Author: Sam McDermott

On November 4th, 2020—while much was still unknown about the outcome of the US elections—the outgoing Trump Administration enacted a consequential international climate policy decision by officially withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement. Although President-Elect Biden has committed to rejoining the Paris Agreement once he takes office, the US’s temporary withdrawal from the agreement revealed the fragility of international climate agreements, and the importance of non-Party stakeholders (i.e. businesses, subnational governments, etc.) to serve a supplementary role in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. This past week, I had the opportunity to interview Kathleen Wight and Julia Meisel from the Rocky Mountain Institute about the role of the private sector and subnational governments in the international climate negotiating space.

Rocky Mountain Institute is an independent, nonpartisan nonprofit which, according to its website, “engages businesses, communities, institutions, and entrepreneurs to accelerate the adoption of market-based solutions that cost-effectively shift from fossil fuels to efficiency and renewables.” Through my conversations with Kathleen and Julia, I was able to get a holistic view of the role that RMI plays in the international climate negotiation space.

Kathleen Wight is the Business Development Manager for Industry and Heavy Transport at RMI. She works primarily on corporate engagement with RMI’s climate intelligence program, looking to see how better data can better inform carbon emissions reduction in hard-to-abate industries like aviation. One of our main topics of discussion was on the role she sees industry-specific agreements like Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) playing in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. While she emphasized the importance of CORSIA as a tool of international carbon abatement in the aviation market, she believes that industry, technology, and market has already gone well-beyond offsets in their sustainability ambitions. In our interview, she stated, “it is better [for airline companies] to replace jet fuel with biofuels than it is to solely rely on plantings forests that take 25 years to grow to any real amount of carbon reduction.” Going forward, she thinks that the biggest sustainability advancements in the industrial sector will be in the form of increasingly accurate ways of monitoring emissions reductions. Through these improvements, she believes investors in the industrial sector will be more comfortable knowing that carbon emissions reductions are both “actionable and bankable.”

For this blog, I also had the opportunity to speak with Julia Meisel who is a Senior Associate with the Global Climate Finance program at RMI. In our conversation, she highlighted RMI’s America’s Pledge project which was launched in 2017 at COP23 with the help of former Mayor Mike Bloomberg and former Governor Jerry Brown. America’s Pledge was an agreement made in the wake of the Trump Administration’s decision to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement between U.S. cities, states, businesses, and universities that reaffirmed their commitment to helping America reach its Paris climate goals.^[1] Julia emphasized the importance of subnational agreements like America’s Pledge in buffering potential political volatility at the national level and for ensuring countries are able to stay consistent on a path of carbon emissions reductions. For Julia, she sees three major priorities for RMI in the international climate space going forward: 1) Aligning the goals of the financial sector with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement, 2) increasing national ownership of climate finance to promote greater independence and equity for developing countries in achieving their NDC goals, and 3) raising funding for research and development in the energy sector. She sees plenty of potential to make headway on these priorities at COP26 and through other channels of action.

Overall, my conversations with working professionals at RMI gave me a better understanding of the importance of non-Party stakeholders and market-based solutions to climate change in addition to international climate agreements under the UNFCCC. In order to accelerate and scale climate solutions, many stakeholders—including businesses, activists, and nonprofits—must be given meaningful channels of negotiations at the COP. Additionally, these non-Party stakeholders are crucial partners for countries in achieving their NDCs and countries must recognize their importance through strengthening subnational and market-based channels of action in the climate negotiating space.

^[1] https://www.americaspledgeonclimate.com/

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the world and put many economies into freefall. As countries went into lockdown to slow the spread of the virus, consumers spent less and many people lost their job. In the United States, unemployment rose to over 15% at its peak in June, and continues to remain above 8%. Many countries around the world are experiencing similar trends in economic strain and job loss. In order to improve from this global recession, comprehensive economic recovery plans are being developed from the local to the international level. 

Recovering from this crisis must, however, be done while working to combat another crisis that was present long-before COVID-19: the Climate Crisis. So far, the share of stimulus spending that has gone to green-related priorities is 1% in the US, 2% in China, and 20% in the EU (a comprehensive breakdown of recovery spending can be found at https://www.energypolicytracker.org). The webinar that I attended focused on tackling that issue, specifically tackling the question: How can economic recovery from COVID-19 work to combat climate change and other social issues plaguing the world? The webinar was co-moderated by Jason Bourdoff and Johnathan Elkind from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Panelists included: Eric Garcetti – Mayor of Los Angeles and Chair of C40 cities group; Damilola Ogunbiyi – CEO and Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All and Co-Chair of UN-Energy; Mauricio Cardenas – Visiting research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy and former minister of energy and finance in Columbia; and Kadri Simson – EU commissioner for energy. The webinar focused on the ways in which the COVID-19 recovery can be a green recovery, and these plans can be organized into 3 themes that I will highlight in more depth: 1) The role of cities in green recovery, 2) the need for an inclusive clean energy transition and 3) ensuring a “just transition” to clean energy.

Role of Cities 

In the Duke UNFCCC Practicum Course, much of the conversation has been focused on the multi-national approach to combating climate change through the UNFCCC and implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement. Mayor Garcetti offered a counter-approach to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement by increasing the role of cities. As he stated, “It is local communities where we live as human beings” and therefore it is in cities where these climate goals and policies will be implemented. Mayor Garcetti highlighted the fact that cities are much more “nimble” than slower, hyper-partisan national governments, and serve as great “laboratories of experimentation” for climate policies. Additionally, it is within cities that waste water reduction, clean public transportation, and retrofitting of buildings are implemented.

Mayor Garcetti and others on the panel offered plans for increasing the role of cities in the COVID-19 green recovery. Mayor Garcetti spoke about the role of C40, the Cities Climate Leadership Group–a group of 96 cities around the world that represents one twelfth of the world’s population and one quarter of the global economy–in functioning as a quasi multilateral climate negotiating bloc. Additionally, Minister Cardenas spoke about shifting the paradigm in which finance ministers are more willing to accept flexibility when it comes to borrowing to the national government than to a city. 

Sustainable Energy for All

Special Representative Ogunbiyi highlighted the difficult dilemma of implementing a green recovery in areas that are still trying to develop basic access to energy in the first place. As she stated, it is important when talking about economic recovery to not forget that fact that there’s still 718 million people who don’t have access to electricity and 2.8 billion people that don’t have access to clean cooking. However, she believes that the economic elements of a green recovery can fuel both increased clean energy and increased access to energy overall–stating that there are “3 times as many jobs in energy efficiency and renewables than in fossil fuel equivalent.” Additionally, she spoke about the need to invest locally for climate adaptation–in congruence with the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage–by highlighting the fact that over 90% of climate adaptation investment in Africa is coming from companies not based within the continent. 

Ensuring a “Just Transition”

Commissioner Simson and others on the panel discussed the need for the transition to clean energy to be a “just transition.” In the context of the EU, Commissioner Simson gave the example of a country like Poland where much of their economy is still dependent on fossil fuel production and stating that their transition may take longer and need more support than a country like the Netherlands which already gets much of its energy from renewable sources. Additionally, Special Representative Ogunbiyi discussed how a “just transition” must “do not harm” and not lead to a neocolonial exploitation of developing countries by more wealthier nations assisting in the recovery process.