Month: October 2021

COP26: Let us move from climate crisis to climate collaboration

Posted on by Chandra Bhushan

Glasgow will not solve the climate crisis but it can fast-track global climate collaboration.

A great hype has been created around the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) at Glasgow. John Kerry, the US climate czar, has called this meeting the world’s “last best chance” to avoid climate hara-kiri. Similar sentiment has been expressed by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. More than 100 world leaders will attend this climate gala, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden.

This is not the first time such hype has been created around climate summits. I can list at least three (two of which I attended) – Kyoto in 1997, Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris in 2015 – where the noise was deafening, but the outcome was muted. Unfortunately, Glasgow COP is heading in the same direction.

Over the last few months, a long list of demands has been put forth by various governments. The UK is pushing for a treaty to “consign coal power to history”, the US wants a net-zero deal, the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) has demanded a 1.5°C declaration. Least Developing Countries (LDCs) want climate polluters to pay them billions of dollars for loss and damage, and Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) want $100 billion climate finance and carbon space. Unfortunately, most of these demands will not be met because the groundwork has not been done to achieve them.

Take the case of coal power phase-out. The UK is pushing to end coal power by 2030 in developed countries and by 2040 in the rest of the world. But it has failed to get support from most coal-consuming countries, especially the top two consumers, India and China.
The reason is simple: Unlike developed countries that depend on gas for electricity, coal provides 70% of India’s and 62% of China’s electricity production. While phasing out of coal power is essential to combat the climate crisis, so is gas power. Countries are not convinced that prioritising one over the other is the right way to move ahead. Also, there has not been any discussion on how this coal transition will happen and who will pay for the closure of coal mines and power plants.

As a sizeable population depends on coal for livelihood in countries like India, huge investments are required to transition coal regions to non-coal economies. But, there has not been any discussion on global cooperation on coal transition. So, without discussing the nut-bolts, expecting a coal power treaty is unrealistic.

Likewise, there are disagreements on loss and damage. Developing countries are now facing a new reality – the destruction unleashed by the climate crisis is taking lives, destroying assets and infrastructure, and costing vast amounts of money in relief and reconstruction. They are demanding that the big polluters compensate them for the losses. But the developed countries have refused to negotiate any responsibility for climate-induced losses. This issue is going to be a significant sticking point at Glasgow and may derail the negotiations.
Similar disagreements exist on all major proposals. So, what should we realistically expect from Glasgow?

COP26 is taking place in the background of a vast trust deficit that emerged between countries during the Trump regime; the vaccine apartheid and the unilateral withdrawal of the US from Afghanistan have further eroded the credibility of developed countries. Hence, the pretence of the developed countries that everything is hunky-dory is misplaced. Therefore, their attempt to forge an alliance on issues like net zero is destined to become high-sounding declarations that are ritually announced at all COPs.

But the Glasgow meeting can achieve some important outcomes, the most important being the rule book for the Paris Agreement. Over the last six years, countries have struggled to finish the rule book and operationalise the Agreement in its entirety, mainly due to disagreements over the design of the carbon market. Theoretically, the carbon market can enhance mitigation, reduce cost and transfer real resources to developing countries for decarbonisation. At Glasgow, negotiators must set robust rules to eliminate past loopholes and ensure the carbon market works for the planet.

Glasgow is also an opportunity to kick-start the process of confidence-building to bring back the global collaboration on track. Both developed and developing countries must cross the aisles, understand each other’s concerns, and announce confidence-building measures.
Developed countries can put out a new plan for climate finance that is ambitious and credible. A recent report on climate finance road map shows how little money is being given by them. For example, in 2019, developed countries provided $16.7 billion as a grant. This means that every person in developed countries contributed just $1 per month for climate finance. Developed countries can surely afford more than this. A credible climate finance plan from them is, therefore, crucial.

Similarly, developing countries need to discuss their decarbonisation plans because there is no carbon space to emit. Even if developed countries reach net zero by 2030 (which is unlikely), developing countries will still have to start reducing emissions very soon. So, a serious plan on decarbonisation from developing countries would go a long way in building confidence in the process.
#TelltheTruth is a popular hashtag for COP26. It exemplifies the frustration of young climate campaigners with the negotiation process. At COP26, leaders must tell the truth. Dishonesty and falsehood are the reason why the three decades of climate negotiations have achieved little.

The writer is CEO, International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST)

Defining the future of cooling

Posted on by Apurupa Gorthi

Green, clean and lean air-conditioners, but with no access it is just mean!

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report (2021) in clear terms attributed climate change to human activities and stated that many parts of the world are already experiencing its ill-effects. Lancet’s Countdown on Health Climate Change (2021), further substantiated the impact of extreme climate events by reporting that between 2018 and 2019 India had the biggest absolute increase in heat related mortality in the world. Empirical evidence from Kolkata shows that the city has warmed by 2.6°C relative to 1950, the highest among the cities sampled by the IPCC. The next in-line in terms of rapidly warming cities, stated another analysis, were Bengaluru and Delhi with a predicted +1°C rise in temperatures. 

