Climate deal needs $16.5tr investment to cut pollution
20 YEARS OF TALKS HAVE RESULTED IN AN AMBITIOUS AGREEMENT THAT HOLDS STATES RESPONSIBLE FOR EMISSIONS TARGETS
The deal struck at United Nations climate talks requires an overhaul of historic proportions for energy policies worldwide and a huge investment in cleaning up the pollution now damaging the Earth’s atmosphere.
Targets outlined in the agreement on Saturday, involving 195 countries, will require $16.5 trillion of spending on renewables and efficiency through 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. To accomplish that, governments will have to offer incentives for clean energy production, scale back support for fossil fuels like oil, make emissions more costly, and reduce deforestation. The changes will touch industries from transport to construction, and encourage people to change their behaviour.
“The strength of the agreement is that it allows a thousand policy flowers to bloom,” Paul Bledsoe, a climate aide during US President Bill Clinton’s administration, said. “This sends a powerful economic signal that fossil fuels will be saddled with financial and legal premiums to remain part of the energy mix, and clean energy will enjoy subsidies.”
Governments have signalled an end to the fossil fuel era, committing for the first time to a universal agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.
After 20 years of fraught meetings, including the past two weeks spent in an exhibition hall on the outskirts of Paris, negotiators from nearly 200 countries signed on to a legal agreement on Saturday evening that set ambitious goals to limit temperature rises and to hold governments to account for reaching those targets.
Government and business leaders said the agreement, which set a new goal to reach net zero emissions in the second half of the century, sent a powerful signal to global markets, hastening the transition away from fossil fuels and to a clean energy economy.
The deal was carefully constructed to carry legal force but without requiring approval by the US Congress — which would have almost certainly rejected it.
After last-minute delays, caused by typos, mistranslations and disagreements over a single verb in the highly complicated legal text, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, brought down a special leaf-shaped gavel to adopt the agreement. The hall erupted in applause and cheers. “It is a small gavel but I think it can do a great job,” Fabius said.
Francois Hollande, the French president, who had invested enormous capital and diplomatic effort in shepherding the agreement, said countries had a rare chance to make history. “We are at a decisive point in time,” he said.
The agreement was equally a victory for the United Nations, which spent four years overcoming political inertia and the deep divisions between rich and poor countries, to put together the ambitious deal. “I used to say: we must, we can, we will,” Christiana Figueres, the UN climate chief who guided the talks, tweeted. “Today we can say we did.”
The US president, Barack Obama, hailed the agreement as “a tribute to strong, principled American leadership” and a vital step in ensuring the future of the planet.
“This agreement represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we’ve got,” he said, but added that the deal “was not perfect. The problem’s not solved because of this accord.”
Last chance
Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU’s climate commissioner, said the agreement had reaffirmed confidence in the UN process.
“This was the last chance [for the UN process],” he added, “and we have taken it.”
Al Gore, the former US vicepresident who helped draft the 1997 Kyoto climate treaty, was in the hall. He appeared visibly moved when the agreement was gavelled in and said the accord would have a powerful effect on the economy.
“This universal and ambitious agreement sends a clear signal to governments, businesses, and investors everywhere: the transformation of our global economy from one fuelled by dirty energy to one fuelled by sustainable economic growth is now firmly and inevitably underway,” Gore said in a statement.
Six years after the chaotic ending of the Copenhagen climate summit, the agreement now known as the Paris Agreement for the first time commits rich countries, rising economies and some of the poorest countries to work together to curb emissions.
Rich countries agreed to raise $100 billion (Dh367 billion) a year by 2020 to help poor countries transform their economies. The overall agreement is legally binding, but some elements — including the pledges to curb emissions by individual countries and the climate finance elements — are not.
The deal was also hailed for delivering a clear message to business leaders. The International Investors Group on Climate Change, a network managing €13tn of assets, said the decision would help trigger a shift away from fossil fuels and encourage greater investments in renewable energy.
“Investors across Europe will now have the confidence to do much more to address the risks arising from high carbon assets and to seek opportunities linked to the low carbon transition already transforming the world’s energy system and infrastructure,” the group said.
Jennifer Morgan, of the environmental think tank, the World Resources Institute, said the long term goal was “transformational” and “sends signals into the heart of the markets”.
The deal set a high aspirational goal to limit warming below 2C and strive to keep temperatures at 1.5C above preindustrial levels — a far more ambitious target than expected, and a key demand of vulnerable countries.
Meanwhile, according to numbers released after the climate talks ended, 21,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas was produced by the conference, equal to the annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of 4,420 cars over the course of a year. France has vowed to “offset” this pollution by supporting pro-climate initiatives.
Around 412,000 meals were served during the conference for the delegates, including 150 heads of state and government who attended the opening ceremonies.