Tag Archives: Climate Change

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Some Countries Commit, Others Deflect as White House Pushes for Faster Carbon Cuts

The Biden-Harris Leaders’ Summit on Climate was scheduled to open with statements from leaders of more than two dozen countries, in what the White House signposted as “an opportunity for leaders to highlight the climate-related challenges their countries face and the efforts they are undertaking”.

Here’s a run-down of the day’s commitments.

United States: 50 to 52% emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2030 and restrictions on financing of overseas fossil fuel projects.

Canada: 40 to 45% emissions reduction below 2005 levels by 2030, with additional measures to meet net-zero by 2050.

United Kingdom: 78% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2035, including a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the 2015 Paris Agreement that includes emissions from international shipping and aviation for the first time. The UK supports ending support for fossil fuels overseas and doubling international climate finance.

“If we actually want to stop climate change, then this must be the year in which we get serious about doing so. Because the 2020s will be remembered either as the decade in which world leaders united to turn the tide, or as a failure,” said Prime Minister Boris Johnson, based on his prepared remarks for the summit. “Let the history books show that it was this generation of leaders that possessed the will to preserve our planet for generations to come,” added Johnson, whose updated NDC was described earlier this week as “a bit of a Boris blunderbuss”.

European Union: The EU confirmed a 55% emissions reduction below 1990 levels by 2030 and a target of “climate neutrality” by 2050, a week after seven European countries agreed to put an end to export financing for fossil fuels. While politicians in Germany welcomed the EU deal, Clean Energy Wire says EU member states remain divided on its implementation, while The Guardian has environmental groups declaring the new target a failure.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the 55% goal, an improvement over the continent’s previous 40% threshold, will “put the EU on a green path for a generation”. But European parliamentarians had sought a 60% commitment. “The ‘at least 55% emission reduction target for 2030’ is not in line with the Paris agreement’s ambition to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C by the end of the century,” said Climate Action Network-Europe Director Wendel Trio. “Today’s agreement is not a victory for climate action, it’s a farce,” agreed Barbara Mariani, senior policy officer for climate and energy with the European Environmental Bureau.

Germany: 55% emissions reduction below 1990 by 2030, coal-fired electricity phaseout by 2030, and further investments in renewable energy.

Italy: The country has made climate one of the main priorities for its year in the G20 presidency. Italy will devote 10% of its budget to green infrastructure, circular economy, and sustainable mobility.

Japan: The country almost doubled its emissions reduction target to 46% below 2013 levels, with “neutrality” by 2050, after adopting a two-page partnership with the U.S. on “ambition, decarbonization, and clean energy”. The Japan Climate Initiative said the target was just 1% higher than its 291 members had asked for. No Coal Japan welcomed the Japan-U.S. commitment to align public finance with a 2050 target for net-zero emissions, but pressed the country to withdraw financing from two coal projects.

“Japan deserves recognition for adopting a new climate target that is a significant and important improvement over the very weak one that it submitted a year ago,” said Helen Mountford, vice president, climate and economics at the World Resources Institute. “Given the sharp decline in the price of renewables and electric vehicles over the last five years and strong business support for bold action, Japan should aim to cut emissions by 50%, as Prime Minister Suga said the government will strive to do. This will be important so that Japan does not lag behind its peers as the world races towards a clean energy future, or lose out on the economic opportunities from a cleaner, healthier, low-carbon economy.”

China: The country will strive to peak emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Pledged strict controls on coal-fired power plant construction over the next five years, with a phasedown of coal consumption in the next five-year plan. (The current one was just announced last month.) China also issued a joint statement with the U.S. last week, undertaking to address the climate crisis with seriousness and urgency.

The South China Morning Post says the U.S. and the EU have been pressuring China for a more aggressive climate pledge and an earlier target year for peak emissions, and most experts agree the earlier target is doable. The Guardian says Chinese President Xi Jinping “is likely to push back” against Biden’s claim to global leadership, but veteran China-based climate analyst Lauri Myllyvirta argues a healthy competition between the two superpowers can actually spur faster, deeper carbon cuts.

Climate vulnerable countries attending the Summit pushed developed countries for increased finance, particularly for climate adaptation], and for debt relief, WRI reports. The vulnerable countries attending the summit include Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Jamaica, Kenya, and the Marshall Islands.

Australia: Avidly pro-coal Prime Minister Scott Morrison entered the summit with a new technology roadmap that called for A$540 million in new carbon capture and hydrogen spending, while critics described his government as “increasingly isolated due to a lack of climate ambition,” The Guardian reports. Morrison reportedly planned to use the summit as an opportunity to troll for international partners for the plan. The Biden-Harris administration pressed Australia for faster, deeper carbon cuts, and nearly a dozen environmental and humanitarian groups from the Pacific region urged the country to reduce its emissions 50% by 2030.

Brazil: President Jair Bolsonaro offered up carbon neutrality by 2050 under pressure from the Biden-Harris administration, promised to double funding for environmental enforcement, and maintained a past target of zero illegal deforestation by 2030. But Inside Climate News says the U.S. is already looking past Brazil to Colombia to find a climate leader in the region, and Reuters writes that Brazilian environmentalists are skeptical of Bolsonaro’s sudden policy shift. “The government makes totally empty promises,” said Climate Observatory Executive Secretary Marcio Astrini.