For climate scientists, policymakers, and activists this signals urgent action – net-zero goals and targeted climate finance, among other such solutions. For an average citizen, this signals the need to purchase an air conditioner. Controlled, optimal indoor temperatures are an undeniable adaptation strategy, linked closely to health, productivity and ultimately economic development. 

However, here lies the challenge. With less than 10 percent of the households owning air conditioners today, India has been postulated to be a tremendous market for cooling appliances. However, India is already among the top 10 countries with the largest urban populations at risk from the lack of cooling; with more than 110 million people at risk. There is a heat inequity at play here – only some of us are likely to successfully adapt to the impacts of extreme heat. 

Simultaneously, there is the much talked about dichotomy of cooling – the more we cool our residences and offices, the more the planet heats up. When thermal comfort or more generally cooling is already an adaptation need, how can cities also make it a key sector for climate change mitigation?

Defining our cooling goals 

Global discourse around environmentally-responsible cooling had its inception at the Montreal Protocol, as a result of which ozone depleting refrigerants have been phased out by 197 countries. More recently, the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol has countries phasing down potent greenhouse gases (GHG) used as refrigerants while simultaneous pushing for improvements in energy efficiency in cooling appliances. The Kigali Amendment has thus centred cooling as a key sector for climate mitigation and this in turn has given rise to variety of strategies. 

Today, there is acknowledgement among governments on the importance and need for cooling, especially under the popular rhetoric of ‘cooling for all’. Strategies such as green cooling, climate-friendly cooling, and sustainable cooling, to name a few, are being explored as potential ways to mitigate effects of cooling. However, a critical question to ask at this time is what these mean and whom they benefit.  

The first among these is Green Cooling which “requires the use of natural refrigerant and energy efficient appliances and buildings.” This strategy aims to reduce demand for cooling, and minimise the GHG emissions during the operational lifetime of the cooling equipment. A key feature of green cooling is that the demand for cooling is reduced through better building design and material use, thereby limiting the need for energy guzzling air conditioners for cooling. 

A slightly more reformed version of Green Cooling is Net-Zero Cooling, which looks to eliminate any carbon emissions from cooling. Net-zero cooling is defined in the Climate Action Pathway as “reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cooling during operational life of products (excluding resource extraction and manufacturing) to as close to zero as possible and any remaining GHG emissions would be balanced with an equivalent amount of carbon removal – for example, by restoring forests and through direct air capture and storage technology.” Net-zero cooling, like green cooling, as per the EIA’s recent analysis, focuses on natural refrigerants with minimal global warming potential. 
Both green and net-zero cooling place technology at the centre and aim to minimise GHG emissions from cooling during the lifetime of the appliance. They have been instrumental in promoting alternative, climate-friendly approaches like natural refrigerants, not-in-kind technologies, cooling as a service, district cooling, cool roofs, to name a few. At the moment however, mainstreaming these technologies and making them affordable comes with a slew of challenges, noted in our latest series of Policy Briefs on Green Cooling in India. Further, a recent analysis found that even with the most accelerated technology progress projection of efficient cooling appliances, in a ‘cooling for all’ scenario the energy demand for cooling is ~2.5 times the maximum energy we can afford to allot to this sector to keep temperature rise under 2°C.

How to avoid cooling for some and heating for others

A recent report by the Centre for Sustainable Cooling stated – “We urgently need access to clean cooling for all. In order to achieve this, we need to stop asking ourselves ‘how much electricity do we need to generate?’ and start asking ‘what is the service we require, and how can we provide it in the least damaging way?’” They further define ‘Clean Cooling’ as a means to “meet cooling needs efficiently and sustainably within the constraints from climate change, natural resource and clean air targets. Clean cooling necessarily must be affordable and accessible to all to deliver the societal, economic and health goals. It likely starts with mitigating demand.” 

The global discourse on cooling for thermal comfort has moved from being solely technology focused to acknowledging the humans who are likely to need access to it. The fact that the discourse on cooling largely has its roots in Montreal Protocol has often led to cooling being confounded with air conditioning. Whereas the fact remains that a majority of urban households in India rely on electric fans (>90% as per Census 2011-12). Given the aspirational aspect of owning air conditioners in addition to rapidly heating urban centres, the growing middle class is predicted to buy the least expensive and thus least efficient air conditioners in the coming decade. 

To avoid such a future, our developmental and climate policies, roadmaps, and programmes must not only address cooling as an important resource but also place the end-users as the focus of cooling strategies. Critical questions that such policies must address are: who will need to be prioritised and how do we prioritise them? how do we move away from cooling only affluent spaces? how do we finance such an endeavour? Discourse of this nature is vital to reinventing strategies, redefining goals and refining approaches.

This is the first of a series of five essays aiming to examine the essential elements of access to thermal comfort or cooling in India.

