Today's summary
Time’s up on Day 4. Its been a pleasure to blog the conference that will, one way or another, decide our fate. Tune in tomorrow.
Here is what happened today:
New research suggests about half the world’s fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036 under a net zero transition. A drop in demand for oil and gas will reshape the geopolitical landscape, with countries that are slow to decarbonise likely to suffer but early movers will profit.
The International Energy Agency said country pledges at Cop26 could limit global temperature rise to 1.8C. The figure is lower than the 2C prediction made a day earlier. However, others have warned not to get complacent with estimates. The world remains on “a 2.7 degree pathway, a catastrophic pathway”, said Selwin Hart, UN Special Adviser.
Scientists have warned of a “reality check” for the world’s nations gathered at Cop26 after they discovered that carbon emissions have shot back to the record level seen before the coronavirus pandemic.
UK activist group, Insulate Britain, blocked Parliament Square in central London. The protest was an apparent response to critics who have accused them of targeting the wrong people. The group is calling on the government to commit to a programme to insulate all Britain’s homes.
Scotland’s largest train operator, ScotRail, said upwards of 50,000 people are expected at a Saturday protest, and warned travellers that its services in and out of Glasgow will be “extremely busy” this weekend. Around 8,000 to 10,000 people would take part in Friday’s youth protests, it added.
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As Energy Day draws to a close, James Thornton, founder and chief executive of the environmental law group ClientEarth, says it’s been a disappointing one.
As #COP26 Energy Day closes, having no clear deadline to end our reliance on #coal is disappointing. Current pledges and dates are too loose if we are to halve emissions by 2030 and meet #netzero by 2050. @AlokSharma_RDG said this was the COP that would consign coal to history.
— James Thornton (@JamesThorntonCE) November 4, 2021
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The Irish government has unveiled its sector-by-sector climate action targets involving what environment minister Eamon Ryan said will be “the defining challenges of our time”.
By 2030, it wants greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by 51% with target reductions ranges as follows:
- Electricity: 62-81%
- Transport: 42-50%
- Buildings: 44-56%
- Industry/Enterprise: 29-41%
- Agriculture: 22-30%
- Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry: 37-58%
The cornerstone of the policy is to increase the proportion of renewable electricity to up to 80% by 2030, including an increased target of up to 5 gigawatts of offshore wind.
Ryan said he thought transport would be the hardest target to meet but spoke of plans to change the entire police fleet to electric cars as a way of accelerating public attitudes to EVs.
He also spoke of “district heating at scale”, with a target of providing 8% of heating in these micro-networks.
Meanwhile, the deputy prime minister, Leo Varadkar, confirmed that Ireland would look at a scrappage scheme for car and van owners to achieve the target of 1m electric vehicles by 2030, something that had been ruled out previously.
Ministers did not comment on a recent KPMG report that suggested more than 1m of the 6.5m cattle herd would have to be culled to meet a 30% reduction in the agriculture sector.
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This photo of locals in Glasglow watching a Cop26 demo march is too good not to post. Enjoy.
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Indigenous leaders from West Papua, home to one of the largest and most diverse rainforests, have launched the world’s first “green state” at Cop26.
The contested Indonesian province declared a provisional “government-in-waiting” last year and promised to implement environmental and social protections with respect for the natural world.
Today it released its Green State Vision. It includes a three-point plan to try to prevent climate collapse. The plan pledges to:
- Make ecocide a serious criminal offence.
- Restore guardianship of natural resources to Indigenous communities.
- Serve notice on oil, gas, mining and logging companies to adhere to international environmental standards or cease operations.
Exiled leader Benny Wenda, interim president of the United Liberation Movement for West Papua and Provisional Government, said: “We are fighting for stewardship of one of the planet’s largest rainforests, a lung of the world. If you want to save the world, you must save West Papua.”
Jennifer Robinson, a barrister at the UK’s Doughty Street Chambers, who helped to draft the Green State Vision, said: “Ensuring West Papua’s right to self-determination will ensure the protection of the environment and the climate by allowing the Indigenous custodians of the land to take back control, protection and management of their resources.”
