Denmark, UK top league against ‘climate change’
COP24 targets coal
LONDON, Dec 5, (RTRS): Denmark and Britain are the top countries when it comes to implementing measures to fight climate change, although Britain has lagged in phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, a report published by academics said on Wednesday.
The report was launched as delegates from more than 190 nations meet in Poland to flesh out how to reach commitments made under the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep the rise in global temperature below 2ºC this century.
Denmark, Britain and Canada have made the most progress in transforming their energy sectors toward meeting the targets, said the report by researchers from Britain’s Imperial College, commissioned by British power generator Drax.
“We researched how the world is progressing on uptake of the five key technologies and measures needed to limit climate change to 2ºC. This reveals Denmark, UK and Canada to be world leading,” said Imperial’s Iain Staffell.
The five technologies are clean power, fossil fuels, electric vehicles, capacity for carbon storage, and energy efficiency of households, buildings and transport.
Denmark has decarbonized its electricity sector, moving away from coal, installing renewables and reducing fossil fuel subsidies by 90 percent over the last decade.
Britain has invested heavily in offshore wind and plans to phase out coal-fired power generation by 2025.
Canada has also installed renewables and is building facilities to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions.
The report assessed the climate change measures of 25 major countries, including all of the G7 and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), which together represent 80 percent of the world’s population and 73 percent of its carbon emissions.
Britain, however, remained the sixth largest subsidizer of fossil fuels among the 25 countries, the report showed, based on data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) up until 2016.
According to the OECD definition of a fossil fuel subsidy – which includes direct expenditures by governments, foregone tax revenues and other concessions – Britain’s fossil fuel support amounted to around 10 billion pounds ($13 billion) a year.
Meanwhile, campaign groups representing citizens from across the world demanded Tuesday that big energy leaves coal in the ground as COP24 host Poland pushed for protections allowing it to continue burning fossil fuel.
With nations locked in UN climate talks aimed at heading off runaway global warming, many parts of the world are already dealing with the storms, floods, fires and droughts our heating planet will suffer.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told officials at negotiations Tuesday that “the dialogue with industries is sometimes difficult and complex”.
“But we believe that even in the oil and gas industry, there is a growing conscience that the present trend is not sustainable.”
Guterres