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Category: Policy
INDCs – how do the latest climate pledges stack up?
by Alyssa Gilbert, Head of Policy and Translation, Grantham Institute
It is just like some colossally awful house-bidding process. Only here it is not just an attractive three-bed semi-detached residence that is at stake. In the run up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference in Paris in December, each country is submitting its bargaining chip, a so-called Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC).
The levels that countries put forward is part of the complex international climate negotiations – countries are keen to show genuine commitments to climate change action, but very few are willing to rush ahead of other nations. It is a classical prisoner’s dilemma.
Analysts and, quite frankly, those who care about climate change are waiting with bated breath to see what these commitments will add up to. Once each country has stated what it will do, how close will we be to the target of limiting global temperature rise to 2°C?
Announcements of INDCs are coming thick and fast, albeit months after the purported deadline. Last week saw a bumper crop of INDCs from Iceland, Serbia, South Korea and the long-anticipated Chinese contribution. These contributions bump us up to over 55% coverage of current global emissions, and 43% of countries.
So, the good news is, we are starting to see some commitments, but where does this take us? A good step-by-step update, complete with lovely infographic is regularly updated on The Carbon Brief .
The expert analysts at the Climate Action Tracker weigh up each of the INDCs to see what that means for the climate as a whole, and it is not looking good. The majority of countries assessed have commitments, and matching national policies, that fall within the ‘medium’ range – this means that they will not keep us within the 2°C limit.
Assessing the latest INDCs
Looking more specifically at last week’s key announcements, different national approaches give us a flavour of some of the key issues up for debate – the use of markets, the need for effective national policies and the potential and desire to overachieve.
Firstly the markets/no-markets debate. South Korea’s INDC is deemed inadequate by the Climate Action Tracker because it just doesn’t demand steep enough cuts to reduce our carbon envelope. In addition, the challenge of kick-starting a step-change in domestic emissions in this well-developed country will be exacerbated by a heavy reliance on international market-mechanisms, i.e. buying reductions achieved in other countries. Critics of this approach reveal a duality – on the one hand the use of more markets is lauded because it can bring down the global costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, whilst on the other hand, countries can use international markets as a way to avoid action at home.
The verdict on China has revealed a second interesting theme, emphasising that action through national policies is needed to make the INDCs effective. In fact, the Climate Action Tracker notes that China’s national policies fare much better than the overall carbon intensity target – which is a good sign, even if the overall trajectory still only scores a medium. A useful English translation of the China National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (NCSC)’s analysis of the INDC can be found here. This analysis emphasises some of the development, greenhouse gas monitoring (MRV) and other challenges that China will still face in delivering on its INDCs.
The importance of national policies should hit home here in the UK. In the same week as China released its INDCs, the UK’s Climate change Committee (CCC) noted that we are doing well, but not well enough (see report). In the end the INDCs need to translate to solid, effective actions within each individual country. And doing so successfully is far from easy.
For me, the third take home message is, as ever, political. It has been widely reported that the China’s overall INDC target is deliberately loose, to allow for overachievement. Let’s hope other countries rise to the competitive challenge – a race to overachieve would be a great way to try and beat the mediocrity of the current INDC commitments and ensure we meet the necessary level of ambition over the coming years.
Let’s all take a leaf out of China’s book – their INDC represents a challenging trajectory, but they are moving fast…..
The current analysis on the table provides information about just how hard it will be for countries to steer towards their stated goals. I will be a more frequent presence on the blogosphere from now on, pulling together my thoughts on climate change commitment and actions at all levels of government, and in business, in the run up to Paris but also, and more importantly, beyond!
Follow Alyssa on Twitter: @AlyssaRGilbert
Transforming climate change from a threat to an opportunity: Lancet Commission on Health and Climate report launch
by Dr Kris Murray, Grantham Lecturer in Global Change Ecology
Today the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate announced the release of their new report “2015 Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change: Policy Responses to Protect Public Health”.
Following a first report released in 2009, which concluded that “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”, today’s report has a proactive, positive take-home: “tackling climate change could be the greatest global health opportunity of the 21st century.”
Strategically released following the 68th World Health Assembly held last month and in the lead up to the UNFCCC’s COP21, to be held in Paris later this year, the report is the culmination of a second international (predominantly Chinese-European) working group assembled to assess the health impacts of climate change and to identify and accelerate effective mitigation and adaptation policies over the next 5 years.
The report provides 9 recommendations and delivers 1 promise:
- Research, monitor and surveil: improve understanding of adaptation needs and the co-benefits of mitigation actions
- Finance: spend more to create world-wide climate resilient health systems, with richer countries helping the poor to adapt and minimise other impacts
- Energy: reduce cardiovascular and respiratory health impacts from particulate matter and pollutants by phasing out coal, switching to cleaner alternatives (renewables with gas transition phase) and reducing air pollution from the transport, agriculture and energy sectors
- Healthy cities: develop energy efficient buildings, promote low-cost active transport (e.g., biking, walking), create and increase access to green spaces
- Carbon pricing mechanism: get one, a strong, predictable and international one.
- Reliable renewables: increase access to renewables in low and middle –income countries to unlock economic gains and promote health equity
- Count the avoided costs: accurately quantify reduced burden of disease and health care costs and track economic productivity on the path towards a healthy, low-carbon future
- Collaborate: build more and better links between Ministries of Health and other government departments and embed health and climate considerations into all government environmental strategies, e.g., those addressing deforestation, biodiversity loss and ocean acidification
- Global low-carbon agreement: get one, agree on ambitious and enforceable mitigation targets that also allow sustainable development
- Develop a Global Health and Climate Action Countdown to 2030 (a promise from the Commission): provide expertise to help implement mitigation and adaptation policies and monitor, support and communicate progress using appropriate indicators.
Accompanying the launch of the report, the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate are holding a number of events around the world (including London, New York and Canberra), which will include speakers, panel discussions and an opportunity for Q&A from participants. The Health and Environment Alliance will also host a virtual launch event.
While the recommendations are not exactly breaking radical new ground, they do represent a welcome synthesis of the front-line evidence on the health impacts of climate change with a clear focus on solutions (the details of which make up the bulk of the report).
Perhaps more critically, they also crank up the volume of the voice of the health community at a critical time in the climate change arena – a voice that has a formidable track record of achievement in confronting other highly complex, trans-national, politically charged threats to health.
