November 18, 2021
The two-week long 26th United National Climate Change Conference (COP 26) came to an end last weekend, after the now-traditional overrun. The most-discussed topic was coal, which was the subject of a slew of agreements, pledges, and moratoriums designed to call time on the dirtiest fossil fuel, which still provided 37% of the world’s energy in 2019.
For those hoping that COP 26 would lay the groundwork for a magical transformation to a global decarbonised economy, the conference ended on a sour note, as a last-minute intervention from India, supported by China and some other developing industrial powers, amended the wording of the draft agreement from the “phase out” of coal to the “phase down”, to the dismay of many national delegations, from developing and developed countries alike.
Reaction to the change of wording varied widely. COP President Alok Sharma appeared to fight back tears as he apologised to delegates for the amendment, while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson played it down, insisting that agreement on the direction of travel was the most important point. Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace, also struck an optimistic tone: “They changed a word but they can’t change the signal coming out of this COP, that the era of coal is ending. If you’re a coal company executive, this COP saw a bad outcome.”
However, beneath the spin, the small change in wording highlights a key dividing line that contributes heavily to the international community’s difficulties in agreeing a joint way forward. India and its allies have made clear that action to address climate change must be based on equity. This involves a recognition that developed countries have historically contributed far out of proportion to global emissions, and serious funding commitments from the rich world to the poor covering reparations for costs already incurred (“loss and damage” in environmental parlance), adaptation costs to the forthcoming damage of climate change, and transitional costs to green their economies. Although such financial commitments have been promised for decades – going back to the original UN Convention on Climate Change in 1992 – rich countries have routinely failed to acknowledge financial liability for the decades of emissions that accompanied their industrial development, or even deliver in full the more limited funding for adaptation costs that has already been promised.
Which explains India’s combative mood. “How can anyone expect that developing countries can make promises about phasing out coal and fossil fuel subsidies?” said Bhupender Yadav, Indian Environment Minister and lead climate negotiator. “Developing countries have still to deal with their development agendas and poverty eradication. We made our effort to make a consensus that is reasonable for developing countries and reasonable for climate justice.” Yadav also declared India, the third-largest carbon polluter globally, as the “voice of the developing countries”, though many of the island nations most vulnerable to climate change, also overwhelmingly poor, may contest that statement, reflecting the complex multi-level chess game at work.
That said, with its announcement of a net-zero emissions target of 2070, India itself set the early tone for a conference that made some clear moves towards a coal-free future, even if the devil will be in the detail. The wording of the final agreement, though contested, was the first-ever direct reference to phasing out fossil fuels in a COP communique. Over 40 countries signed up to various initiatives to phase out coal and switch to clean power, including South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Poland, and Ukraine, all in the top 20 coal-generating nations in the world, though these commitments were criticised by campaigners as being non-binding, and not including the top producer countries, China and the US. In possibly the biggest success for the conference, over 20 countries, including the US, agreed to stop financing new “unabated” coal projects abroad (meaning coal projects that do not use carbon capture technology). Although China, Japan, and South Korea, three of the biggest financiers of international coal projects, did not sign up at COP 26, they have announced similar plans recently, meaning the vast majority of public financing for coal plants should soon dry up. Investment banks and other public financial institutions were also signatories to each pledge, potentially shifting up to $17.8bn a year out of fossil fuels and into the clean energy transition, according to estimates from the UN. “When you add all that together, it is beyond question, Glasgow has sounded the death knell for coal power,” said Johnson.Nonetheless, as UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres put it, “The approved texts are a compromise. They reflect the interests, the conditions, the contradictions and the state of political will in the world today. They take important steps, but unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions.” Indeed, one imagines that such deep contradictions will persist as long as the search for solutions to climate change. But whether countries are able to put aside these contradictions long enough to shift the global energy landscape in time to avert disaster, remains to be seen.
