DECC "pleased with progress" towards climate change targets says chief civil servant

Welshman Phil Wynn Owen, Director General of DECC's International Climate Change and Energy Efficiency group.

The British Government is pleased with its progress towards meeting its climate change targets and in steering the European Union and the United Nations climate talks in a satisfactory direction, according to a senior official within the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Speaking exclusively to me at The Energy Event at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre yesterday, the official said that, given the long timescales involved, DECC is happy with progress so far.

Phil Wynn Owen is Director General of the International Climate Change and Energy Efficiency group. Before that, he was an official in the Treasury. His remarks, paraphrased below, give an insight into thinking within senior levels of government.

UN discussions

The top-level Conference of the Parties (COP) United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks, designed to reach global agreement on limiting greenhouse gas emissions, happen at the end of each year. At the last of these talks in Durban, it was agreed that nations would put in place by the end of 2015 a binding legal agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions that will take effect in 2020.

The UK government was pleased and surprised by this outcome, given the pessimism that preceded these talks.

In between these annual talks are interim negotiations. UK officials were disappointed by the progress made at the last of these, which took place in Bonn earlier this year and ended without agreement. They therefore led calls, together with Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of UNFCCC, for a further meeting, which happened in Bangkok at the end of August and beginning of September.

Whereas outside reports expressed dismay at the lack of progress made there, too, DECC officials believe that significant progress was made, laying the groundwork for a legal agreement.

There was also good progress in negotiating a successor framework to the Kyoto Protocol.

DECC had a large team negotiating in Bangkok, who played a significant part in the production of the first draft of a full negotiating text. This will be discussed at the next Conference of the Parties (COP 18) in Doha, Qatar in late November this year.

The UK Government believes it is very important that these forthcoming talks will take place in the heart of the oil-producing Gulf states.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker told an All Party Parliamentary Group meeting at the House of Commons on Monday that he feels the talks “offer a unique opportunity to encourage the major oil and gas producing states to recognise the benefits of signing up to a low carbon agenda".

DECC is thinking particularly about Saudi Arabia, which has recently announced a huge commitment to solar power. At previous COP negotiations its team has resorted to blocking and delaying tactics and watering down mitigation targets. DECC believes that this November's talks offer an opportunity for Saudi Arabia to see the benefits of behaving otherwise.

The long view

The senior DECC official turned to the disparity between Government and business attitudes towards the low carbon agenda, the latter of which on the whole are enthusiastic, since the sector is one of the few areas of the economy which is experiencing significant growth.

Here, with the longsighted vision of a long-serving civil servant, Mr Owen paid tribute to the manner in which the UK Government conducts its consultations and discussions on developing its energy policies.

While recognising that some sectors would like government to move faster, most appreciated that, with resources tight due to the ongoing recession, it was necessary to have a debate which took in the views of all sides on the most cost-effective way to decarbonise the country and adapt to climate change.

Dominant thinking is now that the greatest opportunities lie in cutting energy use, reducing demand, and energy efficiency.

The beginning of Mr Owen's presentation to delegates yesterday morning was taken up with extremely depressing figures about the rate of increase of climate-warming emissions and their likely effects on overall average global temperatures.

At present trends, the world is headed for at least 3°C warming, which will create a “very high risk of economic impact", he said.

By 2020 there is likely to be an atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide greater than 550 ppm, which means that after that year emissions will need to reduce by up to 2.5% per year, a daunting prospect.

DECC is still very aware of the recommendations of the 2007 Stern Review, which said that early action to tackle climate change would be much cheaper than waiting and taking action later. Mr Owen reported that its author, Nicholas Stern, is “very pessimistic" these days.

He, however, remains optimistic. Turning around the behaviour of a whole country, let alone the whole world, is bound to take far longer than turning around the behaviour of any single company, no matter how large.

Moreover, companies have a completely different command structure to government and nations, unless they are totalitarian and can therefore act more quickly. This explains the long timescale required.

