

Irish energy industry calls for new links to Europe amid Brexit fears

The association published a report in January highlighting Ireland’s reliance on foreign oil and gas. It noted that even its biggest supplier, Britain, depends increasingly on imports from the European Union, Norway and Russia.

A disruption in these energy supplies would be costly for Ireland, the report warned. A year-long interruption of Russian gas to Europe would push up the country’s gas prices by 23% and electricity prices by 15%, while a total blackout would cost around €850m per day.

“Developing indigenous oil and gas would provide greater security of supply for Ireland in the context of global geopolitical uncertainty, including Brexit,” Shannon said.

The industry association has been discussing these risks with Ireland’s local and national governments and other stakeholders since Britain’s June 2016 referendum.

Oil and gas explorers will “likely” drill at least one new well in the deep Irish waters this year, with more being prepared for 2020 and 2021, Shannon said.

“Irrespective of the manner in which the UK departs from the European Union, IOOA believes it is vitally important for Ireland to secure its own indigenous energy supply as we transition to a low-carbon economy,” he said.

Along with supply security, Shannon points to one more upside to developing homegrown oil and gas: lower carbon dioxide emissions. Gas-fired power emits 67% less CO2 than peat and 61% less than coal, while oil emits 33% less than peat and 20% less than coal, according to the IOOA report.

That said, peat and coal only accounted for a combined 13% of Ireland’s total energy use in 2017, while oil and gas dominated with 78%.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

New investment in domestic oil and gas would also put Dublin in an awkward position, after lawmakers voted last summer to make the country the first to fully divest its sovereign wealth fund from fossil fuels. A cross-party parliamentary committee is now debating recommendations for broad new policies to tackle climate change, as the country struggles to limit its emissions.

The Irish Green Party’s leader, Eamon Ryan, dismissed the claims that the country needs domestic oil and gas.

“This industry is like an addict, it just wants one last fix, and it will tell you anything and do anything and try anything to get that fix,” Ryan, a former energy and natural resources minister, told CHN. “They’re chasing the dragon, they’re chasing the wrong way. We should be using Irish waters to develop offshore wind farms… that’s what has to change to take the climate seriously, and Brexit is not going to change that one way or the other.”

Brexit is not expected to immediately disrupt Ireland’s oil, gas or electricity trade with its neighbour, even if it’s a hard, no-deal departure on 29 March.

The World Trade Organization does not apply trade tariffs to power or crude oil, and only 0.7% to gas. Plus, Britain and Ireland also have bilateral agreements on their gas trade outside any EU arrangements, noted Paul Deane, an energy research fellow at University College Cork.

Nonetheless, Brexit has “refocused attention” on Ireland’s import reliance, Deane said. Wind and other renewables are growing, but gas still covers about half the power demand.

Brexit uncertainty is one factor that helped revive plans for the stalled €1 billion Shannon liquefied natural gas import terminal on Ireland’s west coast, when a US equity firm stepped in to buy it last year.

The project’s prospects are also boosted by the availability of new, cheaper technology to receive cargoes offshore rather than onshore, but its future now depends on the outcome of a legal challenge from environmental groups. The High Court is expected to decide on Friday whether the new owner can start building, or has to apply for new planning permits, or must drop the project entirely.

Projects like this require swift decisions aimed at bolstering the country’s energy security, the offshore operators’ association argues.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

An earlier version of this article erroneously said Shannon LNG terminal was bought for €1 billion last year. In fact €1bn is the estimated cost of the project.

The post Ireland needs new oil and gas fields to ease reliance on Brexit UK, say drillers appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ireland relies heavily on British energy. It shares its electricity market with Northern Ireland, with just two power links to the mainland, and receives most of its oil and gas imports from the UK.

While an abrupt, no-deal Brexit on 29 March is unlikely to stop those supplies, it could lead to disruptions if Europe and Britain’s rules diverge in future, energy industry representatives are warning.

With these risks in mind, state-owned EirGrid is urging the European Commission to approve funding for a planned €930m electricity link with France before the commission’s term ends late this year, according to chief executive Mark Foley.

“It’s a project of common interest and a project of enormous strategic importance to an island nation which, in a post-Brexit situation, is not connected to Europe,” Foley said on the sidelines of a conference at Dublin City University last week. “We’d like to achieve grant aid in formal terms in the lifetime of the current EU commission.”

The commission has already approved funding for studies of the Celtic Interconnector, which is deemed a cross-border project of common interest that can bolster the EU-wide energy market. If additional funding is secured, EirGrid and its French counterpart, RTE, hope to begin trading power in 2026, Foley added.

Plans for the link between southern Ireland and northwest France predate Brexit by about five years, and proponents say it will be crucial to both countries regardless of the UK’s future relationship with the EU.

For Ireland, new interconnectors are needed to balance the rising supply of renewable power. This way producers can export their electricity when the weather is strong and supply exceeds demand, and import when it wanes.

Renewables – mostly wind, with some hydro and solar – accounted for about one-third of the entire island’s power generation in 2018, according to EirGrid. The republic aims to reach 40% by 2020, and EirGrid expects to have to double the island’s capacity of around 5,000 megawatts to reach its 2030 goal.

“As we take it to the next level, if we don’t have the safety relief valve to export wind to other jurisdictions, the economic case for building renewables on the part of private developers won’t be there… they won’t get bank financing,” Foley said.

That’s why EirGrid is also pursuing a planned second power connection with Northern Ireland and considering another to mainland UK – on the assumption that Brexit will not split the island’s single power market, he added.

Ireland and Northern Ireland further integrated their market last October, allowing traders to buy and sell as quickly as within the day. London, Dublin and Brussels have all promised to keep the market intact after Brexit.

That said, there are concerns that British and Irish market rules will gradually diverge, and uncertainties about how disputes between traders would be resolved if the UK is not under the European Court of Justice’s jurisdiction – adding to Ireland’s need for links beyond Britain.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

The post Irish energy industry calls for new links to Europe amid Brexit fears appeared first on Climate Home News.

The new rules will define which fuels can be counted toward EU renewable energy targets. Biofuels that indirectly lead to changes in land use and higher greenhouse gas emissions will be excluded by 2023.

EU commissioners will discuss the legally-binding act in a meeting on Wednesday, commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said. It comes a few days after the 1 February due date. If it is adopted, the European Parliament and member countries will have two months to give any objections before it’s finalised.

If the commission chooses tough criteria could significantly limit one of Indonesia’s and Malaysia’s biggest exports – palm oil.

World’s three biggest rainforests face year of precarious politics

The Indonesian and Malaysian governments and industries have long criticised the EU’s push to tighten its biofuels criteria.

“The proposed ban is clearly an act of discrimination,” Malaysian foreign affairs minister Saifuddin Abdullah said in a statement in January. “Malaysia is committed to producing sustainable palm oil … every drop of palm oil produced in Malaysia will be certified sustainable by 2020.”

Jakarta, meanwhile, plans to lodge a complaint with the WTO on the grounds that the EU directive will unfairly target palm oil in favour of European commodities like rapeseed oil, Reuters reported last week. On top of that, the government is reviewing its relations with the EU and urging southeast Asian neighbours to hold off on any plans to upgrade their relationship with the bloc, it said.

Brussels countered that the rules will comply with its WTO obligations. “The commission will make sure that any necessary implementing rules are fair, balanced and based on solid scientific evidence to ensure that the achievement of the EU’s renewable energy goals goes hand in hand with the fair and rules-based international trade regime that we so strongly defend,” Itkonen said.

Germany to quit coal by 2038, under commission proposal

The EU has also stressed that it does not intend phase out palm oil-based biofuels by 2030 entirely. Instead, palm oil and other crops will have to pass new “objective and non-discriminatory” criteria in order to qualify as low-carbon and renewable sources of energy, the EU’s ambassador to Indonesia, Vincent Guérend, wrote in a letter to the Jakarta Post in November.

“The Union remains a large, open market for palm oil,” Guérend wrote. “If it failed to pass these criteria, palm oil imports would still be possible under current condition, except European member states could not count it as ‘renewable energy’ anymore.”

The EU is working with the Indonesian government to see how its palm oil can comply with the coming rules, with about four years to prepare, he added.

The extent to which food-based biofuels should count as renewable energy was one of the most contentious issues in the EU’s negotiation for the 2021-2030 policy.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Environmentalists argue biodiesel made from palm oil is the worst type of biofuel, followed by soy. According to the NGO Transport & Environment (T&E), biodiesel releases three times the greenhouse gas emissions of fossil fuel diesel, once land use is taken into account.

Their concern now is that some palm oil production will count as lower-risk crops that can still be imported for fuel, said Nico Muzi from T&E. “That for us is the loophole, the wide-open door, for green-washed palm oil. All the fight will be around that – how big that loophole will be.”

However, not all palm oil production causes deforestation, and sustainability rules need to recognise the differences from country to country, said Gernot Klepper, a senior researcher at Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy. There is still extensive tree loss and illegal cutting in Indonesia, but much less now in Malaysia. Colombia’s palm oil, instead, is produced in plains rather than forests.

Rules that allow producers to qualify their crops as the lower-risk feedstock can incentivise them to become more sustainable, he said. On the other hand, banning palm oil outright – which the Commission does not intend to do – would hurt more sustainable producers as well.

Norway committed in 2016 to making sure the supply chain in its public procurement is deforestation-free and included the plan in its budget last autumn. Malaysia quickly warned it would affect its trade relations with the European Free Trade Association.

France announced in November that it will stop imports of palm oil, soy, beef and other products linked to deforestation and unsustainable agriculture by 2030. Malaysia again responded, with prime minister Mahathir Mohamad telling president Emmanuel Macron that the government would consider restricting imports of French products, Reuters reported.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

NOTE: This article was amended to indicate that the rules may not be finalised at the meeting this week.

Republish this article

The post EU set to tighten rules on palm oil for biofuels appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Climate Action 100+ group of more than 300 investors, who hold around $32 trillion in assets, plan to present the shareholder resolution at BP’s annual general meeting in May.

The resolution would require BP to set out a business strategy that it considers, “in good faith”, to be in line with the Paris goals to limit global temperature rise to well below 2C, and aim for 1.5C.

The company would also have to evaluate whether each new material capital investment is consistent with the climate agreement. And it would have to set out its anticipated levels of investment in oil, gas and other energy technologies, its goals for reducing operational greenhouse gas emissions, the estimated carbon intensity of its energy products, and how its targets are linked to executive pay.

If the resolution is approved at the meeting, it will be up to BP to provide additional corporate reporting for 2019, as well as the process and methodology for that reporting.

“BP is committed to helping solve the dual challenge of providing more energy with fewer emissions,” the company’s chairman Helge Lund said in a statement. “We believe our strategy is consistent with the Paris goals.”

The company plans to provide a more detailed explanation of its support for the resolution when it publishes a notice of the AGM, it said.

Comment: Exxon knows renewables are cheaper, even if Trump doesn’t

Investors and environmentalists welcomed BP’s announcement, while stressing they will continue to monitor its climate performance.

“This is good news for both investors and the planet,” said Bruce Duguid, head of stewardship at the investment management firm Hermes EOS and the lead coordinator of the resolution. “The decision by the BP board to support the resolution shows that this is a priority for the company and builds on progress to date, such as setting best in class methane intensity targets.”

This is a super significant step forward on #climate action. BP will need to report on how it’s aligning capex planning with the terms of the Paris Agreement. These accountability & transparency requirements will help shift BP’s internal climate responsibility discussions. https://t.co/hGzH8mqCoH

— Ingrid Holmes (@IngridHolmes7) February 1, 2019

The charity ShareAction added that it will keep an eye on BP’s capital expenditure decisions, especially its plans for significant growth in the Gulf of Mexico’s hydrocarbon fields.

Oil and gas majors in Europe and the US have gradually bowed to shareholder pressure in recent years to give more information on how climate change affects their business, and set goals for reducing their emissions.

Shell announced in December that it will set short-term targets to shrink the net carbon footprint from its energy products and link those goals to executive remuneration – also in response to calls from the Climate Action 100+ group. BP introduced a plan last year that sets near-term emissions goals for its operations.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

The post BP backs shareholder call to align its strategy with Paris climate goals appeared first on Climate Home News.

With no replacement legislation in place and the date for leaving the union fast approaching, the UK will lose access to European Union regulators and systems for governing energy trade and environmental protections.

In some sectors, such nuclear, Britain is setting up a domestic regime just in time for an abrupt Brexit on 29 March – by handing new responsibilities and more funding to the Office for Nuclear Regulation, which is procuring a new IT system and training inspectors.

