COP21: Seven issues that could make or break the climate agreement in 2015
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By: Leigh Phillips, science popularizer and journalist on European affairs.
In the months leading up to the United Nations Climate Summit in Lima, Peru, in December 2014, a series of developments, many of them unexpected, instilled a sense of cautious yet genuine optimism in the end: the surprise US-China climate agreement; a similar agreement with India involving some elements of clean technology exchange; a European Union (EU) energy and climate plan for 2030 that, while not very ambitious, at least did enough to stay within the scale of emissions reductions needed and thus be within the internationally endorsed two-degree Celsius warming limit.
In 2015, what are the big issues that will make or break a climate agreement in the crucial discussions in Paris at the end of the year, where either a global treaty will be signed or diplomats will have to admit defeat after more than two decades of effort?
Climate finance
The stalemate over finance from developed to developing countries remains, without exception, the biggest challenge in climate diplomacy. The historic impasse over who bears the greatest responsibility for emissions reductions has been broken to some extent with the China-US agreement and the new language of the Lima Call for Climate Action. But these talks almost fell apart amidst outright accusations of colonialism, news that Japan was spending its announced climate money on coal plants in Indonesia, and a climate finance pool that barely amounts to US$2.5 billion over the next four years. Even such money is not new money at all, but is now called financial aid. Australia, for example, announced US$200 million in climate finance in Lima. Every penny of it comes from development assistance that was already committed.
All official estimates have put the cost of effecting the shift in developing countries to a low-carbon growth path at a minimum of hundreds of billions of dollars per year. Yet with a tepid global economy failing to recover properly from the 2008 crisis, rich country governments are simply not going to offer more money as long as austerity is imposed on them at home. Developing countries are no longer focused on financing the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, but rather on financing the “damages and losses” resulting from global warming, but it is not clear that this is an easier way to access rich country resources.
Climate finance may be just an unresolved issue and the poorest countries need to decide how they will respond to such intransigence.
2. The economy
The issue that pushed climate change off everyone's agenda after Copenhagen was the further collapse of the global economy, particularly in Europe. 2015 shows signs of stabilization, especially in the United States, but risks remain. Any significant deterioration - such as a major slowdown, a materialized financial crisis in China or other emerging economies, or panic in the eurozone periphery - could push climate diplomacy even further down the agenda.
On the other hand, the sudden and sharp drop in oil prices in the second half of 2014 is a gift to consumers and businesses, and could be the initial boost the global economy needs after years of economic weakness; it would make paying for climate change adaptation and mitigation, both at home and abroad, a more affordable proposition for all pockets, and thus give the issue of climate change
3. Oil prices
While cheap oil makes climate change more affordable, such fossil fuel use is the real cause of the problem we face. Any prolonged drop in oil prices will drive greater use by consumers and businesses. Already these modest improvements in the global economy were responsible for the highest amount of carbon dioxide being generated in the atmosphere in 2013 since 1984, as reported in September 2014 by the World Meteorological Organization; while global renewable energy capacity in 2013 expanded at its fastest pace ever, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Conversely, economic malaise in Europe makes climate finance less manageable, but also industrial stagnation has been responsible for the EU achieving significant emissions reductions.
Read more: How can falling oil prices boost renewables?
At the same time, cheap oil makes intensive coal mining such as Alberta's Tar Sands less viable, and some such projects have already been cancelled or postponed. But the phenomenon may also hurt incentives to invest in renewables without additional subsidies, and in particular may kill biofuels. Given the increase in carbon emissions from different forms of biofuels, few outside that industry would lose sleep over it. The issue, however, also affects more advanced biofuels research, such as that on algae-based fuels, which does not lead to land-use change-related emissions effects.
Thus, the very development that makes a climate agreement more achievable paradoxically increases the scale of ambition needed. It also highlights the importance of public sector intervention in building infrastructure that can produce energy cheaply enough, ready to compete with low fossil fuel prices, including lots of clean electricity for the presumed upcoming electrification of transport. However, a greater focus on public spending raises projections for the cost of climate finance.
4. Ambition
As a matter of diplomatic courtesy, the UN will only review the climate pledges that nations are due to submit by a non-formal deadline of March 31, and will not monitor whether individual emission reduction commitments are in line with the necessary scale of ambition to stay within the two-degree limit. There is also no agreement on whether these commitments will be legally binding.
