Good morning great morning, my name is Sanguine Sue. I’m, a professor at the principle of environmental science and management, and it’s. My great pleasure and honor to introduce our distinguished professor and today’s.
Seminar speaker mr. mark grant car mr. rod. Car is heading the energy and climate branch at the UN environment in Paris and he will share his insights on intergovernmental climate negotiations. Personally, I had a pleasure working with him under the UN sustainable demonical process and it was fun and it’s great honored, to see you on campus.
How many of you in this room think that you have been wandering around a few different disciplines or professions before arriving at brand? Ok, miss erotica is your friend, so mister Radtke did his undergrad at MIT and masters at UC, Berkeley in civil engineering and then Reagan’s.
Recession kicked in and he decided flew to the Thailand and he worked as a Peace Corps volunteer for three and a half years, and he turned out to be a great move in with respect there. He helped the country establish what later became the ministry of the environment and had opportunity to work with the UN Environment and UN Environment has a bank of region office and he still has and later that relationship.
You know reconnected him to the UN later now there. He developed interest in international environmental policy and he decided to come back to school and he did another master’s degree in environmental policy at Harvard School of Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Since then, he worked for the US EPA World Bank and went back to Banco again and finally settled in the UN environment in Paris. Thank you all right. This is a electrical part, hopefully all right in his capacity as the head of the energy and climate branch of the UN environment.
He focuses on the energy technologies and their applications, especially in developing countries, which is very important if we are really serious about addressing the climate challenge here. Finally, I would like to thank xeric foundation for their generous support that allows us to bring distinguished leaders in our fields.
Please give so with that. Please join me to welcome mr. rad car just turned down now good. Thank you. Well sangwon. Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity to be here with you today. I thought it would be well, you know.
A good piece of advice is always talk about the things that you understand that you hope other people, don’t understand so that they can’t catch you out in the question and answer your the discussion period.
So I thought it might be interesting to share with you a kind of insider perspective on climate negotiations and focus quite a bit on the cop 24, the 24th Conference of the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which which was held in cata whatsa.
Poland in December, so what were the outcomes? What does that mean in terms of going forward and then use that as a segue to what do we in you, an environment, do to help prepare countries for those types of negotiations, and what do we do? As a consequence of what’s agreed by by governments, so in other words, you know we’re.
We’re, partly responsible for what goes in, and we we bear some responsibility for what comes out, but a little bit about UN Environment. I I’m, not sure how many, how many people know what what you and environment or the an Environment Program is, but if you think of it as the Ministry of Environment or the equivalent of the EPA at the Intergovernmental level, it is part Of the UN Secretariat formally my boss’s.
Boss in a sense, is the secretary-general of the UN and it functions in a number of different ways. Maybe the most notable is to help intergovernmental negotiations on trans boundary, environmental issues.
So things like the Montreal Protocol were negotiated under unit. We have custody of quite a few of the Secretariat’s that maintain those processes after there’s, an agreement so various amendments to international treaties and such but the area in which I work is primarily related to the consequence.
How do we help primarily developing countries deal with what is agreed at the international level, so a bit about climate change conferences? I I liken them to a combination of intergovernmental negotiations, trade fairs, educational symposia, media events, an opportunity for special interest groups to protest.
It’s, a kind of a freewheeling environment in which to gain access at least of the formal parts you need to be on a list, but then there are various levels of what colored badges that allow you to gain access to kind of.
Think of it as concentric circles and at the the the centermost circle are government’s and they are the ones that that are the most important. They’re negotiating some aspect of an intergovernmental treaty and around that as a sort of peripheral circles of interested observers and outsiders that are trying to influence all of that.
Most of the interesting bits take place outside of public view when it really gets to. The crunch issue is usually, there are a handful of governments negotiating on on behalf of blocks of other countries and they are somewhere that nobody can find and it’s very, very difficult to actually know what’s going on in real Time they’re quite confusing in a real kind of sense, and the one rule is never trust.
Anybody who says that they know what’s going on, because rarely rarely does anybody. So all of you are aware of the Paris agreement. I’m sure just a little bit on how did kata Whitsett compare to Paris and Copenhagen, which preceded it by a number of years.
So these events well this particular event attracted, as you can see, 18,000 participants in total. Those are the ones who are registered. There were others outside on the streets trying to influence things but 18,000, most of them from countries, but a good, although diminished, number of journalists and and and observers.