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UN special adviser says don't 'celebrate' 1.8C, world still on 'catastrophic pathway'
Hold the brakes! Moments after the International Energy Agency said Cop26 commitments could limit global temperature rises to 1.8C, another official has warned we are still on a “catastrophic pathway”.
My colleague, Jillian Ambrose reports:
Selwin Hart, UN special adviser and assistant secretary-general for climate change, has warned Cop delegates that the fight to limit global heating is “far from over”.
“Fatih, I heard your numbers, but based on the NDCs that have been submitted, the world is on a 2.7 degree pathway, a catastrophic pathway, and therefore we are a long way away from keeping the 1.5 degree goal of the Paris agreement alive,” he said.
Hart received applause as he continued.
“We cannot be complacent. We cannot celebrate before we’ve done the job. We must recognise that this is a fight that we cannot afford to lose. I urge all of you to keep up the fight.”
- Note: This post earlier quoted the special advisor as saying the Paris agreement goal was 1.3C. It has been changed to 1.5C.
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Half world’s fossil fuel assets could become worthless by 2036 in net zero transition
About half of the world’s fossil fuel assets will be worthless by 2036 under a net zero transition, according to research.
Countries that are slow to decarbonise will suffer but early movers will profit; the study finds that renewables and freed-up investment will more than make up for the losses to the global economy.
It highlights the risk of producing far more oil and gas than required for future demand, which is estimated to leave $11tn-$14tn (£8.1tn-£10.3tn) in so-called stranded assets – infrastructure, property and investments where the value has fallen so steeply they must be written off.
The lead author, Jean-Francois Mercure of the University of Exeter, said the shift to clean energy would benefit the world economy overall, but it would need to be handled carefully to prevent regional pockets of misery and possible global instability.
“In a worst-case scenario, people will keep investing in fossil fuels until suddenly the demand they expected does not materialise and they realise that what they own is worthless. Then we could see a financial crisis on the scale of 2008,” he said, warning oil capitals such as Houston could suffer the same fate as Detroit after the decline of the US car industry unless the transition is carefully managed.
The challenge is evident at the ongoing Cop26 climate conference, where some of the nations most at risk of being left with stranded assets – such as the oil and gas exporters Russia and Brazil – are likely to try to slow down the transition as they have done at previous climate meetings, while those most likely to gain – such as the fuel-importing EU – are pushing for faster action.
The new paper, published in Nature Energy, illustrates how a drop in demand for oil and gas before 2036 will reshape the geopolitical landscape. Current investment flows and government commitments to reach net zero emissions by 2050 will make renewable energy more efficient, cheaper and stable, while fossil fuels will be hit by more price volatility. Many carbon assets, such as oil or coal reserves, will be left unburned, while machinery will also be stranded and no longer produce value for its owners.
Read about it here:
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Cop26 commitments could limit global heating to 1.8C
The International Energy Agency has crunched the numbers and reckons that combining the new pledges to cut emissions made by nations - most notably India - with the plan for 90 countries to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 would mean global temperature rise would be limited to 1.8C.
IEA chief Faith Birol announced the news in a tweet:
BIG NEWS 🚨 #COP26 climate pledges mean Glasgow is getting closer to Paris!
— Fatih Birol (@fbirol) November 4, 2021
New @IEA analysis shows that fully achieving all net zero pledges to date & the Global Methane Pledge by those who signed it would limit global warming to 1.8 C
A big step forward, but much more needed!
It follows similar snap analyses of the new national pledges alone by European Union officials and University of Melbourne researchers, which both calculated a limit of 1.9C of global heating.
There’s a big “if”. These temperature limits will only be realised if every nation fully implements all of their pledges in coming years and some pledges from developing countries are dependent on funding from rich ones. The limits are also short of the 1.5C target needed to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
But the temperature indicated by pledges made up until COP26 began was 2.7C - a catastrophic level. A shift to 1.8C or 1.9C, if confirmed, might well meet a key goal of Cop26, which is to keep the chance of 1.5C alive.