For further comment on the report, see the Lancet website.
A New York take on Sustainable Development: Is it feasible?
By Clea Kolster, PhD student, Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet
The term ‘sustainable development’ was first coined in 1987 in the UN’s World Commission on Environment and Development report, Our Common Future. Almost 30 years later, the concept of sustainable development is more relevant than ever.
The definition given in the report is, to this date, the most widely accepted modern definition of the term: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ Climate and society, energy, water, ecosystem health and monitoring, global health, poverty, urbanization, natural disasters, food, ecology and nutrition – these are some of the main problems that need to be tackled when discussing the possibility of sustainable development. They are all complex problems that require an interdisciplinary and analytical approach. Earlier this year, I joined a group of people doing just that.
On Friday April 3rd 2015, I entered the land of Ivy League elites of Columbia University to take part in the 5th Annual Interdisciplinary PhD Workshop on Sustainable Development. Having been on a year abroad at Columbia University during my undergraduate degree, I knew the spot pretty well and was thrilled about getting the chance to come back as a matured and informed PhD student ready and eager to present my work.
Arriving at the workshop, I struck up a conversation with some of the students around me. I quickly understood that a number of us had made the cross-Atlantic trip, with participants from Denmark, Italy, Sweden, France and even Australia. Students also came from Canada and Mexico, with a large majority attending world-renowned US universities, including Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, UC Berkeley and of course Columbia.
Tackling sustainable development
The highlight of the first day was a keynote speech by American economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University., Sachs has an incredible track record: he is a Quetelet professor (honorary distinction given to Columbia University professors, awarded to only four professors since 1963) of Sustainable Development, special advisor to Ban Ki-Moon, youngest economics professor at Harvard University (age 28), author of three New York Times bestsellers – and the list goes on.
One of the things that engrossed me most was his emphasis on planetary boundaries and the current ideological conflict between growth (mostly economic) and environmental sustainability. Sachs definitely got the whole room thinking about whether or not sustainable development is actually feasible and, for those like myself who desperately want that answer to be positive, what one can do to bring us closer to that goal: a world with sustainable economic, social and environmental objectives.
The rest of the afternoon featured sessions on a variety of topics from natural disasters – including the Venetian example of floods – to urban planning in China and development in India. After a long afternoon of presentations, I got the chance to network and socialize with the students. I met some very interesting individuals, most of whom, contrary to myself, feel as though they are economists before anything else, in spite of an earlier education in engineering.
On the second day, I was due to give my presentation as part of the Energy. In a small room filled with 10-15 other PhD students, all of whom were senior to me, and a few professors, I sat nervously waiting for my turn, beginning to realize that my presentation was clearly going to be one of the most “engineeringy” and technical of all.
I finally gave my 20 minute talk on the “Techno-Economic Analysis of the Link between Above Ground CO2 Capture, Transport, Usage for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and Storage”. I was happy to take some interesting questions at the end of it (which I hoped meant that the audience was actually interested by my topic) and later on at the coffee reception engaged in some stimulating discussions with some of my peers. It was clear that in spite of our dissimilar approaches, we had all contributed to responding to the question of sustainable development and its feasibility.
A look forward
Did you know that 1.4 billion people currently live in a state of extreme poverty at below $1.25/day? In fact, it will take a 4 to 5 time increase in total global output by 2050 to get poor countries to meet the $40,000 per capita income of rich countries today. With figures like these, it isn’t surprising that large groups of individuals around the world dedicate their time to assessing and analyzing the best ways of achieving sustainable development encompassing economic, social and environmental goals.
In my view, sustainable development is feasible, we can tackle climate change, we can reduce our exploitation of natural capital while promoting economic growth, we can bridge the gap between poor and rich countries; the problem is – as Jeff Sachs pointed out – a lack of trust. A lack of trust leads to social and political instability and these will always impede sustainable development around the world.
References
World Commission on Environment and Development – Bruntland Commission. 1987. Our Common Future. s.l. : Oxford University Press, 1987.
Find out more about Clea’s research
Towards a Global Energy Internet
Professor Jo Haigh, Co-director of the Grantham Institute reports back from the Climate Parliament meeting in Lucerne, 12 June 2015.
I have just found a seat on the train from Lucerne to Zurich airport. It is absolutely packed, I suppose, with people going away for the weekend. Staring through the window at the snow-capped mountains, and having spent the day at an inspirational conference set by the beautiful lake, I am wondering quite why anyone would want to leave.
I have been at a meeting of the Climate Parliament. I only learned of this organisation recently but it is rather splendid – a group of legislators from across the world who are concerned about climate change and looking to influence governments to act. Seventy attendees came together to discuss the potential for a Global Energy Internet: an international electricity grid based on regional renewable energy sources.
Attendees were diverse – including MPs from four continents, industrialists, academics and representatives from energy and climate agencies. Simultaneous translation was provided between French, Spanish, Chinese and English, although that can’t have covered all the first languages represented. Fortunately my talk was first up so I could then concentrate on the rest.
The challenges of a global energy grid
For me a highlight was Li Junfeng, Director General of the Chinese National Centre for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, who spoke on China’s energy demands, provision and ambitions for decarbonisation. He spoke of a “solar Silk Road for the 21st century” and noted the need for revolutions in energy production and for technical innovation with international cooperation on R&D in renewables: “Helping China is helping the World” he said.
Lei Xianzhang, of the State Grid Corporation of China, was up next discussing some of the technical issues and describing the construction of new wind and solar plants (grown by factors of 37 and 350 respectively since 2006) as well as very long (thousands of kilometres) high voltage DC transmission cables.
The political and technical challenges which have faced attempts to construct an energy grid across the Middle East and North Africa were elaborated by Tareq Emtairah, Director of the Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency in Cairo. In the absence of an electricity market there has been very little exchange coordinated to date, but the delegates from Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia remained upbeat.
National energy security concerns were foremost in the minds of colleagues from Senegal and Peru. Efforts to connect to international grids were seen as a second priority. I could see their point, but perhaps they were reassured that the proposed networks could be established to the advantage of all.
Damien Ernst, an energy economist from the University of Liège, delivered an inspirational message: his calculations suggest that large scale facilities of solar and wind energy, with long transnational interconnections can provide energy cheaper than fossil fuels. Construct the grid first, he declares, and the incentive to develop renewables will follow.
