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2015 will see nuclear dream fade as wind and solar soar Updated for 2026

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With nuclear power falling ever further behind renewables as a global energy source, and as the price of oil and gas falls, the future of the industry in 2015 and beyond looks bleak.

Renewables now supply 22% of global electricity and nuclear only 11% – a share that is gradually falling as old plants close and fewer new ones are commissioned.

New large-scale installations of wind and solar power arrays continue to surge across the world. Countries without full grids and power outages, such as India, increasingly find that wind and solar are quick and easy ways to bring electricity to people who have previously had no supply.

Developed countries, meanwhile, faced with reducing carbon dioxide emissions, find that the cost of both these renewable technologies is coming down substantially.

Subsidies for wind and solar are being reduced and, in some cases, will disappear altogether in the next 10 years.

Renewables’ enviable speed of installation

The other advantage that renewables have is speed of installation. Solar panels, once manufactured, can be installed on a rooftop and be in operation in a single day. Wind turbines can be put up in a week.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, continues to get more expensive. In China and Russia, costs are not transparent, and even in democracies they hard to pin down. But it is clear that they are rising dramatically.

Building of the proposed twin European Pressurised Water reactors, called Hinkley Point C, in Britain’s West Country is due to start in 2015, but the price has risen several times already. Estimated construction costs have now jumped from £16 billion to £24 billion – before the first concrete has even been poured.

The other problem with nuclear is the time frame. Originally, Hinkley Point C was due to be completed by 2018. This has now slipped to 2024, but even this is optimistic judging by the performance of the two prototypes in Finland and France, both of which are late and over budget.

The Finnish plant was due to open in 2009, but is still at least three years from commissioning. The French plant is five years overdue.

In many countries, there are plans on paper for new nuclear stations, and China, South Korea and India are among those that are continuing to build them. Other countries, particularly where private capital is needed to finance them, are putting their plans on hold.

Extend life

The US, which still has the largest number of reactors of any country in the world, is opting instead to extend the life of its plants. Many operators are considering applying for such extensions from 60 to 80 years.

Provided they are up to modern safety standards, there seems no barrier to this. However experience shows that as reactors age they become less reliable – both requiring scheduled maintenance, and prone to sudden unexpected cut-outs that place huge demands on power grids.

Many other countries, including the UK, are also extending the lives of their plants as long as possible, however, so the industry won’t be disappearing any time soon.

But one of the key problems for the nuclear sector is that reactors have been designed to be at full power all of the time. With renewables taking an increasing share of the market, a combination of nuclear, wind and solar can produce more electricity than required – leaving a problem of what to turn off, or how to use the surplus power.

A way round this problem being developed in Britain is large, strategically-based batteries. A five-megawatt battery, the largest in Europe, has just been commissioned in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, in the middle of England.

This is charged up when there is too much power in the grid, and releases its energy when there is a surge in demand.

If, during a two-year trial, this works to smooth the peaks and troughs of demand, and cuts the costs of switching on expensive gas turbines, then a network of batteries will be installed across the country to harvest the intermittent supplies of renewables.

The only bright spot for nuclear at the moment is the development of small nuclear reactors. These are from 30 megawatts upwards and are designed to be built in a factory and assembled on site – a bit like wind turbines are.

These can be installed singly or in a series, depending on the demand. Their two greatest selling points are that they would be good in remote locations far from other power sources, and are said to be much safer than their larger cousins.

Price tag

However, a drawback is the price tag of around $3 billion dollars. Both the US and UK are supporting private firms in research and development, but commercial operation is a long way off.

Whether a small nuclear power station would be any more welcomed than a wind or solar farm to provide power in a neighbourhood is a question still to be tested.

Nuclear enthusiasts – and there are still many in the political and scientific world – continue to work on fast breeder reactors, fusion and thorium reactors, heavily supported by governments who still believe that one day the technology will be the source of cheap and unlimited power. But, so far, that remains a distant dream.

In the meantime, investors are increasingly sceptical about putting their money into nuclear – whereas renewables promise an increasingly rapid return on investment, and may get a further boost if the governments of the world finally take climate change seriously.

 

 

Paul Brown writes for Climate News Network.

 

 




388423

Rich nations must cough up for past carbon pollution Updated for 2026

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Two weeks of international climate negotiations in Lima, Peru, are over, with an agreement pulled out of the bag at the eleventh hour.

While Lima has been seen by many as a mere curtain-raiser to talks in Paris in a year’s time, when a new deal needs to reached to replace the Kyoto Protocol, it will have an impact beyond this.

Lima has reinforced the familiar battle ground between the developed and developing world, and it has seen the re-emergence of a key concept: climate justice.

The idea of equity is at the heart of this – the question of how to ensure any UN-backed emissions deal is fair and that those countries that caused the problem do the most to clean it up. This had largely been ignored at previous summits but at Lima it was once again a big talking point.

2011: the US’s big ‘No’ to equity

“If equity is in, we are out.” Those were the reported words of Todd Stern, the US chief negotiator, on the eve of the last day of Durban talks back in 2011, when the foundations for a new global agreement were laid.

Stern was reacting to the clamour from developing countries that rich, developed nations should take the lead in making emission cuts under the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility and capability‘, given their historical responsibility for climate change and their enhanced technological capabilities.

While some observers were alarmed by Stern’s position, his words were a fair, if vulgar, rendition of the mind-set that is quite pervasive among many developed countries.