Joe Biden, who urged world leaders at Cop26 to confront the “existential threat” of the climate crisis, is increasingly viewed as something of a hypocrite by climate campaigners in Glasgow, who hit out at his US administration today.
A large banner reading No New Federal Fossil Fuels was unfurled by activists outside the summit ahead of an appearance today by Deb Haaland, Biden’s interior secretary. Protestors are furious that Haaland’s department has been handing out oil and gas drilling permits at a rate of more than 300 a month, with an auction of 80m acres – an area larger than the UK – set to be leased this month to fossil fuel companies seeking to exploit the Gulf of Mexico.
Separately, environmental groups ran an advert in The Herald, Scotland’s largest daily newspaper, today urging Biden to reject a slew of proposed gas pipelines and plants. Fossil fuel activity on US public lands is responsible for around a quarter of the planet-heating emissions coming from the world’s second-largest carbon polluter.
“President Biden’s refusal to halt federal fossil fuel expansion is an inexcusable climate atrocity that makes a mockery of US climate goals in Glasgow,” said Ben Goloff, a senior campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re out of time. The president must use his executive authority to halt fossil fuel extraction on public lands, declare a climate emergency and make renewable energy available to everyone.”
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A collective of Indigenous elders from the Americas, called the Minga Indigena, have been holding talks, celebrations, dance and music in Glasglow this week.
The only problem is that the venue and arts space they are doing it at, the Tramway, was unable to host their sacred fire overnight as they couldn’t leave it burning.
A group of activists called the GalGael, who hailed from Glasgow’s anti-motorway expansion protests of the 1990s, stepped in to help last night, agreeing to host the fire at their community centre.
“Delegates looking to find a bit of Glasgow not just put on for Cop26 would do well to drop in here, too,” writes my colleague, Libby Brooks.
“Currently they are hosting Cop visitors who have struggled with finding affordable accommodation in a marquee behind the workshop.”
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Be careful what you read.
Facebook was accused by researchers today of being one of “the world’s biggest purveyors of climate disinformation,” my colleague Kari Paul reports.
The Real Facebook Oversight Board, an independent watchdog group, and environmental nonprofit Stop Funding Heat, analysed a dataset of more than 195 Facebook pages and groups. Researchers found an estimated 818,000 posts downplaying or denying the climate crisis.
The scale of climate misinformation on Facebook is “staggering” and “increasing quite substantially”, they said in a report.
Facebook has not immediately responded to a request for comment. It previously stated it continues to counteract the spread of misinformation by flagging climate information and referring users to its Climate Change Science Center, which contains data from credible sources on the climate crisis.
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More photos here from reporter Damien Gayle, who is in Parliament Square where an Insulate Britain protester has glued his hand to a police van.
This #insulatebritain member has glued himself to a police van. pic.twitter.com/tdMyiCiWWl
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) November 4, 2021
And another person jumped on top...
Another #InsulateBritain activist has climbed on top of a police van. pic.twitter.com/0llKo8uy53
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) November 4, 2021
You can read more on Insulate Britain here:
Extraordinary plan being reported by Bloomberg Green. A group of scientists, engineers, politicians, and a ship captain went out in a boat to look at Manhattan Island and discuss ways of protecting it: their suggestion is a $40bn construction project to build gigantic iron sea gates to keep out the sea.
Big oil is feeling left out at Cop26
Damian Carrington reports that big oil is feeling left out at Cop26, with BP’s VP for strategy, Giulia Chierchia, calling yesterday for “inclusiveness” at future UN climate summits, “especially for businesses in harder to abate sectors”.
Last week Shell CEO Ben van Beurden said: “We are not represented [at Cop26]. We were told that we were not welcome, so we will not be there.” Yesterday, van Beurden raised eyebrows by claiming the company could become net zero by 2050, but would need the cash from its oil and gas business to pay for it.
In October, my colleague Matthew Taylor reported that private emails from civil servants in the Cop unit showed doubts about BP’s net zero plans, with an official saying the company “[does] not currently fit our success criteria for Cop26” and another noting “it’s unclear whether [its net zero] commitments stack up yet”.