But in other areas, the country is far from ready, the independent Institute for Government said in a report on London’s progress in preparing for a no-deal exit.

Most concerning: the lack of an environmental watchdog to replace the European Commission’s role in keeping countries in line with rules such as air pollution limits, and the security of electricity supply in Northern Ireland, which shares a power market with the Republic of Ireland.

‘End of the road’ for UK citizens’ climate case rejected by appeal court

The UK is drawing up an environment bill that will set standards after Brexit and create an agency to hold the government accountable to its policies and goals. But that watchdog won’t be in place until 2021 at the earliest, the Institute for Government said. A spokesperson said setting up similar public bodies has typically taken 2-3 years after legislation has been passed.

The risk of delay comes on top other criticism of the government’s draft plans for the watchdog. Environmental groups worry it would lack the powers to penalise the government for shortfalls and that its oversight won’t extend to climate change measures. The National Audit Office and MPs raised concerns in January that the agency would not be independent of government influence.

In addition, the gap in legislation raises uncertainty for industries that export highly-regulated products, such as chemicals, the institute said. As a result, chemical exporters may need to register in another European Economic Area country to continues their sales.

Prospects of a no-deal, crash-out Brexit on 29 March have intensified in recent weeks. The UK parliament rejected prime minister Theresa May’s withdrawal deal with the EU, then backed her promise to return to Brussels to renegotiate key parts of it. EU leaders, however, have rebuffed any suggestion that the agreement can be revised.

A hard break-up would also raise uncertainty about the security of Northern Irish power supply. Despite assurances from both the UK and Irish governments that they want to maintain the all-island Single Electricity Market, “there is no clarity on progress to date,” the institute said.

A hard Brexit is not expected to disrupt electricity flows between the north and south or lead to new trade tariffs. But it could lead to longer term problems such as a reduction of electricity traded across the border and changes in rules known as network codes on the EU and UK side.

Northern Ireland faces a greater risk of electricity shortages than Ireland does, as its capacity is already squeezed and older coal- and gas-fired power plants are nearing shutdown, said Paul Deane, a research fellow at University College Cork.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

The post No deal Brexit to leave UK without green watchdog for two years – report appeared first on Climate Home News.

Plan B and 11 Brits lodged the case in December 2017, seeking to compel business, energy and industrial strategy secretary Greg Clark to raise the country’s target for cutting emissions by mid-century.

The plaintiffs were appealing the High Court’s decision in July not to hold a full hearing of the case. The Court of Appeals, however, sided with the High Court, saying there was “no compelling reason” why it should hear it.

Previously: UK judge postpones decision on landmark climate case 

While Plan B said it was disappointed with the ruling, it claimed in a statement on Tuesday that the legal action played a role in pushing the UK government to revisit its 2050 climate goal. Last year, the government asked the independent Committee on Climate Change to review the 2050 goal in light of the Paris Agreement’s second aim to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C.

“That review is now well underway, and what matters is that the committee recommends a bold and ambitious target on the basis of the science and the precautionary principle,” said Tim Crosland, director Plan B.

Sadly, the Court of Appeal has refused our appeal for a full hearing for our 2050 Target case:https://t.co/0rI3YfxjZS

What matters now is that the @theCCCuk recommends to Government the urgent and radical programme of emissions reduction mandated by the IPCC.#RebelForLife

— Plan B Earth (@PlanB_earth) January 29, 2019

In its appeal, Plan B and the plaintiffs argued that the High Court judge had “misunderstood” the Paris Agreement and was wrong to accept the government’s argument that it embodies two goals, “when in truth there is only one target.” The 2015 accord aims to limit the temperature rise to well below 2C and “pursue efforts” for 1.5C.

They also said the judge should not have refused permission to bring proceedings when the issues at stake are “of the widest public importance”.

The appeal court decided these arguments had no prospect of success.

This is one of a growing number of cases in which civil society and individuals are challenging government policies on climate change. The Irish High Court heard arguments last week on an NGO’s case over the country’s plan for limiting emissions, while the European General Court has said it will hear a case over the EU’s 2030 targets.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

The post ‘End of the road’ for UK citizens’ climate case rejected by appeal court appeared first on Climate Home News.

Recent leadership changes in Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and presidential elections in Indonesia this April, are fuelling concerns that politics could side with industries such as palm oil, timber, mining and agriculture in the world’s three biggest rainforest countries.

Brazil’s new right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro campaigned on promises to open the Amazon up to development. In his first foray on the international stage last week, he called on international businesses to invest in the country’s natural resources.

The DRC’s peaceful presidential election of Felix Tshisekedi last month was the first democratic transfer of power since independence in 1960 – although the African Union and European Union questioned the results and the Financial Times reported “massive electoral fraud”. It now remains to be seen whether Tshisekedi’s government curbs forest clearing and cracks down on the corruption that undermines conservation efforts. He gave little indication during the campaign.

Bolsonaro’s Davos speech promised anguish in indigenous lands

Meanwhile in Indonesia, the two presidential candidates – incumbent Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi) and ex-army officer Prabowo Subianto – have given vague promises of environmental protection but few details. That said, Jokowi, who won as an outsider populist in 2014, has done more than some expected to tackle deforestation.

As of 2015, Brazil was home to 12% of total forest global cover, the DRC nearly 4% and Indonesia 2%, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. But tree cover in all three continues to shrink. The actions of the new governments could determine the world’s ability to avoid some of the worst effects of climate change.

“Forests could provide about a third of the solution to climate change, but at the moment they’re more part of the problem because of deforestation,” said Tim Christophersen, head of UN Environment’s freshwater, land and climate branch in Kenya. “If that was stopped and we could restore forests at a large scale, we could probably close about a third of the current emissions gap.”

For now, efforts to stem deforestation have mostly failed to make a dent. The tropics lost an area the size of Vietnam over 2016 and 2017, when tree cover shrunk by record levels, according to the data and monitoring website Global Forest Watch.

Brazil’s deforestation in 2017 was equivalent to 365 million tonnes of CO2 and jumped by almost 50% over the three months of campaigning before Bolsonaro was elected last year. The DRC’s tree cover loss was equivalent to 158Mt last year and Indonesia’s to 125Mt.

Bolsonaro’s deforestation of the Amazon has already begun

Environmentalists are particularly concerned about Brazil. In his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Bolsonaro stressed Brazil’s history of environmental protection while touting its economic opportunities.

But the “wave of forest destruction and violence” started when Bolsonaro immediately removed environmental and human rights safeguards, said Christian Poirier, programme director at the NGO Amazon Watch. “These reckless moves, tailored to serve Brazil’s agribusiness and extractive industries, undermine fundamental constitutional protections that preserve forests and assure the safety of the indigenous and traditional communities who call them home,” he said.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, deforestation remains relatively high and driven by clearing for agriculture, the use of wood for energy, timber and mining, said Christophersen. The UN’s REDD+ programme, which pays developing countries to reduce their deforestation, is starting to work in some places. But it was forced to freeze payments to the government last year amid concerns over the awarding of new logging concessions to Chinese companies. Peatlands across the Congo Basin could release huge stocks of carbon if developed for mining and fossil fuels, Christophersen added.

There is more optimism around Indonesia, although environmentalists are still wary.

Jokowi initially raised concerns that he would not follow through on his predecessor’s commitments on forestry, but then made progressive moves such as creating a new peatland restoration agency and extending a 2011 moratorium on licenses in forest and peatland, said Frances Seymour, distinguished senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Still, it will be up to the next president to cement that ban and push Indonesia’s large palm oil industry to become more sustainable, said Panut Hadisiswoyo, founding director of the Orangutan Information Centre in Indonesia. The country has around 69% of its natural forest intact, he said.

“I worry that with the current visions of the presidential candidates, they have no specific calls for the protection of this remaining forest,” Hadisiswoyo said. “This natural forest is the last limit for sustaining our biodiversity. I worry that this forest will have no guarantee to strive, to be kept as forest.”

There are some good signs. Costa Rica’s tree cover grew from 20% to around 50% over 30 years, Christophersen noted. And Indonesia’s loss dropped by 60% year-on-year in 2017, which Global Forest Watch attributed in part to a 2016 moratorium on peat drainage, educational campaigns and stronger enforcement.

“Without political leadership, we would not see with those kinds of successes,” Christophersen said.

However the potential for more damage remains strong – especially at a time of more nationalistic populist leaders such as Bolsonaro.

“A cross-cutting issue is how this global wave of populism plays out in the climate change debate, and in these countries how it plays out with respect to land use in particular,” said Seymour.

The post World’s three biggest rainforests face year of precarious politics appeared first on Climate Home News.

The buzzword that will dominate the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos this week is a call to resist the urge to withdraw behind national barriers and create a world of public-private partnerships that guide the free market to create economic growth, sustainability and social benefits, according to WEF’s founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab.

However, green groups and academics counter that government regulation remains vital for protecting citizens and the environment from the failures of the market. The same technological changes driving this new phase – automation and clean technology, among others – are destabilising society and politics, raising serious challenges for the response to climate change.

Domestic upheavals such as Brexit, the French gilets jaunes protests and the US government shutdown are forcing political leaders to turn their attention inwards – in fact keeping Britain’s Theresa May, France’s Emmanuel Macron and America’s Donald Trump from attending the Davos summit.

Six big questions as Brazil’s new president heads to Davos

In the energy sector, the speedy shift to renewable energy is already leading to job losses in more labour-intensive coal mining and power generation, while the automation and electrification of cars is set to change the skills needed in the auto industry.

The backlash response has been calls for protectionism of jobs and critical industries. But, Schwab argued, cross-border problems like climate change require “a new social compact between citizens and their leaders, so that everyone feels secure enough at home to remain open to the world at large”.

“It will take an unprecedented level of collaboration and innovation, involving many outside the public sector, to trigger the big, systemic transitions required in industry, technology and the design of consumer goods and services to keep warming to less than 1.5C,” he wrote last week.

France: Under fire, ‘King Macron’ surveys nation on climate policy

BlackRock’s chairman and chief executive Larry Fink echoed the sentiment in his annual letter to CEOs last week, saying society is “unnerved” by the government failure to resolve social and economic issues – and looking to companies to fill the gap.

Environmental concerns dominated the top risks for business leaders surveyed by the WEF this year. They include extreme weather, the failure to mitigate climate change and adapt to its effects, man-made damages such as oil spills and a major loss of biodiversity.

Green campaigners and academics agree that the private sector is crucial to developing new clean technologies and re-directing investment, and that globalisation can help spread and share the work.

Yet they want governments to take a stronger role in shoving companies in the right direction and making sure that business incentives don’t trump social issues such as employment and poverty.

Climate change is a symptom of a “broken global economy” that focuses almost entirely on GDP growth and ignores the negative consequences such as inequality, environmental damage or unpaid care work at home, said Tim Gore from Oxfam International.

Globalisation so far has also made economic production more vulnerable to climate change, as a flood or typhoon in one country can lead to higher prices for exports to another, Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found in a study last year. For example, Chinese exports to the US and Europe will pass on the effects of rising river floods in China, which won’t be balanced out by trade back to the country.

Campaign groups agree, saying a new wave of globalisation without a strong regulatory role risks widening the gap between those in Davos and the so-called ‘precariat’ who will be hit hardest by climate change.

“One in which governments take a stronger role to regulate the private sector, ensuring that there isn’t a race to the bottom on social and environmental standards between companies, but rather a strong foundation on which the market has to be built, where emissions have to go to zero and the most egregious forms of inequality need to be reduced,” said Gore.

The World Economic Forum’s survey shows that economic, social and environmental problems are interconnected, and require more than a shift in business to fix them, added Katherine Kramer from Christian Aid.

“Business tends to have a fiduciary duty to maximise profits, and that doesn’t necessarily create the space that we need, unless we have government regulations looking at social and environmental impacts,” Kramer said. “If you’re looking at economics only, then you’re not doing sustainability properly.”

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

The post Davos elite looks to ‘Globalisation 4.0’ to stem climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

The government’s 25-year environment plan, published a year ago, sets out goals to clean the country’s air and water, increase its woodland, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and minimise waste, among other things. Now London is preparing an environment bill to replace European Union laws and regulation after it leaves the bloc.

That legislation will be key to making sure Britain doesn’t dilute its environmental protections from EU levels, and to replacing the European Commission’s policing role with a national watchdog, the independent audit office said.

Stoke’s potteries backed remain, now they want May’s deal to reshape climate policy

While agreeing with the government’s argument that Brexit offers opportunities to boost environmental protections, the NAO pointed to causes for concern too.