Rich nations tend to prefer to wave aside or at least make light their moral responsibility to tackle climate change, while appealing for concerted action by ‘all parties‘.

Pragmatism, realism, and ‘we are in this together’ are some of the phrases used by developed countries as they try to duck their responsibility and cajole developing nations to instead step up their own climate actions.

It was to this effect that many Western countries lined up behind the US in Durban. Eventually all references to equity, justice and common but differentiated responsibility were expunged from the text.

Lima – justice and transparency return

It was a short-lived victory. Events in Lima over the past two weeks have overwhelmingly demonstrated the utter futility of developed countries’ schemes to diminish issues of equity and justice, let alone sidestep them altogether.

In virtually all the key issues and categories under discussion – countries’ mitigation contributions, states’ adaptation commitments, the remit of the loss and damage, and climate finance, among others – equity and differentiation have stood out as sticking points.

For example, the G77 group of developing countries said that the principle of equity must guide all negotiations and long-term actions. Showing their heightened distrust in the progress, developing countries even requested that texts should be displayed on the big screen in real time while negotiating to enhance transparency.

The harshest word for developed countries, however, came from Bolivian president Evo Morales, who referred to industrialised nations that have appropriated more than their own fair share of global atmospheric space as “thieves“ that must be made to pay back what they have stolen.

Without a moral dimension, there can be no climate agreement

Of course, none of this implies that developing countries should be given an easy ride in negotiating the 2015 climate agreement, or that there are easy approaches to finding a ‘just’ climate agreement.

Climate justice is a deeply contested concept, open to multiple interpretations, recommending diverse and sometimes conflicting policy. For example, there are plausible justice-based arguments for allocating carbon emissions quota on individual (per capita) and on national (per country) basis.

However it appears that the Stern approach to international climate politics, seemingly without morality, is beginning to lose ground. If Lima has taught us anything, it is that humanity badly needs a dose of international respect if we are to avoid climate chaos.

The brazen scheme to expunge equity from previous climate agreements by the US and its backers only served to further erode the mutual trust sorely needed to make compromises.

Morality might be a dirty word in some states’ foreign policy handbooks. But call it what you like, the world needs to find its guiding principles quickly, and developing countries want rich nations to pay for what they’ve broken.

 

 

Chukwumerije Okereke is Associate Professor of Environment and Development at the University of Reading.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




388217

COP20: an agreement of sorts. Now, a rocky climate road to Paris Updated for 2026

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A deal struck in Lima between 196 nations yesterday leaves open the possibility of saving the planet from dangerous overheating. But its critics say the prospects of success are now slim.

The talks – which ran two days longer than scheduled – set a series of deadlines which mean that every nation is charged with producing its plans to cap and reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.

These commitments will then be assessed to see if they are enough to prevent the world heating up more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold political leaders say must not be crossed in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

The Lima agreement invites all countries to set out their plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 31 March. The next step will be to draft a legally binding international agreement on how to get below the 2°C threshold. This text is to be made available to all countries for comment by May 2015.

All eyes on Paris

By 1st November the secretariat of the UN Climate Change Convention is supposed to have assessed whether the commitment of these 196 nations is enough to stop the world overheating – and, if it is not, to point out by how far they will miss the target.

All this is to set the stage for a dramatic final negotiation in Paris in a year’s time, when a blueprint for a legally enforceable deal is supposed to be on the table. This is a tall order, however, because each time the parties meet the rich and poor countries wage the same arguments over again.

The developing countries say the rich developed countries that caused the problem in the first place must make deep cuts in their emissions and pay huge sums for the poorer countries to adapt to climate change.

The rich countries say that the fast industrialisation of many developing countries means that these countries must cut emissions too, otherwise the world will overheat anyway.

The poorest countries of all, and the small island states, who everyone agrees have no responsibility for the problem, want much more dramatic curbs on emissions, and more money for adaptation to sea level rise and climate extremes than is likely to be forthcoming.

The new climate reality: China, India, Brazil are now big-scale emitters

The talks take place amid their own jargon, with phrases like the “principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances” seen as essential to point up the difference between rich and poor nations and what they are expected to do.

The talks have dragged on for 15 years since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, in which the rich nations agreed to the first cuts in emissions while allowing the poorer nations to continue developing.

Now that China has overtaken the US as the world’s biggest polluter, and countries like Brazil and India are fast catching up, the scientific case is that every country has to curb its emissions, or else everyone faces disaster.

But whether the talks have gone far enough to allow a deal to be reached in Paris next year is a matter of many opinions.

“As a text it’s not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties”, said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Peruvian environment minister, who presided over the talks and must have been relieved he got a text on which every country was prepared to agree.

Eco-NGO’s caustic reaction

Environmental groups were scathing about the outcome. Sam Smith, chief of climate policy for WWF, said: “The text went from weak to weaker to weakest and it’s very weak indeed.

“Governments crucially failed to agree on specific plans to cut emissions before 2020 … The science is clear that delaying action until 2020 will make it near-impossible to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, yet political expediency won over scientific urgency.”

“It’s definitely watered down from what we expected”, said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There are deep and long-standing divisions on major issues including climate finance, which countries are more obligated to take action to reduce emissions, and whether to give greater priority to adaptation.

“These divisions nearly derailed the process in Lima; if they aren’t addressed, they threaten to block an agreement in Paris.”

Another problem, he added, was that many of the proposals made by the industrialised countries were obscure and incomplete: “The resistance by some countries to allowing scrutiny of their proposals is troubling.”