A study released earlier this year by the Global Carbon Project shows that the two-degree target is essentially unattainable without a sharp emissions reduction of 5.5% per year over the next 45 years. In a middle ground between maximally fair and maximally unfair sharing of what is left of the carbon pie, only Europe is managing to make adequate reductions. North America should reduce its emissions by 5% per year. Japan, South Korea and Australia by about 5.5%; and China by at least 8.5%. And this is just to reach the 50% odds of avoiding global warming of 2°C. Increase the odds to 66%, and the required rate of global mitigation jumps to 7% per year.
Other research on this “emissions gap” by the United Nations Environment Programme suggests that, given the commitments already announced, we are on track for four degrees of warming. At some point this year will a major player in the climate change landscape appear to announce that the two-degree target is simply unattainable?
However, the emissions reductions already announced are seen as an opening gambit. The question is: by how much are governments willing to increase their ambition over the next year?
5. The U.S. Congress
Any decent global climate agreement needs significant participation from major emitters, such as China and the United States. While the China-US agreement has not signaled a move towards the necessary scale of emissions reductions, it has been a very important step for both nations. In 2015 all attention will be focused on whether these two major powers can at least implement in policy what they have achieved in diplomacy.
Since U.S. President Barack Obama's flagship climate change policy, called the Clean Energy and Security Act, was rejected in 2009 as a result of opposition in Congress, the U.S. leader has shifted strategies and adopted policies that employ executive actions that do not require passage through the U.S. legislature. This largely involves the use of his regulatory power through vehicle efficiency standards and the Clean Air Act to achieve emissions reductions at power plants.
This green perseverance has made the NGOs very happy, but bypassing the legislative process through an executive order has its risks. Republicans in Congress are already investigating how they can block, delay or otherwise undermine regulatory action, for example, by passing legislation that would allow individual states to opt out of the Environmental Protection Agency's mandate until litigation over the issue is resolved, or funding for implementation is limited.
But even more troubling is the reality that regulations alone will not be enough to achieve the 28 percent emissions reductions committed to in the agreement with Beijing. And to do so, the President will have to navigate an opposing Congress. On the bright side, for all their bluster on climate, Republicans have signaled that their priorities for the next Congress will be immigration and health care, issues totally removed from global warming. In addition, polls are consistently showing that public opinion is now in favor of taking more ambitious climate action.
6. China's five-year plan
In contrast, China's commitments under the climate agreement were largely made as part of a pre-existing amount of nuclear, solar and wind infrastructure construction. In that sense, the People's Republic is the only major power committed to the scale of infrastructure transformation needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.
All eyes should now be focused on the next Five-Year Plan, which will be elaborated in the course of 2015. The broad outlines of the Five-Year Plan are currently under consideration for further development during the spring and summer, and then to have a major discussion on the details at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Communist Party Central Committee in the fall. Ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Paris this December, the question will be whether China will up the ante or stay the course already announced. Without any major breakthrough in China's ambition, other powers are unlikely to move forward on their own.
7. Climate change diplomacy
Countries must submit their own reduction pledges this March, rather than distributing them at the UN level, in order for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to review their compliance. This bottom-up approach is likely to be adopted in any final agreement, with states submitting their own plans for emissions reductions, rather than the UN having top-down oversight of targets. Opposing oversight by an independent, unelected body is an understandable defense of national sovereignty, and this approach will make any final agreement easier to get through Congress. But, by definition, this format makes such a document an expression of hope that nations will work to prevent catastrophic climate change, rather than a guarantee that countries will achieve a specific reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by a certain date; a situation that is no different from what we are currently experiencing.
However, between the top-down and bottom-up poles, some parts of the final agreement can be made fixed and legally binding, while others more flexible and changeable, and other parts of the agreement optional and others mandatory. In October, the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions at Arizona State University produced a brief overview outlining the spectrum of structural options for a final agreement. In essence, the trade-off would be between a document with higher ambition but little chance of ratification and lower ambition but greater chance of ratification.
But of course, we have to remember that achieving consensus among 196 countries (and a handful of non-country parties) on a plan that compromises radical and extremely expensive changes to their economies is also perhaps the most arduous and grandiose exercise in maintaining unity ever seen in history. Despite all the mistakes made in the process, even getting this far is already a monument to diplomatic persistence.
Source: COP connection.
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