Category: Previous Issues Articles

ECO is immensely disappointed Japan’s draft INDC yesterday. Japan is only planning to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26% by 2030 compared to 2013 levels. This is just an 18% reduction compared to 1990 levels. It is unacceptable to disguise this weak target by changing the base year from 1990 to 2013, and ignore mitigation efforts made by other countries since 1990.

Unbelievably, Japan insists that the target is in line with the long term goal of “50% reduction globally and 80% reduction in developed countries by 2050” — without further explanation.

Worse still, Japan refused to admit that an 80% reduction by 2050 was already endorsed by the government back in 2010. But an analysis seen by ECO shows this “inflated 26% target” will definitely not lead to an 80% reduction by 2050 for Japan.

Japan’s climate target stems from poor energy policy, as it assumes only 10GW wind power and 74GW solar power by 2030. These values reflect the bare minimum rather than a truly aspirational target.

At the same time, Japan’s target assumes 20-22% of total electricity will be sourced from nuclear power, despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster. This percentage cannot be fulfilled without extending the operation of old nuclear power plants to 60 years and/or building new nuclear plants.
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SB42 has recently seen the presentation of new LULUCF rules analysis in a forthcoming report on global impacts of biomass. It unfortunately reveals that large quantities of emissions are going missing under the existing accounting system.

Several flaws in the current rules have resulted in instances where no country accounts for the emissions generated by the combustion of trees for energy. The assumption that biomass is carbon neutral has been debunked by an ever-growing body of scientific evidence. But there’s an additional problem: biomass is still assumed to be carbon neutral in the energy sector because of a second persisting assumption that emissions will be accounted for in the land-use sector.

But this is clearly wrong. Under the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, countries can opt for business-as-usual baselines with their forest management. This means any emissions built into their projections, including from biomass harvests, don’t get counted. All that gets counted is what goes above the projected baseline.

Countries that are not part of the KP second commitment period, such as the US, don’t account for any of their land-use change, and this means that biomass wood pellets, let’s say exported from the US to the UK, won’t be accounted for in the US land-use sector nor in the UK energy sector.
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Let’s be real, why do you need to have a ‘proper consultation’ with your delegation on the Kyoto Protocol when it doesn’t even apply to you? ECO knows that you want to rely on your inserted brackets for the second commitment period of the KP, but let’s just accept that it’s time to move forward!

The use of assigned amount units (AAUs) from the previous Kyoto period was a stepping stone for agreeing on rules for the this commitment period. That was a massive headache for all of us! Do you remember the Fossil award that you received together with Ukraine and Russia? Why would you want to potentially repeat that in Bonn?

It took 6 months for Ukraine to clean up their mistakes and agree on the wording of the modalities for the second commitment period. While Ukraine delivered on its obligations, it doesn’t seem all that prepared for this session.

AAUs from the first commitment period really shouldn’t be an issue for you. Let’s stop adding brackets to the Kyoto guidelines and give them a chance to be adopted in Paris.

Dear Negotiators…

The Long Term Goal (LTG) has been getting a lot of splash in the past month, with the business community, investors, and others sending a strong signal that the LTG is a key element for the Paris agreement. ECO couldn’t agree more.  The problem is that there are so many formulations to the LTG that it’s confusing everybody.

First, let us agree that the real LTG: is the ultimate objective of the Convention (Article 2), and alongside that is the politically agreed 2°C temperature goal. The problem is that both of these mean different things to different people, so one challenge for us in Paris is to actually operationalise and put them in a language that everyone understands.

The ultimate objective of the Convention refers to stabilising GHG concentrations; to do so requires achieving zero GHG emissions. The question is when this must be achieved in order to avoid catastrophic impacts from climate change. And when we talk about the 2°C goal, are we aiming to achieve that with a probability of 90%, 66%, or something less, and what kind of trajectory will we follow?

Having clarified what we need to achieve and why, let us now talk about substance and text.
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Today will see Switzerland, the EU and Norway take the stage: we salute you for being the first ones to submit your INDCs, and for having the guts to step up to this Q&A session.