All eyes to Paris 2015

Friends of the Earth’s International’s Asad Rehman was equally scathing. “The only thing these talks have achieved is to reduce the chances of a fair and effective agreement to tackle climate change in Paris next year”, he said.

“Once again poorer nations have been bullied by the industrialised world into accepting an outcome which leaves many of their citizens facing the grim prospect of catastrophic climate change. We have the ingenuity and resources to build the low carbon future we so urgently need – but we still lack the political will.

“With the world speeding towards catastrophic climate change, wealthy industrialised nations who have contributed most to our polluted atmosphere must take the lead in tackling this threat. The next 12 months are crucial – failure to act will have a devastating impact on us all.”

FOEI says a number of key areas must be resolved if a fair and meaningful agreement is to be reached in Paris next year, including:

  • Wealthy industrialised nations must pledge bigger cuts in their emissions by 2020;
  • Wealthy industrialised nations must provide adequatefinance and technology to enable developing countries to tackle climate change and adapt to its impacts and support those already being impacted;
  • Wealthy industrialised nations must provide the finance and technology for a global renewable energy transformation;
  • All countries to commit to doing their fair share of effort to keep temps below 1.5C.

Catch-up time – but it can be done!

But those not keen on limiting their own development were happy. “We got what we wanted”, said Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister.

Despite the different views the talks did not break down, and so there is still hope. This assessment from Mohammed Adow, Christian Aid’s senior climate change adviser, probably accurately sums up the Lima result:

“The countdown clock to Paris is now ticking. Countries had the chance to give themselves a head start on the road to Paris but instead have missed the gun and now need to play catch-up.”

And Meyer says there is still hope that things may come good at Paris in 2015: “While the Lima summit fell short of expectations, the pressure is still on countries to put forward their best emissions reduction offers early next year.

“The good news is that the world’s three largest emitters – China, Europe, and the US – have already committed to do so, and others are expected to join them.”

 

 

Paul Brown writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 




388160

COP20 extended another day – but where’s the money? Updated for 2026

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As negotiators enter into all all night session in Lima this Friday night, poor countries that are the main victims of climate change are asking the rich: “where’s the $100 billion a year you promised?”

The Green Climate Fund was announced at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 as a $100 billion a year fund that would finance poor countries adaptation to climate change and their transition to a  low carbon economy.

But so far in Lima, the rich countries have pledged just $10 billion, to be released over four years – just 2.5% of the annual sum promised. As India’s Prakash Javadekar told the Guardian, “We are disappointed. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculously low.”

“We are upset that 2011, 2012, 2013 – three consecutive years – the developed world provided $10bn each year for climate action support to the developing world, but now they have reduced it. Now they are saying $10bn is for four years, so it is $2.5bn.”

Meanwhile the main negotiating text has scarecely progressed beyond its initial seven-page draft, with deep faultlines set between rich and poor countries.

In a nutshell, the rich countries want to keep their cash, while the poor take on emissions cuts matching their own undemanding targets.

The poor, exemplified by India, want to see the rich make deep emissions cuts and to pay up on their climate fund promises, before signing up to any emissions targets at all.

Progress has been made – but outside the UN process

The only good news is that commitments by China, the US and Europe on emissions cuts could mean significant progress towards ensuring that global average temperatures this century will rise less than predicted.

Researchers say the post-2020 plans announced recently by China and the US and the European Union mean projected warming during this century is likely to be less than expected. The downside is that, even then, the world will still not be doing enough to limit the increase in average temperatures to below 2˚C.

The research, released at the UN climate change conference currently being held in Lima, comes from the Climate Action Tracker, an independent science-based assessment that tracks countries’ emission commitments and actions.

It comes in the form of an assessment by four organisations: Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

But these commitments were made before the conference. Many had hoped that they would provide the momentum and goodwill needed to reach a wider agreement. But that never happened.

Not enough to limit warming to 2°C – but a start

Together, the four groups measured government pledges and actions against what will be needed to limit warming below the agreed international goal of a maximum 2°C increase above pre-industrial temperature levels, and against the goal of bringing warming below 1.5°C by 2100.

China – which recently announced a cap on coal consumption from 2020 – and the US and EU together contribute around 53% of global emissions. If they fully implement their new, post-2020 plans, they would limit global temperature rise to around 3˚C by 2100, which is between 0.2˚C and 0.4˚C lower than it would have been.

Their plans are more ambitious than earlier commitments, and represent what the researchers call “significant progress”. But they won’t limit warming to below 2˚C.

“In the context of increasing momentum towards a global agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015, this represents a very important first step towards what is needed”, said Bill Hare, executive director of Climate Analytics.

“Tempering this optimism is the large gap that remains between the policies that governments have put in place that will lead to warming of 3.9°C by 2100, compared to the improvements they’ve made in their promises. These new developments indicate an increasing political will to meet the long-term goals.”

Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, said: “China’s post-2020 emissions levels remain unclear and difficult to quantify. Its peak by 2030 falls somewhat short of a 2°C pathway. However, if emissions peak just five years earlier, this could make a very big difference and move them very close to a 2°C pathway.”

Höhne added that the US, with full implementation of its proposed policies, appears likely to meet its 2020 goal of 17%. But further measures would be needed to meet its newly-proposed 2025 goals.

Targets lacking ambition – so far

The EU’s current policies put it on a trajectory towards meeting its 2020 target. But it’s not enough to meet its more ambitious conditional target of a 30% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the 40% reduction target by 2030.