The Guardian revealed in 2020 that fossil fuel firms had held a series of private meetings with UK officials in an attempt to be part of Cop26. But a Cop spokesperson later said officials from big oil could attend fringe events but would have no formal role in the summit. However, the UK government had many more private meetings with fossil fuel companies than clean energy firms between July 2019 and March 2021.
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ScotRail warns upwards of 50,000 people expected at Saturday protest
Scotland’s largest train operator, ScotRail, has warned travellers its services in and out of Glasgow will be “extremely busy” this weekend because it is expecting tens of thousands of activists to join Cop protests, with long queues at stations forecast, the Guardian’s Scotland Editor, Severin Carrell, reports.
ScotRail said there were estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 people would take part in Friday’s youth protests. It said “upwards of 50,000 people” would take part in the main Cop protests on Saturday, which are due to leave Kelvingrove park at 12.30 pm.
Oliver Holmes here, taking over the liveblog from Bibi van der Zee. We’ve got our team on the ground in Glasglow sending updates, from Greta Thunberg walkouts to electric planes to major announcements (hint hint).
If you are at Cop26, or watching from afar, you can contact me with information or suggestions at oliver.holmes@theguardian.com, or @olireports.
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I’m just about to hand over to my colleague Oliver Holmes, who’ll be manning the liveblog all afternoon. We’ll keep an eye on Insulate Britain, and see how much longer they stay in Parliament Square.
And we’ll also carry on following energy day at Cop26, where ministers are talking about their plans and hopes for a just energy transition. Sounds as if there will be some interesting announcements this afternoon. Thanks for following along with us!
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Indigenous people from Alaska to Patagonia are at the Tramway on the south side of Glasgow to discuss sustainable climate solutions based on centuries of indigenous knowledge, spiritual customs and traditions.
It’s an event organised by the Minga movement, an Indigenous solidarity network in the Americas who refuse to participate inside the official Cop talks and negotiations. They are aiming to call out false climate solutions like net zero and carbon markets. The climate crisis cannot be solved through further exploitation and marketisation of natural resources, they argue, as that’s what has led to the climate breakdown communities are starting to experience.
More than 130 Indigenous youth and elders, from the Mixtecas of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, to Mapuches from Chile are here with the Minga collective, being hosted by local families, solidarity groups and churches. They all bring personal stories about the impact of land loss, water shortages and forced displacement, which they say will get worse if world leaders forge ahead with climate actions such as carbon capture and mass reforestation.
“Putting a price on natural resources is an act of colonialism and inhumanity. But there is another way,” said Calfin Lafkenche, a Mapuche organiser.
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At the green zone, which is open to the public, a zero-emission “spirit of innovation” plane is on show. Rolls Royce engineers say it will fly at 300mph. This would break the record for the fastest electric plane - the current record is 213mph. This is not the actual plane but it is an exact copy.
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Insulate Britain has blocked Parliament Square in central London
Insulate Britain blocked Parliament Square in central London this morning, in an apparent response to critics who have accused them of targeting the wrong people.
Several dozen members of the climate activist group walked out into the roads around the Palace of Westminster at about 9am, gluing themselves to the ground as police quickly reacted to their protest.
#InsulateBritain have blocked Parliament Square pic.twitter.com/2uKGQkTHnZ
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) November 4, 2021
Insulate Britain’s campaign of disruptive road protests in and around London has now entered its eighth week. Today’s was their 19th action. They are calling on the government to commit to a programme to insulate all Britain’s homes as a first step to solving the climate crisis.
However, they have been criticised for stopping ordinary people going about their business during morning rush hour, with some infuriated drivers getting out of their cars and violently clearing protesters from the roads themselves. Many have said they are not choosing the right targets.
An #InsulateBritain activist explains they have come to Parliament to take the fight to the people in power pic.twitter.com/5vFDgmG5OM
— Damien Gayle (@damiengayle) November 4, 2021
Ruth Jarman was stuck by her hand to the ground outside parliament, on her 13th Insulate Britain protest. She said: “It feels right to be here. At this point in time in history this is the place that could make the decision to save humanity and God’s creation, and at the moment it’s not making that decision, so what do you do?”