“Bolsonaro has paid lip service to the U.S. demands, sending Biden a seven-page letter which includes figures and claims that Brazilian environmentalists say are distorted and even false,” adds Climate News Network. “But 15 U.S. Democratic senators, apparently worried that Biden might be taken in by Bolsonaro’s message, have sent him a letter of their own, asking him to link any support for Brazil to progressive reductions in deforestation.” In a post yesterday in The Guardian, two former Brazilian environment ministers say billions of dollars in new U.S. funding won’t stop the country’s “ruinous government” from “destroying the Amazon rainforest”.

India: The country announced the launch of a U.S.-India climate and energy partnership to help it reach 450 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030. India, which ranks 87th in the World Economic Forum’s Energy Transition Index, may still be planning a new generation of coal-fired power plants, according to a draft electricity policy reported in an exclusive by Reuters.

South Korea: The country committed to end public financing of overseas fossil projects. “I applaud South Korea for halting financing for new overseas coal plants,” Mountford said. “This is a historic step, as South Korea was one of the three biggest financial backers for coal plant construction. The announcement sends a strong signal that the era of dirty fossil fuels is coming to a close. Japan and China should quickly follow South Korea’s example and reorient their own overseas funding away from coal to clean sources of energy.”

South Africa: The country said its emissions will begin falling in 2025, a decade ahead of its previous schedule.

Russia: President Vladimir Putin said his country’s “cumulative net emissions” over the next three decades should be less than the European Union’s. “It wasn’t immediately clear how the target would be achieved in the country where fossil fuel production is the single-biggest source of budget revenue,” Bloomberg writes. But the remarks “mark a sharp turnaround from Putin’s past rhetoric on climate action, which typically includes mocking statements about renewable energy. Russia’s current commitment under the Paris Agreement implies a small increase in emissions from current levels because it uses the highly-polluting Soviet Union as its baseline.”

The Washington Post points to climate diplomacy as one area of common ground between Putin and Biden amid a mounting pile of “stress points”.

(h/t to Climate Action Network-Canada for the Day One summit summary that supplied the skeleton for this report.)

Reprinted withe permission from The Energy Mix

Federal Budget Puts $17.6 Billion into Green Recovery, Tips 36% Emissions Cut by 2030

Emissions Target Falls Short

The budget produced a much bigger flurry with a calculation that the new funding measures, coming on top of past federal climate programs, added up to a 36% emission reduction target for 2030, incrementally more than the 31% Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in mid-December. Days ago, Trudeau was expected to commit to a 40% reduction when he participates in U.S. President Joe Biden’s climate leaders’ summit tomorrow and Friday, and the budget reference triggered a flurry of Twitter traffic urging him to go farther still.

“The Canadian federal budget presentation could be the first good news of the week & a key step towards COP26,” tweeted European Climate Foundation Chair Laurence Tubiana, an architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement. “@JustinTrudeau should commit to doubling Canada’s #climatefinance pledge & cutting emissions by 60% by 2030. This target would set Canada on a pathway to #netzero by 2050.”

“This is a big week for climate action!” agreed former U.S. vice-president and Climate Reality Project founder Al Gore. “As the US finalizes its commitment to reduce emissions, we need other leaders to step up also. I hope @JustinTrudeau & Canada will commit to reduce emissions at least 50% by 2030. Only through bold action can we address the climate crisis.”

“In light of Canada’s new budget and ahead of the #ClimateLeadersSummit, Mary Robinson encourages #Canada to step up by doubling its #climatefinance and ambition, with at least 50% cuts in emissions below 2005 levels by 2030,” added The Elders. Elders Chair Robinson, the former president of Ireland, stressed that “Canada needs to have a sense that it’s not just words at a summit,” during a news conference last week hosted by Climate Action Network-Canada (CAN-Rac).

It’s quickly becoming conventional wisdom that Biden will declare a target of 50% by 2030, the Washington Post reported Tuesday afternoon, though the White House has yet to confirm the figure.

The Dollars

Climate-related highlights of the budget include:

• $4.4 billion in interest-free loans to support deep energy retrofits in up to 200,000 homes;

• $2.3 billion over five years to address the biodiversity crisis, and conserve up to a million square kilometres of land and inland waters to meet the government’s 2025 deadline to designate 25% of Canada’s land and freshwater as protected areas, along with $976.8 million for marine and coastal areas;

• A spate of just transition measures, from a national early learning and child care strategy to a $15 federal minimum wage, that had one media analyst declaring that Freeland had swept away three decades of economic orthodoxy in a single budget;

• $5 billion in new funds and $8 billion in total for a Net Zero Accelerator, with a mandate for “decarbonizing large emitters, transforming key sectors—from steel and aluminium to cement—and accelerating the adoption of clean technology across the economy—for example, the auto and aerospace sectors”;

• $1.4 billion over 12 years for a new Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund, along with $11.7 million over five years “to support projects such as wildfire mitigation activities, rehabilitation of storm water systems, and restoration of wetlands and shorelines”;

• $1 billion over five years to attract private sector investments to clean technology projects;

• A $319-million, seven-year program to support research, development, and demonstration of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology, along with a new tax incentive to speed up adoption of CCUS technology;

• $94.4 million over five years “to increase domestic and international capacity and action to address climate change”;

• $92.8 million in long-term funding for renewable energy certificates for federal buildings;

• $67.2 million over seven years to implement the federal Clean Fuel Standard;

• A plan to raise $5 billion through the country’s first-ever green bond.