Rapidly industrialising countries such as India could do more, say the reseachers. Recent discussions indicate that India had been considering putting forward next month a peak year for emissions between 2035 and 2050, which – depending on the level at which this peak occurred – could be consistent with a 2°C pathway.

“We only have a very limited amount of carbon that can be burned by 2050, and we calculate that current policies would exceed this budget by over 60% by that time”, Hare said. “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”

But with the rich countries failure to pay up that leaves an impossible mountain to climb for negotiators in Lima tonight. India is among those countries digging in its heels until the rich countries make much deeper cuts, and honour their financing promises.

The key question facing developing country negotiators will be whether it’s better to settle for a bad agreement, or to emerge with none at all. Past form suggests the former – but don’t count on it.

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




388133

COP20: an agrement of sorts. Now, a rocky climate road to Paris Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




A deal struck in Lima between 196 nations yesterday leaves open the possibility of saving the planet from dangerous overheating. But its critics say the prospects of success are now slim.

The talks – which ran two days longer than scheduled – set a series of deadlines which mean that every nation is charged with producing its plans to cap and reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.

These commitments will then be assessed to see if they are enough to prevent the world heating up more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold political leaders say must not be crossed in order to avoid dangerous climate change.

The Lima agreement invites all countries to set out their plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 31 March. The next step will be to draft a legally binding international agreement on how to get below the 2°C threshold. This text is to be made available to all countries for comment by May 2015.

All eyes on Paris

By 1st November the secretariat of the UN Climate Change Convention is supposed to have assessed whether the commitment of these 196 nations is enough to stop the world overheating – and, if it is not, to point out by how far they will miss the target.

All this is to set the stage for a dramatic final negotiation in Paris in a year’s time, when a blueprint for a legally enforceable deal is supposed to be on the table. This is a tall order, however, because each time the parties meet the rich and poor countries wage the same arguments over again.

The developing countries say the rich developed countries that caused the problem in the first place must make deep cuts in their emissions and pay huge sums for the poorer countries to adapt to climate change.

The rich countries say that the fast industrialisation of many developing countries means that these countries must cut emissions too, otherwise the world will overheat anyway.

The poorest countries of all, and the small island states, who everyone agrees have no responsibility for the problem, want much more dramatic curbs on emissions, and more money for adaptation to sea level rise and climate extremes than is likely to be forthcoming.

The new climate reality: China, India, Brazil are now big-scale emitters

The talks take place amid their own jargon, with phrases like the “principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances” seen as essential to point up the difference between rich and poor nations and what they are expected to do.

The talks have dragged on for 15 years since the signing of the Kyoto Protocol, in which the rich nations agreed to the first cuts in emissions while allowing the poorer nations to continue developing.

Now that China has overtaken the US as the world’s biggest polluter, and countries like Brazil and India are fast catching up, the scientific case is that every country has to curb its emissions, or else everyone faces disaster.

But whether the talks have gone far enough to allow a deal to be reached in Paris next year is a matter of many opinions.

“As a text it’s not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties”, said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Peruvian environment minister, who presided over the talks and must have been relieved he got a text on which every country was prepared to agree.

Eco-NGO’s caustic reaction

Environmental groups were scathing about the outcome. Sam Smith, chief of climate policy for WWF, said: “The text went from weak to weaker to weakest and it’s very weak indeed.

“Governments crucially failed to agree on specific plans to cut emissions before 2020 … The science is clear that delaying action until 2020 will make it near-impossible to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, yet political expediency won over scientific urgency.”

“It’s definitely watered down from what we expected”, said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “There are deep and long-standing divisions on major issues including climate finance, which countries are more obligated to take action to reduce emissions, and whether to give greater priority to adaptation.

“These divisions nearly derailed the process in Lima; if they aren’t addressed, they threaten to block an agreement in Paris.”

Another problem, he added, was that many of the proposals made by the industrialised countries were obscure and incomplete: “The resistance by some countries to allowing scrutiny of their proposals is troubling.”

All eyes to Paris 2015

Friends of the Earth’s International’s Asad Rehman was equally scathing. “The only thing these talks have achieved is to reduce the chances of a fair and effective agreement to tackle climate change in Paris next year”, he said.

“Once again poorer nations have been bullied by the industrialised world into accepting an outcome which leaves many of their citizens facing the grim prospect of catastrophic climate change. We have the ingenuity and resources to build the low carbon future we so urgently need – but we still lack the political will.

“With the world speeding towards catastrophic climate change, wealthy industrialised nations who have contributed most to our polluted atmosphere must take the lead in tackling this threat. The next 12 months are crucial – failure to act will have a devastating impact on us all.”

FOEI says a number of key areas must be resolved if a fair and meaningful agreement is to be reached in Paris next year, including:

  • Wealthy industrialised nations must pledge bigger cuts in their emissions by 2020;
  • Wealthy industrialised nations must provide adequatefinance and technology to enable developing countries to tackle climate change and adapt to its impacts and support those already being impacted;
  • Wealthy industrialised nations must provide the finance and technology for a global renewable energy transformation;
  • All countries to commit to doing their fair share of effort to keep temps below 1.5C.

Catch-up time – but it can be done!

But those not keen on limiting their own development were happy. “We got what we wanted”, said Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister.

Despite the different views the talks did not break down, and so there is still hope. This assessment from Mohammed Adow, Christian Aid’s senior climate change adviser, probably accurately sums up the Lima result:

“The countdown clock to Paris is now ticking. Countries had the chance to give themselves a head start on the road to Paris but instead have missed the gun and now need to play catch-up.”

