Lethal Heating: 11/06/17

06/11/2017

Bonn Climate Talks Must Go Further Than Paris Pledges To Succeed

The Guardian - Fiona Harvey

Hosts Fiji will be aiming to build transparency and constructive dialogue – and this will be crucial to successfully ratcheting up the tough climate targets sidestepped at Paris

Frank Bainimarama (L), prime minister of Fiji and host of the Bonn talks, meets with Ambassador Aziz Mekouar of Morrocco. Photograph: James Dowson/UNFCCC

Talanoa is a Fijian term for discussions aimed at building consensus, airing differences constructively, and finding ways to overcome difficulties or embark on new projects. It is one of the building blocks of Fijian society, used for centuries to foster greater understanding among a people distributed over many small islands, and carry them through a tough existence.
This week, talanoa comes to Europe, and the rest of the world. Fiji is hosting the UN’s climate talks, following on from the landmark Paris agreement of 2015, and will hold the conference in Bonn, Germany. Talanoa will be the founding principle of the conference, the means by which Fiji hopes to break through some of the seemingly intractable problems that have made these 20-plus years of negotiations a source of bitter conflict.
“Talanoa is a process of inclusive, participatory and transparent dialogue that builds empathy and leads to decision-making for the collective good,” said Frank Bainimarama, prime minister of Fiji. “It is not about finger pointing and laying blame but about listening to each other. By focusing on the benefits of action [against climate change] this process will move the global climate agenda forward.”
The most likely subject of finger-pointing will be Donald Trump. The US president this summer announced the withdrawal of the US from the Paris agreement. This was a blow to the 194 other countries which signed up to the 2015 accord, because the US is the world’s second biggest emitter of fossil fuels, after China.
Michael Bloomberg, the former Republican mayor of New York, said Trump’s White House did not speak for the rest of the US. “[This week] I’ll help lead a delegation of US mayors, governors and CEOs and we will deliver a unified message: Americans remain committed to meeting our commitment under the Paris agreement, no matter what happens in Washington. We can get there.”

Donald Trump announces his decision to withdraw the US from the Paris accord on 1 June 2017. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Yet the divisions likely to be caused by Trump’s stance should not be underestimated. Gaining a consensus involving the US and China was arguably the biggest achievement of Paris – the first time that all developed and developing countries had signed a pact vowing to limit global warming to 2C, which scientists say is the limit of safety. The history of the UN negotiations has been littered with attempts at such an agreement that fell short – the Kyoto protocol of 1997, the Copenhagen conference of 2009 – so when the gavel came down on the Paris agreement, it was an unparalleled landmark in the history of the world’s fight against climate change. The negotiations under the UN on a global agreement have been going on since 1992. Meanwhile, the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have steadily increased, reaching levels not seen for 800,000 years.
At Bonn, Trump’s team are reportedly preparing to inflame the talks yet further, by concentrating on the supposed benefits of coal-fired power.
Fiji hopes to confine the White House’s activities to a sideshow. There are two substantive issues to be discussed at this conference, which will carry on whatever the US position is. First is the “ratchet” – the means by which the pledges on emissions made at Paris will be increased in future years, in line with scientific advice. Second, and of huge importance to the hosts, is the question of adaptation to the effects of climate change.
Adaptation was long a dirty word at climate change conferences. Civil society groups feared that espousing, and devoting money to, the means of staving off the worst effects of warming – walls against sea level rises, dykes and floating houses, changes to agriculture to grow heat-adapted crops – would distract attention from the urgent business of reducing emissions. For Fiji and other Pacific islands, however, the effects of climate change are already being felt, and finding ways to reduce their impact will be crucial in the years to come.
One way round this has been to change the emphasis. Instead of adaptation, countries are now talking about resilience – a more positive term, suggesting empowerment and action, rather than giving in to a threat.
“We want resilient development,” said Lord Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank and author of the landmark 2006 review of the economics of climate change. “This is a development-oriented idea. We used to have the idea that it is more expensive to build things that are low-carbon, but that was wrong. Development should be resilient and sustainable. Whenever I come across the word adaptation, I delete it and put in resilience.”

