Now
that the Paris Agreement has been signed by 193 parties and ratified by
over 100, one message is very clear: the era of fossil fuels is over.
But it seems that not
everyone has gotten the message. In many countries, the coal lobby
stubbornly believes it can delay the inevitable.
Let’s
take Brazil as an example. Brazil likes to boast about being a climate
champion. But its Congress just approved a billion-dollar subsidy to the
coal industry.
Equally problematic, this comes at a time when coal represents less
than 5% of electricity generation in Brazil, but over 20% of emissions.
Has anyone in the Brazilian Congress done the maths?
The coal industry spends a fortune on lobbying. But President
Temer now has the chance to veto this subsidy, as tens of thousands of
Brazilians have urged him to do. The world is watching closely, and
expects meaningful action from a country
that could otherwise be one of the first to reach 100% renewables.
But it’s not only Brazil where coal still dreams of a future.
Forbes Magazine recently described Japan as having a “renewed love
affair with coal”, with over 40 new plants being built, planned or
proposed before 2020. If implemented, this would
be a nightmare for the climate.
Perhaps even worse, Tokyo’s renewed love for coal isn’t confined
to home. As the world’s biggest contributor of public financing for coal
projects, Japan invested over $22 billion overseas from 2007 to 2015,
including funding for several proposed
coal projects in–wait for it–Brazil. It’s high time for Japan to stop
sleepwalking, catch up with the times and stop funding the dirty fossils
of the past, both at home and abroad.
Turkey’s
situation is nearly as sickening. The country won COP22’s inaugural
Fossil of the Day award yesterday, in part for its absurd plans to build
70 new coal power
plants that would add over 70 GW of dirty energy capacity. Just writing
that sentence makes ECO nauseous. No matter how you cut it, this
blatant denial of physics is bad, bad medicine for an ailing climate. If
Turkey wants to be taken seriously, it needs to
take some remedial lessons and get back on track for renewables. The
coal financiers investing there and in the Balkan region are big
players: largely Chinese money channelled through different development
banks.
All
around the world, the coal industry is desperately attempting to defy
the laws of physics. It wants us to believe that when you’re in a hole,
if you keep digging
you just might get out. Thankfully, ECO had an excellent physics
professor and has sounder advice: when you’re in a hole, stop digging.
One thing is certain–if we are to deliver on the promise of the Paris
Agreement, every country must show more ambition when
it comes to emission reductions. Getting rid of dirty coal would be a
great place to start.
All Hands on Deck!
Many of us have spent years in the UNFCCC bubble, where every
bracket, and every comma (especially the commas) matter. Slowly, though,
we are lifting our gaze and seeing that there is more to action already
occurring on the ground. One concrete
example is right in this COP’s backyard—the Ouarzazate Solar Power
Station. It is one of the world's largest solar thermal power plants. It
will provide renewable energy to more than one million Moroccans. ECO
is impressed by such an innovative project.
This project convinces us that we can learn from the good things
already happening out there. Non-state actors, such as cities and
regions, businesses, and civil society groups are paving the way by
demonstrating ambition and concrete achievements.
Can these “outside processes”, such as Global Climate Action (GCA),
help increase ambition inside these processes?
Another question remains: How can non-state actors help raise
ambitions for the 2018 facilitative dialogue, including leading by
example through setting science-based targets? And how can the efforts
by state actors help to ensure credibility,
ambition and transparency in voluntary initiatives and coalitions under
the heading of GCA?
So-called inside and outside processes are both needed to function
well. Each can enable and assist the other to create virtuous cycles so
that all actors can do more.
ECO and our friends will be exploring these issues at a CAN side
event Tuesday 8 November at 3pm in room Bering. Please join us.
Four Conclusions on BA2016
Now that the Standing Committee on Climate Finance (SCF) has
presented its 2016 Biennial Assessment (BA2016) of climate finance, the
report’s key findings and recommendations are meant to guide negotiators
through the next two weeks’ worth of
climate finance agenda items. ECO finds four items to be particularly
noteworthy:
First, the SCF had the interesting recommendation (probably
inspired by studying the chaotic jungle of past Biennial Reports) that
Parties should be enabled to provide additional information on, you
guessed it, how they have identified finance
as being “climate-specific”. ECO reads this as a finely-worded,
slightly ironic critique of what’s plain for everyone to see: the
current, very lenient reporting system creates the temptation to
overstate the climate-relevance of provided funds. Of course,
ECO is quite sure this would never happen because anyone
would seek to inflate their numbers. But to many it seems like a lot of
work to track down what portion of funds was aiming specifically at
climate action. That’s especially for flows where
climate is one of many objectives. Clearly, tightening these reporting
guidelines should be addressed in the SBSTA negotiations on accounting
modalities.