So people like me are observers. We’re kind of a special observer, but we’re, not formally negotiating in a sense, but supporting the. The main goal in conduit say was to complete something called the Paris rulebook and, if you think, of the Paris agreement as a political understanding between or among governments, it set a very broad framework that was agreed by in most cases, heads of state.
So the agreement is is akin to, I would say, a legislative legislative outcome in the United States. You have a framework legislation now it needs to be turned into specific regulations, the actual rules, hence the term rulebook, and the rulebook was several years in in negotiation because it matters a whole lot.
Yes, so the B there were initially very, I would say, low expectations. There’s, always a mood for one of these large intergovernmental gatherings, and so little progress had been made that actually governments agreed to insert an entire new additional negotiating session before the main meeting.
Is there a more technical level? They’re experts, who gather and try to work out things so that the political agreement can be reached during second week of the formal cop conference of the parties, and they had made so little progress during the in the preceding three years.
Two and a half years that an additional session that did not make much much headway and going into the katha whatsa cop. They had a 307 page negotiating text. So 307 pages is a lot for governments to agree.
In two weeks I mean it’s, an indication that things are not going very well and the the facilitators the co negotiator facilitators. You know warned going in that time was not on our side. They’re still far too many options on the table now.
What this? What this means in in practice is you have well will be for me a little bit more on. Poland was not the obvious choice for one of these meetings. In fact, it was the third time that Poland has hosted one of the cops in the last ten years and if I’m sure you’re all well aware.
Poland’s; heavy dependence on coal, it’s, not a country that’s rich in renewable energy resources. The government is somewhat similar to the government in Washington in terms of being skeptical about climate change and it’s, an outlier in the in the goat negotiating bloc of the European Union, so it was not always augering well for Poland, ystem is the Host that’s important because the president of the country or the president of the Kop innocence is the host country.
So they set the style and the tone of the negotiations. So we had as well external environments that the kind of cast a cloud over the direction of the negotiations. The one positive thing was that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a few weeks before had had issued a report that the cop had requested on.
What would it take to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C that came out and it was very, very definitive there were. It was not adopted, as I mentioned, or seen Levi all countries, but the list of negatives was much greater.
You had street protests in France that were, in part, triggered by the McCrone government’s. Imposition of a earlier agreed tax on transport fuels set back in Germany in terms of political direction. For for the phase-out of coal, and, of course, you know here closer to home, very negative signals coming from the the Trump administration.
The cops are are always sort of fluid there. There’s, almost a psychology that seems to develop a Barone each one. A mood and something is always coming up: there’s, a lot of rumors going on in rumors and counted rumors, and it’s.
As I mentioned, a chaotic environment where, where what is on the surface, is somehow not always what’s? What’s occurring beneath the surface and and that leads to a lot of speculation and what’s really happening? What have you heard? What no, I heard that that’s counter the the IPCC report, as I mentioned, was there was a long debate about whether the government should welcome the report, which would have been the conventional wording in an outcome or just noted.
Now that sounds like a minor thing, but in diplomatic speak welcoming something that you’ve asked for his tenth amount to saying good. You did what we asked noting. It is a little bit like a like a degrade, I think, and it wasn’t.
We note it, and there was a lot of back-and-forth between governments that that really didn’t want to pretend well wanted to pretend that that report had never been requested, and certainly didn’t agree with the with the the outcomes in It the Secretary General of the UN, intervened three times that was unprecedented.
He went back and forth from New York. He hadn’t planned to be there. It’s, not that he was. You know trying to fly across the Atlantic Ocean unnecessarily, but he personally intervened to kind of bang heads a little bit and ensure an outcome.
There were a number of other. If you’re a student of these things, you saw the reformulation of certain negotiating bloc’s that had become a little bit frayed at the edges, one of them bends the the major developing economies it’s called the Basic group, so Brazil, South Africa, China and India started doing, I would say, growing, unison in a sense and the what is called the the high ambition group.
So the European Commission, Norway, a lot of the small island developing states, often adopt a common, forward-looking sort of negotiating stance, and they came together. Interesting to note was that China, China and a sense stepped into this is a personal opinion, and I think it was request.
It was required and should have started by saying everything I tell you here is is my personal opinion. It’s, not that of the United Nations, but of course it’s very much informed by what I do on my day to day job.