The upside is that Brexit could allow the government’s department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) to review the way performance is reported and monitored and assess whether it “all adds value” to broader UK goals, it said. The downside: Defra still needs to talk to other parts of the government to coordinate the approach.

“There is no clear, single point of ownership for performance as a whole across government on the 25-year environment plan, and more work is needed to embed environmental metrics into government’s core planning and performance monitoring,” the NAO said.

The prospect of the UK crashing out without a deal that would cover continued environmental stewardship was increased on Tuesday after prime minister Theresa May lost a vote in the parliament on the deal she had negotiated with the EU.

The new environmental watchdog is needed to fill a potential governance gap after Britain leaves the EU, since the European Commission has played a role in holding the government to account on environmental measures including air quality. However, indications in the government’s draft of the environment bill – that Defra would fund the watchdog and appoint its chair – raise questions about its independence, the auditors said.

Labour MP Mary Creagh, chair of the parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, welcomed the NAO’s warning that environmental protections should not be weakened after Brexit.

“The 25-year environment plan must work across government departments to ensure transport, business and local government take their responsibility on the environment,” she said.

Brazil downgrades climate diplomacy in Bolsonaro shake-up

Environment secretary Michael Gove and May have both said the UK will have more power to fund and protect its environment after it leaves the EU. “We will use this opportunity to strengthen and enhance the protections our countryside, rivers, coastline and wildlife habitats enjoy, and develop new methods of agricultural and fisheries support which put the environment first,” May said in the 25-year plan.

Environmental advocates, however, worry the UK will lose backup measures and oversight from Brussels – which London is free to build upon – and that the environmental watchdog will lack the power to penalise any shortfalls.

The NAO said the UK’s track record and future outlook on environmental protections are mixed.

It’s a leader in developing data sources to report on progress towards the UN’s sustainable development goals, and its 2008 climate change law established a “robust framework” for measuring both the reduction of emissions and adaptation to changes in climate, it said. However, there is still a timelag in the data the government publishes on the sustainable development goals and there are questions about how well this information feeds into decision-making.

Climate Home News’ reporting on Brexit is supported by a grant from the European Climate Foundation. Please read our editorial guidelines for more details.

Global issues need global coverage

CHN is dedicated to bringing you the best climate reporting from around the world. It’s a huge job and we need your help.

Through our Patreon account you can give as little or as much as you like to support our work. It’s safe and easy to sign up.

Republish this article

The post MPs call to expand post-Brexit green programme across whole government appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the strategy released on Monday, the UK government sought to show how it will realise the “Green Brexit” championed by the prominent Leave supporter and environment secretary Michael Gove.

“We will be able to set out a new direction for our environment, based on rigorous scientific research and underpinned by the legal principles that have done so much to improve our environment in the past,” Gove said in an introduction to the clean air strategy. “It is my profound hope that we will use the opportunity presented by leaving the EU to become a world leader in environmental excellence.”

Campaigners welcomed the air pollution limits set out in the strategy, but criticised the government for not giving enough details on how and when it will meet the limits. The question is if and how London will be held accountable without the European Union looking on, they say.

“Under EU law, we have an air quality directive that, as a member state of the EU, we’re expected to meet. Once we’re out of the EU, there will be no air quality directive or legislative framework that at the moment provides checks and balances,” said Jason Torrance, clean air cities director at the UK100, a network of local governments promoting clean energy.

Stoke’s potteries backed remain, now they want May’s deal to reshape climate policy

The strategy commits to tightening the limit on fine particulate matter across the country to an annual average of 10 micrograms – as advised by the World Health Organization – and to halve the number of people living with air pollution above that level by 2025, compared to 2016.

The government says it has already reached the EU’s standard of 25 μg and is on track to meet 20 μg when it takes effect in 2020.

To cut particulate matter further, the government says it will restrict wood- and coal-burning fires and stoves, which account for 38% of the country’s emissions. It also intends to tackle agriculture, which emits 88% of the country’s ammonia, by helping farmers invest in cleaner infrastructure and equipment and creating a code of good practice.

However particulate matter is not the only dangerous pollutant that hovers over Brexit Britain. The UK was one of six countries that the European Commission referred to the bloc’s Court of Justice last May for failing to limit NO2, in large part from diesel cars, in line with EU legislation.

Climate Weekly: What to watch in 2019

On transport, the strategy points to an existing plan to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040 and upcoming strategies on aviation and the maritime sector for 2050. But those plans “are in total disarray”, said Simon Alcock, head of public affairs at the environmental law firm ClientEarth.

But while the strategy lists a number of commitments, green groups are concerned about how they will be implemented and monitored.

The UK’s existing legal limits on air pollution stem from EU law and will remain in its domestic legislation after Brexit, but they risk eventually being loosened, according to ClientEarth.

The environment bill the government is developing, along with a new watchdog, could set stronger legal standards and penalise any shortfalls. But it’s not yet clear if it will.

The post UK anti-pollution drive undermined by leaving EU, say campaigners appeared first on Climate Home News.

A crash-out departure on 29 March threatens to throw up trade tariffs, border delays and higher pollution charges for the British ceramics manufacturers clustered around Stoke-on-Trent, which sell more than half their exports to the European Union.

In the hopes of avoiding those pitfalls, the British Ceramic Confederation (Ceramfed) has been urging MPs to approve prime minister Theresa May’s contentious withdrawal agreement when they vote on Tuesday.

This, it says, ensures as soft and predictable a Brexit as possible.

On Monday May backed their call in person, giving a speech to factory workers in Stoke-on-Trent – with china bowls stacked behind her – to drum up support for a deal that appears headed for defeat. Not backing the deal, she warned, could lead to no Brexit at all.

“The deal that the UK government has proposed and has been accepted by Europe is the one we want to see going forward,” said Michael McGowan, quality, environmental and energy manager at Ibstock Brick. “We think it will bring economic stability to the UK this year, whereas at the moment it’s just creating instability and uncertainty for business.”

The government also tried to ply the West Midlands city last week. Stoke Central MP Gareth Snell was among the Labour members who met May to discuss how she could change the deal to win their votes, and trade minister George Hollingbery visited ceramics industry representatives to talk about future trade opportunities.

Seven EU nations miss climate and energy plan deadline

If the withdrawal agreement is approved, the ceramics industry even sees a potential upside for its energy-intensive businesses: the chance to replace the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) with a carbon price that is more supportive and less punitive to emitters.

“We see Brexit as a good opportunity to simplify the current approach to decarbonisation,” said Andrew McDermott, technical director at Ceramfed, which is based in Stoke-on-Trent. “There are a lot of overlapping schemes and a lot of complexity, and there are opportunities to have more of an emphasis on support rather than the threat of penalty to drive change. We want more carrot, less stick.”

That, however, requires a gradual withdrawal, once the current ETS trading period ends after 2020. An abrupt no-deal departure, on the other hand, would jack up environmental costs, including through a new carbon tax, and disrupt exports of pottery and imports of raw materials.

Our member @HeraldicPottery show around Trade Minister @GHollingbery with local MP Jack Brereton. Here they look at some of the company’s cutting edge designs pic.twitter.com/0AuUIDAAlc

— British Ceramic Confederation (@ceramfed) January 7, 2019

The industry believes Stoke voters chose Brexit without full knowledge of how it would affect trade and environmental regulation of roughly 300 businesses that employ around 9,000 people out of a population of 250,000.

“I don’t think many people entered the polls thinking about the customs union or REACH [the EU’s chemicals regulations which could complicate future trade of ceramics],” said Tom Reynolds, commercial and public affairs director at Ceramfed.

“Two years down the line, we now have so much more information about the implications that we didn’t know then,” added Alan Ault, owner of Valentine Clays, who opposed Brexit.

But the industry’s support for a soft Brexit is still in sharp contrast to the prevailing views on its home turf.

Bolsonaro, Paris and 1.5C: a guide to our top stories of 2018

Stoke-on-Trent voted 69.4% in favour of leaving, whereas 75% of Ceramfed’s members wanted to remain. Sentiment seems to have shifted only slightly since 2016. A recent poll found that roughly 38% of Stokies wanted to remain, while just over half of the rest said they would choose a no-deal Brexit over May’s withdrawal agreement, StokeonTrentLive reported in December.

“I’d just say, ‘Get out, regardless of a deal’,” said Sam Mawby, who works in a vape shop in the city and opposed EU regulations of vaping. “I don’t think Europe should dictate how we leave and charge us billions of euros to do it.”

Ceramics makers say approval for May’s deal is urgently needed, as the uncertainty is already taking its toll. Ault said a European customer had decided after Christmas to stop buying from the UK, and worries more of these longstanding relationships could follow suit.

A no-deal departure would be even more crippling. Tableware exports to the EU, for instance, would be hit with a 12% tariff under World Trade Organization rules, according to Ceramfed.

Carbon dioxide emissions would be subject to a new UK tax of £16 per tonne, to replace the EU’s emissions trading price, chancellor Philip Hammond announced in October. That would come on top of climate charges such as the UK’s floor price on CO2 from power generation, which passes through to the cost of energy for intensive users such as brick and tile manufacturers, and with no time for companies to budget for it.

WATCH LIVE: PM @Theresa_May gives a speech in Stoke-on-Trent #BackTheBrexitDeal https://t.co/Dfqj3iGQ4c

— UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) January 14, 2019

May’s withdrawal agreement, instead, opens the opportunity to build a more favourable carbon pricing system and prepare for it, the ceramics industry says. The agreement only says the UK will not backslide on environmental protections, while the political declaration on the future UK-EU relationship says they will consider linking the ETS to a new national carbon market (without confirming that the UK will set one up).

But the preferred choice for ceramics makers: forget carbon trading, the CO2 floor price for power generation and other schemes and set up a single, simple carbon tax. Then use that tax revenue to back new breakthrough technologies and help companies go more green, akin to the £170 million of funding for heavy industry innovation that the government announced in December.

“If businesses can plan for that in their budgets, it helps them make investment decisions,” McGowan, from Ibstock Brick, said of a carbon tax. “As a responsible business we accept that we have to reduce our carbon, but at the moment it’s all about generating revenue for the government in the UK with the many different schemes.”

The Stoke-on-Trent roofing materials maker Marley, for instance, would need to replace its older gas-fired kilns and dryers with more efficient models before it can make significant CO2 cuts. A new kiln would cost £10 million or more and reduce Marley’s production capacity while it is being installed, said Annabelle Brayford, the company’s environment manager.

However, government support could also come in the form of guidance on other ways to snip pollution.

“When I’m trying to look at renewable energy [supplies], for example, there are so many companies that I have no idea where to start,” said Brayford. “Normally they just whack up the rates and off you go trying to find your way around it. … To have a network of organisations that could be on board with the process would be quite helpful.”

But while Brexit presents an opportunity for a more appealing carbon pricing system, there is also the risk that – as one of the EU’s biggest proponents for tougher emissions market rules – the UK will actually go beyond the EU in pricing pollution.

“Given its attempts to be on the more ambitious side, we have a concern that that could mean UK companies are faced with higher targets and higher costs compared to the EU,” said McDermott, of Ceramfed. “We’d like to see more carrot, so that whatever targets we’ve got, we’ve got the support to meet them.”

The post Stoke’s potteries backed remain, now they want May’s deal to reshape climate policy appeared first on Climate Home News.

The rules will define nations’ responsibilities for tackling climate change, reporting their progress and upping their efforts for decades to come. They will put the 2015 Paris Agreement into action.

Whereas past UN climate talks have been dominated by global heavyweights – mainly the US and China – this one struck a delicate balance between the concerns of the smallest, poorest and most vulnerable countries, the developed nations most responsible for global warming and the emerging economies wary of being saddled with a bigger burden to act.

“Success here also means success for the rules-based global order at a time when multilateralism is so fiercely challenged. Climate change has a global impact so it requires a global response,” Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU’s climate action and energy commissioner, told Climate Home News.

“Katowice has shown once more the resilience of the Paris Agreement, our solid roadmap for climate action,” said UN chief Antonio Guterres, in a statement read out in the plenary were the deal was adopted. “From now on my five priorities will be ambition, ambition, ambition, ambition and ambition.”

International climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Experienced negotiators told Climate Home News they had expected the result of this meeting to be far, far weaker: just a few dozen pages of rules and many issues left until later to resolve.

Laurence Tubiana, a former French diplomat who helped craft the Paris Agreement said the 133 pages of completed rules agreed by every country was “really striking”.

“Probably today this process, this agreement, is certainly more complete, ambitious and engaging than any other [global deal],” said Tubiana.

