4 Months after COP15 in Copenhagen and where are we now?

In my closing blog at the end of COP 15 in Copenhagen I mentioned the issue of the future.

During the third week of March (22 to 26) we got our first indication of the post COP 15 negotiation landscape and how the ‘Copenhagen Accord’ fits. Why – because the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Marine Environmental Protection Committee (MEPC) met. We have also had the meeting of the UN High Level Advisory Group on Climate Change Financing – which, challenging enough for the maritime and aviation industry, is looking at (among others)a ‘levy’ on bunker fuel to raise money for adaptation. We will hear more about the preliminary outcome of their deliberations closer to the UNFCCC meeting in June

There have been many comments in relation to the IMO MEPC meeting already, including the IMO's website and this Carbon Positive article.
As well as a summary of the outcome.

But what insight did IMO MEPOC and last weekend’s UNFCCC Bonn negotiations provide us about future UNFCCC negotiations?

From my perspective the outcome of the IMO MEPC, which deals with all environmental issues, not just greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, provided mixed emotions:
• Pleasure at the clear leadership that was demonstrated by IMO.
• Pleasure at the fact that IMO unequivocally demonstrated that they can deal with the issues of climate change in relation to international maritime GHG emissions.
• Sadness at how hardline at times the positions between the various Member States became.
• Sadness that we have yet to find a formula of words that is less emotively charged but still fair in relation to the concepts embedded in ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ (CBDR)

Last weekend’s meeting in Bonn set out to: ‘The first sessions of the AWG-KP and AWG-LCA in 2010 will focus on the organization of work of both working groups this year, including the need for additional meeting time, with a view to reaching a successful conclusion of their work at COP 16 /CMP 6 in Cancun.’

The negotiators agreed to an additional two negotiations sessions of at least a week each between the meeting scheduled for June and the meeting in Cancun.

The reports from the Bonn meeting indicate that the ‘poker playing’ is continuing and that if anything the road post-Copenhagen is now even rockier.

Charting the road from here takes me back to a few critical challenges:
• USA domestic developments – where will they go now the health care bill has been signed? – This is a critical contribution to a positive development in Cancun in December
• Financing – another of those stumbling blocks. With the world slowly coming out of the recession we might see some serious movement here?
• To extend Kyoto or not? This is the other big argument that has yet to begin to be bridged
• ‘Copenhagen Accord’ commitments and its link with the UNFCCC – the meeting in Bonn this weekend did not real provide any further clues except to indicate that it may be a negotiating chip or not?

So back to the ‘watch this space’

Copenhagen Accord, what are bloggers saying today?

Today's blog is the final daily update of the Lloyd's Register COP 15 series. We will be back after the holidays with an update from each of our key bloggers. They will each share their thoughts on the Copenhagen Accord and what it might mean for their respective areas of expertise.
Here are what some of the most influential climate change blogs have to say about the conference's outcome.

1) The BBC's environment analyst Roger Harrabin in his blog today, said

World leaders will surely never again agree to meet on this issue in parallel with the UN negotiating process. It was too bloody and it will have muddied many of their reputations.

2) The BBC's correspondent's log shows what the key players reactions were as the deal was being done.
3) The climateprogress.org blog sees the Copenhagen Accord as boosting the chances that the US Senate will pass binding legislation regarding the reduction of US emissions.
4) The Washington Post's analysis of the Accord is interesting, as they see the outcome as a clear signal that the US and China will be dictating future global climate change policy.
5) The Climate Interactive research team are amongst the first to analyse the numbers in the Accord, and they are less than impressed, saying

simulations of the C-ROADS model show a large gap between the targets in the final Copenhagen agreement and the commitments offered by individual nations.

6) Oneworld.net's on location blogger has an excellent post on the final hours of negotiations and the painful decisions that world leaders had to make in those final moments:

Every leader had to decide what response, at this extraordinarily precarious moment in human history, would most likely result in success down the road.

Mohamed Nasheed knows the science, he knows the politics, and I'm confident he's acting in the best interest of stabilizing the global climate as much and as soon as humanly possible. If this "deal" is good enough for him, then it's good enough for me.

We will be back in January with a further update on what COP 15 and the Copenhagen Accord means for Lloyd's Register and our clients.

Happy Holidays!

Alex Briggs

Paradigm shift or not?

When I set out on this ‘journey’ Iike many others I hoped that we, as the international community, could demonstrate that we could pull together and overcome out differences. Yes mainly – ‘my glass is half full’ and somewhere I trust in the innate goodness of us, the human race.  We came to Copenhagen with the expectation that we would get an agreement and that we would bridge the three key issues:

• Emissions reductions for developed countries;
• Adaptation funding;
• Commitments by the developing countries that are responsible for the fastest growth in GHG emissions – not targets but what we had already seen from China and others about reducing their CO₂ intensity.