Experts meet to discuss adaptation ahead of COP23 in Bonn, May 2017. Photograph: James Dowson/UNFCCC

Building resilience has advantages that go far beyond climate change – improvements to infrastructure, and a better evolved response to natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes that have nothing to do with global warming – and can also help to improve the quality of people’s lives, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
For instance, improved public transport systems would have a huge economic benefit in many developing countries, would reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and could be built in such a way as to be resistant against encroaching climate change. Buildings constructed with climate change in mind would also be more efficient, resistant to extreme heat, and against the storms, floods and droughts that are likely to become more frequent under global warming.
At Bonn, discussions are likely to focus on how to help developing countries become more resilient, and the financing that may be available for them to do so. The latter could be a combination of overseas aid from major economies, and investment from the private sector. These discussions, however, are still at an early stage and there may be little concrete outcome on them from the talks other than a decision to keep talking.
Yet the most pressing issue of the conference is likely to be the one that receives least public attention, and deliberately so. Known as the “facilitative dialogue”, this is a crucial – but overlooked – rider to the Paris agreement.
At Paris, countries acknowledged that their pledges to curb greenhouse gas emissions fell well short of the reductions advised by scientists. In order to forge the agreement, they made a compromise: in future years, they would ratchet up their pledges to the levels required.

A meeting board at the Bonn UN climate change conference – Bula is a Fijian word used in greeting. Photograph: James Dowson/UNFCCC

This made agreement at Paris possible, but it effectively put off the toughest negotiations to future years of talks. The difficulty of resolving this should not be underestimated. Currently, none of the world’s biggest emitters can agree on how any such ratchet mechanism would work. Should countries, for instance, take on more stringent emissions goals simply by adding a certain amount to their current pledges? Or should their future pledges be calculated based on their projected economic growth? How should the responsibility for historic emissions be taken into account? What status should be given to scientific advice on how to keep within the 2C limit?
Most countries want to ensure that their pledges are entirely of their own devising, rather than reached in consensus with the rest of the UN, but it is unclear what would happen if these pledges are inadequate. The work is made harder still by deficiencies in collating reliable and up-to-date data on each country’s emissions.
The discussions on the ratchet mechanism are known in the UN jargon as “the facilitative dialogue”, a name that disguises the fraught nature of these negotiations. Given the lack of consensus among major countries on how any such ratchet mechanism should work, and the adamant refusal of the US to take part in further pledges, it may take much more than talanoa – and years more of tough negotiations – to come up with a solution to this conundrum.

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'Critical Turning Point' As More Nations Hit Peak Carbon Emissions: Think-Tank

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The number of countries in which greenhouse gases has peaked continues to rise, representing a "critical turning point" in the task of curbing climate change, according to a report by the World Resources Institute.
While offering a "silver lining", the rate of national peaking won't be fast enough to prevent emissions reaching a zenith before 2030, assuming countries implement their Paris climate pledges, the Washington D.C.-based think-tank said.

Carbon dioxide levels surged in 2016
The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere in 2016 hit a rate not seen for millions of years, the United Nations said.

Any backsliding by China and the US, the two biggest emitters accounting for more than a third of the total, would also "significantly compromise" the peak projections, it said.
Most of the early peakers were former Eastern Bloc nations, whose heavy industry sectors hammered in the run-up to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Germany, France and the United Kingdom, though, had also seen their greenhouse gas pollution top out by that year.
Australia, thanks largely to a reduction in land clearing, has probably seen its emissions peak in 2006 at 610.2 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent.
While the most recent quarterly figures show Australia's pollution edging higher – up 1.2 per cent to 550.1 million tonnes of CO2-e in the year to March 2017 – government projections don't point to a new peak
By 2010, 49 nations had likely peaked emissions, a tally the WRI projects will reach 53 nations by 2020 and 57 by 2030. The share of pollution from those peaking nations was 36 per cent in 2010, rising to 40 per cent in 2020 and 60 per cent by 2030, the WRI estimates. (See chart below).