It is a shame I have to miss tomorrow’s discussions, which will focus on finances and start to develop an action plan, but I have to attend my father’s 90th birthday party. If I live to 90, or 80, or even 75(?) perhaps I will see established an international energy internet. It is a fantastic vision.
UK elections: climate change debate is hampered by neoliberal consensus
By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute
Although both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have pledged to decarbonise the electricity sector by 2030, climate change is unlikely to be a key issue in the run up to the May general election. This reflects a long term decline in political engagement with the problem since the Copenhagen conference in 2009. Although Copenhagen was held in the immediate wake of the global financial crisis, the ongoing recession and drop in living standards have shifted priorities away from tackling climate change. The increasing cost of energy might also have hardened attitudes towards green policies.
However, John Ashton, an independent speaker, commentator and adviser who served as the UK’s Special Representative for Climate Change from 2006 to 2012 says, “Acting on climate change is part of the solution to that problem.
“If you want to make the economy less vulnerable to external shocks, if you want to create new drivers for innovation, improve our infrastructure, deal with the terrible problem of cold homes and vulnerable people dying because of cold in the winter, all of those things; a very serious effort to build a low carbon economy will help with that.”
Politics or policy?
According to Ashton, the current generation of politicians hasn’t “engaged politically with climate change, which is quite a serious criticism. They have treated it as a policy issue; and there’s an enormous difference between politics and policy.
“Policy is about what you do. Given the sense of identity you have as a political movement, a political party, the values you have, the story you have about our country and where it’s going. Given all of that, what are you going to do?
“Politics is not primarily about policy. It is about who we are not what we want to do. It is about the sense of identity itself, the values, the history, the core national story, and how you talk to the country about what all this means for how we feel about ourselves.
“None of the mainstream political parties have done that. Moreover they haven’t understood the systemic nature of the climate problem. You can’t have one set of policies in a silo marked, if you like, ‘energy and climate policies’, and other conflicting policies in a silo called ‘macroeconomic policies’. Climate change is about the energy system, which is at the foundation of the economy. Changing the energy system means changing the growth model, and therefore intervening structurally using macroeconomic tools.”
Dyfunctional politics and the rise of neoliberalism
In recent decades, the traditional differences between the parties have been eroded by the widespread adoption of the neoliberal prospectus, within a framework of neoclassical economics. Ashton says,
“All of the parties have core stories that have been heavily degraded by the sterile doctrines of neoliberalism and the consumer society. So they don’t talk to us very much about who we are, and where we came from, and where we’re going.”
According to Ashton, this state of affairs has precipitated “a collapse of confidence in politics itself, which we’ll see in the election, reflected by the fact that the vote for the major parties will probably be lower than it’s ever been in my lifetime.” The proportion of the vote going to Labour and the Conservatives collectively was 65.9% in 2005 and 67.6% in 2010, down from over 90% in the 1950s.
Ashton continued, “This isn’t a problem of dysfunctional climate politics; it’s a problem of dysfunctional politics. Climate change is not the only thing that we’re not talking about that we would be talking about if we had functional politics.
“Take a different example. A generation ago, Hitler and what he stood for were still fresh in people’s minds. The core political story in Britain and across much of Europe revolved more than it does now around human universality and the need to make sure that the strong look after the weak and vulnerable. We would not then have turned our backs, as we are doing now, on the plight of the refugees drowning every day in the attempt to cross the Mediterranean. Nowadays our leaders still claim the same values but they do not act accordingly. Of course, expediency and narrow self-interest have always to some extent got in the way of moral coherence. But the gap today is wider than it has been for a long time and people sense that.
“Of course climate change is also a question of justice and solidarity, and some of the refugees are being displaced at least partly by what look like climatic stresses. So the Mediterranean example is not entirely separate.
Putting climate change on the agenda
“If we want to bring about the political renewal we need, we must all do more to connect ‘what we want to do’ to ‘who we are’. Those who aspire to lead us particularly need to focus on this. Building a real political conversation about climate change will have to play a part in that.
“If you want to reconnect politics to reality, to the reality that people experience, then climate change is a good thing to talk about. But they [British politicians] haven’t found the language, and there’s no time now, between now and the election, to construct the right language for that.”
So, what can be done to get climate change back onto the political agenda more generally? According to Ashton, the answer doesn’t lie solely in the hands of politicians. Scientists have a key role to play in communicating the implications of climate change.
“You need to have much better communication taking place between the world of knowledge, if you like, science, the place where the Grantham Institute has its roots, and the world of choice which is politics, because these have to be political choices informed by science”, says Ashton,
“I think a challenge for the Grantham Institute is to act as a kind of catalyst and stimulant for the rapid upgrade in the skills we need among scientists to get stuck into that challenge.”
Read our joint policy brief on Climate change priorities for the next UK government
China Energy Outlook 2015
The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog
by Neil Hirst, Senior Policy Fellow, Grantham Institute
China’s Energy Research Institute (ERI) releases an interesting analysis of the prospects for China’s energy production and consumption and CO2 emissions to 2050
Last November’s joint announcement of national climate targets by President Barack Obama and President of China Xi Jinping has framed the preparations for this December’s crucial Paris summit. The US is aiming to reduce its emissions by 26-28% below the 2005 level in 2025. China intends that its CO2 emissions will peak around 2030 and will use best efforts to bring that date forward. Plainly China’s energy and emissions outlook is highly relevant to the global effort to mitigate climate change and to the Paris negotiations.
The Grantham Institute, Imperial College London, is working with China’s Energy Research Institute and the NDRC on a joint project about China’s role in world energy governance. Improving international cooperation on energy policy is a first order requirement for climate mitigation.
Prof Yang Yufeng, who co-leads this project with me, is also lead author of China Energy Outlook and he has just released, through this presentation given a few days ago in Australia, the preliminary findings of its 2015 edition. (He also introduced their Outlook analysis methodology, the China 2050 Energy Calculator, which was developed independently by his team after studying the analysis platforms of other major international institutions, especially including contributions from DECC’s Energy Calculator).
These findings are of exceptional interest for the light that they shed on the questions, opportunities, and difficulties that China faces in trying to bring forward the peaking of its emissions.