Switzerland

Switzerland was the first country to submit an INDC. It plans to reduce emissions by 50% from 1990 levels by 2030, with 30% to be achieved domestically, and the rest through offsets. It’s turned to the same approach with the long-term target, using offsets again. Which is far from clever! If the whole world needs to decarbonise by mid-century, what makes Switzerland think there will be enough offsets available? In any case, it really doesn’t make sense to spend your money on offsets. Those need to be bought year after year, it makes much more sense to just achieve your reductions independently which brings jobs and other co-benefits. And could you kindly specify the amount of offsets in tonnes, and clarify your responsibility to provide finance for mitigation and adaptation abroad? Then there’s the question of how non-forest land emissions can be accounted as zero…

EU

The EU a.k.a the first major economy to submit its INDC, where it commits to at least 40% emission reduction from 1990 levels by 2030.
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ECO imagines that negotiators have spent the night looking for gems in the Geneva text’s finance section in order to prepare smart interventions for today’s informals. This will not have been in vain. The text contains everything needed to build a robust framework for the provision of financial support in the Paris agreement.

All countries should contribute their fair bit to shift financial flows, public and private, away from dirty fossil fuels and towards renewable energies and energy efficiency. And to be clear, developing countries will require support for this ‘shifting of the trillions’ exercise.

Another good idea found in the text involves periodically setting collective targets for the provision of this financial support. After all, if the Paris agreement is to include contribution/commitment cycles for mitigation, it makes a lot of sense to organise financial support around similar cycles. Separate targets would be set for mitigation and adaptation funding, not only because the nature of support required for each differs, but also to ensure that sufficient support is provided for adaptation, which has been terribly neglected up to now.

The text’s next promising piece is its emphasis on needs assessments. There are numerous references that support should meet developing countries’ needs.
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International shipping and aviation generates approximately 5% of global CO₂ emissions. Massive growth rates in carbon pollution are anticipated for both sectors (50-250% for shipping and 270% for aviation by 2050). Without strong mitigation action in these sectors, we may lose any chance of staying below the 2°C goal. Whilst almost all other sectors and countries are discussing their commitments to the effort to keep global warming below 2°C, international aviation and shipping’s commitments are nowhere to be seen. What ECO heard from the IMO in SBSTA today does not comfort us that either sector is acting ambitiously enough or fast enough.

International shipping is the only sector that does not even acknowledge the need for absolute emission reductions or have a process in place to agree on such a target. In fact, only last month, the IMO turned down a proposal by the Marshall Islands to begin such a process. Its review of this suggestion took just 90 minutes, even though the Marshall Islands has the third largest shipping registry in the world. The message on climate impacts from the Pacific Islands is a wakeup call for all—except for the IMO.

At least the aviation sector is in the process of developing a new market-based mechanism, with the aim of using offsets to limit its emissions to 2020 levels.
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ECO thanks Parties for recognising how important keeping facilitated sessions under the ADP open to observers is. We smiled when Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Nicaragua all took to the floor in support of a transparent process with no objections from any Party.

The rooms may not have enough seats and the non-pink-badge lines are long, but that’s why we get up in the morning: to see the text turn from its “original paragraph” into a “proposed consolidation”.

Transparency in the process is critical—we don’t want to miss this. When we started in Bonn, there were 10 days and 4232 lines that run across more than 89 pages. Observers are keen to offer our assistance and suggestions with the streamlining.

COP21 is approaching and the pressure of time is upon us to finalise the negotiating text and ensure the new agreement is legally binding, anchored within the requirements of science, and fair for everyone.

Here in Bonn, Parties have to advance discussion on the essentials while streamlining the unwieldy Geneva text. To help with this undertaking, here is ECO’s take on the issues that need to be advanced this session.

The Paris agreement will come into force in 2020 and to be successful, a foundation of trust, ambition and fairness is needed. This requires that governments—especially those of developed countries—implement their current pledges and increase their overall mitigation ambition. Ambitious action from sub-national actors is a step in the right direction, but concrete policies and actions from governments is key.

The good news is that there are several ways governments can act to close the gigatonne gap, including (but not limited to): a massive expansion of renewable energy, greatly improved energy efficiency, a shifting of subsidies from fossil fuels to renewables, sustainable agricultural practices and developing zero carbon infrastructures. ECO calls for governments to pay full and due consideration to all these options. Yes, all of them. So don’t procrastinate.

Additionally, ECO believes the technical examination process should continue to and beyond 2020. The Convention’s technology and finance bodies should prioritise mitigation action with sustainable development co-benefits.