Boris Johnson has said that a successful conference would be one that keeps alive hopes of limiting global warming to 1.5C and does so by delivering deals on “cash, coal, cars and trees”.
“Keeping 1.5 alive”
All countries committed in the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change to limit global warming to well below 2C compared with pre-industrial times and to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5C.
Since then, greater scientific understanding of the severe impacts of warming above 1.5C have prompted countries most vulnerable to climate change to demand that the second so-called “aspirational target” is achieved.
Alok Sharma, Cop26 president, explained the importance of limiting warming to 1.5C in a speech in Paris in mid-October: “At 1.5C, 700 million people would be at risk of extreme heatwaves. At 2C, it would be 2 billion. At 1.5C, 70 per cent of the world’s coral reefs die. At 2C, they are all gone. If temperatures continue to rise, we will step through a series of one-way doors, the end destination of which is climate catastrophe.”
The average temperature has already increased by 1.1C and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in a report in August: “Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5C or even 2C will be beyond reach.”
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The IPCC said global emissions needed to fall by 45 per cent on 2010 levels by 2030 to limit warming to 1.5C. A UN report this month said that emissions would rise by 16 per cent by 2030 based on the national pledges made by countries to date.
There will be some new announcements on emissions targets for 2030 during Cop26, with India possibly making the most significant new contribution.
However, they will definitely not add up to anything like the 45 per cent cut needed. That will not stop Johnson claiming success in “keeping 1.5 alive” because he is hoping Cop26 will agree a mechanism under which countries will come up with new, more ambitious targets for 2030 over the next two years.
Cash
Wealthy nations pledged in 2009 to deliver $100 billion a year of public and private money from 2020 to help poor countries cut their emissions and adapt to climate change. The target was missed in 2020 and will not be met until 2023, according to a report published this month by the UK government. Sharma has admitted that the failure to meet the target has undermined trust in the Cop26 negotiations and he is hoping the conference will deliver more promises of funding to make up the shortfall. He also wants to shift the balance of funding provided so that more money goes to help developing countries adapt to climate change. At present most of the money is linked to projects that will cut their emissions but they say they need urgent help to cope with the increased droughts, floods, heat waves and crop failures already being caused by climate change.
There will also be discussions at Cop26 on setting a new climate finance target for 2025 onwards. The Least Developed Countries, a 46-nation negotiating bloc at Cop26 that includes Senegal, Bangladesh and Yemen and represents one billion people, want the annual total to rise to at least $200 billion a year, according to their chairman, President Chakwera of Malawi.
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Coal
Sharma has said that he wants Cop26 “to be the Cop where we consign coal power to history”.
António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, has called for all OECD countries to phase out coal-fired power by 2030 and non-OECD ones to do so by 2040.
G20 countries agreed at the weekend to end financing for coal plants overseas by the end of this year but they rejected a proposal to stop using coal power in their own countries. Australia, India, China and Russia, which rely heavily on coal production and consumption, were among the countries which refused to sign up to an end date.
Sharma is hoping Cop26 will deliver an agreement on helping wean developing countries off coal by supporting their transition to cleaner sources of energy.
Trees
A multi-billion pound package is expected to be agreed at Cop26 to help achieve the global goal set in 2014 of ending deforestation by 2030. The rate of destruction of the world’s forests increased sharply last year, with at least 42,000 sq km of tree cover lost in tropical regions.
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Cars
Johnson wants other countries to follow the UK by setting deadlines for ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans.
The Energy Transitions Commission, a global coalition of 40 energy producers, industrial companies and financial institutions, has said that Cop26 should set a global deadline for this of 2035. There may be individual announcements by countries but there is unlikely to be a global agreement on banning fossil fuel cars.
There will also be announcements during Cop26 about cutting emissions of methane and ending fossil fuel subsidies.
There could also be progress on setting rules for establishing a global market trading credits for carbon reductions. This market would allow countries that overachieve their emissions reduction targets to sell their surplus to other countries that are struggling to meet their own targets There are concerns that this could lead to double-counting of emissions reductions.