But you can’t quote me and say that the secretary-general said so and so through mark. That would not work so it just as an indication of how these things unfold. That is undoubtedly difficult, but the the bars and the colors show the number of brackets in text so that that lengthy negotiating document will, if you examined it it as it evolved.
There are brackets around certain phrases and sentences and entire paragraphs where there is no agreement and the goal that is, by the end, to have no bracketed text. That means it’s agreed by all countries.
The the climate change convention is based on consensus, so it’s, important that everybody agree on everything. Otherwise it’s no deal so there’s, a lot of back-and-forth about removing what are called what is called bracketed text.
So if you looked at, for example, the the reddish orange bar, the reddish bar toward the top on the left, you see quite a large chunk and that had to do with the text related to transparency. The reporting of what countries are actually doing, and so there’s, a lot of trading.
We will strike this text or that will remove this bracket. If you remove that bracket, one country might and it’s, all a search for in a both a strategic and a tactical sense, moving towards some sort of an agreement.
And you see that there most cases the number of racquets go down. But sometimes a country or a block will say well, if you’re gonna say that we’re gonna we’re gonna go back in a sense and add some more brackets on text and by the End you know it: it’s, dwindled down to here and then finally agreement.
The question is: how much do you have to throw away that you care about to get agreement politically? Disastrous is to leave without an agreement. You can have an agreement that’s very, very weak, but as long as it’s, an agreement that’s better than no agreement in this sense.
So you will recall that the I bet on the outcome see the heart of the Paris agreement was a restructuring of the architecture of intergovernmental approach to climate change. Copenhagen had failed because it in in a sense, the Kyoto Protocol was in many ways flawed from the beginning, because it attempted to say this is how much emissions need to be reduced and we will apportion that responsibility to different countries based on their economic status.
In the development development state and so on and in in retrospect, I think it was sort of doomed to failure because it’s very difficult. Once you & # 39, ve defined an amount to portion it up, given so many variables and so many differences of opinion.
So the Paris agreement turned that around and it said, listen. We know we have to get there. Why doesn’t, everybody say what they could do now and commit to it, and these were called the nationally determined contributions in DC.
So a nationally determined contributions to a common goal, and then we will peer it. We will do the math see where that takes us and then periodically review know the idea that technologies would improve cost would drop, countries would gain experience, it would learn from one another and, and so the mantra becomes raising ambition over time.
You could make an analogy to losing weight. You know if you have to get started and you do a little bit and then once you’re encouraged, you do a little bit more, then you know this sort of thing. So there was a lot of rules, then that needed to be put into place about what? What is the reporting mechanism? Hopefully only do people have to report on what’s happening, because you could appreciate that from this this type of architecture, each country saying it will contribute something.
It’s, really based a lot on trust and accurate reporting by countries to the climate change Secretariat in Bonn on what they’re, actually doing how much have they achieved in terms of their pledge again, the analogy if you said you Were collectively a weight loss group or you’re, trying to mutually support each other’s ambitions and if nobody ever gets on the scale and just says they’re doing better, you know, maybe maybe the the ethos is Not what you’d like it to be, and you’re, not making as much progress as you as you’d like so a technical detail about you know what’s to be reported by whom, and This sort of thing it gives a lot of flexibility to countries, but they have to explain how they’re using the flexibility.
So it’s. It’s, prescriptive to a certain, a certain level on mitigation which really the the heart of bringing GHG emissions down. The key anchors were set, but a lot was kicked off into the future. We know there were some good attempts at accounting.
What I would call accounting rules it’s. It’s, important that everybody be measuring and reporting on the on the same basis, so it’s somewhat akin to having accounting standards so that you know we can compare one company to another in this case one country to another.
But some items were deferred until until the future on technology, which is the area that I work it’s. It’s, usually not a very contentious area because it doesn & # 39. T attempt to do very much basically to agree on the importance of transferring broadly and in in rapidly technologies that would bring down greenhouse gas emissions and some some guidance guidance to the system, the UN system, but also external about you know.
What are, what are the areas that are priorities, and so on? Finance is always important, but there was not very much that was new. It was not really on the agenda, so much kind of reiterations of the importance that climate change mitigation and adaptation certainly do have costs.
Often there are great benefits, but there’s, a disparity and you know who pays and when the benefits accrue and that sort of thing so international financial transfers, the role of the private sector and so on.