“This is a very important achievement that shows a strong willingness from the international community, even in a context where there are leaders that challenge multilateralism,” said Teresa Ribera, Spain’s energy and environment minister.

‘Most important years in history’: major UN report sounds last-minute climate alarm

The build-up to the conference was dominated by major public concern after a UN science report found warming even 0.5C beyond today’s global temperature would cause widespread damage and human suffering.

The first week of the meeting saw a bitter fight over the language used to adopt the report. Eventually, it welcomed its “timely completion”, but not the findings. The US, Saudis, Kuwaitis and Russians resisted a full acclamation of the science.

Diplomats believe that the rulebook is a strong enough tool that, if it is coupled with political leadership, can prevent the worst impacts.

CopCast: Paris lives

A final dispatch from the much delayed final plenary, just after the gavel came down.

Follow us on Soundcloud and all podcast apps. Please share, share, share!

That leadership is lacking, said Amjad Abdulla, the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States. He said the group was “not entirely happy”, but the deal was something they “can work with”.

“It’s not a bible we are drafting,” said Gebru Jember Endalew, the chair of the least developed countries group. “It’s something that we can revise.”

National climate pledges to date put the world on track for 3-4C of warming, double the target agreed in Paris. Many hoped for a political statement in Katowice urging governments to commit to increased ambition before 2020, which did not materialise.

The next stop on the climate roadshow is a summit in New York in September hosted by  Guterres. He flew into the Katowice conference three times to draw a commitment from the parties to arrive at that conference with new, tougher climate pledges. Their response, in the main, was non-committal.

Brazil to review Paris Agreement status, says Bolsonaro environment minister

While the most vulnerable countries were dissatisfied with the level of ambition on show, they won a few concessions, including more predictability of financial aid and a toehold for recognising the damages caused by climate change in the process.

Countries could not agree on everything, however. A package of rules on trading carbon credits across borders was deferred to 2019, after a standoff between Brazil and a coalition of European and climate-vulnerable countries.

Brazil was lobbying for looser rules to benefit its carbon offset industry, which the latter group said undermined the environmental integrity of the Paris Agreement. That disagreement led the end of the meeting to be delayed by more than 24 hours, with the Polish presidency trying to broker agreement on how to take the negotiation forward.

“We all worked very hard to find compromises, but the wise decision is to defer,” a Brazilian negotiator told CHN.

Observers do not see much prospect of those tensions easing next year. Jair Bolsonaro, incoming president of Brazil, tends to favour business interests over environmental protection.

Concerns that US indifference could turn into hostility proved mostly unfounded. Multiple sources said the state department was a constructive force in the talks.

White House advisor Wells Griffith oversaw a pro-fossil fuel event, that was supported by the Australian delegation. But that happened on the sidelines of the conference. Within the talks, the White House chose collaboration over confrontation. Beside China, the US oversaw the drafting of the rules governing transparency, a central aspect of the rulebook.

A compromise reached through diplomacy between the two major powers saw further blurring of a two-tier system that has governed climate politics since the early 1990s. The split between developed and developing countries was shifted to a common set of rules that can be flexed for those who need it.

Republish this article

The post Countries breathe life into the Paris climate agreement appeared first on Climate Home News.

The question of how the rules underpinning the Paris climate agreement will apply to developed and developing countries remains one of the biggest sticking points after nearly two weeks of negotiations in Katowice, Poland.

The European Union – along with the US and other rich nations – has been lobbying China to back a flexible system that gives poorer countries time to comply with a set of rules that will govern how countries cut carbon.

Xie Zhenhua, China’s special representative on climate change, suggested on Thursday that the country was on board – as long as the developed side helps out.

“Developing countries also have varied levels of capabilities,” Xie told reporters. “Some might need greater flexibilities, while others could voluntarily do more and accept uniform standards. With more support given to them and enhanced capabilities for these developing countries, they will be able to meet their requirements earlier and faster.”

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

The EU is willing to make it voluntary, so countries can choose when to join, as long as there is a clear deadline by which everyone must comply, a developed country negotiator following the talks said. “But we would expect China to start from the beginning.”

The EU and China are hastily drafting new proposals on parts of the “rulebook” under negotiation, at the request of UN secretary general António Guterres on Wednesday, according to the negotiator. As well as the system for ensuring transparency in climate action, they’re discussing rules on financial aid and the scope of national pledges. They plan to deliver the proposals to the Cop24 summit’s Polish presidency so it can incorporate them into a draft of the entire text, which is due Friday.

Guterres flew to Katowice on Wednesday, amid concerns that the Polish presidency was dragging its feet and political leadership was lacking. He met representatives from Poland, China, the European Commission, India, Canada, Brazil, South Africa and the bloc of developing countries known as the G77 plus China. The secretary general is expected to return on Friday, when the conference is due to end.

After agreeing to work with China, the EU also held a series of meetings on Wednesday and Thursday to shore up support for its flexible system of applying the rules. Those included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Mexico, Japan, Switzerland, Norway and some African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, the developed country negotiator said.

The aim: “To have a critical mass of developed and developing countries, to support one system of transparency when we go to the plenary on Friday.”

CopCast: Guterres calls for more

Our daily podcast from Cop24: A push emerges in Poland for countries to step up their climate pledges and Megan Darby interviews one of the scientists whose work made the world realise we are on the brink.

Follow us on Soundcloud and all podcast apps. Please share, share, share!

The way the rules are applied to countries could determine how effective they are in making sure countries fulfil their pledges under the Paris climate agreement. Loose requirements for tracking and reporting greenhouse gas emissions, for example, will make it difficult to assess progress or pick out the laggards.

Xie’s comments on Thursday broke away from China’s traditional allies: Brazil, South Africa and India. This group – known as the Basic group of emerging economies – had to date been the loudest in demanding a clearer division of labour, or bifurcation.

“There has to be some degree of flexibility – a reassertion of the differentiated approach, if you like – and the allowance made for developing countries,” South African tourism minister Tokozile Xasa said in a press conference on Wednesday. The push for “equal treatment” from some countries would represent a backslide on the Paris Agreement, which recognises the differences in capabilities, Xasa added.

A US state department spokesperson declined to comment on the kind of system it would support.

A burst of shuttle diplomacy on Thursday came amid deepening concern about the progress of negotiations. Many expect the summit to run over into the weekend. Poland’s Cop24 president, Michał Kurtyka, made a plea to ministers on Thursday afternoon, after hearing a stocktake of their progress on specific pieces of the text.

“I ask you to move forward as soon as possible… so we can achieve a meaningful outcome tonight,” he said. “We do not have the comfort of time, but we have the will and we have the power to achieve an outcome here in Katowice.”  

The main concern for negotiators was that Poland had yet to deliver a full draft of the rules – making it hard for ministers to decide where they were willing to make trade-offs. Plus, many of the open questions were still extremely complex. “There are risks around ministers dealing with technical issues; that things could be weakened if they haven’t been fully briefed,” a British source said. “So we’re not there yet.”

Republish this article

The post China open to ‘uniform’ climate rules, sidestepping old allies appeared first on Climate Home News.

At a UN climate summit in Poland, Guterres was joined by Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama in issuing a plea for countries to renew and upgrade their Paris Agreement promises within a year.

“To waste this opportunity would compromise our last best chance to stop runaway climate change. It would not only be immoral, it would be suicidal,” Guterres said. “This may sound like a dramatic appeal, but it is exactly this: a dramatic appeal.”

The remarks were some of the last to be made at the Talanoa Dialogue, a diplomatic procedure initiated by the Fijians in 2017 that aims to bridge divides in the polarised climate process through the sharing of stories.

CopCast: Guterres calls for more

Our daily podcast from Cop24: A push emerges in Poland for countries to step up their climate pledges and Megan Darby interviews one of the scientists whose work made the world realise we are on the brink.

Follow us on Soundcloud and all podcast apps. Please share, share, share!

In an effort to build urgency, the Fijian and Polish governments who presided over Cop23 and Cop24 UN climate summits released the Talanoa Call to Action, which asked governments to place climate change at the top of the political agenda and step up their policies immediately.

Launching the call, Bainimarama said governments needed to increase their current national climate pledges five-fold to limit warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial level.

“Or enter history as the generation that blew it; that sacrificed the health of our world and ultimately betrayed humanity because we didn’t have the courage and foresight to go beyond our short-term individual concerns. Craven, irresponsible and selfish,” said Bainimarama.

Under the Paris Agreement, countries made pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But the combination of these pledges fell far short of what will be necessary to stabilise the climate.

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

Because of this, there is a push for countries to regularly increase their pledges, with the first moment being targeted as next year at a summit Guterres is organising in New York in September.

Bainimarama appealed to all nations to arrive at the summit with plans for new pledges, joining Fiji and the Marshall Islands, which have already committed to raising their pledges in recent months.

Even if countries do up their pledges, the Paris Agreement will need rules that ensures countries stick to them. That is the main subject of the talks in Katowice, Poland, which wrap up on Friday.

On Wednesday, the Polish presidency released a new version of the rulebook. The proposal left several big and technical issues open for ministers to wrangle over in just a few days, negotiators said. The biggest sticking points included financial aid and the way rules are applied to rich and poor countries – with Brazil, China, India and South Africa calling for more differentiation.

But the extent to which the Talanoa Dialogue leads to a declaration that pushes for ambition is questionable too, a British source said. “Personally, I don’t feel like the mood is quite there yet.”

An anticipated call from a broad group of developed and developing countries – known as the high ambition coalition – was promising, but not central to the results, the source added. “It obviously sits alongside any decision and it’s not part of it… but maybe I’m being a bit too downbeat.”

“I challenge you to accelerate and finish the job,” Guterres told ministers and negotiators from around the world, many of whom sleep-deprived after one and a half weeks of talks.

On Tuesday night, the Polish presidency of the talks also announced a list of ministers who would work in pairs on the toughest issues at these talks. On Wednesday, another pair was added – Costa Rica and Sweden – to try and find agreement on a statement on ambition.

In an interview before that appointment was made, Costa Rica’s environment minister Carlos Manuel Rodriguez told Climate Home News that the central American nation had been “one of the few countries who have been systematically consistent in [raising] the bar of commitment”.

In a sign of concern from outside the UN process, a coalition of businesses, mayors, regional governments and investors released a joint statement calling on the meeting to make a “clear commitment” to begin processes that will lead to “new or updated” national climate pledges.

Karl Mathiesen contributed reporting.

Republish this article

The post Step up on climate or choose ‘immoral, suicidal’ path, says UN chief appeared first on Climate Home News.

After a heated debate on Saturday night failed to adopt the conclusions of a scientific report on the effects of warming the planet by 1.5C, Saudi Arabia’s chief negotiator said scientists had painted a picture that ignored the historical responsibility of major polluters.

In an interview with Carbon Brief, Saudi Arabia’s lead negotiator Ayman Shasly said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report – released in October – “shows that [halting warming at 1.5C] is achievable, it’s doable, let’s all do it together, which is not fair. What is the equity in this? Where is history in this?”

He said responsibility for constraining the use of fossil fuels should not fall on developing countries, including Saudi Arabia, but on the largest, richest countries with long histories of emitting carbon, which include the US, Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan.

“They are the one in question, not us. They are the one who should really make the space for all of us, as developing countries, to at least develop to something closer to the level of development that is enjoyed by the industrial world,” said Shasly, whose country is the second largest oil producer in the world.

Indigenous peoples gain foothold in climate talks

But during the debate on Saturday night, which revolved around whether countries would “note” or “welcome” findings the IPCC released in October, it was developing countries that spoke most loudly in favour of the science.

In a speech to the UN body on Wednesday, Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama will also call for the report to be welcomed.

“Let me make this perfectly clear. Fiji welcomes the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 degrees. And we thank the thousands of scientists who contributed to it,” he will say. “We must all accept the science, which is irrefutable. We accept science in virtually every single other form of human endeavour. So simple logic dictates that we must do it when the evidence of human-induced warming is so conclusive.”

All would pay a price if the the science was ignored, Bainimarama said on Tuesday: “If you think you’re safe in your environment, if you’re not vulnerable, you will be vulnerable if we do not follow what the scientists told us.”

CopCast: Can Talanoa help the climate?

Our daily podcast from Cop24: Michael Lazarus talks to Megan Darby about a climate meeting that tried to break down the formal boundaries with Pacific twist

Follow us on Soundcloud and all podcast apps. Please share, share, share!

Costa Rica’s environment minister Carlos Manuel Rodríguez told Climate Home News that Saudi Arabia’s resistance, which it shared with Kuwait, Russia and the US, had marked it out from other developing nations, which negotiate at climate talks together under a 134-country bloc known as the G77 and China.