From coal to renewables
The Outlook suggests that by 2050 China could represent 18.5% of world GDP. By that time China’s industrial structure will have been transformed, with the most energy intensive primary and secondary industries, which dominate today, giving way to tertiary industries at a higher end of the value chain. By then renewables should compete with coal in the mix of power generation, mainly in the form of onshore wind, photovoltaics, gasified biomas, and city waste. But it is a hard task, for China, to free itself from dependence on coal. Today coal represents 66% of energy supply but, according to the Outlook, even in 2050 it may still have more than a one third share.
Most interestingly, the Outlook also offers alternative “high”, “low”, and “medium” scenarios of when critical functions of energy, coal, oil, and gas consumption, and CO2 emissions, will peak. Coal consumption peaks in 2020 in the low case, 2025 in medium, but not until 2030 in high. CO2 emissions peak in 2025 in low, 2030 in medium (which would meet President Xi Jinping’s minimum target), and 2035 in high. We must all hope that China can find the pathway that brings this peak forward to 2025, or even before. It is tantalising to see that in the low cases coal consumption is close to flat from today and CO2 emissions from 2020.
GDP per person in 2050 ranges from $25,000 to nearly $40,000 – a level that would give Chinese citizens incomes commensurate with current levels in the developed countries. The critical issue in China, as in other parts of the world, will be to implement the low carbon options that also support the high end of the range for living standards.
The Energy Research Institute is a research body and their study does not represent Chinese government policy. Nevertheless, it throws very interesting light on the options for energy policy as perceived form within China. The full China Energy Outlook 2015, when it is published in the next half year or so, will no doubt go into much greater depth. Under the close relations between the ERI and the Grantham Institute, we plan to exchange details of the China energy models, and to work together on further refinements.
The Road to Paris 2015 – the UK’s postition
The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog
This blog post by Samantha Buzzard, a NERC student at the University of Reading, is part of a series on Responding to Environmental Change, an event organised by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded Doctoral Training Partnerships at Imperial (SSCP), and the University of Reading and the University of Surrey (SCENARIO).
See the full list of blogs in this series here.
To conclude the Responding to Environmental Change meeting Matthew Bell, Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change, outlined the position of the UK in relation to climate change and the issues that could be faced at the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21) at the end of this year. At the beginning of his talk he emphasised that the credibility of the Committee on Climate Change depends on properly interpreting the science of climate change and also that the committee should feedback into the scientific community through signalling the gaps in the evidence and determining what research would be most valuable in the long term.
The UK at present
Matthew made it clear that most of the debate in the UK was not whether climate change is happening, but around the uncertainty of the levels of change and its impacts. This was highlighted only a few days ago when David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Milliband made a pre-election pledge to uphold the climate change act, which holds the UK to a statutory 2050 target for emissions reductions. In fact when the act was first introduced in 2008 it received massive cross-party support with only three MPs voting against it.
It is because of this act that Matthew was able to speak to us – it established the Committee on Climate Change as an independent advisor to report back to the government annually on the UK’s progress towards meeting the five year legally binding carbon budgets that the country has been set in order to meet the 2050 emissions target (the Committee also suggest the levels that these five year targets should be set at when they are planned). The Committee also gives an assessment of the country’s adaptation to climate change, ensuring that actions taken are in line with the level of risk expected.
The UK’s 5 year carbon budgets. The UK met the first budget but mostly due to the economic slowdown. (Source Matthew Bell, Committee on Climate Change).
Issues in Paris
There will be many areas under discussion at COP 21, ranging from pledges and the monitoring of them once they are made, support from high to low income countries (both financial and non) and the actions required from ‘international’ sectors such as aviation and shipping.
However, the focus here was on the wider co-benefits of tackling climate change. Matthew stressed that when looking at these issues the Committee have to take into account a range of factors. Although scientific knowledge is key, areas such as technology, the impact of actions upon the competitiveness of UK industry, social circumstances (particularly fuel poverty) and fiscal circumstances all have to be considered. There is a trade-off to be made between the cost of mitigation and how much we are willing to accept risk to ecosystems and certain parts of the planet. Furthermore, there are both benefits and costs of tackling climate change, some of which are outlined below:
Benefits:
- Improved air quality
- More active lifestyles
- Fewer (net) road traffic accidents
- Time savings from reduced congestion
- Less water abstraction
- Improved health from better diet
Costs:
- Landscape impact of renewables
- Hazardous waste (and risk of major incidents) from nuclear
- Road accidents from walking and cycling
- Air quality impacts of biomass for heat
- Airstream quality and upstream fuel impacts of coal carbon capture and storage
Some work has been done to calculate the net impact of tackling climate change but the error bars are large and more work is needed. The current recommendation that the Committee on Climate Change are suggesting would costs less than 1% of the UK’s GDP.
The UK leading into Paris
The UK is currently in a good position leading up to COP21 having met the first of our five yearly carbon budgets – although it must be stressed that this is largely due to the financial crisis and economic slowdown rather than specific policies. There is still a lot to do to meet the 2nd and 3rd targets and the 4th is going to be a very big step down.
A key stage in reaching these targets will be to have a largely decarbonised power sector by 2030. Matthew suggests a highlight for future research could be the wider use of low-carbon heat, for example having this in 15% of homes by 2030. To ensure the success of policies relating to these changes more research also needs to be done into behaviours – what prevents people taking up green actions and determines their reactions to environmental policies?
It was emphasised that we also have a poor evidence base and lack of data for working with the industry and agriculture sectors, so these areas need greater attention in future. Furthermore, despite success in reducing vehicle emissions by a greater amount than expected (due to EU regulation) it will now be even more challenging to reduce them further.
The Committee are due to release a progress report on both adaptation and mitigation in June outlining the key risks to achieving the 2050 carbon target and will also advise on the level of the 5th carbon budget (the 2028-32 budget as these are set 12 years in advance) at the same time COP 21 is taking place in December.
Help in different areas will be important to the Committee this year and well beyond. From scientists better near-term climate models, better monitoring and understanding of the full life-cycle of greenhouse gas emissions and their wider environmental impacts and linking the science of diversity, ecology and evolution to policy debates about climate will all be helpful for the committee’s work. However, this will need to be combined with better understanding of people’s behaviours and gaining the optimal balance between adaptation and mitigation, as well as understanding the best timing and level (local, regional or national) at which to apply measures.
Watch a video of the talk on our YouTube channel.