One disappointment to many in the private sector was that what are called the the market-based mechanisms was deferred until next year. Brazil was a bit of a holdout on some of the features and they could not reach agreement.
So an example where, where to reach agreement, something was just set aside until the future. I think, in the interest of time I had maybe a little bit too much so there was a the Fijian presidency of the cop had spent it adopted approach of dialogue and discussion that was meant to help foster agreement.
It’s called the Talon OA dialogue and it I think it went a good, a good way in making countries understand each other’s, positions and perspectives a little bit better. There. It’s, interesting to see how, when countries pledge there are very different national approaches in the United States, everything tends to have a very legalistic view.
The US government is very careful. You’re, very careful about finding in agreed outcome texts. Anything that might have legal ramifications – the Chinese government in my in my way of looking at it, is very careful to make sure that it can deliver on what it what it & #.
39 s been agreed not for legal purposes, but more for sort of reasons of national pride. If you say you’re going to do something, you’d like to be able to show so they tend to under promise and over deliver.
The European Union member states, however, they take a position of let’s, set a stretch, goal and really try hard. But if we don’t reach it at least we’ve tried hard. So you see, you see a lot of different kind of national dynamics and when it comes to sort of what should we said is the level of ambition it’s.
It’s. It’s quite a bit different depending on almost national. You know net national mood or national way of framing issues, and you know how do you approach these things? Legally, morally, you know ethically in some sense there are a lot of different drivers.
So some key messages was, we did a straw poll internally and we decided that the glass was two-thirds fall. It was better than expected, but you know in in some sense it’s, not nearly enough, and I’ll return to that.
In a moment there were the Paris rulebook was agreed, so there is a good basis for at least moving forward on the on the accounting and the transparency China, in what I think is an underappreciated move, gave up one of its long-standing negotiating positions, which is that It is a developing country and it should be treated like some of the the least developed countries in Africa.
That was actually I mean. Some people said that was China moving into a kind of leadership vacuum caused when the u.s. retreated that’s. A very political statement, so I won’t venture to say whether I think that I mean the UN would never sort of say yes, that’s, the cause, but that’s.
What a lot of observers said – and there are the usual sort of – I would say – weaknesses in terms of enforcement. There are very little intergovernmental negotiation, well treaties, conventions like this that actually have stringent enforcement mechanisms.
A lot depends on self enforcement. So between the lines, there is a lot of in the in the katha whatsa outcome document. A lot of use of the word relevant relevant. This is the kind of thing that the lawyers slip in and then it’s, sort of left to everyone else to decide what is act exactly is relevant and the maybe another notable thing about the katha whatsa was that the non-governmental organizations were relatively Less visible in part because the Polish government made it difficult for them to be there and to do anything that was publicly visible.
I think I’d. Put that in an earlier slide they clamped down, they were afraid of protests and things that would disrupt the cop next steps in this process. Later this year, the continuation of the the annual series will will occur – the cop 25 in Chile and then the following year.
In the United Arab Emirates, UK in Italy, and then in 2025, as part of the Paris agreement, there’s, something called the global stocktake, which is a kind of a collective. Where are we now remember that the whole idea was sort of ratcheting upward, increasing ambition? You hear that word.
A lot of you follow these increasing ambition, increasing ambition, so the the next chance to really sort of formally take take stock is the the global stock take which will occur in 2023. No, I wanted to move on to how do we? What what is our role in all of this in UN environment – and I picked – I picked one area that that actually has maybe not surprisingly become the most influential thing that we do, which is it’s, just a publication called the emission gap report.
It came about because the head of our organization and the the Secretary of the climate change convention sat down one day and, and he said what could we do to help you, you who organized the meetings and she said a detailed analysis of what it all means.
In terms of what countries say this and this, and this and this, if you add it all up and do the math, which is not so easy, what would it? What does it all mean, and she said we could never do that. The countries would immediately object and say we did not request you in the Secretariat to do that kind of analysis and our head head of you at the time he said.
Yes, we can do that. No one told us we can so that if you think that would be a contribution, so we started the analysis and for nine years now we have undertaken what amounts to a process light, not unlike the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
There is a team of leading authors and and review editors and contributing authors all based on peer-reviewed publications, a bit of modeling and the goal is to determine what does it all mean when you add up what countries have said so in the in the context, we Have the Telenoid dialogue, as I mentioned, there was the global climate action summit that Governor Brown had organized in San Francisco in September.