And Meyer says there is still hope that things may come good at Paris in 2015: “While the Lima summit fell short of expectations, the pressure is still on countries to put forward their best emissions reduction offers early next year.

“The good news is that the world’s three largest emitters – China, Europe, and the US – have already committed to do so, and others are expected to join them.”

 

 

Paul Brown writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 




388160

COP20 extended another day – but where’s the money? Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




As negotiators enter into all all night session in Lima this Friday night, poor countries that are the main victims of climate change are asking the rich: “where’s the $100 billion a year you promised?”

The Green Climate Fund was announced at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 as a $100 billion a year fund that would finance poor countries adaptation to climate change and their transition to a  low carbon economy.

But so far in Lima, the rich countries have pledged just $10 billion, to be released over four years – just 2.5% of the annual sum promised. As India’s Prakash Javadekar told the Guardian, “We are disappointed. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculously low.”

“We are upset that 2011, 2012, 2013 – three consecutive years – the developed world provided $10bn each year for climate action support to the developing world, but now they have reduced it. Now they are saying $10bn is for four years, so it is $2.5bn.”

Meanwhile the main negotiating text has scarecely progressed beyond its initial seven-page draft, with deep faultlines set between rich and poor countries.

In a nutshell, the rich countries want to keep their cash, while the poor take on emissions cuts matching their own undemanding targets.

The poor, exemplified by India, want to see the rich make deep emissions cuts and to pay up on their climate fund promises, before signing up to any emissions targets at all.

Progress has been made – but outside the UN process

The only good news is that commitments by China, the US and Europe on emissions cuts could mean significant progress towards ensuring that global average temperatures this century will rise less than predicted.

Researchers say the post-2020 plans announced recently by China and the US and the European Union mean projected warming during this century is likely to be less than expected. The downside is that, even then, the world will still not be doing enough to limit the increase in average temperatures to below 2˚C.

The research, released at the UN climate change conference currently being held in Lima, comes from the Climate Action Tracker, an independent science-based assessment that tracks countries’ emission commitments and actions.

It comes in the form of an assessment by four organisations: Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

But these commitments were made before the conference. Many had hoped that they would provide the momentum and goodwill needed to reach a wider agreement. But that never happened.

Not enough to limit warming to 2°C – but a start

Together, the four groups measured government pledges and actions against what will be needed to limit warming below the agreed international goal of a maximum 2°C increase above pre-industrial temperature levels, and against the goal of bringing warming below 1.5°C by 2100.

China – which recently announced a cap on coal consumption from 2020 – and the US and EU together contribute around 53% of global emissions. If they fully implement their new, post-2020 plans, they would limit global temperature rise to around 3˚C by 2100, which is between 0.2˚C and 0.4˚C lower than it would have been.

Their plans are more ambitious than earlier commitments, and represent what the researchers call “significant progress”. But they won’t limit warming to below 2˚C.

“In the context of increasing momentum towards a global agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015, this represents a very important first step towards what is needed”, said Bill Hare, executive director of Climate Analytics.

“Tempering this optimism is the large gap that remains between the policies that governments have put in place that will lead to warming of 3.9°C by 2100, compared to the improvements they’ve made in their promises. These new developments indicate an increasing political will to meet the long-term goals.”

Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, said: “China’s post-2020 emissions levels remain unclear and difficult to quantify. Its peak by 2030 falls somewhat short of a 2°C pathway. However, if emissions peak just five years earlier, this could make a very big difference and move them very close to a 2°C pathway.”

Höhne added that the US, with full implementation of its proposed policies, appears likely to meet its 2020 goal of 17%. But further measures would be needed to meet its newly-proposed 2025 goals.

Targets lacking ambition – so far

The EU’s current policies put it on a trajectory towards meeting its 2020 target. But it’s not enough to meet its more ambitious conditional target of a 30% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the 40% reduction target by 2030.

Rapidly industrialising countries such as India could do more, say the reseachers. Recent discussions indicate that India had been considering putting forward next month a peak year for emissions between 2035 and 2050, which – depending on the level at which this peak occurred – could be consistent with a 2°C pathway.

“We only have a very limited amount of carbon that can be burned by 2050, and we calculate that current policies would exceed this budget by over 60% by that time”, Hare said. “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”

But with the rich countries failure to pay up that leaves an impossible mountain to climb for negotiators in Lima tonight. India is among those countries digging in its heels until the rich countries make much deeper cuts, and honour their financing promises.

The key question facing developing country negotiators will be whether it’s better to settle for a bad agreement, or to emerge with none at all. Past form suggests the former – but don’t count on it.

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




388133

COP20 extended another day – but where’s the money? Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




As negotiators enter into all all night session in Lima this Friday night, poor countries that are the main victims of climate change are asking the rich: “where’s the $100 billion a year you promised?”

The Green Climate Fund was announced at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 as a $100 billion a year fund that would finance poor countries adaptation to climate change and their transition to a  low carbon economy.

But so far in Lima, the rich countries have pledged just $10 billion, to be released over four years – just 2.5% of the annual sum promised. As India’s Prakash Javadekar told the Guardian, “We are disappointed. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculously low.”

“We are upset that 2011, 2012, 2013 – three consecutive years – the developed world provided $10bn each year for climate action support to the developing world, but now they have reduced it. Now they are saying $10bn is for four years, so it is $2.5bn.”