From a marine perspective we were also expecting a pragmatic approach to bunker fuels that left the responsibility with IMO via the Conference of the Parties as well as left the IMO with the ‘right’ to develop the approach to regulating GHG emissions in the international bunker fuel area.

A number of us saw the outcome from Copenhagen as setting the stage for the paradigm shift that is barely visible as yet but which energy issues (see Sean’s blog on ‘peak everything’) as well as other emerging challenges with our climate is beginning to push. Paradigm shifts are normal, we have dealt with them many times before. For example the marine industry has in propulsion terms seen the shift from sail to steam to diesel in the last 250 years, just looking at Lloyd's Register rules. But Ian in his blog explained why we resist ‘paradigm shifts’ as humans. But they happen anyway, just think about the growth in mobile communications and systems arena over the last 20 years.

The memory from the last few days has been one of media hype, major political leaders on our television screens, arguments about which texts to use and little focus on the myriads of national negotiators working through the night the last few days to get something there for the final moment (note some political leaders also worked long hours in Bella Centre or in bilateral or multilateral talks). And from a number of us serious concerns that we may miss some vital pieces of the ‘Lego brick’ tower we are constructing because we are now rushing. Although without the pressure to get a ‘deal’ we may not even have started to construct our ‘Lego brick’ tower (I hope it is not going to be like the ‘tower of Babylon’).

So is the outcome setting the stage? and what did we get?

So where are we today, after we have all got some sleep, in terms of the aims outlined above. Well not where we wanted to be, no indication that we may get a paradigm shift and the ‘Lego brick’ tower seems like the ‘tower of Babylon’ to have collapsed at the end. So what we have had is:

• No agreement and hence a political question ‘can we as the human race reach an international agreement across the whole world?’ Be fascinating to see what the ‘Copenhagen Outcome’ will result in and where the discussion goes in Bonn in June and Mexico in December 2010.
• No incentives for us as human to recognise what is happening (note none of the leaders here [in total 119] disagreed with the climate change science)
• No clear signal to business to continue to invest in:
• clean operations and technologies;
• market mechanism to help find the money we need for adaptation.

On the international bunker fuel discussions we got no decision. Although we need to remember that we have the existing Kyoto Protocol (Article 2.2) and we have uncertainty on what regional developments we may see as a potential product of the ‘Copenhagen Outcome’.

On a human level, it has been a fascinating journey. Covering, as I suspected two weeks ago ‘…the whole gamut of emotions and energy from exhaustion to exhilaration. As well as generating not a few headaches (real and virtual) and a large amount of words (spoken, written and images).’ Although I was not envisaging the 27 hours marathon discussion that occurred on Saturday, after we had been told we had a ‘deal’.

I started my blog on day 1 with noting that this meeting came just as all of us were preparing for the festive season (and for some it meant breaking their festive season early to join the throng at Bella Centre). So let me finish by wishing us all a relaxing break from climate negotiations and hope that 2010 will allow us all to finish what we started here in Bella Centre.

Buried Sunshine and the Energy Supply Chain

In my last blog I pondered three questions:
1) “Instead of burying CO2 at various locations around the world, could we not convert CO2 into a fuel ?”
2) “Is all the public focus on CO2 emissions justified, given the threat of a warming Arctic?”

NGO's Shipping and an organisation turning 250 years old

Dr Anne-Marie Warris' blog today is also an audio blog as she called us from outside of the Bella Centre last night to update us on the latest COP 15 happenings. Here is the audio file to listen to or download and below is the transcript of her phone in.

Talking with Tanaka and the Rebound Effect - an audio blog post

Today's blog was "phoned in" by Sean Cuthbert, one of the Lloyd's Register Group's leading climate change experts. Here is the audio file to listen to Sean's recap of the IEA meeting and his discussions with Executive Director Tanaka, as well as Head of the IEA Energy Efficiency Unit, Dr Jollands and Mr Kerr, the Senior Energy Analyst with their Energy Technology Policy Division at the IEA.
Here is the transcript of Sean's phone blog.

IEA Briefing and the Rebound Effect
Sean Cuthbert

Good morning I’m Sean Cuthbert from Lloyd’s Register Energy. And this morning I attended the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) morning session with regards to renewable energy, the energy outlook to 2050 and essentially a summary of their technology outlook reports as well.

Skeptics, Standards, and Peak “Everything”

“… No debate can be considered ‘healthy’ without an equal voice given to both sides. “ Such was my thought as I read about the recent meeting of global warming skeptics. However, the article quickly dispelled the notion that the climate change skeptics would put forward a convincing argument for their denial of a warming planet. The article portrayed an almost comical scene where the small number of delegates debated the various aspects of their theories and data without giving a cohesive view that would balance the ‘warming planet’ COP15 consensus.