More nations are hitting peak emissions, although more needs to be done if the Paris climate goals are to achieved. Photo: AAP

Frydenberg to attend Bonn event
The think-tank's report is among a flurry of studies released ahead of the Bonn climate conference that begins next week in Germany. The gathering will review progress towards the climate targets agreed on by almost 200 nations in Paris in late 2015.
Josh Frydenberg, federal Environment and Energy minister, will be the most senior Australian official at Bonn and plans to attend November 14-16, a spokeswoman said. The overall event runs from November 6-17.

Globally, the world add 31,000 solar panels every hour, the IFC says. Photo: supplied

US emissions are assumed by the WRI to have peaked in 2007 despite current President Donald Trump's campaign promise to end "the war on coal", and his promise to pull America out of the Paris agreement.
Steady Chinese emissions have been critical to a flat-lining in global emissions over the past three years. Even so, atmospheric CO2 levels jumped by a record rate last year, and China's growth of total greenhouse gases – including potent gases such as methane – may increase if the economy accelerates.
"The more we delay necessary reductions, the greater the need for rapid reductions in subsequent decades," the WRI said.
Any delay poses greater risks of economic disruption and more reliance on unproven technologies to achieve negative emissions. It would also raise risks of higher temperatures and associated greater adaptation costs, it said. (See below of different scenarios.)

Carbon price 'key'
A separate study by the International Finance Corp., part of the World Bank Group, estimated the Paris accord could create $US23 trillion in investment opportunities for 21 emerging economies alone by 2030.
Renewable energy investment, now worth $US297 billion a year, is expected to rise 37-fold to $US11 trillion by 2040, the IFC said. Most of that money will come from private investors.
One IFC project in Papua New Guinea, partly funded by Australia, had brought low-cost off-grid solar energy and storage to almost 20 per cent of the population in just a couple of years. The model could be replicated in the Pacific and elsewhere, Thomas Kerr, an author of the report, said.
"We see a huge potential," said Mr Kerr, adding nations could be encouraged to lift their Paris emissions-reduction goals if the huge supply of funds makes their targets more achievable as expected.
Carbon pricing – a policy rejected by the Abbott and Turnbull governments – is favoured by the IFC as an efficient method to promote the shift from fossil fuels to lower-carbon alternatives. "We think that it is just a key policy that countries should be putting in place to … level the playing field," Mr Kerr said.

Let’s Be Honest: Australia Is Well Behind On Renewables

RenewEconomy - David Leitch

Australia’s fossil fuel share of electricity generation is higher than that of our peers.
The following chart is ugly, in my next life I hope to come back with more drawing ability and a better sense of design, but its also ugly for Australians who care about doing our bit in the 21^st century.

The data are for Jan-July 2017 cumulative for selected countries and regions. i.e. it’s basically right up to date. It shows that Australia has the highest share of fossil fuel generation in the selected sample of countries.
Most of the rest of the sample shows a big increase in wind & PV production. For instance in the USA as a whole (not shown) wind & PV cumulative production is up about 35% this year so far.
The graph also shows that our share (which includes rooftop PV) of wind & PV is one of the lowest. To be clear the IEA stats lump other in with wind & PV in their monthly data and so the chart marginally overstates the wind & PV share for the European countries selected. But we don’t think that makes much difference.
None of these other countries or grids seem to feel there is any difficulty, yet, with reliability. However its also fair to say that discussions about dispatchability and other market design related issues in many of these regions is on the increase.
It’s also fair to point out that transmission interconnectors more easily facilitate more renewables. But then we could easily build some more of them. Even the rainy UK is well ahead of Australia.
California and Spain at 28% and 24% respectively are more than 3 times bigger in wind & PV than Australia and with comparable grid sizes.

As the electricity price in virtually every country and region is lower than in Australia and as the renewable energy share is higher in almost all of them, so its clearly not renewables alone that is responsible for high prices. But anyone reading this knew that already.
To be sure I could select some countries in Eastern Europe and in Asia that are worse than Australia, but I like to think we are better than that. We are wealthy country with great renewable resources and we can and will do better.

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