Category: Previous Issues Articles

Earlier this year, ECO was delighted to read submission upon submission referencing the potential for removing fossil fuel subsidies to contribute substantially to pre-2020 mitigation ambition. In fact, it was so exciting that we counted the countries represented by these submissions. Turns out, over 110 countries supported submissions calling on fossil fuel subsidy reform to be included as an option for raising mitigation ambition.

Well, Thursday morning it seemed as though many parties had forgotten about these submissions, only a few months after they were sent in. Despite hours of discussion, fossil fuel subsidies seemed to not have made it into the morning’s ADP workstream 2 discussions.

Fortunately, not all countries have fully forgotten this issue, though, and yesterday afternoon’s ADP session provided some hope. ECO would like to thank the Philippines, Costa Rica and Switzerland for recognizing this important opportunity for additional pollution reductions. (ECO would also note rumours that the US and Mexico referred to fossil fuel subsidy reform in other sessions in recent days as well).

The IEA has told us that removing fossil fuel subsidies could close the mitigation gap by nearly one half between existing pledges and what’s needed by 2020 to put us on a path to limit global warming to 2 degrees.
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Joint Implementation (JI) is the much neglected little brother of the CDM. Yet JI needs careful watching, not just because hundreds of millions of credits have been issued under JI that basically launder hot air and have zero environmental integrity. But also, because JI shows us what we could face with new market mechanisms, if we do not insist on stringent international rules and oversight.

Here in Doha, Parties are discussing how to reform the JI to make it fit for post 2012. ECO welcomes the suggestion of eliminating Track 1, under which host countries can unilaterally approve projects and issue credits without any international oversight. 95% of all JI credits have been issued under track 1, many of them with blatantly no environmental integrity.

Let’s look at Ukraine, the biggest supplier of JI credits with 69 projects registered under track 1. Sixty of these projects were audited by one single auditing company, paid for by the project developer. Normally such an audit takes many months, but some of the projects were miraculously audited in as little as 7 days. That hardly inspires confidence… Many of these projects requested registration only in the last couple of years but receive so called “early credits,” for emission reductions achieved before the Kyoto Protocol started, some receiving credits going as far back as 2002.
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It is no secret that the future of the CDM looks grim. According to the High Level Panel on the CDM Policy Dialogue, the CDM will produce an excess of roughly 1.25 billion offset credits because of low ambition by developed countries. This has driven the prices in the cellar and stirred creativity on how to keep the market flourishing. In the CMP opening plenary, India suggested setting up a stabilisation fund to buy up excess offset credits – something that has also been recommended by the High Level Panel on the CDM. A large chunk of the excess offset credits will come from HFC-23 destruction facilities in India and China. Credits form such HFC-23 projects have been banned by major buyers (EU, Australia and New Zealand) for their lack of environmental integrity and sustainable development benefits. With a lack of buyers, such a fund would provide a convenient new source of money!

Even if HFC-23 credits were not allowed in such a fund, there is more to worry about. New findings from the CDM Policy research team show that large-scale power supply CDM projects, which are expected to generate the majority of CDM credits until 2020, are rarely additional and therefore increase global emissions.
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The First Place Fossil is awarded to Poland. Back home in Poland, Environment Minister Korolec, revealed the country’s position on the Doha talks – claiming the carryover of AAU credits is NOT a priority issue, but that the length of the second commitment period and the obligations contained in the Kyoto Protocol are. We should remind the minister that carryover of AAUs influences the level of ambition in CP2.

Moreover, Poland does not want to give up even one tonne of their huge surplus of AAU emission allowances to contribute to the environmental integrity. Why? Warsaw believes their AAU surplus is a strictly national issue. Hello…!! Carbon emissions know no national borders and the issue is a key element of the CP2 negotiations!

The Second Place Fossil of the Day goes to Russia. The Russian vice Prime Minister confirmed on Wednesday following ministerial talks that the country will not sign on to the Second Commitment Period of the Kyoto Protocol. Next week, Russia will announce its emissions reduction targets, but they will not be attributed to the Second Commitment Period, which Russia strongly opposes. This also means that Russia will lose the chance to take part in JI (Joint Implementation) projects in the future, something that the country was striving to be involved with.
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L’Afrique cherche toujours sa solution pour faire face à un double défi : donner accès à l’énergie à l’ensemble de ses populations tout en anticipant la finitude des ressources fossiles et l’impact croissant des changements climatiques.

La pauvreté, insécurité et précarité énergétique qui caractérisent le continent conditionnent sa croissance et influencent son développement. La demande d’énergie en Afrique n’est pas satisfaite et freine le développement économique, la création d’entreprises et d’emploi, l’accès à l’éducation et aux systèmes de santé performants. Pire, une grande partie des communautés n’ont toujours pas accès à l’électricité pour leurs besoins vitaux. Peut être parce que dans les dernières décennies, les choix énergétiques sur le continent donnent la priorité aux énergies fossiles – charbon et pétrole – qui contribuent à dégrader l’environnement, à renforcer la pauvreté énergétique et ne permettent pas de faire face aux changements climatiques.