I believe, and then the IPCC report and 1.5 degrees came out in October, we released our UN Environment, a mission gap report and then the climate the following month and then and then the climate conference kicked off.
The trends are, as you I’m. Sure you’re all aware. Rather worrisome, the greenhouse gas emissions so know no sign of no sign of peaking those from energy increased. Actually, after a two-year decline, they increased in 2017.
The emissions are about as best we can estimate about 53 gigatonnes of carbon, and they really need to be down in the level of about Oh 25 percent below that or by 2030 and 55 percent. If you take the median trend by 2030 to stay on, the two-degree at 114 remain consistent with a 2 degree in 1.
5 degree path. So if you disaggregate that what you’d see is you know, the global GDP is in is of course increasing primary energy demand has been increasing, energy intensity is decreasing, so we’re, getting better at extracting value from energy.
In terms of economic output, the carbon intensity is also going down, which is a good thing, shift to renewables and and and and so on, but and you’d, see that there are decreasing trends for the other non carbon greenhouse gases.
So methane. Nitrous oxides, fluorinated, HFCS and so on. They’re all going down, but they’re still positive. So is that a good? Are we on the right trend or not? They need to be negative, they need to be.
We need to be reducing emissions, not increasing them, but the trend is at least in the right direction so reduce to where, where we, if you add up these nationally determined contributions, the upper bar is sort of a baseline case, the the blue band beneath it.
You see here twenty fifteen to twenty thirty and then gigatonnes of carbon. The current policy scenarios are where governments were headed before they announced their nationally determined contributions and the blue band and the green band down at the bottom.
Are we ever really neat that’s? The trajectory we really should be on in terms of least cost compliance, or at least cost adherence may be a better word with the two-degree in 1.5, so the unconditional? What are called unconditional, NDC’s.
The pledges of all governments would drop that by about 3 Giga tons of carbon. If you add in what are called conditional, we will do so, and so, if we receive some funding or if we receive support that takes it down about another three Giga tons, so six gigatonnes of carbon, which is clearly insufficient to put us on the path to A two-degree, a two-degree pathway that means that the gap, hence the emissions gap report, is about 13 Giga tons to stay on the two-degree path and 15 Giga tons to stay on the 1.
5 degree path and even more if we wanted to get down to 1.5 degrees. But the I’m, sorry with the conditional and unconditional. So this is. This is the type of message that we in UN environment, bring to the cup to arrive here requires sort of dis, adding tickets.
It’s, a exercise of taking all the national contributions. These nationally determined contributions which might range from we are going to institute a vehicle fuel efficiency standard in our country to limit the amount of gasoline that a car will need somewhat equivalent to a cafe standard starting in 2025.
Another country might have said we’re, going to improve electrical energy efficiency and in home appliances starting in 2022. So it’s. It’s, an exercise and sort of trying to reduce these to a common metric and then and then adding them together.
The the headlines are that they’re, the NDC & # 39. S are in a sense of first start, but they’re. Nowhere near enough. Full implementation would require much more ambition, and we need actually to do this rather quickly, because the the more that emissions continue to grow.
The harder is going to be to dig out there are many different opportunities. You know they range from strengthening existing targets, adding new targets, accelerating timelines, additional policies and actions, and so on and the report in an attempt to go from what our executive director said.
You know this is very gloomy. Can’t, we offer more advice to governments on how to move forward. What began with an original sort of stock. Taking of this is where we are, it’s pretty gloomy, and he said you know we have to offer hope we have to offer advice or guidance, or at least framing of it, in something that could be influential in the realm of the cop.
So the potentials are great: the potentials for mission reduction – they you know cover energy industry for street and transport. You know buildings and, and so on. Most of them would have other environmental, economic and social benefits.
So there’s, a compelling rationale for taking action and the the goal is like how to get over the inertia. So let me, let me tell you, then what people like me spend my days on and I’m gonna use energy efficiency as as an example.
So we we have had for a number of years, a program called United for efficiency, and it is an example of what I’d said earlier. After scaring people with the numbers we we try to offer advice and guidance and support for actually taking action.
It’s that equivalent of when one of my colleagues said you know. The first part is like going to the doctor and they tell you you’re overweight. Your diet is terrible. You’re smoking. You drink too much.