Meanwhile the main negotiating text has scarecely progressed beyond its initial seven-page draft, with deep faultlines set between rich and poor countries.

In a nutshell, the rich countries want to keep their cash, while the poor take on emissions cuts matching their own undemanding targets.

The poor, exemplified by India, want to see the rich make deep emissions cuts and to pay up on their climate fund promises, before signing up to any emissions targets at all.

Progress has been made – but outside the UN process

The only good news is that commitments by China, the US and Europe on emissions cuts could mean significant progress towards ensuring that global average temperatures this century will rise less than predicted.

Researchers say the post-2020 plans announced recently by China and the US and the European Union mean projected warming during this century is likely to be less than expected. The downside is that, even then, the world will still not be doing enough to limit the increase in average temperatures to below 2˚C.

The research, released at the UN climate change conference currently being held in Lima, comes from the Climate Action Tracker, an independent science-based assessment that tracks countries’ emission commitments and actions.

It comes in the form of an assessment by four organisations: Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

But these commitments were made before the conference. Many had hoped that they would provide the momentum and goodwill needed to reach a wider agreement. But that never happened.

Not enough to limit warming to 2°C – but a start

Together, the four groups measured government pledges and actions against what will be needed to limit warming below the agreed international goal of a maximum 2°C increase above pre-industrial temperature levels, and against the goal of bringing warming below 1.5°C by 2100.

China – which recently announced a cap on coal consumption from 2020 – and the US and EU together contribute around 53% of global emissions. If they fully implement their new, post-2020 plans, they would limit global temperature rise to around 3˚C by 2100, which is between 0.2˚C and 0.4˚C lower than it would have been.

Their plans are more ambitious than earlier commitments, and represent what the researchers call “significant progress”. But they won’t limit warming to below 2˚C.

“In the context of increasing momentum towards a global agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015, this represents a very important first step towards what is needed”, said Bill Hare, executive director of Climate Analytics.

“Tempering this optimism is the large gap that remains between the policies that governments have put in place that will lead to warming of 3.9°C by 2100, compared to the improvements they’ve made in their promises. These new developments indicate an increasing political will to meet the long-term goals.”

Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, said: “China’s post-2020 emissions levels remain unclear and difficult to quantify. Its peak by 2030 falls somewhat short of a 2°C pathway. However, if emissions peak just five years earlier, this could make a very big difference and move them very close to a 2°C pathway.”

Höhne added that the US, with full implementation of its proposed policies, appears likely to meet its 2020 goal of 17%. But further measures would be needed to meet its newly-proposed 2025 goals.

Targets lacking ambition – so far

The EU’s current policies put it on a trajectory towards meeting its 2020 target. But it’s not enough to meet its more ambitious conditional target of a 30% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the 40% reduction target by 2030.

Rapidly industrialising countries such as India could do more, say the reseachers. Recent discussions indicate that India had been considering putting forward next month a peak year for emissions between 2035 and 2050, which – depending on the level at which this peak occurred – could be consistent with a 2°C pathway.

“We only have a very limited amount of carbon that can be burned by 2050, and we calculate that current policies would exceed this budget by over 60% by that time”, Hare said. “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”

But with the rich countries failure to pay up that leaves an impossible mountain to climb for negotiators in Lima tonight. India is among those countries digging in its heels until the rich countries make much deeper cuts, and honour their financing promises.

The key question facing developing country negotiators will be whether it’s better to settle for a bad agreement, or to emerge with none at all. Past form suggests the former – but don’t count on it.

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




388133

COP20 extended another day – but where’s the money? Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




As negotiators enter into all all night session in Lima this Friday night, poor countries that are the main victims of climate change are asking the rich: “where’s the $100 billion a year you promised?”

The Green Climate Fund was announced at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 as a $100 billion a year fund that would finance poor countries adaptation to climate change and their transition to a  low carbon economy.

But so far in Lima, the rich countries have pledged just $10 billion, to be released over four years – just 2.5% of the annual sum promised. As India’s Prakash Javadekar told the Guardian, “We are disappointed. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculously low.”

“We are upset that 2011, 2012, 2013 – three consecutive years – the developed world provided $10bn each year for climate action support to the developing world, but now they have reduced it. Now they are saying $10bn is for four years, so it is $2.5bn.”

Meanwhile the main negotiating text has scarecely progressed beyond its initial seven-page draft, with deep faultlines set between rich and poor countries.

In a nutshell, the rich countries want to keep their cash, while the poor take on emissions cuts matching their own undemanding targets.

The poor, exemplified by India, want to see the rich make deep emissions cuts and to pay up on their climate fund promises, before signing up to any emissions targets at all.

Progress has been made – but outside the UN process

The only good news is that commitments by China, the US and Europe on emissions cuts could mean significant progress towards ensuring that global average temperatures this century will rise less than predicted.

Researchers say the post-2020 plans announced recently by China and the US and the European Union mean projected warming during this century is likely to be less than expected. The downside is that, even then, the world will still not be doing enough to limit the increase in average temperatures to below 2˚C.

The research, released at the UN climate change conference currently being held in Lima, comes from the Climate Action Tracker, an independent science-based assessment that tracks countries’ emission commitments and actions.

It comes in the form of an assessment by four organisations: Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

But these commitments were made before the conference. Many had hoped that they would provide the momentum and goodwill needed to reach a wider agreement. But that never happened.

Not enough to limit warming to 2°C – but a start

Together, the four groups measured government pledges and actions against what will be needed to limit warming below the agreed international goal of a maximum 2°C increase above pre-industrial temperature levels, and against the goal of bringing warming below 1.5°C by 2100.