Mr Owen said that the measures contained in the Green Deal, the introduction of 53 million smart meters by 2019 in 30 million properties, and the Renewable Heat Incentive, which will increase the proportion of renewable heat from the current 1% to 12% by 2020, all give grounds for optimism.

Within the proposed Electricity Market Reforms, the capacity mechanism, the carbon price floor, and contracts for difference, will all help to leverage the £110 billion of investment required by 2020 to decarbonise the energy infrastructure.

He backed Ed Davey's defence of these measures, published yesterday, saying that they will create at least a quarter of a million jobs.

Moreover, energy intensive users will be compensated for the effects of the measures on their energy bills.

Mr Owen added that DECC is still lobbying within the European Union for it to commit to a 30% target for reducing emissions by 2020.

Mr Owen is clearly proud of his department's achievements; that it, and therefore the UK as a whole, is playing a vitally important role in steering the whole world away from completely disastrous climate change.

Bangkok U.N. climate talks make little progress. World headed for 3°C rise.

 Protesters in Bangkok outside the UN climate talks.

The U.N. climate talks featuring delegates from 190 nations, that have been ongoing for the last week in Bangkok, Thailand, and which conclude today, have produced few concrete results.

The talks were happening against a backdrop of record Arctic ice melt, recent flooding in the Philippines, Asam and other areas, recent drought in the US, and an ongoing food crisis in the Sahel.

Last December at the Durban COP talks, the world's nations agreed that they would sign a legally-binding pact to cut emissions and help developing nations adapt to climate change, from 2020. Part of this agreement included a promise to deepen existing promises to cut emissions by the end of the decade.

However, after one week of talks in Thailand, not a single country has made a fresh commitment, and US negotiators stunned delegates by calling for any new treaty to be ‘flexible’ and ‘dynamic’ rather than legally binding, representing a complete U-turn on its previous position.

In response, 130 developing countries sought to put pressure on developed countries by threatening to deny them access to Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits, which developed countries use to offset their emissions by financing projects in the poor ones.

But this tactic could backfire, as Takehiro Kano, a senior climate negotiator with Japan, said that if they went ahead, Japan's response might just be to lower its voluntary target of cutting emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, and Justin Lee, Australia's climate change ambassador, retorted that the Australian government would anyway "take international action that best supports Australia's domestic initiatives".

The United States and other developed countries blamed the global economic crisis for the lack of funds that they are able to make available to combat climate change. In a reaction to this, developing countries earlier tried to play down requests for finance and technology commitments, in favour of greater efforts by developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

But this created yet another deadlock, as Japan, Canada and Russia, which refused to sign up to an extension to the Kyoto Protocol as last December's climate summit, dug their heels in and refused to rejoin the process. The European Union argues that it cannot afford to up its reduction targets, and the United States is in an election year, which paralyses its ability to act.

This has led one observer, Sanjay Vashist, director of Climate Action Network South Asia, to comment that, "the existing deadlock on taking up ambitious climate action will only delay the necessary adaptation finance to vulnerable countries."

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN’s climate secretariat, Was putting a brave face on it. “Government negotiators have pushed forward key issues further than many had expected and raised the prospects for a next successful step in Doha," she said.

This leaves many political decisions that will have to be taken at this next meeting in Qatar.

With the present level of commitments to reduce emissions, the world is still on for at least a 3°C temperature rise, which would have catastrophic repercussions.

Rich nations failing to cut emissions

At the summit, the U.N. released a report showing that several rich nations will not even meet their existing pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade, made at Copenhagen in 2009.

These nations include Australia, Canada, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea and the US.

The report, from the UN Environment Program, adds that even if all nations do meet their existing pledges, emissions of greenhouse gases will still reach between 50 and 55 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, that is 11 billion tonnes, or 20%, more than what is needed to try to keep temperature increases below 2°C.

“It's still possible to meet a 2°C pathway, if there is sufficient political will," commented Niklas Hoehne, and author of the report on Tuesday. "We’re not facing a participation gap here – it’s an ambition gap.”

Meanwhile, developed countries want the industrialised developing countries such as India, China and Brazil, to take more responsibility for cutting their emissions.