You’re gonna have a fatal heart attack within five years and that you can leave the doctor’s office and say yeah. That was pretty sobering advice. My part of the of the equation is having been convinced that the doctor was right.
We try to be like the diet coach in the exercise, coach and the person who can get you on a healthier lifestyle by providing motivation and support, and all that kind of thing so, first to recognize we actually are getting a lot better and using energy more Efficiently, energy efficiency trends are encouraging.
This is a slide taken from analysis done by the International Energy Agency, with with whom we work rather closely, both being in Paris and in in a sense if we were not improving energy efficiency across the board.
Today, we would be seeing something like 15 percent – more energy relative to the year 2000 than than we would otherwise. My own ahead of you that you, an environment, got very excited about energy energy efficiency.
When he heard Steven Chu make a presentation to the secretary-general and dr. chu mentioned how many power plants in the United States had not needed to be constructed simply because of refrigerator efficiency standards that the Department of Energy and EPA had progressively tightened since the mid-nineteen? Well, the early 1980s – and you know you’d – think refrigerator efficiency standards.
It’s, not very interesting, but 8686 large power plants were not built in a sense because refrigerators became efficient. They became larger the phase-out of CFCs as a refrigerant. In the foam blowing agent occurred concurrently, all sorts of amenities were added people liked refrigerators more than they were much more environmentally friendly and cheaper to run again from the International Energy Agency.
You know that they do a lot of analysis and an energy efficiency and we tend to take take their analysis into country-specific suggestions. So we are an environmental organization and why would any energy ministry listen to anything that we would say is a valid question, but if we go as we often do, armed with information and analysis from a reputable partner like the IEA, it’s.
Much more much more credible and we often work with them so broad advantages. If you take just the China EU, the new member states, China and India, all of which import fuel savings of about 700 billion dollars a year avoided energy expenditure in industry of IEA estimates.
600 billion u.s. a year and avoided spending by households through a more efficient use of energy, providing the same amenities of you know: half a trillion dollars. So this is compelling these are compelling sort of numbers for for ministries of economy or the finance ministry, which is often worried, worried about you know.
Where does all that energy? Where is it going to be paid from so in in you and environment? We picked five categories of equipment, so room air conditioners, indoor lighting, well, indoor outdoor lighting, I’m, sorry, electric motor systems, residential refrigerators and distribution transformers, and we these account for over half of electricity consumption globally.
Now the interesting thing is the countries in green on this map have some sort of standard related to energy efficiency of those of those five categories. The ones in gray have no standards whatsoever.
So in this in in Russia, there’s, no efficiency standard for distribution, transformers those things that sit up on utility poles most of southern sub-saharan Africa had no efficiency standards for motors and the fact that the summer green doesn’t indicate That their efficiency standard is good, it might be severely outdated.
You know not been revived or revised in many many years, so not surprising that you find like the United States and Europe and Australia. Basically, the the OECD member countries generally are pretty good, but there’s still room for improvement, so our efforts focus on all those gray areas and on the weak green areas.
Our approach is to bring a very credible technical and policy advice to countries, and we do that by forming large consortium of partners, often from industry, from NGOs from reputable laboratories and research organizations.
So, for example, we work quite closely with well. Maybe I shouldn’t say in this audience: what UC Berkeley you know? Does there’s? A lot of a lot of analysis for the US Department of Energy? They’re, very good on energy efficiency, and we work closely with with the group at at the LBNL and promoting solid technical information to two countries.
We adopt an approach where the core is minimum energy performance standards, but around that is the bundle of policy advice that provides information to consumers, so that the purchasing decision decisions are better informed.
So these are things like labeling programs. We work with financial institutions to overcome the barriers that a higher initial purchase price might might act in discouraging somebody from buying a more efficient appliance, and these can be things like utility on on-bill financing.
You know your utility actually finances part of the purchase of the new piece of equipment and you pay it back through a in a sense of surcharge on the on the electricity bill, but because the electricity demand has gone down, you might actually not even notice that You’re, paying anything additional for for the equipment and so on.
We put emphasis on end-of-life equipment policies in government’s. There was concern learned, largely gone now, of a concern example that the move from incandescent light lamps to compact fluorescent lamps, which contained mercury, would be distributing it distributing a lot of mercury throughout the world.