“This is where I think we have the big difference with some of the G77 members,” Rodríguez said. “I’m not that surprised that once more countries have expressed little commitment to comply with the scientific recommendations… there shouldn’t be any possibility to question the information.”

The IPCC concluded climate-related risks would continue to worsen with a temperature rise of 1.5C, but remain lower than at 2C. Impacts would disproportionately impact “disadvantaged and vulnerable populations, some indigenous peoples, and local communities dependent on agricultural or coastal livelihoods” the report said. It also found the economic growth of countries in the tropics and southern hemisphere subtropics – a region almost entirely made up of developing countries – would be most impeded.

Climate science on 1.5C erased at UN talks as US and Saudis step in

But it also found that rapid transformation would be required in every country, with fossil fuel use effectively ended by mid century.

This pressure offers developing countries “the opportunity to leapfrog into this century”, said François Martel, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Development Forum. “You don’t see any issues in relation to this report from India, from China, from south America and Africa. Because it’s not a question of economy, it’s a question of survival.”

Melchior Mataki, the Solomon Islands’ head of delegation, said the Saudi position was “akin to saying ‘OK, we can just continue to face the negative consequences of climate change, and probably even lose our economies as well’”.

Mataki said the Solomon Islands would be pushing for the Polish presidency on the UN summit to include a passage welcoming the report in the final declaration of the meeting. An EU source said they were also lobbying the presidency for “welcome”, and others are expected to join in.

Shasly told Carbon Brief that Saudi Arabia had asked for a final decision that would “note” the report.

That sets the stage for a political showdown on Friday night when the meeting is scheduled to end and where the adoption of a rulebook for the Paris Agreement is the main point of order.

Republish this article

The post Saudi version of climate justice rejected by developing countries appeared first on Climate Home News.

During the first week of the Cop24 summit, negotiations on the participation of “local communities and indigenous peoples” at UN climate talks hit loggerheads.

China insisted the agreement contain a specific reference against infringing on state powers, clamping down on the potential for communities, such as Tibetans or Taiwanese, to seek recognition and circumvent Beijing.

According to negotiators involved in the talks, China took issue with the lack of a definition for self-defined “local communities” who were included in the newly-created platform, alongside officially-recognised indigenous groups. China says there are no indigenous peoples in the country.

Indigenous representatives argued there was no need to delineate state sovereignty in the platform, because it was already made clear in the UN’s declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples agreed in 2007.

“As indigenous peoples, we don’t want to have this language in the text, because that will limit the exchange in good faith,” said Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, a member of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee, from Chad. “Why does the document have to define who we are and what we do? That’s really not fair. But if it is just a condition to get the others [to agree], and we don’t have any other choice – that’s why we accepted it and we can live with it.”

That declaration, however, doesn’t mention local communities – so it doesn’t apply to China.

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

In the end, negotiators in Katowice agreed to say that when it comes to local communities, the so-called Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform would not “authorise or encourage” action that “will dismember or impair” sovereign and independent states.

A delegate from China welcomed the outcome during a plenary meeting on Saturday, while alluding to the “heated discussion” and “twists and turns” it took to get there and omitting any mention of local communities.

“China’s government respects and welcomes the active participation of indigenous peoples in climate action, we encourage them to share knowledge and experience,” he said. “Many parties have serious concerns over the context of the resolution. However, all parties in the negotiations, including indigenous peoples, have shown greater degrees of flexibility and tolerance in this spirit, which helped us overcome one difficulty after another.”

Indigenous peoples make up less than 5% of the world’s population, but they safeguard 80% of its biodiversity, according to UN Climate Change.

The agreement reached in Katowice, after three years of talks, sets the foundation for future talks on how indigenous peoples and still-to-be-defined local communities can pitch into to talks about limiting greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to changes in climate.

While it kicks a lot of the practical work out to the next three years, the talks drew a much larger presence of indigenous peoples to the Cop24 than any previous annual climate summit.

The platform will tap into the historic understanding of the environment and natural resources, such as how to use the wind to predict changes in weather, preserve forests and biodiversity or farm the available land. That information, usually passed on orally rather than in writing, could inform the pledges governments make under the Paris Agreement.

The platform will have representatives from each of the UN’s seven recognised indigenous regions, plus seven national delegates. The members must now come up with a plan for how indigenous and local communities can exchange information and experiences by the end of 2019, to implement in 2020-2021. Meanwhile, the UN’s climate secretariat will consider how local communities can be represented, and look at any new groups that ask to take part.

While the platform’s work remains undetermined, the Cop24 deal cements its existence.

Indigenous groups originally wanted their rights recognised throughout the Paris Agreement, rather than in this platform. It creates a “permanent space” for native people in the UN climate secretariat, but it still needs to be linked with the global climate rules governments are negotiating in Katowice, said Ghazali Ohorella, a member of the Indigenous Global Caucus, from Maluku Islands off the coast of Indonesia. “What we don’t want the platform to be is some catch-all bucket for everything that is indigenous.”

CopCast: What is the US doing at Cop24?

Our daily podcast from Cop24 turns to the US’ twin strategy: tout coal on the sidelines and negotiate hard to future-proof the rules.

Follow us on Soundcloud and all podcast apps. Please share, share, share!

While some countries, such as Bolivia, have entrenched rights for their native groups, others still struggle at home as well as internationally. Brazil’s incoming president, the right-wing Jair Bolsonaro, poses new threats to the Amazon and its native communities, after pledging to open the land to mining and construction and loosen environmental laws.

Bolsonaro’s government will inherit petitions to demarcate 54 territories as indigenous land, following delays from previous administrations, said Nara Baré, head of the group Coordination of Indigenous Organisations from the Brazilian Amazon. But the country’s forest peoples face “extreme” threats – as do other native lands around the world. 

“We are the only humans who continue to see ourselves as part of nature; we are as much of the forests as the forests are of us. It is the reason you need us,” she said.

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is the environmental story of 2018.

No-one is better positioned than CHN’s Fabiano Maisonnave to cover the impact of his near-certain presidency on the world’s most important forest. We are the only international news site with a correspondent living in the heart of the Amazon. You can read some of the great reporting Fabiano has already done for us here.

We know we need to keep on this story, but after a huge 2018 and with the biggest UNFCCC talks in years approaching, our resources are really stretched. Please help us to keep Fabiano writing by making a small donation through our Patreon account.

The post Indigenous peoples gain foothold in climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

While the White House touted its fossil fuel industry on the sidelines of a UN climate summit in Poland, state department negotiators were deeply engaged in talks on the future of the Paris deal.

The apparent endgame, according to negotiators from other countries: push hard for a deal on the rulebook of the accord that this administration – and any future administration – will be able to swallow; just in case the US never leaves or chooses to return.

A senior non-US negotiator told Climate Home News she had heard directly from current and former state department diplomats that “they are trying to keep the rules as stringent as possible and without [different rules for developed and developing countries], so a future US government can rejoin [or] not leave the Paris Agreement”.

Another senior diplomat from a developed country said: “I think they are keen to secure a deal that’s fit for a future independent of their administration.”

CopCast: What’s a first Cop like?

It’s producer Soila Apparicio’s first UN climate conference. She takes us on a brief journey through the conference and shares her experience as a first timer.

Follow us on Soundcloud and all good podcast apps, and please share.

US diplomats at UN climate talks in Poland this week are pushing for a robust, more universal set of rules – largely in line with the European Union’s asks.

A state department spokesperson said: “As a negotiating team, we are focused on protecting US interests in the negotiations. Because we remain in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, we have an interest in ensuring the rules that evolve for the Paris Agreement are fair and effective.”

“I think [the state department negotiators] are doing a good job,” Todd Stern, who was Barack Obama’s special envoy on climate change and led the state department team in Paris in 2015, told a meeting on Monday morning. “And I think they are appreciated as being serious and knowledgeable and effective and cordial.”

The developed country negotiator said: “Despite the transition from one administration to the other, we are still negotiating with the same experts and these experts have been involved in the process for a long, long time.”

Outside the negotiating rooms, the US is much more combative. White House officials continue to publicly criticise the accord and any climate policies that it believes undermine the US economy.

Last week, Trump jabbed France for the yellow vest uproar, blaming it on the Paris deal. The US publicly sided with Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait – against rich and poor countries around the world – to block a note welcoming landmark science on the effects of a 1.5C rise in global temperatures. And White House officials staged a side event at the UN talks promoting coal, natural gas and nuclear energy.

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

It has been 18 months since the US president announced with fanfare, in a Rose Garden speech, that he would either withdraw the US from the 2015 Paris accord or negotiate a new and fairer “transaction”.

Except that UN rules don’t work quite that way. Parties to the agreement cannot leave until four years after the deal came into effect, so the earliest Trump could pull out is in 4 November 2020 – coincidentally one day after the next US election.

The White House isn’t letting a time delay derail its message. For the second year in a row, it organised a protest-grabbing panel discussion on Monday touting the energy sources dear to the Trump administration’s policies – as well as the priority of US jobs over environmental protection.

The Paris Agreement rulebook explained

“The administration does not see the benefit of being part of an agreement that impedes US economic growth and harms the competitiveness of US manufacturing while allowing those same plants to operate in China with greater levels of emissions,” said Wells Griffith, Trump’s energy adviser. “We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability.”

“I think that’s something that is produced by a part of the administration that’s different from the people on the ground working at a technical level on the negotiations,” said Stern of the event.

Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer in the Obama, Clinton and Bush administrations, said most negotiating positions the US was taking had been long held. But she said a different US government would seek a decision at this meeting on increasing the pledges countries have made to cut their emissions.

“If there were a Democratic administration the US would be running around trying to get that decision to be as ambitious as possible… and of course you are not going to see that from the current administration,” she said.

Note: This article was updated to include a response from the US state department.

Republish this article

The post The US, still in the Paris Agreement, is trying to decide its future appeared first on Climate Home News.

By failing to reach agreement after two and half hours of emotional negotiations, delegates in Katowice set the scene for a political fight next week over the importance of the UN’s landmark scientific report on the effects of a 1.5C rise in the global temperature.

The battle, halfway through a fortnight of Cop24 negotiations, was over two words: “note” or “welcome”.

Saudi Arabia, the US, Kuwait and Russia said it was enough for the members of the UN climate convention (the UNFCCC) to “note” the findings.

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

But poor and undeveloped countries, small island states, Europeans and many others called to change the wording to “welcome” the study – noting that they had commissioned it when they reached the Paris climate agreement in 2015.

“This is not a choice between one word and another,” Rueanna Haynes, a delegate for St Kitts and Nevis, told the plenary. “This is us, as the UNFCCC, being in a position to welcome a report that we requested, that we invited [scientists] to prepare. So it seems to me that if there is anything ludicrous about the discussion that is taking place, it is that we in this body are not in a position to welcome the report.”

The four opposing countries argued the change was not necessary. Saudi Arabia threatened to block the entire discussion if others pushed to change the single word – and warned that it would disrupt the last stretch of negotiations between ministers next week.

The aim of the Cop24 climate summit is to agree a dense set of technical rules to underpin the Paris Agreement’s goals for limiting global warming to well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C, by the end of the century.

The scientific report was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October. It found that limiting global warming to 1.5C, rather than below 2C, could help avoid some of the worst effects of climate change, and potentially save vulnerable regions such as low-lying islands and coastal villages in the Arctic. But it also made clear that the world would have to slash greenhouse gases by about 45% by 2030.

Before the plenary on Saturday, the UN’s climate chief Patricia Espinosa said she hoped to see countries “really welcoming and highlighting the importance of this report… Even if the IPCC is very clear in saying how difficult it will be to achieve that goal, it still says it is possible”.

CopCast Episode 6: The Yellow Vest Warning

Just a few months before the gilets jaunes protests threw France into turmoil, Valérie Masson-Delmotte presented science to the government, warning climate policy without public consultation was risky. Follow us on Soundcloud and all good podcast apps, and please share.

The US, which raised doubts about the science behind the report before it was finalised, said on Saturday that it would accept wording that noted the IPCC’s findings – while stressing that that “does not imply endorsement” of its contents. Russia said “it is enough just to note it”, rather than welcoming the report, while Kuwait said it was happy with the wording as it stood.

The push in the plenary to change the wording to “welcome” began with the Maldives, which chairs the alliance of small island states. It was quickly backed by a wide range of countries and groups, including the EU, the bloc of 47 least developed countries, the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean, African countries, Norway (another large oil and gas producer), Argentina, Switzerland, Nepal, Bhutan, the Marshall Islands, Belize and South Korea.