They say that if this was resolved, it would allow the issues of technology, finance, intellectual property lies and emissions from aviation and shipping, which are stymied, to be set aside while the responsibilities of the emerging economies are increased in the short and long-term and the rich countries take stronger action after 2020.

But this is unlikely to happen without further commitments from developed countries. Depressingly, it seems the stalemate continues.

CBI urges Government to give investors certainty so business can fight climate change

Businesses want to and must maintain the trend to low carbon innovation, but need more investment, which requires commitment from politicians, both CBI Deputy Director-General Dr. Neil Bentley and Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told an audience of business leaders and the Energy Secretary Chris Huhne at the CBI’s first international Green Business Dinner in London last night.

Ms. Figueres also said that when countries like Britain fulfilled ambitious climate change targets this encouraged poorer countries like China and India to follow suit.

Companies are being given the wrong value by world stock markets, because the cost of their exposure to climate change is not being factored in, she said. "As long as these companies [that emit large quantities of greenhouse gases] have a high value, we are giving out the wrong signals," she said. "It has got to be that those companies that are investing in the technologies of the future are recognised."

She said that companies ought to take on board the political target of keeping global average temperatures below 2oC above pre-industrial levels. "We are moving to a low-carbon future – businesses need to understand that signal. This is a megatrend."

She said that by 2031 businesses will need to extract five times the economic value that they do today for every tonne of carbon dioxide emitted, calling on both governments and businesses to unleash the investment needed for "a transformation of the economy".

How committed are the Conservatives?

In the UK, the overwhelming feeling in the environmental industries sector is that George Osborne's speech to the Tory Party conference last week signalled an about-turn in Treasury thinking regarding support for low carbon technology.

Further evidence came from a Sunday Times article that Osborne is delaying rubber-stamping the Renewables Obligation Certificate banding review despite anger from David Cameron and other Ministers from DECC and Vince Cable's Business Department.

The consultation on an increase in speed limits, the proposal to reinstate weekly bin collections and, most importantly, Osborne's commitment to ensure the UK's carbon targets do not exceed those adopted by Europe were defended on Sunday's BBC Politics Show [22 minutes 20 seconds in] by Chris Huhne as marking either no change in the UK's position or not yet proven to have an impact on carbon emissions.

Osborne had hinted in his speech that part of his motivation for being cautious on the low carbon front was that there was opposition to green policies from members of the CBI.

Yet last night at the Green Business Dinner, the CBI’s Dr. Neil Bentley told the Government that British businesses are committed to tackling climate change, but blamed politicians at home and abroad for failing to provide clarity and certainty for investors about issues such as Electricity Market Reform, the Green Deal and a globally-binding emissions deal.

He said, "the case for a global emissions deal is even more compelling".

“Today, we find ourselves not ahead of the pack, but out on a limb," he said. "We’ve got no international deal, no global carbon price, no meaningful EU price and the UK tying itself in costly green policy knots.

"The UK is in danger of straining to hit its targets but missing the point: that we need an economy that’s low carbon and competitive.”

"We wanted first-mover advantage," he said, "We acted on the expectation of a global deal to address our competitiveness concerns. We acted without realising what was around the corner economically."

He blamed dithering and tinkering from Coalition politicians - such as making the Carbon Reduction Commitment into a straightforward tax, "adding to bottom-line costs and doing nothing to help businesses achieve their green goals" - as well as the low price of carbon due to an ineffectively managed EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Europe's Environment Ministers, also meeting yesterday, are in agreement. They admitted that the number of "Assigned Amount Units (AAUs)" - free permits to pollute given to countries and industry - continues to be a problematic issue affecting the carbon price, but that suddenly reducing the number allocated would cause a mass sale and a price fall, which represents a double bind dilemma.

"We're going to have to continue to work on it," admitted Polish Environment Minister Andrzej Kraszewski after the meeting in Luxembourg.

Dr. Bentley also felt that that "the renewables target has skewed the economics of our energy market". The Treasury's carbon price floor is meant to address this but is not yet in force.