1. According to a report by the Centre for Sustainable Cooling – “Cooling for All, a hypothetical scenario is developed whereby refrigeration equipment penetrations globally converge by 2050 with those experienced in the developed world today (USA as the proxy), and air conditioning is made available to all populations experiencing more than 2000 Cooling Degree Days per year.” They further define cooling degree day (CDD) as “the demand for cooling a building. It is the number of degrees that a day’s average temperature is above 21° C in this instance multiplied by the number of days per year. China experiences 2,030 cooling-degree days per year, whereas the United Kingdom experiences 135. The UAE experiences over 10,000 cooling degree-days per year.”

The UNEP Production Gap Report’s call for a Just Transition is as timely as it is urgent

Posted on by Chinmayi Shalya

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and leading global research institutes released the Production Gap Report on Thursday.  The report raises clear concern on countries following their net-zero ‘pledge’. Most governments plan to produce more than twice the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.

As part of the Paris Agreement at the COP21 in 2015, countries pledged to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses to keep global warming from breaching the 2°C mark, preferably keeping it to 1.5°C. Now, many countries have declared their net-zero emission targets for 2050. 

The report finds that despite the climate action commitments and targets for net-zero, the governments would be producing 240% more coal, 57% more oil and 71% more gas collectively. Countries globally have directed over USD 300 billion of new funds towards fossil fuels since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than they have towards clean energy.

Taking a closer look at 15 fossil-fuel producing countries, including India, the report states that the thrust is towards ramping up fossil-fuel production. India plans to expand coal production by nearly 60% from 2019 to 2040, by removal of barriers to land acquisition and building capacity for exploration. India also plans to increase its oil and gas production by over 40% in the same duration. India has so far not set a net-zero emission target. There is no policy or discourse for a just transition away from fossil fuels. 

The Production Gap report is the second clarion call for climate action. Earlier this year, the InterGovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) sounded the “red code for humanity” stating that there is no time to defer action, if the climate catastrophe has to be avoided. 

 As the global leaders converge for COP 26 two weeks down the line, the Production Gap report calls for “rapid and immediate steps” and to ensure a “just and equitable transition” to cleaner sources of energy, a key agenda to take forward. 

The call for a “just transition” is as timely as it is urgent. Just transition is not a one-time fix, rather a process. This process is not just technological, but a human one as well which involves economies, workers and local communities and ensuring justice for them. 

So far, the discourse on just transition has been limited and restricted largely to the developed economies where the challenge of transitioning has been to account for the workforce employed in the fossil fuel industry. For developing economies like India, the challenges are bigger. Apart from formal workers, there is a huge informal workforce dependence on the fossil-fuel industry, which is largely unaccounted for. 

iFOREST’s latest research has shown that about 21.5 million workers working in fossil-fuel and dependent sectors will need employment to prevent socio-economic distress in the regions. At least 32% of these are informal workers. In key fossil fuel sectors such as coal mining, iron and steel and automobile industries, the informal workforce is four times those formally employed. Coal mining in India, for instance, employs an estimated 2.6 million people, of which 70% are informal workers. In fact, in the old coal mining region of eastern India, many people eke out a living by manually gathering and selling coal in local markets.  These workers also have to be accounted for and provided with alternative livelihoods and required skills. 

There is also a huge indirect local dependence on the fossil fuel industry. Ground interactions in many of India’s coal mining regions show that local businesses mushroom and thrive on the demand created by the workforce in the local coal and coal-based industries. Often these businesses also lead to rapid urbanization of small concentrated pockets of otherwise rural districts. 

This is why planning will be required to bring together resources, align policy and even development outcomes, create a political will and social appetite for a fossil fuel transition. The local industry, businesses and communities will need to be brought on board for an economic diversification of the region. 

Additionally, in developing economies such as India, the fossil fuel regions suffer from the resource curse. They are among the poorest regions where communities have been burdened with displacement, loss of land, and multiple levels of deprivation of income and  decent livelihood, healthcare, education and even sanitation for years. About 17 of India’s top coal mining districts, have about 30% of people who are multidimensionally poor, more than the country’s average of 27.5%. Justice for them is a key component of this transition

To be able to achieve this, the planning and action must start now, so that in the next two decades, countries like India are ready for the transition. Going by precedence, Ruhr Valley in Germany, a highly industrialised region with a coal-centric economy, took 50 years to transition from coal, after resistance from industry and local communities. The economy shifted to tourism based one after due policy and financial thrust, and roping in the stakeholders through bottom-up approach.

If the world has to meet the climate action commitments, a just transition to cleaner sources of energy is an inevitability. Inaction towards decarbonization also thwarts the renewable energy ambitions. A push towards climate action has to be coupled with a push for cleaner sources of energy but also at the same time to decarbonize. 

At the launch of the Production Gap report, there was a push for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty led by civil society groups globally, to ensure that countries don’t cheat and match climate commitment with action by ending new exploration for fossil fuels, phase out of existing production and invest in a transformational plan. To ensure these, a just transition is an imperative.

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