As well as sticking themselves down by the hands, some protesters had stuck themselves down by their feet, to each other. One stuck himself to a police van, while another climbed on top of a police vehicle and held a banner.
Among those who came to see the protest was the Tory MP Dehenna Davison. She said: “We all believe in the right to protest, but I think what this does is frustrate people going about their daily lives and actually turns people off.”
In a statement, Insulate Britain said it had been one of the most successful climate campaigns yet. “Our name recognition went from zero to 77% of the public in three weeks, we have attracted enormous media interest and we have started thousands of conversations, in the press, on social media and in homes up and down the country,” they said.
“Importantly, we have exposed the government’s refusal to act on home insulation as cowardly and vindictive and their refusal to protect our country and our children from the climate crisis as genocidal and treasonous.”
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Despite only making up about 6% of the global population, Indigenous people protect 80% of biodiversity left in the world. Guardian films have spoken to six young Indigenous climate activists from the Ecuadorian Amazon, Chad, Alaska, Sweden, Indonesia and Australia about their people and culture – and what we can learn from them about protecting our planet.
The global transition to clean power needs to be five times faster, says Kwarteng
Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK business secretary, is now speaking on the massive challenge that a global transition to clean power presents.
“The global transition to clean power needs to progress at roughly five times the current rate,” he points out.
“We don’t underestimate the scale of this challenge. But the UK’s own experience is a good model. Only nine years ago 40% of our electricity came from coal. Today it is less than 2% and we’ll phase it out completely by 2024.”
“We cannot tackle climate change without revolutionising the way we power our world.”
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'Stop greenwashing', Greta tells carbon offsetting meeting
A new video of Greta Thunberg leaving a meeting on improving the integrity of the voluntary carbon market has appeared from Cop26. As the climate activist leaves, she tells those in attendance to “stop greenwashing”.
Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered, who attended yesterday’s meeting, has been working with Mark Carney on a task force to improve the quality of carbon credits and scale it to a $100bn-a-year market. But offsets, often used by companies to claim they are carbon neutral, have been dogged by claims they are untrustworthy and face a major credibility problem.
Ahead of the meeting, Thunburg posted a “greenwash alert” on Twitter, raising concerns about the impact of carbon credits on Indigenous communities and vulnerable communities in the global south.
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Leo Hickman, the head of Carbon Brief, has highlighted a meeting which took place yesterday at which the director-general of the BBC said that climate change is no longer a “politically controversial” issue and pledged to increase his coverage.
This story has been lost a bit amid COP26, but there was a side-event that took place yesterday that resulted in a really significant outcome, I feel.
— Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) November 4, 2021
"12 of UK's media brands agreed to increase quantity and quality of climate change coverage"https://t.co/P2pBW0Xyln
According to the Daily Mail, Davie said: “The overwhelming consensus is that we, as humanity, are causing global warming. There are voices on the fringes but, in my view, when it comes to due impartiality for the BBC, we are now at a point where we have consensus around that.”
Twelve of the UK’s major media brands, including Channel 4, ITV, Sky and STV, have agreed to increase the amount and improve the quality of their climate change storytelling across drama, comedy and daytime programming.
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Cop President Alok Sharma is currently opening the Cop26 Energy day. The aim here is “to keep 1.5 alive and that means we have to decarbonise our power sectors”.
“Today I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight. The progress we have made would have seemed like a lofty ambition when we took on the cop presidency …”
They will publish the Global Coal to Clean Power statement today, which includes a commitment to make a just transition. It has 77 signatories, which includes 46 countries, 23 of which are making commitments on ending coal for the first time.
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Strictly dancer Cameron Lombard has created a dance video outside Buckingham Palace as an ambassador for Climate Actions Now. According to the website: “After experiencing first-hand the impact of climate change during his upbringing in South Africa, and fuelled by the global discussion of Cop26 and the royal family’s warnings that planet Earth is at a ‘tipping point’, Cameron is using the medium of art to inspire bold and immediate action.”