As a result, “investors are struggling to understand how to invest against the proposed framework while the resulting costs could damage parts of our manufacturing sector".

He also said there was "reluctance from financiers to take the risk of underwriting" the Green Deal, which could cause it to fail.

But yesterday, Energy and Climate Change Minister Greg Barker defended the Government's record.

In a statement responding on behalf of DECC to the Environmental Audit Committee's report on carbon budgets, which echoed the CBI leader's criticisms, he said the UK is "doing more than any other country in providing long term certainty to those investing in the low carbon economy".

He added the government was actually doing UK industry a favour by reviewing progress towards the EU emissions goal in 2014, to make sure it wasn't "disadvantaging British industry" and leading to "emissions being shipped overseas".

“Getting the rest of Europe to go further and faster in providing certainty to green investors is vital which is why we’re not letting up in pushing the EU to up its emissions reduction target to 30%,” Barker said.
 

The need for a deal at Durban

Dr. Bentley's speech underlined the necessity for a deal at the upcoming COP17 UNFCCC climate talks at Durban, since "last year saw the highest level of carbon emissions in history".

"Patience is wearing thin," he said, citing the failure at Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun last year to reach global agreement. Wrangling "mustn’t drag on and on like the Doha Trade Round".
 
“In the absence of a deal," he continued, "companies have committed to get on with it because they understand that it’s not about what business can do for sustainability. It’s about what sustainability can do for business, driving innovation in new products and services."

He said the CBI is calling for two main outcomes from Durban: “Certainty that the Kyoto carbon markets will persist even if the protocol expires: if the Clean Development Mechanism is derailed, we’ll lose the most successful part of Kyoto and potential investment.
 
“And second, getting carbon finance flowing across the world, to places where it can encourage energy efficiency and help countries leapfrog high-carbon development and go straight for those green technologies. This will give the global economy the boost it needs."
 
He called for "a global, binding and comprehensive climate change deal. Otherwise business and nations will lose faith.”

EU ahead of targets

The EU will go to Durban well on its way to meeting its emissions targets from the Kyoto Treaty, which requires 20% cuts in Europe's emissions from 1990 levels by 2020.

Environment ministers in Luxembourg yesterday also committed to signing up to a 'Kyoto II' agreement at Durban, if other countries agreed.

Despite a 2.4 % emissions increase in 2010, and despite economic growth of 41% over the same period, Europe's greenhouse gas emissions were 15.5% below 1990 levels, according to estimates released yesterday by the European Environment Agency (EEA) on progress to meeting the continent's Kyoto targets.

In fact, the EU is likely to overshoot this target, which has inspired some member states, like the UK, to argue that it should be increased by to 30% cuts by 2020.

Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said the figures showed that the EU has successfully decoupled emissions from economic growth through the wider use of low carbon technologies.

"The EU continued decoupling emissions from GDP during the recession," she said in a statement. "Between 2008 and 2009, emissions fell by 7.1 per cent in the EU-27, much more than the around four per cent contraction in GDP."

Of the 15 EU Member States with a common commitment under the Kyoto Protocol (the 'EU-15'), emissions were 10.7 % below base year levels (1990 in most cases), which is well beyond the collective 8 % reduction target. However, Austria, Italy and Luxembourg were still behind their targets.

"Many different policies have played an active role in bringing down greenhouse gas emissions", Professor Jacqueline McGlade, EEA Executive Director, said.

"Alongside renewable energy or energy efficiency, efforts to reduce water pollution from agriculture also led to emission reductions. This experience shows we can reduce emissions further if we consider the climate impacts of various policies more systematically."

Back at last night's Green Business Dinner, Christiana Figueres also was hoping that major progress will happen at Durban.

“Governments are willing to consider a document that is equivalent to a letter of intent of all Governments to move towards a comprehensive agreement that is binding to all and incentivising to all at some point in the future.”

She admitted that any agreement will take years to draw up but it would be a major leap forward if all countries agreed to the principal of a legally binding treaty.

She also hoped that Governments would agree on how to raise the $100 billion per year by 2020 they have committed to for adaptation to climate change, technology sharing and saving forests.