The Post-2015 Goals: Environmental Sustainability, Science and Development
By Bora Ristic, Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet DTP student
This week, the next round of UN negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are under way in New York. The SDGs aim to coordinate and promote development across the world in critical areas, including health, education, governance, and environment amongst others. Imperial College PhDs (myself included) recently exchanged ideas with David Hallam from the Department for International Development about his current work on the SDGs to be agreed later this year. The talk centred on how this ambitious global development effort could be successful and, very broadly, what role science and the environmental research being conducted at Imperial can play.
Too many targets?
The UK holds the position that there are too many goals and too many targets currently under discussion. The 17 goals and 169 associated targets are not easily memorable to put it mildly. David argued that development agencies cannot do all at once, and will inevitably prioritise some goals and targets over others. Such prioritizing can reduce the impact of the SDGs as the easier options may be chosen over the harder ones.
On the other hand, a set of easily communicable goals and targets could mean oversimplification – once again lowering their effectiveness. These goals, after all, reflect what every UN member sees as the ends any society should pursue. Clearly a delicate balance must be struck between a manageable list and the inclusion of many different concerns.
Science and the SDGs
Science plays an integral role in these policies. Science can determine baseline values, measure current performance, and determine policy effectiveness against these. It can help in identifying the particular barriers to achieving goals and also elucidate means for removing them, such as the knowledge and the innovations that can feed the world sustainably and provide it with low-carbon energy.
For science to do any of this however, there must be communication between development needs and the research conducted. DfID uses a tendering method for its outsourced research needs and this could be applied more broadly. It is still important to have fundamental research, but the relevance of research to needs could be improved if funding criteria target the SDGs.
Limits of Science
Limitations to the application of science to the development agenda also exist. Scientists are trained in assessing uncertainty in their measurements and predictions. However, uncertainties are often misunderstood by the general public and are unpalatable to decision makers who push for clear answers.
Uncertainty is not the only limit to what science can deliver for development. Science often is simply trumped by political considerations in policy making. For example, the UNFCCC target of keeping global warming under 2°C was not determined by science, but by negotiations taking science into account. This is related to the question of weighting the interests of the disadvantaged duly and brings us to the main challenge posed for the application of science to development.
Science and Values
The SDGs, and development in general, deal with fundamental questions of value. What is development about? Do we want wealthy people? Healthy people? Educated in which way? Development is always driven by a sense of fairness or dignity or other values. We need environmentally friendly economies because people are suffering and we should help those in need (or at least not harm them). More ambitiously, we may consider the interests of future generations or the environment itself as imposing duties on us. So, how can science, with its objectivity, help us in this normative terrain?
While the interplay between science and values is hotly contested, one philosopher of science, Otto Neurath, saw science as a “a social practice – a discursive formation with emancipatory potential.” Science is influenced by social interests and projects but its choice of subject for investigation can deliver beneficial outcomes to human or non-human well-being. Such a conception of science as a sort of discourse ‘format’ could be applied to the development of the SDGs. With it, we would limit ourselves to the consideration of measurable well-being as targets for goals. This may enable easier communication between diverse perspectives, and may lead policy to deliver tangible results more readily.
Achieving the SDGs
There was also substantial discussion on practical steps for achieving the goals and targets. As with research funding, the work of development agencies and their staff could be assessed on the basis of the SDGs.
In terms of the negotiating process, a promising approach that is being adopted in the climate negotiations is one which calls for countries to report their nation’s intended contributions in advance of substantive negotiations. Coordinating bodies can then calculate the total individual measures in advance and determine if together they would meet the targets. Gaps can then be identified and parties called upon to address them. Secondly, instead of countries arguing they will not take ambitious measures until other parties do so, such an advance announcement creates competition between parties for the best measures.
As with any international effort, the SDG process suffers from the lack of a higher authority to ensure ambition and compliance. The anarchic setting of international agreements means parties can only deal in the currencies of goodwill and reputation. Preview and review processes, coupled with a scientific mind-set such as we have discussed above, could help to develop and achieve ambitious but feasible goals in such a setting.
We are extremely grateful to David for his visit and the fruitful conversation he made possible.
Who’s responsible for tackling climate change? – COP 20 outcomes
By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute
An agreement produced by the 20th Conference of the Parties in Lima, Peru, noted ‘with grave concern’ that countries’ current pledges on emissions reductions are insufficient to keep global temperature rise within either 2°C or 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels. This is indeed a serious concern because temperature changes of just a few degrees are enough to change the climate significantly. Rising sea levels, melting mountain glaciers and polar ice caps and increases in extreme precipitation have already been observed. These trends will continue with ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, and it is expected that we will continue to see an increase in extreme high sea levels, an increase in the intensity of the heaviest rain, and changes in the global distribution of rainfall.
The Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have until March 2015 to provide updated emissions pledges. The 1994 UNFCCC protocol aims to achieve the ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’. The protocol made it clear that countries have ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’, implying that developed nations who are responsible for historical emissions should make the deepest cuts. An agreement drafted during COP 20 added the phrase ‘in light of different national circumstances’. The new deal to some extent blurs the distinction that has existed between developed and developing nations. However, it remains to be seen exactly how the responsibility to reduce emissions will be spread between different countries.
China’s per capita emissions are now at EU levels, but when total cumulative emissions of greenhouse gases are taken into account – carbon dioxide is long lived in the atmosphere so the total emissions over time are what matter – the five countries most responsible for global warming on a per capita basis are the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Russia and Germany. When countries are ranked by their absolute contribution to global warming so far, the top five are the United States, China, Russia, Brazil and India, and the United Kingdom is number seven on the list. Of course, the reason for the United Kingdom’s high ranking on both these lists because it industrialised early. Different studies disagree on the exact ranking, but on a per capita basis the developed nations bear most of the responsibility for the temperature increases we have already seen. Nevertheless, there is increasingly a need for the richer developing nations to take some action as well.
The coming months are a critical time for the global climate change negotiations. There have already been encouraging signs: the United Kingdom and the EU have led the way with ambitious pledges, and China and the United States have taken a positive step forward with their recent bilateral agreement. However, more needs to be done. It is right that the United Kingdom and the EU are leading the way on this, but it is also vital that the political will remains to tackle climate change as we move into a crucial stage of the negotiations. Action is urgently needed – in order to avoid temperatures rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, global emissions should peak by 2020. Delaying the peak in emissions until 2030 will increase the costs of taking action and make it very difficult to keep to this target. Meeting the 2°C target will require the leaders of the developed world to continue to increase the level of ambition over the coming months.