Lombard is dancing to a hip-hop track written by his best friend, Shaun Musungate, a Zimbabwean refugee now living in Cape Town.
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European Union officials believe that pledges made at the Glasgow Cop6 summit could limit global heating to 1.9C by the end of the century, an improvement on forecasts ahead of the crucial talks.
The European analysis is based largely on a pledge by India, the world’s third largest emitter, to reach net zero emissions by 2070, as well as plans set out by Korea and Brazil in Glasgow.
The EU number crunching corresponds to work by researchers at the University of Melbourne, which found that if countries upheld their pledges, temperatures would probably rise to 1.9C above pre-industrial levels.
The current trajectory - which depends on countries sticking to their pledges, which have been criticised for being vague or unambitious - is an improvement on the outlook ahead of Glasgow, where the EU expected a 2.2C or 2.7C rise, depending on modelling assumptions.
The outlook still falls short of the Paris goal of keeping global heating to 1.5C, the threshold to avoid the most disastrous impacts of the climate crisis. EU sources are optimistic that the Glasgow Cop will keep 1.5C alive. “At the end of Glasgow, we will be able to say 1.9C is in the pocket and 1.5C is in reach,” said an EU official.
For the world to avoid exceeding 1.5C, the EU is banking on China coming up with more ambitious emissions reductions plans, but does not expect that from Glasgow.
More immediately, EU officials hope the US will signal an improvement on their climate finance offer to poorer nations. The US hopes to contribute $11.4bn a year by 2024 to a $100bn annual fund to help the least developed countries deal with the climate crisis and transform their economies. The EU, which has pledged $25bn a year, has said the US pledge is not generous enough.
The $100bn fund was meant to be complete by 2020, but the full funds will not be available until 2022 or 2023.
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“There can be no stranded workers and no stranded communities,” Sharan Burrow of the International Trade Union Confederation told the Cop.
Trade unions and the ITUC are totally committed to climate ambition, she said, but it must be in parallel with a just transition. “There can be no stranded worker and no stranded communities. We know there is no future for coal. That’s painful for our workers. There must be a near exit date for fossil fuels. That’s painful for our workers.”
The good news, however, is that there are jobs in renewable energy. The ITUC, along with the World Resources Institute, have just released a job study called Green Advantage, which shows that dollar for dollar, investment in clean energy returns at least two jobs to one compared with fossil fuels.
“The critical message is integrating the urgency of action with the just transition. It will take all of us, so lets get on the job.”
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'I am obsessed with creating jobs in clean energy,' says US energy secretary
Jennifer Granholm in the US department of energy is now talking about her own personal experience as governor of Michigan.
“In 2009 the great recession tore through the US auto industry. Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs in Michigan, where I was governor. The pain that I saw in the eye of workers has seared my soul … I became obsessed with how we can create jobs in clean energy to diversify our economy.
“And with large federal and state and private sector investment we began focusing on electric vehicles, and employment rebounded. Today Michigan is a national leader in electric vehicle manufacture. Line workers who once assembled gas-powered vehicles are now building electric trucks.”
She points out that by 2030 the market for clean energy will be worth $23tn. “That’s what’s on the other side of this transition. Truly sustainable economic growth that will keep growing as other countries jump into this market.”
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Kwasi Kwarteng, the UK’s business secretary, is addressing the meeting about the energy transition ahead. He tells the meeting that he imagines “that the skills of the miners today will be needed to extract the mineral that will power our solar panels tomorrow.
“It’s clear that to keep 1.5 in reach we ned to consign coal to history and make clean synergy our future. But there is a green industrial revolution out there within our grasp that promises huge economic opportunities for our people and our communities.”
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One of the great things about Cop26 is there are lots of interesting events going on in nooks and crannies of the Blue Zone in the SEC. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the governor of New Mexico, former Obama aide Paul Bodnar and the SSE CEO are on a panel discussing the energy transition this morning.