China – which recently announced a cap on coal consumption from 2020 – and the US and EU together contribute around 53% of global emissions. If they fully implement their new, post-2020 plans, they would limit global temperature rise to around 3˚C by 2100, which is between 0.2˚C and 0.4˚C lower than it would have been.

Their plans are more ambitious than earlier commitments, and represent what the researchers call “significant progress”. But they won’t limit warming to below 2˚C.

“In the context of increasing momentum towards a global agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015, this represents a very important first step towards what is needed”, said Bill Hare, executive director of Climate Analytics.

“Tempering this optimism is the large gap that remains between the policies that governments have put in place that will lead to warming of 3.9°C by 2100, compared to the improvements they’ve made in their promises. These new developments indicate an increasing political will to meet the long-term goals.”

Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, said: “China’s post-2020 emissions levels remain unclear and difficult to quantify. Its peak by 2030 falls somewhat short of a 2°C pathway. However, if emissions peak just five years earlier, this could make a very big difference and move them very close to a 2°C pathway.”

Höhne added that the US, with full implementation of its proposed policies, appears likely to meet its 2020 goal of 17%. But further measures would be needed to meet its newly-proposed 2025 goals.

Targets lacking ambition – so far

The EU’s current policies put it on a trajectory towards meeting its 2020 target. But it’s not enough to meet its more ambitious conditional target of a 30% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the 40% reduction target by 2030.

Rapidly industrialising countries such as India could do more, say the reseachers. Recent discussions indicate that India had been considering putting forward next month a peak year for emissions between 2035 and 2050, which – depending on the level at which this peak occurred – could be consistent with a 2°C pathway.

“We only have a very limited amount of carbon that can be burned by 2050, and we calculate that current policies would exceed this budget by over 60% by that time”, Hare said. “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”

But with the rich countries failure to pay up that leaves an impossible mountain to climb for negotiators in Lima tonight. India is among those countries digging in its heels until the rich countries make much deeper cuts, and honour their financing promises.

The key question facing developing country negotiators will be whether it’s better to settle for a bad agreement, or to emerge with none at all. Past form suggests the former – but don’t count on it.

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




388133

COP20 extended another day – but where’s the money? Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




As negotiators enter into all all night session in Lima this Friday night, poor countries that are the main victims of climate change are asking the rich: “where’s the $100 billion a year you promised?”

The Green Climate Fund was announced at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 as a $100 billion a year fund that would finance poor countries adaptation to climate change and their transition to a  low carbon economy.

But so far in Lima, the rich countries have pledged just $10 billion, to be released over four years – just 2.5% of the annual sum promised. As India’s Prakash Javadekar told the Guardian, “We are disappointed. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculously low.”

“We are upset that 2011, 2012, 2013 – three consecutive years – the developed world provided $10bn each year for climate action support to the developing world, but now they have reduced it. Now they are saying $10bn is for four years, so it is $2.5bn.”

Meanwhile the main negotiating text has scarecely progressed beyond its initial seven-page draft, with deep faultlines set between rich and poor countries.

In a nutshell, the rich countries want to keep their cash, while the poor take on emissions cuts matching their own undemanding targets.

The poor, exemplified by India, want to see the rich make deep emissions cuts and to pay up on their climate fund promises, before signing up to any emissions targets at all.

Progress has been made – but outside the UN process

The only good news is that commitments by China, the US and Europe on emissions cuts could mean significant progress towards ensuring that global average temperatures this century will rise less than predicted.

Researchers say the post-2020 plans announced recently by China and the US and the European Union mean projected warming during this century is likely to be less than expected. The downside is that, even then, the world will still not be doing enough to limit the increase in average temperatures to below 2˚C.

The research, released at the UN climate change conference currently being held in Lima, comes from the Climate Action Tracker, an independent science-based assessment that tracks countries’ emission commitments and actions.

It comes in the form of an assessment by four organisations: Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

But these commitments were made before the conference. Many had hoped that they would provide the momentum and goodwill needed to reach a wider agreement. But that never happened.

Not enough to limit warming to 2°C – but a start

Together, the four groups measured government pledges and actions against what will be needed to limit warming below the agreed international goal of a maximum 2°C increase above pre-industrial temperature levels, and against the goal of bringing warming below 1.5°C by 2100.

China – which recently announced a cap on coal consumption from 2020 – and the US and EU together contribute around 53% of global emissions. If they fully implement their new, post-2020 plans, they would limit global temperature rise to around 3˚C by 2100, which is between 0.2˚C and 0.4˚C lower than it would have been.

Their plans are more ambitious than earlier commitments, and represent what the researchers call “significant progress”. But they won’t limit warming to below 2˚C.

“In the context of increasing momentum towards a global agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015, this represents a very important first step towards what is needed”, said Bill Hare, executive director of Climate Analytics.

“Tempering this optimism is the large gap that remains between the policies that governments have put in place that will lead to warming of 3.9°C by 2100, compared to the improvements they’ve made in their promises. These new developments indicate an increasing political will to meet the long-term goals.”

Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, said: “China’s post-2020 emissions levels remain unclear and difficult to quantify. Its peak by 2030 falls somewhat short of a 2°C pathway. However, if emissions peak just five years earlier, this could make a very big difference and move them very close to a 2°C pathway.”

Höhne added that the US, with full implementation of its proposed policies, appears likely to meet its 2020 goal of 17%. But further measures would be needed to meet its newly-proposed 2025 goals.