The budget envisions shifting refundable household tax credits for the federal floor price on carbon from annual to quarterly payments, and funding a five-year, $36.2-million initiative “to develop and apply a climate lens that ensures climate considerations are integrated throughout federal government decision-making.” Ottawa will also launch a consultation on border carbon adjustments, and mandate climate risk disclosure for Crown corporations with more than $1 billion in assets, beginning next year at the latest.

“I welcome the introduction of mandatory climate-related financial disclosures standards for Canada’s Crown corporations, therefore fixing important transparency issues around fossil fuel funding by Export Development Canada, for example,” Independent Senator Rosa Galvez said in a release. “This initial step should evolve in the direction set by France and New Zealand, which are legislating mandatory disclosure in the markets, not just for Crown corporations.”

The budget contains fewer than 10, mostly technical instances of the word “fossil”, and no reference to the small modular nuclear reactor program that has been lobbying heavily for federal support.

Cutting Emissions While Bankrolling Polluters

Reaction from the climate community mostly acknowledged the good news in the budget, but pointed to the much bigger, more transformative commitments the climate crisis demands.

“Some investments made by Budget 2021 are extremely helpful— particularly investments in clean transportation, energy-efficient homes, resilient agriculture, and Canada’s first green bonds,” said Teika Newton, CAN-Rac’s membership and domestic policy manager. “Some investments made by Budget 2021 are extremely worrisome—investments in carbon capture and storage risk perpetuating our dangerous addiction to fossil fuels, and some of the forestry investments perpetuate a transactional relationship with nature that treats it like a commodity we can trade. Yet the big takeaway is this: we are in a time of changing norms, and Budget 2021 does not present a vision for climate-safe, transformational change.”

“The budget is a great step forward despite the fact that it comes at a moment where the country needs the courage to take a giant leap forward to recover from the impact of COVID-19,” Galvez said. “Despite progress towards more ambitious emissions reductions by 2030, our contribution still falls short of our fair share.”

The federal plan “contains unprecedented investments to tackle climate change and environmental priorities,” said Julia Levin, climate and energy program manager at Environmental Defence Canada. “However, hiding in the details of this budget are some concerning elements, including a new commitment of more than $6 billion in financial support and new tax breaks for high-emitting sectors, including oil and gas. Without robust conditions, this money may go to support technologies, including carbon capture and fossil fuel-derived hydrogen, that will delay a transition away from fossil fuels and lock us into decades of increased carbon pollution.”

The budget shows the Trudeau government “investing in programs to cut emissions in one breath, and announcing new financial support and tax breaks for some of the worst climate polluters in the next,” said Sven Biggs, Canadian oil and gas director at Stand.earth. “While we are glad to see an increase in the ambition of Canada’s emissions reduction target, it is still far too low. Canada needs to match the commitments of other leading industrialized countries to reduce emissions globally, and that means increasing Canada’s emissions reduction goal to 60% below 2005 levels by 2030.”

“Canadians demanded a green and just recovery,” said Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist Keith Stewart. “Trudeau has responded with funds for Indigenous communities, child care, and climate action, but fails to tackle our fossil fuel addiction and deepening inequality. To build a better normal, we must build back fossil-free.”

Karri Munn-Venn, senior policy analyst at Citizens for Public Justice, acknowledged new federal dollars for early learning, child care, and expanded employment insurance and emergency benefits, all consistent with the principles for a just recovery that 150 Canadian non-profits and campaign groups adopted last year. “Still,” she wrote, “Budget 2021 makes it clear that the federal government has yet to grasp the severity and urgency of the global climate crisis or the devastating ramifications of inadequate action.”

“This budget does not reflect that we are in a climate emergency,” said ClimateFast Co-Chair Lyn Adamson, citing an energy retrofit investment equal to just 10% of what would be needed to hit the country’s 2030 carbon reduction target. “Right now, climate is a side show, not central as it needs to be for civilization to continue,” with the result that “we are abandoning our children and grandchildren with inadequate action.”

Published with permission from The Energy Mix

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Supreme Court Carbon Ruling Could Trigger ‘Start-Up Explosion’ but Loopholes Undermine Federal Floor Price

Steve MacLellan

Ramble On

Tag Archives: Climate Change

Some Countries Commit, Others Deflect as White House Pushes for Faster Carbon Cuts

Federal Budget Puts $17.6 Billion into Green Recovery, Tips 36% Emissions Cut by 2030

Supreme Court Carbon Ruling Could Trigger ‘Start-Up Explosion’ but Loopholes Undermine Federal Floor Price