Negotiators huddled with the plenary meeting’s chair, Paul Watkinson, for nearly an hour to try and work out a compromise. But Watkinson’s suggestion – welcoming the “efforts” of the IPCC experts and noting the “importance of the underlying research” – fell flat. Delegates from Latin America, small islands, Europe, New Zealand, Canada, Africa and elsewhere argued it was not enough to highlight the work that went into the report, it needed to address the findings.

Watkinson said he was disappointed that they could not agree. But a negotiator said the talks will continue: “This is a prelude to a huge fight next week,” when ministers arrive in Poland. It will be up to the Polish hosts to find a place for the report’s findings in the final outcome of the talks.

Wording that welcomes, rather than notes, the 1.5C report should be the bare minimum, Belize negotiator Carlos Fuller told Climate Home News. However, “the oil producing countries recognise that if the international community takes it on board, it means a massive change in the use of fossil fuels”, he said. “From the US point of view, this is the Trump administration saying ‘we do not believe the climate science’.”

COP 24: 12 activists denied entry to Poland for UN climate summit

Fuller added: “In my opinion we have won the fight, because the headline tomorrow will be: the UNFCCC cannot agree the IPCC report’, and people will say ‘Why, what’s in the report?’ and go and look.”

The 1.5C science wasn’t the only divisive issue after a week of Cop24 talks, with countries still mostly holding their ground on the Paris Agreement’s rulebook.

Contentious decisions related to the transparency of reporting emissions and the make up of national climate plans have all been refined, but ultimately kicked to the higher ministerial level. Several observers raised the concern that some unresolved issues may be too technical for ministers to debate with adequate expertise.

Financial aid is still contentious issue. The rules on how and what developed countries must report on their past and planned funding, and the extent to which emerging economies are urged to do the same, remains largely up for debate.

In a further moment of drama on Saturday afternoon, Africa stood firm as UN officials tried to finalise a draft of the rules that will govern the deal. Africa’s representative Mohamed Nasr said the continent could not accept the deal as it was presented, forcing the text to be redrafted on the plenary floor.

“You can’t bully Africa, it’s 54 countries,” said one negotiator, watching from the plenary floor.

The change will mean new proposals to be made to the text next week. That would allow African ministers to attempt to strengthen a major climate fund dedicated to helping countries adapt to climate change and push for less strict measures for developing countries.

“We have been voicing our concerns, maybe the co-chairs in their attempt to seek a balanced outcome they overlooked some of the stuff. So we are saying that we are not going to stop the process but we need to make sure that our views are included,” Nasr told CHN.

Mohamed Adow, a campaigner with Christian Aid, said the African intervention had “saved the process” by ensuring that dissatisfied countries could still have their issues heard.

“It’s actually much better than it’s ever been in this process at this stage,” he said. “Because this is the end of the first week and ministers have been provided with clear options. Of course nothing is closed but the options are actually narrower.”

Republish this article

The post Climate science on 1.5C erased at UN talks as US and Saudis step in appeared first on Climate Home News.

Climate negotiators at the Cop24 summit in Katowice, Poland, aim to agree a broad set of technical rules by the end of next week, to make sure countries meet the Paris Agreement’s goals for tackling global warming. But the finance rules remain particularly “sensitive”, and progress on bridging the divide is “dragging”, according to two negotiators.

As revised draft text on various elements trickled out on Wednesday and Thursday, the finance piece was one of the last to emerge. The page count had been whittled down from the previous version, but many open questions remained.

The latest draft on reporting past financial aid included 41 “options” and 185 square brackets, denoting phrases that could still change, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. Among the issues still to be decided: whether the accounting of past aid from developed countries should be tied to the reports they make every two years on future “indicative” support.

Japan bids for top climate finance job, citing $1.5bn contribution

Money is always a contentious issue in these talks. In Katowice, the fight is over the rules designed to hold richer countries to their pledge to shore up $100 billion a year in public and private climate finance from 2020.

The question is how far developed countries will be required to go in committing to their pledges for future funding, and reporting on what they deliver.

Developing countries want firm reassurances on the sums they will receive, the type of development aid that is counted and where it is being funnelled. The more they know about future funding, they say, the easier it will be to fulfil their own pledges for tackling climate change, since many of them are conditional on support.

“If you ask for what will come in 10, 15 years, it will have higher  uncertainty. But when they report backwards on what they have already provided, you will be able to see how they have been really complying with their promise,” said Gebru Jember Endalew, chair of the least developed group of countries block and an Ethiopian delegate. “[Developing country] governments need some kind of unaggregated indicative figures, so they can consider it in their plan.”

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

The European Union and others on the developed side worry about tying their national budgets into international law – especially if they have to pledge funding more than a few years in advance. Some developing countries initially asked for funding to be committed alongside national plans for cutting emissions, which go out to 2030, according to observers following the talks.

“There are certain constitutional constraints for developed countries to report on the forward spending, which are difficult to overcome,” Elina Bardram, the European Commission’s chief negotiator, told reporters on Wednesday. EU countries and the European Investment Bank are the biggest contributors to climate finance, providing a combined €20.4 billion ($23.2bn) in public finance last year.

But while governments may not be able to lock their successors into future aid, providing more information on their intentions could help would-be recipients to seize the opportunities – whether those be forestry in Africa, for example, or renewable energy in the Caribbean, or flood defences in Pacific island countries.

CopCast Episode 5: The Jim Crow of climate change

Civil rights activist Katherine Egland lived under segregation as a child but saw it revive in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“There is some reluctance to provide upfront information. But it is very clear. We all do forecasting, budgeting. Providing upfront information doesn’t mean that you are legally locking in something,” said Amjad Abdulla, chair of the alliance of small islands states and lead negotiator for the Maldives. “We are not asking them to provide 10-20 year forecasting. At least what they have, they can provide. I don’t see any reason why they can’t.”

The draft text also pointed to uncertainties over who must report the financial aid, and who can or should report it – suggesting that emerging economies could be encouraged to do more.

Negotiators appeared to have made more progress on the rules for reporting future finance, cutting the number of pages and brackets. However, there were still questions around whether the reporting will be for “adequate and predictable” financial resources, or “clarity” on the financial support – and whether it would start in 2020, 2022 or some other time in the 2020s.

Endalew stressed that developing countries need to know what future support they will receive, but that the system is “facilitative”. “We don’t have a strong compliance system in place, it’s not punitive,” he said. “No one is going to be affected by the indicative figures being communicated.”

Karl Mathiesen contributed reporting 

Republish this article

The post UN climate finance rules ‘dragging’ amid fight over who reports what appeared first on Climate Home News.

A draft carried into this conference was a mess of unresolved options. A new version began being released in segments overnight on Tuesday and negotiators were nervously awaiting the full drop.

Which parts will have been cut or massaged? And which countries will see their preferences ignored?

There’s a long way to go in these talks, but this will be the first real test of countries’ willingness to compromise.

CopCast Episode 3: Closing the mines

Megan Darby and Sara Stefanini go beyond the Cop24 walls to speak to trade unionists at a recently closed Polish coal mine and a Katowice climate activist about the effects of the green transition in Silesia. Subscribe, share and tune in tomorrow!

Science, meet politics

Leading scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presented the findings of their latest report on the 1.5C global warming threshold to negotiators on Tuesday afternoon.

In a plenary session, national delegates had the chance to ask questions. Some leapt straight to a political statement; the Maldives, speaking for small island states, said the report was a “gamechanger” and called for ambitious action to hold temperature rise to 1.5C.

“The author is reluctant to tell us whether or not it [holding warming to 1.5C] is feasible,” said China in one of the pithiest interventions, asking for a direct answer.

Jim Skea responded that the IPCC deliberately avoided a yes/no conclusion. Because it’s complicated. It depends on things like whether policymakers are prepared to close coal plants before the end of their technical lifespans. In other words, the ball’s in your court, China.

Go go Guterres

The Polish presidency here may not be interested in revving up ambition, but UN secretary general Antonio Guterres is.

At a press conference, he trailed a climate summit to be held in New York at next September’s general assembly. This has the explicit aim of encouraging world leaders to submit stronger climate pledges to the UN process by 2020.

“I believe the summit next year can be an essential piece in our strong will to make sure we are able to catch up,” Guterres said, noting existing commitments are inadequate to meet the temperature limits in the Paris Agreement.

Tracking the money

Another goal of the NY shindig is to show progress towards the 2020 target of channeling $100 billion a year to the developing world for climate action.

The Green Climate Fund is part of that but “far from being the totality,” said Guterres. After a turbulent year, the flagship scheme has triggered a new fundraising round, which the SG said he expected to be complete before September. Germany last week became the first to promise new funds, with a €750 million ($850m) contribution.

“There has been a meaningful improvement of the GCF” to resolve some “dysfunctionalities”, Guterres added. “The GCF needs improved management to be more effective, but it also needs funds.”

On the bigger picture, he said: “What we need is a transparent mechanism to see how financial flows can move from the developed to the developing world, from public and private sources.”

The whole baguette

The French government has suspended the diesel tax hike that had inspired the gilets jaunes’ protests. It’s an attempt to appease what some see as France’s worst period of unrest since May 1968.

The Polish hosts of Cop24 may be feeling vindicated. They have called for a ‘just transition’ that incorporates social planning with the green shift. The French have provided an object lesson in the dangers of ploughing on with ecological policy without enrolling the community.

Now, it has gone beyond diesel. A spokesperson for the French protesters downplayed the gesture as “a crumb” in response to demands that have since widened to living costs and social inequality. They want the “whole baguette,” he says.

St Barbara

Tuesday was St Barbara’s day, a celebration of the patron saint of miners.

It is a bittersweet occasion in Zabrze, 20 kilometres from Katowice, since the Makoszowy coal mine – their major employer – closed in 2016. Climate Home News met the handful of remaining trade unionists, who see no justice in the Polish government’s “just transition”.

Pressure from Brazil

The chief climate negotiator for Brazil’s outgoing government called on developed countries to deliver on their commitments to raise financial aid and reduce emissions even before the Paris Agreement takes effect in 2020.

“These financial commitments were not mere ornaments to the Paris Agreement,” J Antonio Marcondes said in a statement sent to CHN on Tuesday. “They were fundamental elements in the balance of the agreement, which must be fully delivered for developed countries to meet their historical responsibilities, and for developing countries to reach an even higher gear.”

Further delay, both in mobilising the money and lowering greenhouse gases, will put the accord’s goals for limiting global warming out of reach, he added. “Emission reductions are like credit card debt – the longer they are put off, the more expensive and painful they become.”

European hike

Meanwhile in Brussels, EU countries on Tuesday formally signed off on policies that will hike the bloc’s goals for adding renewables to 32%, and for improving efficiency to 32.5%, by 2030. That’s from 27% for both. They also finalised the governance regulation designed to monitor countries’ progress towards their climate and clean energy goals and keep them on track.

13,898

That’s the number of party delegates registered for this Cop by 12 December, according to analysis by Carbon Brief. The figure, which is less than Paris (around 22,000) but more than Bonn (11,300), backs up the widely held idea that this is the most important climate summit since 2015.

The data also shows that Africa has once again sent the five largest delegations, with Guinea heading the table with 406 delegates. Syria and North Korea linger at the bottom, respectively sending one male and two female representatives. At 188-strong, the French delegation is Europe’s second largest, after hosts Poland.

The post Katowice Brief: The first test appeared first on Climate Home News.

Behind the rhetoric on the gala day of these UN talks, there was a serious political game afoot and some familiar faces playing it.

Todd Stern and Sue Biniaz told us if these talks go a certain way it could mean the US never re-enters the deal, even under a future Democratic president. Read the inside story of the Obama officials’ continuing involvement in the UN climate negotiations.

CopCast Episode 2: The make or break issue

Sara Stefanini and Karl Mathiesen talk about the political problem these talks must solve, or risk the failure of the Paris deal.

Solidarity

Polish leaders sent out a clear message to negotiators: don’t leave industrial workers and economies behind in the shift away from fossil fuels, Natalie Sauer and Sara Stefanini report. The summit’s negotiations over the rulebook are all about implementation of the Paris Agreement’s goals – which makes Katowice, in the Silesian heartland of Polish coal country – the perfect setting. The city’s coal workers “need reassurance they are along for the  transition,” said Michał Kurtyka, Poland’s Cop24 president.

The Polish comments came in sharp contrast to speeches from small island leaders, including Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama. The “just transition” isn’t just for workers and regions moving away from dirty industries, but people hit by the impacts of climate change too, he said.

