Daily News 17 Nov 2024

Club of Rome: COP29 “No longer fit for purpose”

Club of Rome have finally noticed the world’s premier climate conferences are being run by petroleum states.

Open Letter on COP reform to All States that are Parties to the Convention

Mr. Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Secretariat and UN Secretary-General António Guterres

November 15, 2024

Excellencies,

We, the undersigned, write today to reiterate and update the call for COP reform, which was first conveyed in our open letter to the UNFCCC Secretariat, dated February 23, 2023.

We recognise the important diplomatic milestones of the past 28 years of climate negotiations. A remarkable consensus has been achieved with over 195 countries having agreed to strive to hold global warming to 1.5°C. We also recognise the key role of the UNFCCC Secretariat in helping to bring all 195 countries along the steps necessary to establish the global policy framework, which is underpinned by the Paris Agreement and its subsequent COP decisions.

Beyond the Paris goals, countries have now agreed to phase out fossil fuels, end inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies, stop deforestation by 2030, operationalise carbon trading globally, and most have joined the Global Methane Pledge. Governments have pledged $100 billion annually to the Green Climate Fund, and the Loss and Damage Fund is officially established.

Despite some of its flaws, and limited resources, the global policy framework is scientifically rigorous and economically sound and complete. But the framework alone is not enough to solve the problems.

Global emissions continue to increase, carbon sinks are being degraded and we can no longer exclude the possibility of surpassing 2.9°C of warming by 2100. Our first encounter with 1.5°C was accompanied by unprecedented human impacts coupled with enormous climate costs running into the hundreds of billions in 2023. Science tells us that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 7.5% annually to have any chance of staying within the 1.5°C threshold, a prerequisite for the stability of our planet and a livable future for much of humanity. In 2024, the task is unequivocal: global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 4 billion tonnes.

28 COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this. However, its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity. This is what compels our call for a fundamental overhaul of the COP. We need a shift from negotiation to implementation, enabling the COP to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure the urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy.

We outline below our suggested measures for reform:

1. Improve the selection process for COP presidencies
We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase out/transition away from fossil energy. Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris Agreement.

2. Streamline for speed and scale
With the global policy map fully developed, COP must shift away from negotiations to the delivery of concrete action. COP meetings must be transformed into smaller, more frequent, solution-driven meetings where countries report on progress, are held accountable in line with the latest science, and discuss important solutions for finance, technology and equity. This work must be supplemented by the benchmarking of national progress using the UN Gap Reports. This approach will accelerate action and allow for timely adjustments based on emerging scientific findings and changing global circumstances.

3. Improve implementation and accountability
The COP process must be strengthened with mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their climate targets and commitments. Whilst the Paris framework was intended to operate in “delivery mode”, it is not working because governments are not held to account to ensure that national action plans align with the latest scientific evidence. The Global Stocktake process is an important start but it must be strengthened with enhanced reporting and benchmarking, rigorous peer-review processes, independent scientific oversight and transparent tracking of pledges and action.

4. Ensure robust tracking of climate financing
A growing proportion of climate financing pledges are now being disbursed as interest-bearing loans, thereby exacerbating the debt burden for climate vulnerable nations. We need standardised definitions and criteria for what qualifies as climate finance, along with common reporting frameworks and tracking mechanisms to verify climate financing flows. All of these measures are critical for rebuilding trust and accountability and for mobilising the necessary resources.

5. Amplify the voice of authoritative science
Whilst the climate COP does rely on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other related bodies, such as the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA), it does not have its own permanent scientific advisory body that is formally part of the COP structure. We share growing concerns that climate COPs do not sufficiently integrate or action up the latest scientific evidence. The CBD COP has its own permanent scientific advisory body, which has provided a technical and scientific underpinning for the CBD. And the same could be replicated within the climate COP.

6. Recognise the interdependencies between poverty, inequality and planetary instability
New research from the Earth Commission and from Earth4All affirms the important linkages between ecological and social change processes. If the climate COP is to be more impactful, it must acknowledge that the current rate of nature loss (e.g. freshwater scarcity, land and soil degradation, pollination decline, ocean pollution) is affecting the stability of the planet. Moreover, planetary stability, now at grave risk, is impossible without decisive action on equality, justice and poverty alleviation. This is why we call for a Climate-Poverty Policy Envoy to ensure that these critical links are anchored in the negotiations and implementation actions, especially through dedicated spaces for vulnerable communities to advocate for these linkages.

