5 December 2015, The Spectator, An age of climate realism is upon us. At last, cooler heads are prevailing….The Paris meeting is not even attempting to achieve what the 2009 Copenhagen summit failed to do: reach a legally binding treaty on cutting CO2 emissions. Instead, the aim is to replace the legally binding targets of the Kyoto Protocol (which runs out in 2020) with voluntary pledges tailored to the national considerations of individual countries. In short, the Paris climate deal will mean abandoning the notion of making decarbonisation legally binding — at least for the time being. Even so, governments from around the world are keen to sign an agreement that will allow political leaders to declare a victory, and to move on. At the same time, officials readily accept that painful decisions will be kicked into the long grass. Thus, the Paris accord is likely to be a ‘wait and see’ arrangement which, for the next decade at least, suspends any attempt of reaching a binding decarbonisation treaty. Such an outcome will almost certainly trigger a fundamental reassessment of Europe’s go-it-alone-no-matter-what-the-costs decarbonisation policies. Why has it proven impossible for such summits to make the kind of progress that was, until recently, billed as a matter of saving the world? Firstly, policies that commit western governments to unilateral decarbonisation have turned out to be more costly and politically toxic than conventional wisdom proclaimed. Rather than running out of fossil fuels — and thereby making renewable energy more competitive — the US shale revolution and the prospect of its global proliferation has triggered a glut of cheap oil and gas. Fuel prices have fallen and look set to remain low for the foreseeable future. As a result, the bridge to a world powered by renewable energy has become longer rather than shorter. Read More here Note that “the pause” noted in the article is a red herring – read more here
Category Archives: Global Action Inaction
4 December 2015, The Guardian, The ‘red line’ issue that exposes deep divisions in the Paris climate talks. Buried in the detail of the Paris Accord could be some innocuous-looking words that will have a powerful impact on whether it ever delivers the greenhouse gas reductions it promises. The words could “paper over” deep divisions about whether countries ever have to properly report and account for the promised emission reductions that collectively limit global warming to the already-dangerous 2.7 degrees. Key to the negotiations will be a trade off between developing countries’ demands for financing to reduce their own emissions and adapt to locked-in climate change and the insistence by both rich nations like the United States and climate-vulnerable countries like the small island states that every country should be required to at least work towards the same rules for reporting and checking their emission reductions. Since the pledges in the Paris Accord will not be legally binding and the more stringent rules applied to developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol are almost certain to lapse in five years, the direction set for this new set of reporting and checking rules is important to ensure the agreement delivers what it promises for the climate. Countries like India claim the existing rules under the overarching UN framework convention on climate change are fine. Read More here
3 December 2015, Climate News Network, Coal plant plans raise climate risk. COP21: As some of the world’s political leaders strive to save the planet from overheating, others still see increased coal burning as the answer to their future energy needs. More than 2,400 coal power plants already under construction or planned will have to be cancelled if the planet is not to overheat by more than 2˚C, according to an analysis released at the COP21 climate summit in Paris. Even if existing plants are allowed to continue producing electricity beyond 2030 until the end of their technical lifetimes, the world will reach temperatures that risk runaway climate change, says the report by Climate Action Tracker (CAT). The report assessed the impact of planned new coal plants globally, and found that the several of the 28 European Union members states (EU28) planned to replace existing coal stations with new ones. The EU 28 and eight large countries assessed − China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Turkey – that each plan to build new plants will together add nearly half the world’s total – 2,011 power stations. Plans undermined The report makes clear that the efforts of the 195 countries meeting in Paris to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will be undermined unless plans to replace old coal plants with new ones are scrapped. Read More here
3 December 2015, Carbon Brief, EXPLAINER: the ‘ratchet mechanism’ within the Paris climate deal. One outcome of the Paris deal is already certain: it will not succeed in limiting temperatures to below 2C. This has been repeated ad infinitum, by studies, by politicians and by observers. Perhaps the most widely quoted figure for the impact of countries’ climate pledges on global temperature is the 2.7C rise calculated by Climate Action Tracker. The World Resources Institute has analysed the numerous other studies that come to similar conclusions. The 2C limit has been enshrined as the aim of UN climate negotiations since 2010 — so if Paris has already failed to achieve it, why is it not already being labelled as a failure? This is where the so-called ratchet mechanism comes in, or the “ambition mechanism”, as some are calling it. This will ensure that actions to deal with climate change become progressively more ambitious over time. What is the ratchet mechanism? This week, countries have started the process of negotiating a 54-page draft text, helped on the way with the input of world leaders who made an appearance on day oneto set the direction. But there’s no point in searching the document for the “ratchet” — the word does not even feature once. It is not a self-contained issue within the text, but is scattered throughout the deal, linked with and integrated into other issues. Observer groups, such as Greenpeace, are pushing for a fairly simple structure. In theory, countries would submit new “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) every five years, outlining how much they intend to reduce emissions. Each submission would be more ambitious than the last, namely, ratcheting up. These submissions would then be reviewed to assess their overall impact on stemming the rise of global temperatures. In particular, it will be benchmarked against the long-term goal set up in the text. A weak long-term goal — still a distinct possibility — will mean the ratchet mechanism has to work even harder. With the knowledge gained from this review in mind, countries would then have a “homework” period, where they have the opportunity to make their intended contributions even more ambitious. And, finally, the contributions would be formalised and inscribed in the agreement. Greenpeace has written a detailed timeline of how they see the ratchet mechanism playing out for the first two cycles of INDCs. Read More here