Hope after Cancún?

According to Michael Jacobs in the Guardian sees the Cancún climate summit as a sign of hope because not only action must be taken to tackle climate change but also a low-carbon world generates different opportunities and a green growth.

Now countries have put domestic emissions reduction commitments into a formal UN agreement, further action can be justified. The really convincing political and economic case for investing in low-carbon energy is not just tackling future climate change but generating "green growth" now. It's the jobs and the new clean industries that will be stimulated by a low-carbon world that countries and businesses are eyeing up eagerly. But investing in these requires confidence that others are also cutting emissions – that there will be new low-carbon markets, and that high performance will not be undercut by competition from lower-cost polluters.
After Cancún, the global race to produce clean technologies is back on. Business and investor confidence has a chance of being restored. Europe has justification for moving to its higher 30% emissions reduction target by 2020. The really significant shift is the willingness of emerging economies — China, India, Brazil, South Korea and others – to cut emissions growth, and their refusal to allow the world to be dragged backwards by the dysfunctional domestic politics of the US. The view now is that America will simply have to catch up later when the economic costs of its high-carbon economy become painfully apparent.

Michael Jacobs

Revised Energy Efficiency Action Plan should focus on efficient buildings

The European Parliament passed a resolution that states that efficient buildings should be a key priority in the revised Energy Efficient Action Plan, proposing proper implementation of existing legislation and public sector example-setting. Energy efficiency should also be improved 20% by 2020.

Since existing buildings consume about 40% of energy, the European Parliament strongly advocates their efficiency-oriented renovation. However, investment costs are high and must be upfront and incentives are split in multi-apartment buildings. Innovative ways to remove these downsides, such as district refurbishment plans, financial incentives available at regional, national and European levels (proven "pay as you save" mechanisms, are needed.

The assessment of the energy efficiency potential of existing buildings should start with public buildings including schools. EU institutions and agencies should set an example by refurbishing their buildings in a cost-effective manner to near-zero energy consumption levels by 2019. The Commission should propose minimum requirements for the installation of street lighting and the purchase of vehicles by public authorities.

Want to destroy carbon? Now you can!

The Sandbag created an initiative to take pollution permits out of the system: Destroy Carbon.
Sandbag claims it is giving individuals and organisations the chance to intervene directly to buy and destroy pollution permits, taking them out of the hands of would-be polluters.

This is citizen action to reduce the number of pollution permits and hence to reduce the cap on CO2 emissions.

It comes with a cost, of course: the market price of permits plus Sandbag's operational costs (£14.78 per tonne), but includes an email to politicians to reduce the supply of pollution permits and a certificate.

Summary of the Cancún summit by the Pew Center

The Pew Center provided a summary of the Cancún summit here.

The agreements import the essential elements of the Copenhagen Accord into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), including mitigation pledges and operational elements such as the Green Climate Fund for developing nations and a system of “international consultations and analysis” to help verify countries’ actions. Agreement hinged on finding a way to finesse the more difficult questions of if, when, and in what form countries will take binding commitments. The final outcome leaves all options on the table and sets no clear path toward a binding agreement.

Pew Center

IEA-IETA-EPRI GHG Emission Trading Workshop Proceedings

Check out the Proceedings of a workshop organized by IEA, IETA and EPRI on greenhouse gas emission trading.

The workshop covered topics relevant to the future of global carbon markets post-COP 15, including scaled-up and new market mechanisms, regional linkages, carbon market oversight, and accounting and verification. As in previous years, the workshop invited government and business to discuss advances in various national GHG markets, as well as carbon market developments over the past year. A high-level panel was invited to discuss the future of carbon markets in a Copenhagen Accord world.

Sara Moarif, IEA

Energy Efficiency not very popular amongst politicians

A report from the World Economic Forum warns about the substantial gap between policy and implementation of energy efficiency measures.
The report "Energy Efficiency, accelerating the agenda" refers that energy efficiency could reduce substantially the energy demand by 2030. But identifies market and institutional failures that limit its success.
The major challenges identified include access to capital for energy efficiency projects, a regulatory structure of incentives, uniform measuring and reporting, skills and supply chains to deliver energy efficiency measures and international standards for products.

Tapping into the “largely unrealized potential” of energy efficiency will be essential to meet growing energy demand in the future, which is expected to see a 40% increase by 2050.

Pawel Konzal (World Economic Forum)

More information: Energy efficiency not necessarily low-hanging fruit, warns report

Cancún climate summit

The Cancún climate summit didn't bring a new deal for post 2012 (the Kyoto protocol ends in 2012). It brought an agreement to take some modest steps to combat climate change and assist developing nations. It established a $100 billion a year Green Climate Fund to help poorer nations adopt low-carbon technologies, adapt to climate change and protect the world's forests.
It was also agreed that average global temperature should not rise above 2ºC above pre-industrial times and to share information about clean energy technologies.
We will have to wait for South Africa in 2010 for a successor of the Kyoto Protocol that attributed a legally binding target to the world's richest nations, with the exception of the US, to cut their greenhouse gas emissions since Japan, Canada and Russia refused to discuss extending the Kyoto Protocol in favour of a new deal including the US, China and India in this summit.

More information: COP16: Cancún talks end with modest climate deal

Financing energy efficiency, a new report by the IEA

Money Matters—mitigating risk to spark private investments in energy efficiency is a new free publication from the IEA.

Scaling-up investment in energy efficiency is essential to achieving a sustainable energy future. Despite energy efficiency’s recognised advantages as a bankable investment with immense climate change mitigation benefits, most of the energy efficiency potential remains untapped and the investment gap to achieve climate goals is tremendous. This report seeks to improve understanding of why this is so, and what can be done about it.