7. Enhance equitable representation
Despite the climate COP’s new disclosure rules, a record number of 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access at COP28, nearly four times more than COP27. The fact that there were far more fossil fuel lobbyists than official representatives from scientific institutions, Indigenous communities and vulnerable nations reflects a systemic imbalance in COP representation. Improving the management of corporate interests within COPs proceedings will require stronger transparency and disclosure rules and clear guidelines that require companies to demonstrate alignment between their climate commitments, business model and lobbying activities.

In closing, let us reiterate the important role the UNFCCC has played and will continue to play in ensuring ambition on climate change. There is no doubt that climate change is a global challenge and must be solved through multilateral negotiations alongside ambition at the National level through Nationally Determined Contributions. The Paris agreement and subsequent COP decisions have laid a robust foundation for the global policy framework on climate action. Now, we must work together with urgency and purpose, transforming the climate COP so that it can take strategic, action-oriented and accountable decisions to deliver the scale of ambition commensurate with the defining challenge of our time.

SIGNATORIES
Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Executive Chair, Earth4All and Global Ambassador for the Club of Rome
Prof. Dr. Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Action Research
Ban Ki-moon, former Secretary-General of the United Nations
Mary Robinson, Former President of Ireland
Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Connie Hedegaard, Chair of the Board for the KR Foundation and former EU Former EU Commissioner for Climate Action
Dr. Carlos Nobre, Member of the Joint Steering Committee of the World Climate Research Programme & the Rockefeller Foundation Economic Council on Planetary Health
Dr. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director-General, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Dr. Bertrand Piccard, President, Solar Impulse Foundation
Esmeralda of Belgium, President of the Leopold III Fund for Nature Exploration and Conservation
Maria João Rodrigues, President, Foundation for European Progressive Studies
Youba Sokona, Chair, African Institute for Sustainable Energy and System Analysis and former Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Dr. Arunabha Ghosh, CEO, Council on Energy, Environment and Water
Sharan Burrow, former General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation
Phyllis Cuttino, President and CEO, The Climate Reality Project
Ilona Szabó de Carvalho, Co-founder and President, Igarapé Institute
Eva Zabey, Executive-Director, Business for Nature
Sheela Patel, Director, Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres and Global Ambassador for the Race to Zero and Race to Resilience
Dr. Gunhild A. Stordalen, Co-founder and Executive Chair, EAT
Marie-Claire Graf, Co-Founder, Youth Negotiators Academy & YOUNGO Focal Point COP26
Paul Shrivastava, Co-President, The Club of Rome

Source: https://www.clubofrome.org/cop-reform-2024/

One of my favourite responses to the Limits to Growth was published by The New York Times shortly after the publication of Limits.

You would think after an intellectual blunder like “The Limits to Growth” that they would have changed their name or something, but every so often The Club of Rome still pops their head above the parapet to deliver a doom laden pronouncement, or scold the world for not being run the way they would like it to be run.

via Watts Up With That?

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November 17, 2024 at 04:02AM

Daily News 17 Nov 2024

Why Ed Miliband’s net zero dream is doomed to failure

By Paul Homewood

h/t George Herraghty

Climate summits – with delegates flying in on private jets to discuss reductions in carbon emissions – tend to be hotbeds of irony. But the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – also known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP – has elevated such lack of self-awareness to an art form.

Last year’s event was held in the United Arab Emirates, which holds the world’s seventh-largest reserve of natural gas. Next year’s event will be in Brazil, which recently joined Opec, the cartel of oil exporters.

Ilham Aliyev, the president of this year’s host nation Azerbaijan, opened proceedings in Baku by declaring that fossil fuels are “a gift from God”. The country’s deputy energy minister, who was also the conference’s chief executive, was secretly filmed promoting oil and gas deals on the sidelines.

The British contingent to COP, which included Sir Keir Starmer and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, inadvertently embraced the spirit of the event. The Prime Minister declared that the “single most important” way to hit emissions targets will be to generate more renewable energy.

But back at home, the UK was generating much less renewable energy than normal because the sun wasn’t shining and the wind wasn’t blowing. Northern Europe was labouring though another period now known in energy circles by the German word Dunkelflaute, which roughly translates as “dark doldrums”.

