COP26 is officially over, and we are looking forward to COP27 in Egypt in 2022. Before we start planning on where to book our next vacation hotel in Egypt, let’s have a short overview of what happened in Glasgow last week.

Some are happy, others claim that not enough has been done to meet the climate goals (something about the “blah blah blah” as Greta puts it). I think it is fair to assume that during these two weeks of COP26 much more did actually happen than it was initially expected. Here is a brief note of how I see the COP26:

Methane reduction

A breakthrough led by the United States and the European Union led to a global agreement to reduce methane emissions by 30% until the end of the decade. More than 100 countries entered the agreement, representing about 80% of the methane emissions (mostly arising from the agriculture, waste and the gas and oil sector). Methane emissions have in the long term 20 times more serious effect on the climate heating and more than 80 times more serious effect in the short term. Reduction in the methane levels can significantly impact the global warming and potentially keep it below 2° C.

Climate finance

On Climate finance, the Parties agreed to try to at least double the funds promised by developed nations for mitigation and adaptation in the upcoming years to 200$ billion annually. However, at the same time the developed countries were unable to find the 100$ billion annually promised to developing nations. It is therefore uncertain if the developed nations are going to be able to meet the new even higher targets. Thus, I am a bit sceptic when it comes to meeting these promises.

Stopping deforestation

More than 100 countries – including Canada, Brazil, Russia, China, Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the US and the UK – covering around 85% of the world’s forests, have pledged to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. Furthermore, multiple developed nations promised to provide 12$ billion by 2025 to fight deforestation. However, as I heard from specialists, the pledge in this timeline seems to be rather impossible and more of a “blah blah blah” from politicians. Thus, I hope for the best, but I expect that the pledge may not be met on time. In any event, any pledge from countries covering such huge amount of the world’s forests is still a big win.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement

This time we got it! The Article 6 (para. 2 and 4) was the last piece of the Paris Agreement puzzle to be agreed upon. Now, Parties will be able to transfer emission certificates and other carbon emissions under the new rules. However, the rules are extremely technical and their main rule is to improve transparency as well as to ensure that no double counting happens and carbon emissions are measured in the same way throughout the different Parties. My understanding from the talks is that the potential for emissions trading is huge as long as there is no “greenwashing”, when it comes to the projects reducing carbon emissions. Now, it is up to the Parties to start implementing laws and regulations to ensure that the emission trading is properly implemented and helps us to reduce the overall GHG emissions worldwide.

Commitments to net zero

There were some new commitments on the COP26. The most prominent is India’s promise to reach net zero by 2070. Furthermore, India’s prime minister Modi pledged that India’s energy will be 50% renewable by 2030. The big deal of India’s promise is that India was previously very reluctant on any promises to net zero. Now, since we have the first commitment by India, we shall hope that in the upcoming COPs the international pressure on India will be able to persuade them to made more ambitious commitments.

Phasing coal “our” or only “down”

This is – in my view – the major disappointment of COP26. I know that phasing “out” and phasing “down” sounds almost the same, but it is not. Phasing out coal (including subsidies to coal) would have meant that the Parties will stop supporting the coal industry throughout the world. The financial (and political) support to the coal industry is tremendous and has a significant impact on the emissions of carbon in the world.

Phasing “down” buys more time to the coal industry to continue their business as usual. China and India insisted to this change in the text in the last minutes of the COP26, which seems to have been their strategy from the very beginning of the negotiations. Thus, it seems that two of the biggest users of coal in the world are still not ready to make a firm commitment to removing coal from the electricity generation in their respective countries.

Even with this not insignificant change, the other Parties are still able to continue their phasing out of coal until coal no longer is used for electricity generation. Thus, I was able to remain my positive hopeful mood after COP26.

Final remarks

I think that it is necessary to keep the momentum created during COP26 and we need to keep working on implementing many of the good political decisions negotiated in the last two weeks.

We need to include all stakeholders and look for solution on local, national and international level at the same time. I am happy from the COP26 outcome, but I am also realistic that we need to understand that this is just the beginning and much more work must be done in the current decade. Thus, I look forward to working on climate related issues in the future and hopefully visit the next COPs.