Climate change: positive messages on the international scene
By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute
This blog forms part of a series addressing some of the criticisms often levelled against efforts to mitigate climate change.
The Twentieth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 20) – the latest in a series of meetings of the decision making body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change –began in Lima this week. Many in the media are quick to point to the difficulty of obtaining international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and to denounce COP 15, which took place in Copenhagen in 2009, as a failure. Far from being a failure, the Copenhagen meeting paved the way for future climate change action. World leaders agreed ‘that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time’ and emphasised their ‘strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’, and it was agreed that ‘deep cuts in global emissions are required’. The Copenhagen accord also said that a new Copenhagen Green Climate Fund would be established to support developing countries to limit or reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change.
The last objective is in progress: the green climate fund was set up at COP 16, held in Cancun, Mexico in 2010, and several major countries have pledged money. Japan has pledged $1.5 billion, the US has pledged $3 billion, Germany and France have pledged $1 billion each, the UK pledged $1.13 billion and Sweden pledged over $500m. This brings us close to the informal target of raising $10 billion by the end of the year. The goal is to increase funding to $100 billion a year by 2020. There have also been several smaller donations. This is a key step in tackling climate change, because the gap between developed and developing countries in their ability to respond to climate change and their level of responsibility for causing the problem must be addressed.
Obtaining international agreement to reduce emissions is a real challenge. It is not surprising that it is difficult to reach consensus on a course of action between a large range of different countries at different stages of development who bear differing levels of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions to date: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has 196 Parties. However, there has been significant progress towards global emissions reductions, led by the EU, China and the US.
UK commitments
Prior to the Copenhagen COP, the UK Climate Change Act was passed in 2008, and contains a legally binding commitment to reduce UK emissions by at least 80% on 1990 levels by 2050. In addition, the UK Committee on Climate Change has recommended an emissions reduction of 50% on 1990 levels by 2025 in order to meet the longer term target. Some have argued that by taking unilateral action, the UK put itself at risk of losing out economically to countries that had not made such pledges. Competitiveness concerns have been evaluated by the Committee on Climate Change, the body set up as part of the Climate Change Act to advise the UK government on emissions targets. The committee found that ‘costs and competitiveness risks associated with measures to reduce direct emissions (i.e. related to burning of fossil fuels) in currently legislated carbon budgets are manageable.’ Continued support from the EU emissions trading scheme may be needed in the 2020s, but this depends on progress towards a global deal.
By making this commitment the UK has been able to enter into negotiations with other countries from a position of strength. The UK is one of the leading historic emitters of carbon dioxide – it is, of course, the sum total of our emissions beginning in the industrial revolution that will, to a good approximation, determine humanity’s impact on the climate, not the emissions in any given year – and therefore it is right that the UK took the lead by making this commitment. Had we not made such a pledge, it would have put us in a more difficult position when negotiating with other countries, particularly those still on the path to development.
EU pledges
The UK is not now acting alone – other major countries have recently made significant emissions reduction pledges. The recent European Council agreement that the EU should cut emissions by 40% on 1990 levels by 2030 represents a step forward. It was decided that all member states should participate, ‘balancing considerations of fairness and solidarity.’ It was also decided that 27% of energy consumed in the EU should be from renewable sources by 2030, and a more interconnected European energy market should be developed to help deal with the intermittency of renewable sources of energy.
The EU target is still not quite as ambitious as the UK target. However, this latest EU agreement is a significant step in the right direction and demonstrates that international cooperation on a large scale is possible, albeit within a body like the EU with pre-existing economic ties. In addition, it generally costs more to cut emissions the faster the cuts are implemented. If the world is genuine in its commitment to tackling climate change, very significant emissions reductions are ultimately required, and delaying action means having to cut emissions more quickly at a later date – at a higher cost. In addition, the Committee on Climate Change found that despite short term increases in electricity prices, early action means that UK electricity prices are projected to be lower in the medium term compared to a fossil fuel intensive pathway, assuming there is an increase in the carbon price in the future.
China and the US
A recent development is the bilateral agreement between China and the US. China stated that its emissions would peak by 2030, by which time the country aims to get 20% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources, and the US pledged to reduce its emissions by 26%-28% on 2005 levels by 2025. Some have suggested that the agreement does not go far enough because China’s emissions will continue to rise until 2030 under the deal, and the US target is not as stringent as the EU or UK targets. However, these pledges coming in the lead up to Lima from the two largest emitters globally are hugely significant, and pave the way for further progress. China has already made significant progress in reducing the energy intensity (energy per unit of GDP) of its economy: the 11th Five Year Plan, covering the period 2006-2010 aimed to reduce energy intensity by 20%, and achieved a reduction of 19.1%. Despite some disruption to the energy supply, this success in meeting the target demonstrates the Chinese government’s track record of achieving its objectives on green growth. The current five year plan aims to cut energy intensity and carbon intensity (carbon emissions per unit of GDP) by a further 16% and 17% respectively on 2010 levels by 2015. It is right that developing countries should be able to grow their economies – China’s per capita GDP is still relatively low – and this has to be balanced with climate change targets.
The EU, China and the US together accounted for just over half of total global carbon dioxide emissions in 2013. Their pledges demonstrate that smaller groups of countries made up of the major emitters can make a difference without waiting for far-reaching international agreement on emissions reductions. Their willingness to act also has the potential to spur other industrialised countries into reducing their own emissions. More action is still needed, but there has been significant progress since the Copenhagen conference, which should pave the way for more ambitious pledges.
Why subsidise renewable energy?
by Ajay Gambhir, Grantham Institute
This blog forms part of a series addressing some of the criticisms often levelled against efforts to mitigate climate change.
It is often claimed that intermittent renewable sources of electricity (mainly wind and solar photovoltaics), are too expensive, inefficient and unreliable and that we shouldn’t subsidise them.
What are the facts?
Last year, governments spent about $550 billion of public money on subsidies for fossil fuels, almost twice as much as in 2009 and about five times as much as they spent subsidising renewables (IEA, World Energy Outlook 2014). This despite a G20 pledge in 2009 to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” that “encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.