Targets lacking ambition – so far

The EU’s current policies put it on a trajectory towards meeting its 2020 target. But it’s not enough to meet its more ambitious conditional target of a 30% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the 40% reduction target by 2030.

Rapidly industrialising countries such as India could do more, say the reseachers. Recent discussions indicate that India had been considering putting forward next month a peak year for emissions between 2035 and 2050, which – depending on the level at which this peak occurred – could be consistent with a 2°C pathway.

“We only have a very limited amount of carbon that can be burned by 2050, and we calculate that current policies would exceed this budget by over 60% by that time”, Hare said. “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”

But with the rich countries failure to pay up that leaves an impossible mountain to climb for negotiators in Lima tonight. India is among those countries digging in its heels until the rich countries make much deeper cuts, and honour their financing promises.

The key question facing developing country negotiators will be whether it’s better to settle for a bad agreement, or to emerge with none at all. Past form suggests the former – but don’t count on it.

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




388133

COP20 extended another day – but where’s the money? Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




As negotiators enter into all all night session in Lima this Friday night, poor countries that are the main victims of climate change are asking the rich: “where’s the $100 billion a year you promised?”

The Green Climate Fund was announced at the Copenhagen COP in 2009 as a $100 billion a year fund that would finance poor countries adaptation to climate change and their transition to a  low carbon economy.

But so far in Lima, the rich countries have pledged just $10 billion, to be released over four years – just 2.5% of the annual sum promised. As India’s Prakash Javadekar told the Guardian, “We are disappointed. It is ridiculous. It is ridiculously low.”

“We are upset that 2011, 2012, 2013 – three consecutive years – the developed world provided $10bn each year for climate action support to the developing world, but now they have reduced it. Now they are saying $10bn is for four years, so it is $2.5bn.”

Meanwhile the main negotiating text has scarecely progressed beyond its initial seven-page draft, with deep faultlines set between rich and poor countries.

In a nutshell, the rich countries want to keep their cash, while the poor take on emissions cuts matching their own undemanding targets.

The poor, exemplified by India, want to see the rich make deep emissions cuts and to pay up on their climate fund promises, before signing up to any emissions targets at all.

Progress has been made – but outside the UN process

The only good news is that commitments by China, the US and Europe on emissions cuts could mean significant progress towards ensuring that global average temperatures this century will rise less than predicted.

Researchers say the post-2020 plans announced recently by China and the US and the European Union mean projected warming during this century is likely to be less than expected. The downside is that, even then, the world will still not be doing enough to limit the increase in average temperatures to below 2˚C.

The research, released at the UN climate change conference currently being held in Lima, comes from the Climate Action Tracker, an independent science-based assessment that tracks countries’ emission commitments and actions.

It comes in the form of an assessment by four organisations: Climate Analytics, Ecofys, NewClimate Institute and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

But these commitments were made before the conference. Many had hoped that they would provide the momentum and goodwill needed to reach a wider agreement. But that never happened.

Not enough to limit warming to 2°C – but a start

Together, the four groups measured government pledges and actions against what will be needed to limit warming below the agreed international goal of a maximum 2°C increase above pre-industrial temperature levels, and against the goal of bringing warming below 1.5°C by 2100.

China – which recently announced a cap on coal consumption from 2020 – and the US and EU together contribute around 53% of global emissions. If they fully implement their new, post-2020 plans, they would limit global temperature rise to around 3˚C by 2100, which is between 0.2˚C and 0.4˚C lower than it would have been.

Their plans are more ambitious than earlier commitments, and represent what the researchers call “significant progress”. But they won’t limit warming to below 2˚C.

“In the context of increasing momentum towards a global agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015, this represents a very important first step towards what is needed”, said Bill Hare, executive director of Climate Analytics.

“Tempering this optimism is the large gap that remains between the policies that governments have put in place that will lead to warming of 3.9°C by 2100, compared to the improvements they’ve made in their promises. These new developments indicate an increasing political will to meet the long-term goals.”

Niklas Höhne, founding partner of the NewClimate Institute, said: “China’s post-2020 emissions levels remain unclear and difficult to quantify. Its peak by 2030 falls somewhat short of a 2°C pathway. However, if emissions peak just five years earlier, this could make a very big difference and move them very close to a 2°C pathway.”

Höhne added that the US, with full implementation of its proposed policies, appears likely to meet its 2020 goal of 17%. But further measures would be needed to meet its newly-proposed 2025 goals.

Targets lacking ambition – so far

The EU’s current policies put it on a trajectory towards meeting its 2020 target. But it’s not enough to meet its more ambitious conditional target of a 30% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2020, and the 40% reduction target by 2030.

Rapidly industrialising countries such as India could do more, say the reseachers. Recent discussions indicate that India had been considering putting forward next month a peak year for emissions between 2035 and 2050, which – depending on the level at which this peak occurred – could be consistent with a 2°C pathway.

“We only have a very limited amount of carbon that can be burned by 2050, and we calculate that current policies would exceed this budget by over 60% by that time”, Hare said. “We clearly have a lot of work to do.”

But with the rich countries failure to pay up that leaves an impossible mountain to climb for negotiators in Lima tonight. India is among those countries digging in its heels until the rich countries make much deeper cuts, and honour their financing promises.

The key question facing developing country negotiators will be whether it’s better to settle for a bad agreement, or to emerge with none at all. Past form suggests the former – but don’t count on it.

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist.

 

 




388133