ECO Newsletter

Now that the Paris Agreement has been signed by 193 parties and ratified by over 100, one message is very clear: the era of fossil fuels is over. But it seems that not everyone has gotten the message. In many countries, the coal lobby stubbornly believes it can delay the inevitable.

Let’s take Brazil as an example. Brazil likes to boast about being a climate champion. But its Congress just approved a billion-dollar subsidy to the coal industry. Equally problematic, this comes at a time when coal represents less than 5% of electricity generation in Brazil, but over 20% of emissions. Has anyone in the Brazilian Congress done the maths?

The coal industry spends a fortune on lobbying. But President Temer now has the chance to veto this subsidy, as tens of thousands of Brazilians have urged him to do. The world is watching closely, and expects meaningful action from a country that could otherwise be one of the first to reach 100% renewables.

But it’s not only Brazil where coal still dreams of a future. Forbes Magazine recently described Japan as having a “renewed love affair with coal”, with over 40 new plants being built, planned or proposed before 2020.
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Many of us have spent years in the UNFCCC bubble, where every bracket, and every comma (especially the commas) matter. Slowly, though, we are lifting our gaze and seeing that there is more to action already occurring on the ground. One concrete example is right in this COP’s backyard—the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station. It is one of the world’s largest solar thermal power plants. It will provide renewable energy to more than one million Moroccans. ECO is impressed by such an innovative project.

This project convinces us that we can learn from the good things already happening out there. Non-state actors, such as cities and regions, businesses, and civil society groups are paving the way by demonstrating ambition and concrete achievements. Can these “outside processes”, such as Global Climate Action (GCA), help increase ambition inside these processes?

Another question remains: How can non-state actors help raise ambitions for the 2018 facilitative dialogue, including leading by example through setting science-based targets? And how can the efforts by state actors help to ensure credibility, ambition and transparency in voluntary initiatives and coalitions under the heading of GCA?

So-called inside and outside processes are both needed to function well. Each can enable and assist the other to create virtuous cycles so that all actors can do more.
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 Now that the Standing Committee on Climate Finance (SCF) has presented its 2016 Biennial Assessment (BA2016) of climate finance, the report’s key findings and recommendations are meant to guide negotiators through the next two weeks’ worth of climate finance agenda items. ECO finds four items to be particularly noteworthy:

First, the SCF had the interesting recommendation (probably inspired by studying the chaotic jungle of past Biennial Reports) that Parties should be enabled to provide additional information on, you guessed it, how they have identified finance as being “climate-specific”. ECO reads this as a finely-worded, slightly ironic critique of what’s plain for everyone to see: the current, very lenient reporting system creates the temptation to overstate the climate-relevance of provided funds. Of course, ECO is quite sure this would never happen because anyone would seek to inflate their numbers. But to many it seems like a lot of work to track down what portion of funds was aiming specifically at climate action. That’s especially for flows where climate is one of many objectives. Clearly, tightening these reporting guidelines should be addressed in the SBSTA negotiations on accounting modalities.

Second, the BA2016 confirms what every other climate finance report has said: the continued existence of an ugly imbalance between adaptation and mitigation in climate finance (with the notable exception of the UNFCCC funds).
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With transparency coming into focus in the APA, here are three cheat sheet answers to help with the transparency eye chart.

Transparency is a cross-cutting issue and Article 13 has many facets, making it a complicated piece of the Paris Agreement puzzle. To deal with this complexity, Parties need a boost of strong modalities, procedures and guidelines (MPG).

The first step is to build a common and inclusive framework to enhance effectiveness. This means ensuring all strands of the transparency framework are tied together with flexibility and in the context of equity, to account for differing national circumstances. The MPG must be the leader of the transparency pack on several fronts. These include the level of action and support for how Parties implement the commitments, in the context of the cross-cutting principles reiterated in the Agreement, including the integrity of ecosystems, human rights and gender equality.

Secondly, non-Party stakeholders can provide a great contribution to the effectiveness and integrity of the transparency framework. The modalities, procedures and guidelines should recognise and promote this role.

Finally, the entire process needs to be complete and ready for 2018. When aiming to reach such an imperative goal, concrete steps must be taken. Hence extra sessions might be necessary to make this transparency framework operational for 2018.
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Everyone loves a good COP — so much so that even though delegates are roaming around a half-finished conference centre. And although we don’t know where the 2017, 2018 or 2019 COPs will be hosted, we do know one thing: 2020 could be Year of the Turkey.