Reducing the cost of renewables
There is a key reason why it makes sense to subsidise the deployment of renewable energy technologies instead of fossil fuels. They are currently more expensive than established fossil fuel sources of power generation such as coal- and gas-fired power stations, because the scale of the industries that produce them is smaller and because further innovations in their manufacture and deployment are in the pipeline. As such there needs to be a period of translating laboratory-stage innovations to the field, as well as learning and scaling-up in their manufacture, all of which should bring significant cost reductions. This is only likely to be possible with either:
- a) a long-term, credible carbon price at a sufficient level to make the business case for developing and deploying renewable energy technologies instead of CO2-emitting technologies; or
- b) some form of subsidy in the short to medium term, which creates a market for these technologies and provides businesses operating in a less-than-certain policy environment with the incentive to build industrial scale manufacturing plants to produce them (ever more economically as scale and learning effects take hold).
Unfortunately, there is unlikely to be a long-term, credible and significant (“long, loud and legal”) carbon price anytime soon, given the immense political lobbying against action to tackle climate change, and the lack of global coordinated emissions reduction actions, which means any region with a higher carbon price than others puts itself at risk of higher energy prices and lost competitiveness. Whilst subsidies are also likely to raise energy prices, their targeting at specific technologies (often under some fiscal control such as the UK’s levy control framework) means they should have less overall impact on prices. In addition, subsidies have helped to put some technologies on the energy map faster than a weak carbon price would have done and have given a voice to new energy industries to counter that of the CO2-intensive incumbents.
Nevertheless, subsidies should not remain in place for long periods of time, or at fiscally unsustainable levels. Unfortunately some countries, such as Spain, have fallen into that trap, with an unexpectedly high deployment of solar in particular leading to a backlash as fiscal costs escalated, rapid subsidy reductions and the stranding of many businesses engaged in developing these technologies. Germany’s subsidy framework for solar, with its longer term rules on “dynamic degression” levels (which reduce over time depending on deployed capacity in previous years) has proven a better example of balancing the incentive to produce and deploy new technologies with the need to manage fiscal resources carefully (Grantham Institute, 2014).
Reaching grid parity
Fortunately, the price of solar and onshore wind has fallen so much (through manufacturing and deployment scale-up and learning that the subsidies were aimed at in the first place) that they are now approaching or have achieved “grid parity” in several regions – i.e. the same cost of generated electricity as from existing fossil fuel electricity sources. Analysis by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute shows that solar PV, even in its more expensive form on houses’ rooftops, will approach the same level of electricity generation cost as (hard) coal and gas power stations in Germany within the next decade or so, with onshore wind already in the same cost range as these fossil fuel sources. Subsidies should be phased out as the economics of renewables becomes favourable with just a carbon price (which should be set at a level appropriate to reducing emissions in line with internationally agreed action to avoid dangerous levels of climate change).
It’s important to note that grid parity of electricity generation costs does not account for the very different nature of intermittent renewables compared to fossil fuel power stations, which can very quickly respond to electricity demand peaks and troughs and help ensure that electricity is available as required. For example one common contention is that for every unit of solar capacity in northern latitudes, significant back-up of fossil fuel generation (most often gas turbines, which are quick to ramp up) is required to meet dark winter peak demand in the evenings. Indeed, analysis by the US Brookings Institute based on this principle (as given much publicity in The Economist in July 2014) suggested this would make solar PV and wind much more expensive than nuclear, gas and hydro power.
Unfortunately, and as reflected in the published responses to the Economist article, this analysis has proven to be too simplistic: not accounting for the fact that wind and solar provide complementarities since the wind often blows when the sun’s not shining; that electricity grids can span vast distances (with high voltage direct current lines) which effectively utilise wind and sunlight in different regions at different times; that there is a great deal of R&D into making electricity storage much cheaper; that electricity networks are going to become “smarter” which means they can more effectively balance demand and supply variations automatically; and that the costs of these renewable technologies are coming down so fast that (particularly in the case of solar) its economics might soon be favourable even with significant back-up from gas generation.
In summary, the world is changing, electricity systems are not what they once were, and there is a very sound economic case for meeting the challenge of climate change by deploying low-carbon renewable electricity sources. It is encouraging to see that there has been a rapid rise in the deployment of these technologies over the past decade, but more needs to be done to ensure that the low-carbon world is as low-cost as possible. This means supporting and therefore continuing to subsidise these critical technologies to at least some extent.
References
International Energy Agency (2014) World Energy Outlook 2014
Statement from the G20 in Pittsburgh, 2009, available at: https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/Pittsburgh_Declaration.pdf
Grantham Institute, Imperial College London (2014) Solar power for CO2 mitigation, Briefing Paper 11, available at: https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange/Public/pdfs/Briefing%20Papers/Solar%20power%20for%20CO2%20mitigation%20-%20Grantham%20BP%2011.pdf
Fraunhofer Institute (2013) Levelized cost of Electricity: Renewable Energy Technologies, available at: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/veroeffentlichungen-pdf-dateien-en/studien-und-konzeptpapiere/study-levelized-cost-of-electricity-renewable-energies.pdf
The Economist (2014a) Sun, Wind and Drain, Jul 26th 2014, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21608646-wind-and-solar-power-are-even-more-expensive-commonly-thought-sun-wind-and
The Economist (2014b) Letters to the editor, Aug 16th 2014, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/letters/21612125-letters-editor
Paterson misses the point
By Dr Simon Buckle, Grantham Institute
Owen Paterson’s remarks on the UK response to climate change miss the point. I do not disagree with him that the UK decarbonisation strategy should be improved. In particular, there is a need for a more effective strategy on energy demand. However, my preferred policy and technology mix would be very different to his and include the acceleration and expansion of the CCS commercial demonstration programme in order to reduce the energy penalty and overall costs of CCS. And without CCS, there is no way responsibly to use the shale gas he wants the UK to produce in the coming decades for electricity generation or in industrial processes, or any other fossil fuels.
However, these are second order issues compared to his call for scrapping the 2050 targets and the suspension of the UK Climate Change Committee. On current trends, by the end of the century, the surface temperature of our planet is as likely as not to have increased by 4°C relative to pre-industrial conditions. The present pause in the rise of the global mean surface temperature does not mean we do not need to be concerned. We are fundamentally changing the climate system, raising the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts on society and the natural systems on which we all depend.