With the advent of light-emitting diodes, you know LEDs. The mercury issue has become less less important, but you know anything that’s. New and improved generally is is some sort of electronic waste at the end of its life, and so that’s, where people like like Zhang Feng Wan, are important.
They’re. Looking at the lifecycle analysis of all these changes in the in the energy system, so our approach promote efficient products, offer incentives been inefficient products by setting a floor below which that product cannot be sold and then things that help our actions and policies and such that That help monitor market performance make sure that good products, only good products are available.
Bad products are are pulled from the market. The numbers are compelling. We’ve, prepared detailed fact sheets for 150 countries. Basically, every developing country looking at what are the electricity savings by moving toward higher efficiency standards for those five products? What are the co2 emissions avoided on a national level? How much money can be saved for businesses and consumers and how much money does not need to be invested in new supply infrastructure, and this is, I think, an example of taking the global aggregate and reducing it to national level information that is much much much more Persuasive to policymakers so final few words and and airconditioning.
This is an estimate from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. They’re, their equivalent of the US Environmental Protection Agency and a forecast of cooling demand where energy for cooling demand versus heating demand.
Now it’s, not surprising. In a in a warming world demand for heating, probably would go down and demand for air-conditioning would go up, and that’s. What you see in their forecast, not only is it going up it’s going up alarmingly.
Now. Personally, I wouldn’t, put a lot of confidence on numbers. You know in 2100 and so on, but too far out, but it is absolutely true that the amount of the amount of demand for cooling is going up.
We see, cooling is, is coming at the intersection of the three internationally agreed goals. You know one is of course, the Paris climate agreement, it’s, also central to the sustainable development goals of the United Nations and, interestingly now, the Montreal Protocol kigali amendment.
So the kigali amendment brought energy efficiency within the the intergovernmental treaty that was prior to that dealing solely with the phase-out of ozone depleting substances, HF C’s. The one of the replacement chemicals for ozone depleting refrigerants is in any way connected with ozone layer depletion, but it is a very powerful greenhouse gas and therefore the decision by governments, largely driven by active engagement, actually the the champion was the US government, under the Obama Administration, they said we have this whole regime of dealing with ozone, layer protection and they know the community that has developed.
They know how to deal with engineering transitions of refrigerators and air conditioners. They know how to deal with customs compliance. Why don’t? We just take hf, seize this whole category of greenhouse gases and move it over to a completely different regime that that took some.
I think six years of negotiation and the interesting feature was that the final outcome of this kigali amendment was that it encouraged governments to say, look at energy efficiency opportunities. While you make the phase down of these HFCS and that that is easier said than done, because the the financing of something that actually gives you a return on the investment is, is not something that that community is very good at dealing with the kigali amendment.
Sort of takes countries into a realm where maybe money should be spent for something that has a positive return on investment, and they don’t know how to deal with that everything before it had been kind of.
We will pay you developing country to take some action where there’s, a clear cost, but a global benefit. So there is much, I would say hope put on the fact that that this particularly thorny issue of rapid demand and cooling, the fact that technologies exist and that the economics are favorable, but it’s.
It really amounts to kind of a large, a large global effort in getting better technologies adopted more rapidly, particularly in countries like India, where the demand is is really skyrocketing, as incomes increase and such.
So. I think the interests of time, because I’m speaking too long. I had a few additional slides here on. You know. Where is the demand for cooling growing? You could see China and India, not surprisingly hot countries, least southern China, rising incomes, acquisition of room air conditioners and so on so great potential there, and I need to sort of move aggressively in this window of time.
The final word would be on again on partnerships and very interesting the role that a number of foundations here in California, primarily mostly in the Bay Area, but they have banded together two years ago to get a prompt start on the kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
These intergovernmental negotiations often result in, as I said, a consensus document and one way to get consensus is to say we will agree to do things but far enough off that it doesn’t disturb this political cycle.
It’s for the next administration to deal with so in 2016-17 philanthropic foundations, so the Gates Foundation, Hewlett, the Packard Foundation, MacArthur Foundation and so on, put up a lot of money to get a head start on what would be the Intergovernmental process? They said we would, we would test good examples.
We would. We would do a lot of communications and public awareness. We would. We would get a head of the governor the way that governments usually act, which is slow and see if we could kickstart this whole process and the early indications are that it’s.
