As climate change pact starts, path to curb carbon is unclear
PARIS — When the landmark Paris Agreement to address climate change officially goes into effect Friday, the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe will be floodlit green to celebrate the occasion. Now comes the hard work: figuring out the details.
Top energy policymakers and corporate leaders caution that it will be challenging to meet even the deal’s modest goals to reduce planet-warming emissions of greenhouse gases.
Many companies have not even figured out yet how much greenhouse gas they emit, much less made plans to curb these emissions. Rapid technological advances in areas like electric cars are not enough to stop the world’s long climb in oil consumption, let alone reverse it.
The financial framework, namely a carbon price or tax that would force industries to pay for the pollution they spew, has barely started to emerge.
And while tens of billions of dollars of green bonds have been issued to finance environmental projects, these are a pittance compared to the sums required to make a difference.
“It’s not a question of billions, it’s a question of trillions,” said Angel Gurría, secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, speaking Thursday at the New York Times Energy For Tomorrow conference in Paris.
The Paris Agreement, reached in December among 195 countries, was never imagined as the silver bullet for global warming. Rather, the goal of the agreement was to stave off the most devastating effects of climate change by limiting the increase in global temperatures.
From a market perspective, many companies do not yet have a strong financial imperative to make sweeping changes to address climate change.
Fledgling exchanges for trading carbon emissions rights have attracted limited interest. And the prices on those markets are well below the $100 a ton or more that experts say would force companies to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases.
The world needs “a big, fat price on carbon,” Gurría said at the conference.