The Government of Turkey’s bid for the 2020 COP has caught the eye of some who happened to find themselves wandering around the colourful pavilions in Area D. It cannot overshadow the awarding of the Fossil of the Day award for most ironic agenda item request. Despite having not yet even ratified the Paris Agreement (like the hundred odd countries that have), yesterday Turkey had the nerve to ask for an agenda item on financial support under the Paris Agreement and the Green Climate Fund. Brave, courageous, audacious—or simply ludicrously out of touch?

Unfortunately, it is possibly the latter, given Turkey’s plans to support the opening of new coal plants and increase its greenhouse gas emissions in the near term. Instead of pretending to access financial support under the Agreement, Turkey should do the simple 1, 2, 3: ratify, increase ambition in its national climate action plan and move towards 100% renewable energy.

The past year was tremendous for climate action. The Paris Agreement entered into force on Friday. HFCs are finally on their way out., The international shipping and aviation industries have started to reduce their emissions. With this success echoing through the COP halls, there couldn’t be a better time for a pep rally for COP22.

But, we are up against our greatest rival, and cannot afford time-outs. 2016 is set to be the hottest year on record, with a disastrous El Niño and massive coral bleaching in tropical seas. Carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere passed the dangerous 400ppm threshold and continues to rise.

While the NDCs that were pledged in 2015 bend emissions into a downward trajectory, we’re still not on a safe path. UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report shows that our climate curve remains on a pathway towards 3.4°C warming by 2100. It confirms that global emissions in 2030 will still be 25% higher than they should be for a 2°C pathway.

In ECO’s view, Marrakech should be the start of the process to strengthen countries’ ambition, in line with 1.5ºC and national long-term strategies.

The facilitative dialogues in 2016 and 2018, and the first global stocktake in 2023, are built-in mechanisms to assess progress and scale up ambition.
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The UN’s shipping body, the International Maritime Organization, had a mixed meeting last month. Where does this now leave the sector’s pledge to act? The IMO met to discuss air quality, as well as GHG emissions, but how does this level up from agreements made in Paris? We saw long awaited action on air quality, but it is disappointing that Parties couldn’t show equal ambition when it came to shipping’s climate impact.

The key issue at stake was whether the sector—with a CO₂ impact greater than Germany—will pull together an emissions target in time for the 2018 facilitative dialogue. One proposal was to set a provisional target, and then update it when more data became available. But we are currently going down with this ship.

Following huge opposition from a group of member states and the industry, the IMO eventually settled for an “IMO Strategy” document to be developed and submitted to COP24. Under the agreed roadmap, the strategy includes neither a provisional target nor clear emission pathways and measures for international shipping. Rather it looks to short-medium-long term efficiency opportunities for international shipping. This is a euphemism for no action at least for the next 7 years, and a certainty of no wind in its sails.
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There’s a simple truth for what’s needed in technology transfer at COP22. Here are some suggestions on how to make it so:

1. The massive scale of technology deployment that is needed to meet the 1.5°C goal with pre and post 2020 action requires that the Climate Technology Centre and Network, the operational arm of the Technology Mechanism, is ready for a sharply rising influx of country requests. The CTCN needs to use its resources wisely, for example, by improving the transparency of its funding, and by prioritising the Network provider of services, by the member with the most closely-related experience and reasonable, but not necessarily lowest cost.  Quality and local knowledge do matter. Add the periodic assessment of the TM and a solid draft for the Technology Framework for a winning combination.

2. We need to create a “Stakeholder Cooperative Technology Assessment Space” to take a hard look at both the co-benefits and risks of projects, particularly “unknown” or “unknowable” negative impacts when a technology is untested or can only be properly tested in the open atmosphere or ocean.

Cooperative Technology Assessment engages all stakeholders and endeavours to answer a range of questions:

1. How do we know which technologies’ emission reductions and/or increased resilience/co-benefits are worth the risk that they might pose?
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Loss and damage (L&D) has earned its place in the climate change playbook, alongside adaptation and mitigation. With its own stand-alone article (8!), as well as a commitment that there will be international support for loss and damage, COP22 can boldly go where no COP has gone before.

And bold steps are sorely needed. Despite having “action and support” in its mandate since 2013, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (WIM) has not yet even come close to  delivering bold actions to protect vulnerable people. The WIM framework for a 5-year plan is a good starting point, but needs political rocket-fuel to deliver real benefits in the near term. ECO applauds the WIM ExCom for listing finance as their top priority. However, we wonder how finance for L&D will be scaled up if the WIM’s current framework only contains a “placeholder” for finance. Loss and damage will need significant finance separate from adaptation finance. The first logical step would be for the WIM and the SCF to work out how much finance is required, and to put an appropriate strategy in place to raise the necessary funds. This plan has to also consider innovative sources. Levies from aviation and fossil fuel sales could provide a significant, predictable source of finance that need not come from taxpayer contributions.
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