This is a sort of philanthropic money which comes with fewer strings attached and maybe more flexibility as actually proving to be very, very useful. So I would watch that space if you’re interested, because I think the the fact that philanthropy was willing to come in and do something.
But the overriding conclusion is that, as I started on that, first slide that unless we collectively increase ambitions, we are not headed in a in a very good path and it is going to be very difficult to to get out of the collective mess that we’re currently sort of looking at so.
Thank you very much. I think I spoke a little bit longer than I was supposed to, but um. We should still have some time for questions if you have any so. Thank you yep well anyway. Thank you. So much for your talk and while I totally agree that energy efficiency improvements are not something that should be abandoned, tons more work to be done.
I also feel that they’re, treating the symptom of an underlying cause, which is overconsumption and developed countries, and also unfettered population growth globally. And so I’m wondering if there was any dialogue at the cop 24 or in your experience.
In general, about these broader talks on how to shift our economy, so it’s, maybe less consumption, material driven – and I know that carbon taxes things like this could address that. So I was disappointed to see that market mechanisms were kind of pushed to the next cop.
But I’d love to love to hear your your yeah, interesting yeah. I you don’t, certainly population discussions about population growth rates and such don’t. Don’t really come into the cop discussions. The broader issue that you said of overconsumption or or maybe it’s, the the emulation of Western lifestyles in in rapidly growing developing countries, I think is, is an issue that a lot of my colleagues worked on.
We we have a program called sustainable production and consumption, which we is sort of a catch-all phrase for a lot of different things and we kind of joke like okay, sustainable production and consumption.
What’s left, I mean, but it is meant in in part to address those sorts of issues and and really take a fundamental look at you know. You know how it is that we, as societies and countries you know, use energy or use materials to bring about human welfare.
You can understand it’s, it’s extremely sensitive politically, but it is something that needs to be discussed. Basically, the development or lack of development of carbon capture technologies is that happening? Is you and encouraging that what’s? Your vision of that, I think the IPCC is pretty clear that we still need it if we don’t.
If we, when I say we, you know what I mean, but if we don’t bend the trajectory quickly, it’s, going to almost absolutely be required and you know taking carbon out of the atmosphere as well. I mean we.
We don’t have any active programs on it, but we, you know that I think the science says yes and we tell countries that that’s. The reality I think much more controversial. Is you didn’t you didn’t, ask the Geo engineering, particularly putting sulfate aerosols into the into the atmosphere, to reduce the Earth’s, albedo that that’s, something that’s.
Maybe more worrisome, but but geoengineering. My personal view is that I think it will be needed. The problem is that governments are not supporting it in the private sector is not willing to invest until there’s, clear policy, more policies, so it’s, proceeding but a to slow pace.
Yes last question: I’ll there’s, one down here too. Well, we we put our emphasis on energy efficiency because, because the technologies are for the most part known and you can deploy them quickly and they they have an immediate effect on the trajectory, I think carbon capture and storage would would would fit into that.
And that’s, a whole category. You know direct air capture there’s, a lot of research underway. I would I would be guessing as to you know, which one might yield Bennett you know might might be cost-effective and such I.
I think we just need to try many different things at this point. You know it’s, not it’s, the search for the holy grail that will solve all the problems I don’t think it exists. I wish it was so to address your one of the last points you made about.
You know a lot of the local governments trying to just push off any of the changes they want to make until the next administration. How can you imbue the sense of urgency for these? You know negotiators to recognize that you know they need to set aside their local politics in favor of you know what is essentially the greater good to achieve the long-term change necessary for this kind of problem yeah.
I mean it strikes to the heart I suppose of where does political leadership come from and you know if we could solve that, we probably would have the solution to a lot of other problems as well. What we are seeing is a lot more interest on the part of local governments and city governments.
In particular, it seems that mayor & # 39. S are much more attuned to the immediate concerns of their of their their citizens. They’re much, sir. The action and so a lot of the interesting activities that are being taken or not by national governments there by by city governments and state governments.
It could be that the neh that in most in many countries that the country is too big and too amorphous and there’s, no political consensus, and so it’s, just paralyzed and and therefore it falls on lower levels of government.
To take action and that’s, that is indeed what we’re. Seeing maybe it begins, you know locally could be the answer. We should get rid of the countries and then we just you know, live with cities. Yes.
Well. Thank you very much mark for your great presentation.
Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=U4cmEIxNOu4