“We have 80% of the technologies needed to cut global emissions by half. The hard part is figuring out how to smooth the transition out of the dirty stuff,” says Bodnar, who is now Global Head of Sustainable Investing at BlackRock.
“How are you going to get all the internal combustion passenger vehicles off the road? You think you’re going to do that just by selling more EVs? No, you’re not. How are you going to get rid of the chemical plants and the cement plants and the steel mills that have technically or financially useful lifetimes left? You’re not going to do that just by building something alongside them that doesn’t emit any carbon.”
Grisham, governor of one of the US’s most coal-heavy states, has signed off a plan to have a carbon-free energy network by 2045. “In our really poor rural counties, we use utility cooperatives and they don’t have access to the same capital investment and have tiny consumer markets. They still have to deliver reliable, cost-effective power.”
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Minister Shauna Aminath from the Maldives tells Cop: “We came to Cop because this is our lifeline. The Maldives climate and energy challenges are enormous - we depend almost entirely on imported fossil fuels for meeting our needs. The diesel costs are enormous.”
“The government’s policy is to quit fossil fuels as quickly as possible and replace them with something the Maldives has in abundance - sunshine. Today 12% of our energy is coming from renewables,” but they are planning to speed up their transition to renewables, with floating solar panels all around the island. But, she said, they need finance for this.
She reminded the audience: “The difference between 1.5 and 2 for a country like the Maldives is a death sentence.”
Our Seascapes project has just launched the first part of a fascinating series on Blue Carbon. The ecosystems of seagrass, mangroves and salt marshes could absorb 1.4bn tons of CO2 emissions a year.
But these ecosystems are some of the most threatened in the world by coastal development – damaged by farming, harmful fishing practices and pollution – so protecting and restoring them is expensive.
The Cop audience at the Energy Transition discussion is hearing about the Just Energy Transition partnership with South Africa, signed this week by France, Germany, the UK and the US, along with the EU.
South Africa, the largest emitter in Africa, is heavily dependent on coal. But under the deal, $8.5bn will be mobilised over the next few years to help the country transition away from fossil fuels.
The partnership is regarded by Merkel, Macron, von der Leyen and Biden as an exemplary partnership that will, they hope, “be a blueprint” for other similar deals.
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Sharma is telling the Cop that this afternoon the Powering Past Coal coalition will announce that it now has 165 members.
Global CO2 emissions shooting back to record levels
Global carbon emissions are shooting back to the record level seen before the coronavirus pandemic, analysis has shown. Scientists said the finding is a “reality check” for the world’s nations gathered at the Cop26 climate summit.
The emissions driving the climate crisis reached their highest ever levels in 2019, before global coronavirus lockdowns saw them fall by 5.4%. However, fossil fuel burning has surged faster than expected in 2021, the international research team said, in stark contrast to the rapid cuts needed to tackle global heating.
The data, from the Global Carbon Project, shows world leaders have failed to build back greener, with just a small proportion of pandemic spending going to sustainable sectors. But the scientists said hopes of keeping global heating to 1.5C remain alive if Cop26 leads to rapid global action.
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There’s a Che/Greta mashup on the wall in Glasgow...
That’s fun, wonder if Greta has seen her likeness up on the wall near @Monorail_Music ? pic.twitter.com/wIaqYRm9Go
— stuart murdoch (@nee_massey) November 3, 2021
Good morning! It’s energy day up in Glasgow at Cop26 today; all day long we’ll be following the discussions on how to make an energy transition work, plus whatever else we can pick up.
The coal deal that was announced late last night is still being picked apart. While a deal is obviously good news, it is still not entirely clear how much further this take us forward. Many of the biggest coal producing countries are not actually signed up, and it’s proving hard to pin down deadlines: the devil, of course, will be in the detail.
Another emerging issue is access - a number of vital groups have been unable to attend critical meetings, there is a perpetual overcrowding problem, and we’re hearing that digital access is not much better.
You can contact me with information or suggestions or your own experiences at bibi.vanderzee@theguardian.com, or @bibivanderzee.
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