Second, the BA2016 confirms what every other climate finance
report has said: the continued existence of an ugly imbalance between
adaptation and mitigation in climate finance (with the notable exception
of the UNFCCC funds). The recent $100
billion roadmap released by developed countries highlighted that, in
2020, a mere one-fifth of the total is projected to target adaptation.
The BA2016 confirms that observation. Parties should address this when
negotiating their COP22 decision on long-term
finance. Or perhaps developed countries have some announcement up their
sleeves for next week to do away with that imbalance?
Thirdly, as ECO hears the SCF present its executive summary, ECO
wonders how much the BA2016 will say about finance for loss and damage.
The Biennial Assessment’s next iteration should study such flows, based
on conclusions from the WIM and the
SCF’s work on accounting for loss and damage separately from
adaptation. This should be combined with a proper work plan of at least
two years for the WIM, to understand–and scale up–loss and damage
finance further.
Fourthly, ECO was pleased that yesterday’s panel discussing the
BA2016 also mentioned the role of future iterations of the Biennial
Assessment in understanding progress toward implementing Article 2 c) of
the Paris Agreement: to make all flows–whether
public or private–consistent with low-emissions, climate-resilient
development.
After noting these points of direction, ECO wonders: why not
reserve one chapter of the BA2018 to study fossil fuel subsidies,
including an evaluation on actions taken by countries to remove them?
Consider this something to chew on for those
seriously planning to implement the Paris Agreement.
Moving Transparency in the Right Direction
With transparency coming into focus in the APA, here are three cheat sheet answers to help with the transparency eye chart.
Transparency is a cross-cutting issue and Article 13 has many
facets, making it a complicated piece of the Paris Agreement puzzle. To
deal with this complexity, Parties need a boost of strong modalities,
procedures and guidelines (MPG).
The first step is to build a common and inclusive framework to
enhance effectiveness. This means ensuring all strands of the
transparency framework are tied together with flexibility and in the
context of equity, to account for differing national
circumstances. The MPG must be the leader of the transparency pack on
several fronts. These include the level of action and support for how
Parties implement the commitments, in the context of the cross-cutting
principles reiterated in the Agreement, including
the integrity of ecosystems, human rights and gender equality.
Secondly, non-Party stakeholders can provide a great contribution
to the effectiveness and integrity of the transparency framework.
The modalities, procedures and guidelines should recognise and promote
this role.
Finally, the entire process needs to be complete and ready for
2018. When aiming to reach such an imperative goal, concrete steps must
be taken. Hence extra sessions might be necessary to make this
transparency framework operational for 2018.
Also, it will aid national implementation to be comparable across the
board. Let Marrakech be the constructive conversation that kick starts
this. It’s a continuous journey; but let’s not forget that all marathons
started with a single step in the right direction.
Year of the Turkey
Everyone loves a good COP -- so much so that even though delegates
are roaming around a half-finished conference centre. And although we
don’t know where the 2017, 2018 or 2019 COPs will be hosted, we do know
one thing: 2020 could be Year of
the Turkey.
The Government of Turkey’s bid for the 2020 COP has caught the eye
of some who happened to find themselves wandering around the colourful
pavilions in Area D. It cannot overshadow the awarding of the Fossil of
the Day award for most ironic agenda
item request. Despite having not yet even ratified the Paris Agreement
(like the hundred odd countries that have), yesterday Turkey had the
nerve to ask for an agenda item on financial support under the Paris
Agreement and the Green Climate Fund. Brave, courageous,
audacious—or simply ludicrously out of touch?
Unfortunately, it is possibly the latter, given Turkey’s plans to
support the opening of new coal plants and increase its greenhouse gas
emissions in the near term. Instead of pretending to access financial
support under the Agreement, Turkey
should do the simple 1, 2, 3: ratify, increase ambition in its national
climate action plan and move towards 100% renewable energy.
Linh Do
Editor-in-Chief, The Verb
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