The Polish presidency also launched its memo in support of the workers and communities that face rapid and disruptive change. The Silesia declaration calls for a “paradigm shift” to clean energy, “while ensuring a just transition of the workforce that creates decent work and quality jobs”. The document is due to be adopted by acclamation, rather than consensus, indicating the lack of support from vulnerable countries, who care more about their islands disappearing.

India to increase ambition?

India’s environment minister Harsh Vardhan was lauding his country’s achievements. According to analysis by green think tank the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, his country is going to meet its energy capacity and emissions intensity goals by 2020, ten years ahead of the timeline it promised under the Paris deal.

That leads to the question: will it submit a more ambitious climate pledge by 2020?

“If there is a need and if the whole world is talking about it or is demanding about it, I can assure you that India will be leading in this also. But right now India’s goal is to see that whatever we have promised, we achieve it well before time,” said Vardhan.

Climate finance

Nine multilateral development banks agreed on Monday to align their work on six key areas, including on reducing emissions and building resilience to its effects and ramping up financial aid. MDBs contributed $35 billion to tackling climate change in developing and emerging economies last year, and helped to mobilise another $52 billion in public and private money.

The World Bank is doubling its target for climate finance to $200 billion between 2021 and 2025, it announced on Monday. The new plan boosts the bank’s support for projects that help poorer countries adapt to the effects of climate change to $50 billion over the five years.

Power list

Who are the movers and shakers that will determine the outcome of Cop24? Check out our interactive guide, with 20 faces to look out for.

The post Katowice brief: The other US climate team appeared first on Climate Home News.

By holding this year’s UN climate negotiations in Katowice, a city in the coal mining region of Upper Silesia, the Polish government put the spotlight on its call for a “just transition” for industrial workers who risk losing their jobs with the shift to cleaner energy and operations.

“‘Solidarity’ and ‘just transition’ – the language is key to making acceptable [climate policy],” Polish president Andrzej Duda said in a speech to the plenary on Monday.

“One of the challenges we have to face and continue to face is how to reconcile economic growth with taking care of the environment,” he added later. “The choice we are making is not between jobs and the natural environment but whether we are going to keep both or none of them.”

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

The Polish government also launched a European Union-backed declaration on Monday calling to support regions and cities like Katowice that will be affected by the shift away from fossil fuels. International union groups welcomed the message.

The new summit presidency’s comments stood in sharp contrast to speeches from the small island countries, whose leaders stressed that their people are already suffering – not from climate action, but inaction.

“We should not only have a just transition for those workers, regions and economies affected by the move from dirty energy to clean energy, we must have a just transition for all – and especially the most climate vulnerable,” said Fijian prime minister Frank Bainimarama, who presided over last year’s Cop23 summit in Bonn, Germany.

The leaders’ speeches kicked off two weeks of intensive negotiations over rules to make sure countries meet their pledges under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The strength of the rules will largely determine how the political goals set in Paris are actually implemented – making Katowice the perfect setting to highlight the challenge of maintaining economic growth while shifting away from old, polluting industries.

CopCast: Episode one – What are we doing in Katowice?

Throughout the next two weeks, we’ll be starting the morning with the news that is driving the day and guests to explain what is happening inside the room and out of it.

Sara Stefanini and Karl Mathiesen caught up on Sunday evening for our very first episode. Follow us on Soundcloud and please share, share, share!

Katowice was home to as many as 14 coal mines in the 1980s, and two now. The Cop24 conference centre sits next door to one of the shuttered mines, which has been converted into a museum.

But Katowice is also “one of the greenest cities in Poland”, with forests covering more than 40% of its area, Duda said. The modernisation of plants is leading to “environmental improvements”, without disrupting energy security.

The city’s remaining coal workers “need reassurance they are along for the transition”, said Michał Kurtyka, Poland’s Cop24 president. “They need rules – transparent, implementable – and a system of support for the role they are asked to take.”

While the rulebook will be crucial to monitoring progress towards the Paris goals, some countries want the Cop24 to also set the scene for all parties to raise their commitments by 2020. Current pledges would only limit global warming by 3-4C by 2100; the Paris accord calls for well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C.

Duda made little mention of the discussions due to be held in Katowice, although Polish environment minister Henryk Kowalczyk said the summit will “take stock of all the wealth of views, expectations and proposals for action”.

But it was the small island countries that put the strongest emphasis on increasing efforts.

“It is essential that the contributions presented in 2020 significantly raise the bar of ambition,” said Baron Divavesi Waqa, president of Nauru, in Micronesia. “After a quarter century of negotiations we are further away from our goal of stabilising greenhouse gas emissions than we have ever been. I will resist the temptation to brand our efforts a dramatic failure.”

Republish this article

The post Poland calls for ‘solidarity’ with industrial workers in climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

As head of the UN’s climate change secretariat, she’s supposed to quietly mediate the contentious talks over global climate change rules. But in the end, it may fall on her to muscle countries to consensus and save the promise of the celebrated Paris climate agreement.

Like in Paris in 2015, negotiators from around the world are meeting to agree on efforts to limit global warming. But missing in Katowice, Poland are some of the political heavyweights who joined forces to land the deal Paris: the US, the French presidency and Espinosa’s fiery predecessor.

That leaves Espinosa as one of the few people at these crucial talks with the potential to break a gridlock.

Her message to negotiators ahead of the summit: everyone must come ready to cede ground.

“There are many creative ways of trying to put together some landing zones that can make different parties have the minimum amount of comfort,” Espinosa told Climate Home News in an interview. “In multilateral agreements, it’s always finding this delicate balance where everyone can see his own position reflected, even if it’s not 100% what they would expect.”

All the Cop24 news in your inbox? Sign up here

The former Mexican ambassador has been here before: as president of the 2010 climate summit in Cancun. It was a year after countries failed to reach an accord in Copenhagen, and she is widely credited for clinching a deal that committed the world to keep working on what would finally be agreed in Paris.

But the text in Katowice is thicker and thornier than the political declarations of the past, and the stakes are potentially even higher. Plus, the UN post puts Espinosa in the trickier position of facilitating decisions, without making them.

“Being in the secretariat, unlike the moment when I was presiding over the conference [in Cancun], is a very different role, and we need to always be very mindful of that and the fact that the responsibility lies within the parties,” she said.

Cop24 is Espinosa’s third climate talks in the UN post. But as the first that is due to deliver a finalised text, it will be her toughest and most important yet.

CopCast: Episode one – What are we doing in Katowice?

Throughout the next two weeks, we’ll be starting the morning with the news that is driving the day and guests to explain what is happening inside the room and out of it.

Sara Stefanini and Karl Mathiesen caught up on Sunday evening for our very first episode. Follow us on Soundcloud and please share, share, share!

At the end of this fortnight, negotiators aim to agree the complex rules needed to make sure countries actually fulfil their pledges under the Paris Agreement, and set the scene for them to raise those pledges by 2020. The talks have already reignited rifts between rich, emerging and poor economies – mostly over the division of responsibilities and aid. If the rules are too loose, governments can say they are reducing emissions and providing finance without showing it. Too tough, developing countries say, and they’ll impede economic growth.

Poorer countries, in particular, will be looking to Espinosa to make sure the Katowice outcome adds meat to the bones of the Paris deal’s goals to limit global warming to well below 2C, and ideally 1.5C.

“She belongs to everyone,” said Gebru Jember Endalew, chair of the group of 47 least developed countries and an Ethiopian diplomat. “With her role in coordinating, she will have a bird’s view of what’s happening in the negotiations, which group is engaged more constructively, which group is blocking. Using that, she could have an advisory role in addressing countries.”

Espinosa is known for her reserved and mild-mannered style, both publicly and in closed-door negotiations. Two climate diplomats described her as “subtle”, “not pushy” and a “smooth operator”. That can make for a frustrating media interviewee. She is warm and friendly, but refrains from talking tough. She speaks in lengthy, detail-heavy sentences rather than snappy sound bites.

Know your NDCs from your LMDCs: A climate diplomacy glossary

However, the “hard spade work” she put into understanding different national positions and restoring goodwill in Cancun may serve Espinosa well in Katowice, said David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s international climate initiative.

“She’s the kind of person who stays steady at the wheel, and I think that’s a good characteristic in this upcoming Cop, in that there’s a lot technical complexity and some political complexity,” he said.

She carefully couches expectations for the summit, stressing the huge amount of work to get through. For it to be a success, however, it should produce the “basis of the machinery” for implementing the Paris Agreement, and a sharing of information that gives countries the “confidence” they need to raise their pledges.

But what the talks may need in the 11th hour is a louder cry for motivation – and perhaps straight out bullying, according to some observers – to get to the end. Here, Espinosa is in a lonelier position than that of Christiana Figueres, who held her post in Paris.

Climate Home News brings you reporting from inside the room at every UN climate summit and Cop24 is no exception.

Support our journalism by making a regular donation through our Patreon account.

Figueres galvanised support for the deal with public punches about the urgency of stemming climate change. But she was also backed by well-tuned powerbrokers including the French summit presidency and the Obama administration, who opened a bridge between the developed and developing worlds by partnering with China. That coalition was broken by Donald Trump’s plans to withdraw from the deal.

On top of that, the politics around climate change have soured elsewhere in the past three years. Australia has backed away from future climate finance, Germany is struggling to set an end date for coal use and Brazil’s president-elect appointed a climate denier as foreign minister. Meanwhile, greenhouse gas emissions reached new highs in 2017, according to UN data published in November.

And, there are concerns that the Polish presidency is working to protect its prominent coal industry and slow efforts to raise national pledges.

Diplomatic as always, Espinosa acknowledged that Poland, like other presidencies, wants to raise attention about issues it cares about. However, she said, that is not part of the formal talks. “I think that is really a very generous signal, it shows also Poland does not want to complicate the negotiations any further.”

Republish this article

The post Climate leadership collapse leaves UN chief with a daunting task appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a hotly anticipated strategy for tackling climate change out to 2050, the commission outlined eight pathways that would lead to greenhouse gas reductions of 80% or 90% compared to 1990, or go fully carbon neutral — and urged future policymakers to go with the biggest cuts.

The European Union’s existing climate and energy policies are on track to lower emissions by 45% by 2030 and 60% by 2050.

“This is clearly not sufficient to meet the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU’s climate action and energy commissioner. “This is why going climate neutral is necessary, possible and in Europe’s interest.”

The strategy comes less than a week before the Cop24 climate summit begins in Katowice, Poland, and is meant to show that Europe is working to strengthen its efforts under the Paris deal. EU leaders are expected to discuss the strategy next spring and choose which direction to back.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

A reduction to net zero would bring significant economic, health and geopolitical benefits, Arias Cañete said.

It can spur nearly €300 billion ($340bn) a year of investment in clean energy, boosting the economy by up to 2% of GDP by 2050. It can cut premature deaths caused by air pollution by more than 40%, saving some €200bn a year in health costs. And it can also help Europe reduce its energy imports by more than 70%, saving €2-3 trillion up to 2050. The EU now spends €266 billion a year on imports, with a heavy reliance on Russian gas.

Five of the strategy’s pathways lead to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050, or 85% counting the carbon absorbed by forests. A 90% reduction, instead, would continue to see emissions from agriculture, despite some natural CO2 absorption.

The last two pathways lead to net-zero emissions. One would push all zero-carbon energy sources as well as efficiency, and use capture and storage technology and bioenergy to catch the remaining carbon. The other requires less carbon capture technology because it takes into account a “highly circular economy”, consumer choices that emit less – such as buying environmentally friendly products and services – and strengthened land use absorption.

Miguel Arias Cañete: EU’s climate caterpillar looks to seal legacy

Electricity use would rise in all of the pathways, but at different levels.

Using more electrofuels, which turn power into liquid or gas fuels, would lead to a nearly 150% rise in electricity production by 2050, compared to today. Pathways that rely more on energy efficiency and a circular economy would require around 35% more power, as well as the lowest amount of energy storage and the biggest energy savings in the residential and industrial sectors.

Bigger emissions reductions would also help stem the damaging effects of climate change in Europe, the commission stressed.

Weather-related disasters could affect around two-thirds of the bloc’s population by 2100, compared to 5% today, it said. River floods, for example, could cost €112 billion a year, up from €5 billion, while labour productivity in southern European countries could decline by 10-15%.

