Mathew Beech looks at what’s at stake at the climate change talks in Paris.

The 21st session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP21, currently meeting in Paris, is deemed to be a make or break summit in the global effort to tackle and limit the impact of climate change.

Following the failure to secure a binding agreement in Copenhagen in 2009, the need for action on greenhouse gas emissions is becoming acute. A report last year by the World Bank Group said that the globe had seen warming of 0.8C since pre-industrial times, and that with the emissions already released into the atmosphere, a warming of 1.5C has been “locked in”.

With global warming of less than 2C generally seen as a sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change impacts, the need to reduce current emissions to ensure this limit is not breached is pressing. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has warned of “dire consequences” if the 2C limit is surpassed, and that with current emissions rates, the globe is heading towards a 6C temperature increase.

French president Francois Hollande and Pope Francis are among those who have labelled COP21 a “last chance” to save the world from the worst that climate change threatens. It is hoped COP21 will lead to a legally binding agreement, but this could be difficult to achieve with some of the big polluters less willing to commit (see p13).

Should an agreement be reached, there will be a need to continue with efforts to decarbonise the economy, as has been the general direction in the UK over recent parliaments. However, today the forecast is that the UK will miss its 2020 target for 15 per cent of electricity to be generated from renewables, and energy secretary Amber Rudd admits that the fourth carbon budget “is going to be tough to achieve” (see p14).

Britain has also pushed ahead with putting a price on carbon, with the chancellor setting the carbon floor price – now frozen at £18 per tonne of carbon dioxide (t/CO2). This puts the UK cost of carbon ahead of that in the EU Emissions Trading System, which currently values carbon at €7.50 per t/CO2, considerably lower than UK levels.

While reforms are underway to boost the EU carbon price, an effective way to tackle emissions, avoiding carbon leakage, would be for a global carbon trading market to be created. This would prevent carbon (and energy) intensive industries moving away from the UK and Europe, to areas with cheaper power and carbon prices.

A new agreement is unlikely to significantly change UK energy policy, especially after the recent “reset”, but it will increase the pressure for more low-carbon generation. The government is still making positive noises, with chancellor George Osborne announcing in last week’s spending review a “commitment to the Paris talks by increasing support for climate funds by 50 per cent”.

The statements coming from the Department of Energy and Climate Change are pro-green and appear to back this up, although there is the proviso that this cannot be done at any cost. As Rudd said in her policy reset: “Green energy must be cheap energy.”

Opinion: Adrian Johnson

“Measuring carbon needs to be switched from production to consumption.”

Collaboration and innovation will be key if the COP21 talks are to succeed. A global deal is needed not only to get tackling climate change back on track, but also to serve as a clarion call for infrastructure managers and related businesses to pull their weight in driving innovation to reduce energy consumption. For example, pumping and treating water and wastewater uses a lot of energy. And in Europe, more stringent environmental regulation has led to the installation of more treatment processes, which use more energy.

Although many in the water and environmental sectors are making advances, we can and should do more. Sustainable solutions are not only effective and reduce costs but also are more energy efficient and generate less carbon.

I see two stumbling blocks that will make it hard to reach an agreement. First, because we are addicted to consuming more “stuff” made by burning coal (not only the energy used directly in manufacture but also all the other resources used in production, including clean water). Reducing emissions on the scale we need will require nothing less than the transformation of energy and related infrastructure that underpins our economy.

Second, we have tended to focus on reducing the carbon emissions from production rather than our consumption. This does not take into account the fact that as countries like the UK de-industrialise, their “carbon of production” reduces while the “carbon of consumption” continues to rise. In the UK, we are buying more and more energy-intensive products but increasingly their manufacture occurs overseas.

Hence, the view of commentators such as Dieter Helm and David MacKay is that what we really need is an economy-wide carbon tax. This is likely to increase the cost of things made with dirty energy, such that we start switching to buying lower carbon products or we buy less. This would ripple across the economy. For example in the water sector, because pumping water needs lots of energy, the cost of water production would likely rise. To address this, we either pump water using cleaner energy or we find ways to pump less.

So, what if we fail to get agreement in Paris? Well, we won’t see progress at the same rate. However, I do think that ever-increasing global competitiveness, continued pressure to reduce pollution and improve public health, the social and economic pressure to stop burying waste, plus the need to adapt to climate change will continue to drive us towards the “circular economy” that will deliver carbon reduction almost as a by-product. The leaders will be those countries that work out how to innovate and collaborate in very practical ways.

Adrian Johnson, technical director and sustainability leader at MWH Global

A bumpy road to Paris

When it comes to energy and climate change, the UK always seems to be torn in different directions.

The road to Paris has been a bumpy one for the UK. In climate talks – as in energy policy generally – conflicting interests, contradictions and cross-party opposition have  dogged the debate.

The official government message is that the UK will push hard for an ambitious global climate deal. But domestic developments threaten to undermine the credibility of the government’s stance following a flurry of moves that have left parts of the sector reeling.

The UK’s climate goals are covered by a joint EU pledge to cut Europe-wide emissions by at least 40 per cent on 1990 levels by 2030. On top of this, the UK’s 2008 Climate Change Act binds it to reduce its emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050.

But UK energy secretary Amber Rudd has backed further progress, setting out in a letter to the Energy and Climate Change Committee calls for:

l an ambitious global deal to mitigate climate change;

l a five-yearly cycle of reviews that would provide the opportunity to reflect on progress and increase ambition;

l legally-binding rules to help ensure transparency and accountability;

l a long-term goal that will provide a clear signal of the commitment to a low-carbon future and help provide certainty for investment at the scale required;

l an effective climate finance offer to bring all nations on board and to support the most vulnerable to take action towards moving to a low-carbon economy and against the impacts of climate change.

“We are committed to getting a global deal in Paris, which will create a level playing field for businesses, driving innovation and growing the low carbon economy,” a spokesman for Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) said.

These words stand somewhat in contrast with moves by Decc and the Treasury in the recent “reset” of energy policy and government spending.

Shortly after the general election, Rudd stood accused of undermining investor confidence by slashing subsidy payouts for renewable energy and backing a renewed dash for gas in generation and shale exploration. Furthermore, when she took to the stage of the Conservative party conference in September the Paris talks, just two months away, received no mention at all.

Chancellor George Osborne’s spending review offered more bad news for climate campaigners, as Decc’s budget took a heavy hit alongside energy efficiency, renewable heat and carbon capture and storage, the latter seeing the government’s £1 billion support being pulled.

It’s an uncomfortable platform from which to address 190 nations as a “climate change leader”. The UK will be leaning on its Electricity Market Reform legacy as a means of creating a framework for low-carbon investment, and Rudd’s latest proposal to ban coal generation from 2025.

In addition, Osborne has offered a doubling of Decc’s innovation programme to £500 million over five years and a £1.7 billion share of the government’s £5.8 billion International Climate Fund, which will help the poorest countries decarbonise and adapt to the effects of climate change.

But it still falls short of former Labour party leader Ed Miliband’s call for a zero-emissions economy by 2050, and set against the backdrop of the Conservatives’ “un-greening” may well raise eyebrows around the negotiating tables.

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