Meanwhile, the Energy Secretary was repeating now-debunked claims about how his plan to deliver clean power by 2030 (five years earlier than the Tories’ plans) will result in cost savings for the average household, while supporters of the UK’s net zero ambitions and sceptics alike have been picking holes in the Government’s proposals.

During a speech in Baku, Starmer said he wanted to restore the UK’s role as “a climate leader on the world stage”. But delegates from the US, China, India, Japan, Australia, Canada, Mexico and the European Union were conspicuous by their absence.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/11/16/ed-miliband-doomed-net-zero-dream-labour/

This section of the article is particularly relevant:

Unreliable weather and neighbours

Last week’s Dunkelflaute was not even the worst this year. Between February 26 and March 8 the capacity factor – the measure of how often turbines generate their maximum power – of the UK’s wind fleet failed to rise above 20 per cent. In fact, as the wind refused to blow, the fleet’s average over the 11 days was just 11 per cent – less than a quarter of what it achieved in the month before and after. It was the longest Dunkelflaute that Britain has experienced in the last decade.

Some six times in the past 30 years, such cold spells with little wind have affected large parts of Europe for a week or more, including areas in which most onshore and offshore wind projects are located, according to analysis by the International Energy Agency.

But there are worries that climate change means wind droughts are becoming frequent. Scientists working for the United Nations’s intergovernmental panel on climate change have forecast that average wind speeds in the UK are expected to drop by up to three per cent by 2050 and by 10 per cent by the end of the century.

Ofgem, the energy regulator, recently approved controversial plans for the building of new undersea interconnector cables that will link the UK to Dutch and Belgian windfarms and combine with existing interconnectors that will give the grid access to Norwegian hydro-electric stations and French nuclear power.

However, critics have pointed out that it is hard to square such reliance with claims of greater “energy security”. They worry what Norwegian and French politicians might do if the interconnectors expose their populations to energy price spikes caused by Dunkelflautes as Europe becomes evermore reliant on wind power.

The think-tank Agora Energiewende believes that, were countries to hit their net zero targets, the proportion of Europe’s electricity coming from renewable sources will rise from 44 per cent now to 96 per cent by 2050. Europe is also set to become more reliant on electricity as households are encouraged to switch from petrol to electric cars and from gas-fired boilers to electric heat pumps. At the moment, electricity meets just over 20 per cent of the continent’s energy demand but this could rise to 70 per cent by 2050.

“You hear people saying: ‘It’s always windy somewhere.’ But European wind speeds are highly correlated,” says Montford. “You frequently get weather systems that are large enough to cover everywhere from here to south of the Sahara.” Scientists and energy experts agree that managing periods of Dunkelflaute and wind drought will therefore require a stepchange in electricity storage.

Costly and untested electricity storage plans

The Royal Society conducted a study modelling solar and wind generation, which used 37 years of weather data, and found that wind droughts lasting days or even weeks would require the UK to develop long-duration electricity storage adding up to “some tens of [terawatt hours]”.

Its numbers, which are based on some fairly optimistic forecasts about what will happen to both costs and efficiencies over the next 25 years, suggest the UK will have to spend the equivalent of the original cost of HS2 on electricity storage each and every year in perpetuity.

The analysis concluded that the amount of storage required is around 1,000 times more than is currently provided by pumped hydro – where water is pumped up to a reservoir and then discharged when needed to drive a turbine – and “far more than could be provided cost-effectively by batteries”, according to the Royal Society.

This is why, according to one climate scientist, “hydrogen is the only game in town” for storing surplus electricity. Electricity from renewable sources can be used to extract hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is then stored and used to fuel a power station when the wind drops.

However, it’s currently pretty inefficient, with something like two-thirds of the electricity wasted during the process. Energy experts also expect much of the low-carbon hydrogen produced in the coming years to be snapped up by energy-intensive industries – such as fertiliser manufacture or steelmaking – which have precious few other options when it comes to cutting their emissions.

A lot now rests on making lithium batteries or hydrogen energy storage a lot more efficient very quickly. “We’re betting the economy on the hope that someone will come up with a viable storage solution,” says Montford. “It’s like jumping out of a plane and hoping someone will invent a parachute on the way down.”

The whole article, which goes on to look at the lack of trained labour and the logistical problems of Miliband’s targets, is well worth a read. (Just switch off you Java-Script to get past the paywall!)

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November 17, 2024 at 03:38AM