Press briefing with @BasEickhout on #EU2050 strategy just started. Main message: good narrative showing that going #netzero is technologically feasible & economically beneficial, but incomprehensible that COM still relies on shaky negative emissions not on early action by 2030 pic.twitter.com/pfPe0Kdk5m

— Yan Dupas (@YanDupas) November 28, 2018

The NGO group Climate Action Network Europe said the commission’s strategy is an improvement from a 2011 roadmap, but stressed that Europe should fully decarbonise by 2040 in order to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 1.5C. The strategy also does not suggest raising the EU’s Paris pledge to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030, even if the bloc is on track for 45%, the group said.

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is the environmental story of 2018.

No-one is better positioned than CHN’s Fabiano Maisonnave to cover the impact of his presidency on the world’s most important forest. We are the only international news site with a correspondent living in the heart of the Amazon. You can read some of the great reporting Fabiano has already done for us here.

We know we need to keep on this story, but after a huge 2018 and with the biggest UNFCCC talks in years approaching, our resources are really stretched. Please help us to keep Fabiano writing by making a small donation through our Patreon account.

Republish this article

The post European Commission sets out path to net-zero emissions by 2050 appeared first on Climate Home News.

Some saw it as a political stroke of genius.

Caught between international pressure to speed up greenhouse gas cuts by 2030 and resistance from several EU states, the climate action and energy commissioner was telling the world that Europe is now on track to supersede its own pledge under the Paris Agreement, “de facto”.

That, and the 2050 climate strategy the European Commission will propose on Wednesday, will cap off a five-year term that has set Europe’s climate and energy trajectory in thousands of pages of new legislation.

A new class of commissioners will take over late next year. But before he signs off, Arias Cañete hopes one last push will convince policymakers to set a course to reduce greenhouse gases to net-zero by mid-century, from 60% now, he told Climate Home News on Tuesday.

“We have completed the circle, and now we will leave the European Union with a vision for the future to open a big discussion amongst member states, parliamentarians, stakeholders, citizens, NGOs, of what will be the next degree of ambition,” Arias Cañete said. “We have seen where we have to arrive, and now it will be for the next commission and the next parliament and the council to decide how far they want to go.”

Whether these parting efforts can satisfy international demand on Europe to bring its policies in line with the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 1.5C, rather than 2C, still remains to be seen.

The climate strategy will set out eight pathways for greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, leading to reductions of either 80%, 90% or net-zero compared to 1990.

But the commission will make clear the pathway it prefers, urging EU leaders to choose net-zero when they begin discussing it next year. Then, the commission thinking goes, the bloc will be forced to revisit all of its climate and energy policies and scale them up.

“If this is endorsed by leaders, and they say ‘let’s go for net-zero by 2050’, you need to start crafting that pathway,” said an EU diplomat who has worked closely with Arias Cañete. “What does that mean in practice? Targets will need to be revised upwards.”

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

That would leave a largely successful legacy for a conservative politician who drew heavy criticism when he was nominated in 2014, including for holding shares in two oil companies while he was Spain’s agriculture and environment minister.

Instead, Arias Cañete caught many environmentalists by surprise with a mix of enthusiasm, openness and stamina for tough negotiations – even if the commission’s proposals often fell short of greens’ demands.

“He’s been the classic caterpillar that became a butterfly, because he was open to listening beyond his conventional story,” said Sanjeev Kumar, founder of the climate think-tank Change Partnership in Brussels.

Arias Cañete became particularly prominent on the international stage. He made the EU a key player in clinching the 2015 Paris deal by working closely with his counterparts from the US, China and vulnerable developing countries – many of whom he hugged once the deal was done.

In another technically savvy move, Arias Cañete convinced EU states to ratify Paris as a bloc in late 2016, before many of its national parliaments had done so. The move pushed the accord into legal force years ahead of expectations, adding to a sense of initial momentum around the agreement. The carefully executed swoop required multiple daily phone calls with France, Germany, Poland, the UK and other members, the EU diplomatic source said. “He managed to make them understand that what was at stake here was that because of sovereignty concerns, we could miss one of the biggest opportunities for credit, leadership and recognition. And that’s how we did it.”

Arias Cañete then stepped up to try and fill the leadership void left when US president Donald Trump announced plans to pull out of the Paris deal, partnering with China and Canada. But it wasn’t always successful. A widely awaited EU-China statement on developing clean technology and raising climate finance for poor countries was blocked by a wider trade spat the day after Trump’s June 2017 announcement. The text was adopted a year later.

As countries prepare to meet in Katowice, Poland next week, the EU’s ability to lead global climate diplomacy will be tested. Tensions between China, its allies and the developed world threaten to send the talks off track. All of Arias Cañete’s relationship-building and diplomatic experience over the past five years will be required to bridge the divide.

At Cop21 in Paris, flanked by (l-r): Luxembourg environment minister Carole Dieschbourg, Marshall Islands foreign minister Tony de Brum and German environment minister Barbara Hendricks (Photo: Sara Stefanini)

While Arias Cañete has tried to lead on the world stage, the EU remains divided on climate change, struggling to agree on raising its own emissions targets and cut fossil fuels more quickly. Resistance from eastern and central states has led to incremental shifts – with the commissioner present for many of the late-night talks.

The commission’s proposals usually struck a balance between a more ambitious European Parliament and countries looking to protect their big, polluting industries. But the EU did agreed to increase its 2030 renewable energy and efficiency goals this year. It was with this deal that Arias Cañete said the EU could now go beyond its Paris pledge for reducing emissions.

“I thought it was good to tell the member states, the parliamentarians, that with the ambition they have both agreed, we were overshooting our targets,” he said. “It was the obvious, but some people don’t understand the obvious.”

Critics, however, saw it as a missed opportunity to push countries further. German chancellor Angela Merkel in fact shot back a few weeks later, saying the EU should meet the existing targets before setting new ones.

Exclusive: Global NGO chief suspended after bullying, inappropriate conduct allegations

“If he was serious, he would have immediately also said: ‘and this means we need to also adjust our policies’,” said MEP Bas Eickhout, who represented the Greens in a number of climate and clean energy policy negotiations. “What he was doing was stating a fact without political consequences.”

Environmentalists are similarly circumspect about the climate strategy coming on Wednesday.

The net-zero goal falls short of what is expected of Europe if the world is to meet the 1.5C temperature goal, according to Climate Action Network Europe. And its pathways would not begin until 2030, meaning its current Paris pledge (which covers the next 12 years) would remain unchanged, said Eickhout.

This could put the bloc in an uncomfortable position on the international stage next year.

The Paris accord requires countries to revise their 2030 targets by 2020, but UN secretary-general António Guterres is encouraging them to do so at a summit he is hosting in September. As the world’s third-largest emitter after the US and China, and the most dominant developed world bloc after the US backtrack, Europe will be in the spotlight to show something new.

“They’re going to need to be relevant, otherwise they’re going to be out of the game,” a climate negotiator for a small island state said. “They’re putting a lot of hope on the 2050 strategy. While that is welcome,  it will only have impact if linked to short term decision-making.”

But Arias Cañete stressed that the EU’s policies for 2030 all include review clauses for 2023 or 2024, giving policymakers the opportunity to keep ramping them up rather than taking some 27 months to enact new legislation.

“If you don’t have the legislation, a target is meaningless, you don’t have the tools,” Arias Cañete said. “Now we have the tools to arrive at a reduction of emissions of 60% in 2050. What the commission is saying is, we have to go climate-neutral and need additional tools. Member states have the opportunity to use the review clause, or to put in additional policies.”

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is the environmental story of 2018.

No-one is better positioned than CHN’s Fabiano Maisonnave to cover the impact of his presidency on the world’s most important forest. We are the only international news site with a correspondent living in the heart of the Amazon. You can read some of the great reporting Fabiano has already done for us here.

We know we need to keep on this story, but after a huge 2018 and with the biggest UNFCCC talks in years approaching, our resources are really stretched. Please help us to keep Fabiano writing by making a small donation through our Patreon account.

The post Miguel Arias Cañete: EU’s climate caterpillar looks to seal legacy appeared first on Climate Home News.

Fast rising prices in the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS) have pushed the government into talks with the owners of Hungary’s last big lignite power plant, Mátra, about phasing out coal use and installing clean and renewable energy.

“Electricity production based on lignite has no more long-term economic viability in Europe, due to the sky-rocketing ETS quota prices and also the lack of any available future support scheme for coal-based energy production,” Barbara Botos, deputy secretary of state for climate at the innovation and technology ministry, told Climate Home News.

Botos said the government’s “preferred coal exit date” was 2030, although this is not yet supported by an official decision or strategy.

“Hungary intends to provide smart, clean and affordable energy for all,” Botos said. The government is outlining a “positive and innovative” development plan based on low greenhouse gas emissions, she added.

EU carbon price finally puts pressure on coal

Hungary is not as coal-reliant as some of its central and eastern European neighbours. Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria have the highest percentage of coal power in the EU. Yet on climate policy, the Visegrád Group – Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – tend to stick together in resisting measures that would price out the dirtiest fossil fuel. The Three Seas Inititaive, of which Hungary is a member, plans to host a climate policy cooperation summit this Thursday.

That cohesion may be breaking, and not just because of Hungary. Slovakia, which also uses less coal, said in December 2017 that it was considering ending coal-fired power and mining in 2023. Economy minister Peter Ziga told reporters on Monday that the government plans to pull subsidies for mines and power plants that year, Reuters reported.

Hungary, meanwhile, is about to begin a political discussion about a coal phase-out, Botos said earlier this month in a presentation to the European Commission’s Coal Regions in Transition Platform. The platform, launched last year, aims to help the EU’s poorest and most coal-reliant regions shift to clean energy by re-training workers, funding renewables and other projects.

Climate news in your inbox? Sign up here

Her comments, along with a presentation from a Mátra power plant representative, marked a “milestone” for the country, said Csaba Vaszkó, an independent Hungarian energy consultant who also spoke at the meeting. Even though Hungary’s coal industry has declined significantly, it is still strong in the region around Mátra, in the northeast.

If it sets an end date for coal, Hungary would join a growing group of western Europeans aiming for exits by 2030 at the latest, including France, the Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Portugal, Finland, Austria, Denmark and Sweden. Even coal-powered Germany is expected to set an end date for coal by the end of this year.

In Hungary, the move is motivated by rising costs of EU carbon prices after years of lagging and the fact that Mátra already has concepts for low-carbon projects, rather than making a political break from the Visegrád position, said Vaszkó.

A graph produced by Hungary’s transmission operator and presented by Barbara Botos, deputy secretary of state for climate

Hungary’s second national climate strategy, approved by the parliament in October, aims to reduce carbon emissions by replacing fossil fuels, improving energy efficiency, developing a green economy and adding forests, Botos said in the presentation. Coal-fired power could drop sharply in 2025, according to a scenario she was given by Hungary’s transmission system operator.

Also at the commission’s meeting, Zoltán Orosz, head of strategy for the Mátra power station’s owner, talked about the potential for replacing coal with biomass, gas, solar energy and battery storage in order to keep the plant alive beyond 2030. Further down the line there was also the potential for building a solar panel factory, he said.

Coal mining and power production in Hungary are already declining, according to the presentations from Botos, Vaszkó and Orosz.

Poland’s coal miners: ‘EU climate proposals terrify us’

The fuel generated 18% of Hungary’s electricity in 2016 – almost all from the Mátra station. Nuclear provided around half and gas roughly 20%. Most of the country’s coal and lignite basins have been closed, and the number of miners is down to 2,000 this year, from 125,000 in 1965.

However, Mátra’s lignite produced nearly 14% of the Hungary’s carbon dioxide emissions in 2016 and half of the energy sector’s pollution.

The fall in costs for solar and wind energy and lithium-ion batteries over the past 10 years can help create new industries, jobs and economic growth, Hungarian president Áder János told the parliament before it voted on the climate strategy last month.

Specifically, Budapest now aims to boost solar power capacity from 500 to 3,000 MW as early as 2022, Botos told CHN. The Mátra owners have installed a 16 MW photovoltaic plant on an abandoned slurry deposit, and plan to add two 20 MW solar plants nearby.

Russia’s state-owned Rosatom is also building a new nuclear power plant, which would replace older units in the later 2020s.

This article is not for republication

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is the environmental story of 2018.

No-one is better positioned than CHN’s Fabiano Maisonnave to cover the impact of his presidency on the world’s most important forest. We are the only international news site with a correspondent living in the heart of the Amazon. You can read some of the great reporting Fabiano has already done for us here.

We know we need to keep on this story, but after a huge 2018 and with the biggest UNFCCC talks in years approaching, our resources are really stretched. Please help us to keep Fabiano writing by making a small donation through our Patreon account.

The post Hungary wants end to coal power by 2030 appeared first on Climate Home News.