Pourtant les sources ne manquent pas sur le continent, et le potentiel est infini pour répondre aux besoins énergétiques de l’Afrique et même au-delà. C’est pour faire face à ce défi que les ONG se sont mobilisées à Rio+20 pour proposer des solutions: les énergies renouvelables et l’efficacité énergétique! Energie pour tous ou Energy for all, ce slogan devenu le credo de toutes les institutions trouvera-t-il exécuteur, dans un monde de plus en plus aveugle aux sources d’énergies les moins polluantes, les plus sobre en carbone mais entreprenant pour le gaz de schiste ?
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When $30 billion is not $30 billion – As many delegates will have imagined, ECO has had a close look at the delivery of Fast Start Finance as that period comes to a close this year. Apart from the fact that the large majority of finance is not new or additional, ECO also noted that countries pretty much made up their own rules in terms of what to include in their reporting. The US, for instance, included money for food security programmes as adaptation, and they also included export credit finance (which has an air of subsidies to US companies). Japan included billions of dollars in private finance towards their pledge. In a situation like this, ECO finds it really hard to meaningfully compare countries’ performance based on their reporting. ECO now understands how developing countries must feel in their search for trust (and money), which this process is both in such short supply of. As the finance period post-2012 is about to start, the finance fog needs to be cleared.

How to ensure $100 billion is indeed $100 billion – Luckily, ECO sees light at the end of the tunnel. Progress can be made on two fronts in Doha. On the one hand, the LCA could agree on what finance flows can be legitimately reported as support to action on mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.
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Today parties have their last and best chance to make progress on addressing emissions from
international shipping and aviation, already contributing to more than 5 percent of global emissions and
growing faster than any other sector. More than 15 years of negotiations in three UN bodies, including
the UNFCCC and the sectoral bodies IMO and ICAO, have produced very little, especially regarding
progress on market-based measures (MBMs) that can incentivise emissions reductions while generating
significant financing for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, as well as for efficiency
measures within these sectors.

The principal stumbling block has been disagreement on how to reconcile the UNFCCC’s principles of
common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC) with the principles
and approaches in the IMO and ICAO, based on global approaches with equivalent treatment on all
ships and aircraft, anywhere in the world. Technical work on exploring options for putting a price
on carbon in these sectors is well advanced, but lack of agreement on how to reconcile the different
principles is blocking progress.

Today the LCA spin-off group on sectoral approaches will consider text that addresses exactly this
issue, and one text option on the table could hold the key to breaking this long-standing deadlock.
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Do you remember last year? We do. ECO desperately hoped the hallway rumours of a Kyoto withdrawal weren’t true, but the second your Minister left the fine city of Durban, he confirmed your reckless abandonment of the only legally binding climate treaty we have. Little birds from around the world are telling ECO that this promise-breaking probably has something to do with those vast pits of tar sands you are so hooked on, the same ones that are undermining all of your domestic climate goals.

ECO knows you are still technically allowed in the Kyoto room, but please don’t touch that microphone. When you jumped ship on the first KP term as it hit the home stretch, you drowned what little credibility you had left. As a matter of principle you should sit silently in the back like the bad kid in the class who has been told to be quiet until they learn how to behave. There are well-intentioned Parties in the room that are trying to move forward to solve the climate crisis, so please just back off. You don’t want Kyoto and we suspect, as a result, it doesn’t want you.

Love(?),

ECO

Yesterday the halls of COP 18 in Doha were abuzz because of an announcement by the UAE during the meeting of the ADP. The Gulf state announced concrete actions it would be taking in order to do its part in reducing climate change.

The UAE announced that they will open a 100 megawatt (MW) plant this year using Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), while also preparing for another 100 MW using Photovoltaics (PV).

This is exciting news considering that the UAE belongs to a set of countries that have not historically been responsible for comparatively large total emissions. The Arab world in specific is currently only responsible for a fraction of total world emissions and is still flagged as a developing country region.

The UAE has already been one of the more active countries in the region in renewable energy. In recent years it has shown a drive to improve its infrastructure in many regards and the energy generation sector is no exception.

The examples to this are numerous, such as increased solar energy (including a solar roofing pilot program), and wind energy generation adapted to the weather of the region. Several mass transit projects, such as the Dubai and Abu Dhabi metros, and the countrywide rail system, are underway.
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The world is now watching whether the freshly re-elected Obama administration will take renewed interest in tackling climate change, and put some effort into bringing Congress along with him. This week he signed a bill from Congress aimed at blocking US airlines from complying with EU emissions regulations for flights into and out of the EU. The bill amounts to chest thumping as it provides no new authority to the Administration to take any meaningful steps. In fact, if they did anything with the law it would likely lead to a trade war, a taxpayer funded bailout, or a screeching halt to efforts to secure a global agreement. The EU created the regulations only after its efforts to pursue emissions in ICAO, the UN organization responsible for the aviation sector, came up against “15 years of intransigence and doublespeak,” as one informed observer put it.

But the signing of the bill could be water under the bridge if the US now throws its weight behind a strong agreement under ICAO to control emissions from the global aviation sector. There are some signs this could happen. The EU has agreed to suspend its regulations for one year, which should create a more constructive negotiating climate.
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