Author: Miro Georgiev

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.

COP26 is almost over, and I have had the honour of working closely with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) during this week.

As part of my collaboration with IETA, I was able to visit at IETA’s pavilion a number of presentations on the development of the carbon trade market as well as on different technologies and projects on sustainable farming, agriculture and finance. In these talks, researchers and business leaders presented their ideas and new technologies on fighting climate change. I was particularly impressed by new technologies, which should capture carbon from the air and use the carbon to either store it permanently (for at least 1,000 years) outside the atmosphere or to create different materials (e.g. concrete made of carbon), which can be used in different industries.

Another aspect of the presentations at IETA’s pavilion were the regulations and transfer of carbon certificates. The carbon market is transforming to be a commodity market as many others and companies are developing multiple platforms to trade this commodity. The market functions in such a way that emitters of carbon purchase certificates from companies, which focus on capturing carbon. For example, a company that builds cars may purchase certificates to offset its carbon emissions from a company, which is active in deforestation. In that way, the economy should promote companies, whose business model is build around capturing carbon through the use of nature (e.g. forests, ocean plants) or technology (e.g. air clearing stations).

Apart from my work with IETA, I was able to speak to business leaders focusing on the protection of the oceans. In particular, I learned of the importance of sea life (e.g. whales, corals, sea plants) for the reduction of CO2-levels. I did not know that whales for example absorb tones of CO2 during their lifetime. But killing whales or filling the oceans with plastic is a significant threat to the whole ecological system. Providing funding to organizations, which focus on fighting oceanic pollution and the destruction of sea life should be a priority for the COP in the upcoming decades.

Of course, the COP would not be interesting if one does not run into some celebrities. While I was busy at the IETA pavilion, many of my colleagues had the chance of bumping into Boris Johnson, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio and many others. I had the honour of meeting John Kerry (even if very briefly) at the COP26. Furthermore, my colleagues and I spoke to a staff member from the U.S. delegation, who told us that the U.S. is very motivated to move forward on the climate change fight. This came only hours, after the U.S. and China in a joint statement announced their close collaboration and increased efforts on fighting climate change.

Learning of that as well as the efforts related to protect the environment, gave me hope that we can actually win the fight against climate change. I came to COP26 with the negative feeling that nothing gets done. And while I met some kids from Fridays for Future, who were disappointed with the outcome of the Conference, I feel much more positive now and I hope that this is just the beginning of a long-lasting trend to save our planet.

#TogetherForOurPlanet #COP26UK

The time for the COP26 is approaching after a year without a COP and many problems related to COVID-19. It feels like the climate action has fallen back behind issues like public health, vaccination, economic recovery, supply chain and energy crisis. But I am fairly optimistic when it comes to the COP26 and I am feeling hopeful.

Emission targets

My main expectation for the COP26 is to finalize the Rulebook on the Paris Agreement. A big part of this involves the agreement of the rulebook regarding Article 6. It is clear to almost all players involved that emission trading is a low cost and market driven opportunity for the parties to decrease emissions. Cap-and-trade systems have proven that they work and a vast majority of economists agree on the positive effect such systems have on the global emissions reduction. However, the fear of “getting it wrong” is there as some argue that if the rulebook on article 6 is not properly negotiated, it could “break” the Paris Agreement. Article 6 has proven already to be a tough negotiation topic and highly technical. The last two COPs (COP24 in Katowice and COP25 in Madrid) were not successful in bringing the issue to bed. However, it should be acknowledged that there has been a significant progress on the issue. Considering its importance (again – it could potentially “break” the Paris Agreement) it is good that the Parties did not go for the “rather bad deal than no deal”-approach.

Climate finance

Another topic will be climate finance (to somewhat quote Margaret Thatcher – “We want the money”). A number of developed countries have promised to arrange the climate funding of $100 billion annually until 2020 and as of now, we are $20 billion short of this amount. It is also to questionable if we are talking about “grants” and/or “loans”, which shall be considered part of the $100 billion promise. In any event, the parties will have some heated discussion about the “where is my money”-issue on the COP26. But a significant progress in this area might also allow parties to negotiate a fair and balanced deal on the Article 6 issue. After all, it is expected that emissions trading would generate some revenue for the parties, so why not reinvest parts of the revenue into climate mitigation and adaptation projects. Stayed tuned for how this develops.

More ambitious climate goals

Finally, it is time to address the elephant in the room – the latest IPCC report. To put it mildly, the report paints a disastrous scenario if no action is taken as soon as possible. In fact, the report goes so far to say that it is unrealistic to stay under the 1.5 ° C target and we should at least try to stay below 2 ° C. However, this would require from the parties to present much more ambitious targets, which is still to be seen.

The biggest emitter China has committed to climate neutrality in 2060, after a peak of its emissions no later than 2030. So, China would need until the end of the decade to make its economy more clean and climate friendly. In my view, it is unclear if that would be sufficient, if we look at the IPCC report and taking into account the necessity for an imminent solution.

The second biggest emitter – the United States – is still struggling to get President Biden’s climate agenda through Congress, and it looks like that would only happen if major legislation were taken out of the bill. So, Americans should decide – do we want to invest in education and colleges or climate? That sounds like a terrible choice, but no one can blame them. It’s not like the U.S. is the second biggest emitter and the biggest economy in the world.

So, it looks like (but we are still not sure if it will actually happen) that the EU is the only big player left to try to do something about the climate and lead the way in these dark times. Let’s hope for some good old European diplomatic solution.

Finally, we expect some countries (they know who they are ;)) to try to block the process and negotiate better deals for themselves. Let’s hope that it would not work so well for them this time.

Stay tuned for more on the COP26!