A cost-effective policy to limit these very real climate risks must be based on concerted, co-ordinated and broad-based mitigation action. This is needed to deliver a substantial and sustained reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions, which continue on a sharply rising trajectory. The best way to create the conditions for such action by all the major emitting economies – developed and developing, in different measure – is through the UN negotiation process, supplemented by bodies such as (but not confined to) the Major Economies Forum. The focus of this process is now on achieving a deal covering emissions beyond 2020, due to be finalised at the Paris summit at the end of next year.
There are encouraging signs of progress, e.g. in both the US and China, and the EU is due to agree its own 2030 targets at the end of this month. But the process is difficult and protracted. I agree with Paterson that 2050 is not the be all and end all. I have argued here that the Paris talks should focus on how the next climate agreement can help us collectively to achieve a global peak in emissions before 2030, the first necessary step to any stringent mitigation target, rather than trying to negotiate a deal covering the whole period to 2050.
If Paris is a success, we might then re-assess whether or not the UK’s current mitigation targets are adequate or not. But we are rapidly running out of time to achieve what the world’s governments profess to be their aim of limiting global warming to at most 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The longer we delay mitigation action, the more difficult that challenge will be and the more expensive. At some point soon it will become impossible in practical terms.
Given its leadership on this issue over many decades, UK action to scrap the Climate Change Act and/or suspend or abolish the Climate Change Committee would be severely damaging. Seeking short-term domestic political advantage – which is what this move appears to be – through recommendations that would undermine national, European and international efforts to limit climate risks is irresponsible. Sadly, this seems to be what the so-called political “debate” in the UK has been reduced to.
2°C or not 2°C – should we ditch the below 2°C target for global warming?
By Professor Joanna Haigh, Co-Director, Grantham Institute
A commentary published in Nature this week has opened up a discussion about the value of using the goal of keeping global warming to below 2°C.
David Victor and Charles Kennel are concerned that the below 2°C target for global warming is not useful, partly because they consider it is no longer achievable and partly because global mean surface temperature does not present a full picture of climate change. The problem comes, of course, in identifying an alternative approach to establishing what is required from attempts to mitigate global warming.
The 2 degree target is in a sense nominal, in that it there is no precise threshold at which everything goes from bearable to unbearable, but it does have the advantage of being easy to understand, for both policy makers and the wider public . The proposed alternative indicators, including ocean heat content and high latitude temperature, have scientific validity but the implications of changes in these parameters may not be obvious to people living away from these areas. Furthermore, monitoring any measure on a real time basis will not avoid the intrinsic variability seen in the global temperature record. Ocean heat content shows an apparently unremitting upward trend at present but a climate change denialist would have been happy to point out a “hiatus” in that trend during the 1960s.
Victor and Kennel also state that “the 2°C target has allowed politicians to pretend that they are organizing for action when, in fact, most have done little”. This criticism would apply to any target – providing it is still at such sufficient distance to remain broadly plausible – and their proposal for “a global goal for average [greenhouse gas] concentrations in 2030 or 2050” would provide equal opportunity for prevarication.
According to a review of recent emissions reduction modelling studies conducted for the AVOID 2 programme co-authored by Ajay Gambhir of the Grantham Institute, it is still possible to meet the 2 degrees C target, provided that a broad portfolio of technologies is available and that there are no significant delays in global coordinated mitigation action. A continuation of relatively weak policies to 2030, or the absence of specific technologies such as carbon capture and storage, could however greatly increase mitigation costs and in some models render the target unachievable.
Nevertheless, Victor and Kennel are right to point out the problems with the current over-simplistic approach and I hope that their initiation of a search for “indicators of planetary health” will spur someone to invent a useful new measure for monitoring and assessing climate change.
Read more about Grantham Institute research on climate mitigation
Reflections on the UN Climate Summit in New York
By Dr Simon Buckle, Grantham Institute
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”
Climate change was not, so far as I know, one of the issues that Shakespeare wrote about, despite plays like “The Tempest” or (for the sceptically minded) “Much Ado about Nothing”. But King Henry V’s lines in Act III of the play of that name could have been written for the UN Secretary General to deliver at the Climate Summit in New York on 23 September where, with the help of a VIP cast, he in effect also urged us to “stiffen the sinews” to address one of the defining issues of our age. And he was right to do so.
Without concerted and sustained action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the major emitting economies and across various sectors, climate risks will continue to grow to potentially catastrophic levels. Thirteen of the 14 warmest years on record have occurred during the 21st Century. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are growing rapidly. And on current trends, the average surface temperature of the planet is likely to be some 4 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of the century.
There is increasing evidence that action on climate change is compatible with continued economic growth and development. Indeed, one could argue that it is a prerequisite. The recent Calderon report illustrates that in many cases action makes sense even in narrow economic terms and highlights the opportunities for action on cities, land use and energy. While undoubtedly there will be losers as well as winners from a transition to a low-carbon economy, this fact has always been true of the major economic and social transformations that have shaped our world.
The point is that, unless we act, there is a real risk that humankind will face a far worse future than its recent past. Financial investors see these risks – that’s why global investors representing US$24 trillion of assets have just called on “governments to develop an ambitious global agreement on climate change by the end of 2015. This would give investors the confidence to support and accelerate the investments in low carbon technologies, in energy efficiency and in climate change adaptation.”
I must admit, the analogy with Henry V is not perfect for (at least) two reasons. First, the venue for the 2015 climate summit that is meant to finalise this new global agreement is Paris. Some six hundred years after the famous battle at Agincourt, I hope preparations for the summit will be marked by excellent co-operation between the UK and France, at all levels!
Second, an all out fight between the developed and the developing world must be avoided. Clearly, whatever agreement is reached in Paris will have to address the diversity of nations and developing country concerns about finance and technology. But the scale of the problem is now such that there can be no rigid divide between the developed and the developing worlds. We will all have to work together if we are to achieve the peak in global emissions in the next ten to fifteen years or so, which is the first necessary step in reducing climate risks.
An international agreement between governments on its own will not be sufficient however. Action needs to be taken at all levels – city, sub-national, national and regional – and across sectors. To quote from the Calderon report, this will only happen if governments provide “consistent, credible, long-term policy signals”. Well-designed policies can drive resource efficiency, create the conditions for investments in low-carbon, resilient infrastructure and stimulate innovation in the technologies we need and the new business models and social practices that will drive this generational transformation to a low-carbon world.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more”…