As the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties ("COP") in Glasgow has drawn to a close, with seemingly mixed messages and a somewhat ambiguous conclusion, it is worth reflecting on the overall trajectory of the climate issue, societal expectations, and the accomplishments that — with time — Glasgow is likely to represent.  COP26 highlighted the fragility of the planet, as well as the fragility of the global consensus-based United Nations approach to protecting it.  It highlighted the sweep of global climate-induced challenges and the scale of transformation needed to address them.  With rising temperatures has come a rising global focus on climate and a far greater set of emerging societal expectations for meaningful responses by government and the private sector.  Despite the risk that the global agreement forged in Glasgow is seen by climate activists as all talk and no action — what they referred to as "blah, blah, blah" — I believe that a number of features will endure as important accomplishments.

Representatives from 197 nations, businesses, hundreds of civil society organizations, scientists, educators, media, and climate activists — you name it — all converged on Glasgow to shine a global spotlight on the climate crisis.  The Conference had some 40,000 registered participants.  With just a few thousand of those involved in the negotiations themselves, the rest converged around elevating climate understanding, climate solutions, and climate action.  And still tens of thousands of others converged to protest and lend their voices to the climate debate.期望因Covid-19延迟一年以及美国返回巴黎气候进程而提高但这些期望都集中在依赖实现每一项结果一致性的联合国谈判进程上 。

尽管Covid云下集合和大批与会者所构成挑战,但缔约方会议在某些方面组织得比以往更好。它不再完全是一个国际谈判,而更多地是一个通信机制,以凝聚世界对雄心气候行动需求的看法United Nations进程启动全球领导人峰会,有120位国家元首参加It featured inspiring statements from governmental and societal leaders, such as Sir David Attenborough.  The Summit then flowed into the overall COP, which had a thematic organization for each day of the conference, by which it highlighted actions or the sweep and scale of climate impacts in a more coherent fashion than ever before — spanning from energy, finance, transport, cities and the built environment, science and innovation, nature, gender, youth, and adaptation to and loss and damage from climate change.  And the overall gathering encapsulated a heightened global focus on climate as a defining generational issue in a way that has never happened before.

The World Rallied Around the Urgency Shown By the Evolving Climate Science

The defining element of the Glasgow considerations was the acceptance of a far sharper sense of climate science findings around the scale and urgency of emissions reductions needed to stabilize the earth's climate and prevent catastrophic consequences.  Every aspect of the discussions was judged by the context the new climate science shows.

Leading up to the COP, the UN's authoritative science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ("IPCC"), had issued two reports — one in 2018 focused on the imperative of holding global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Centigrade, and one in the Summer of 2021 highlighting the "overwhelming" evidence of climate change.  The reports showed that a rise in global temperature to 2 degrees would lead to catastrophic results in both the frequency and severity of climate-induced events and global changes.  The reports found the science of human-induced impacts "unequivocal" and noted that global temperatures had already risen by 1.1 degrees over pre-industrial levels — demonstrating how limited the remaining carbon budget is —  and that climate adverse effects were widespread, rapid, and intensifying.The report further found that urgent action is needed to cut emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2050 in order to maintain a sustainable trajectory.

The IPCC findings were characterized by UN Secretary General António Guterres as a "code red for humanity."  They became the touchstone for judging the adequacy of country pledges and private sector net zero commitments.  In addition to the scale of the emissions reductions, the need for an accelerated pace of change also became far clearer and a widely accepted expectation.  The notion that we are now in a "decisive decade" to get on the right emissions trajectory was embraced by the COP process.  Going into the COP, various assessments, such as from the International Energy Agency, showed that existing country emissions reduction commitments would lead to a global temperature rise of 2.8 degrees by the end of the century.  Those pledges covered less than 20 per cent of the gap in emissions reductions needed to be closed by 2030 to keep a 1.5 degree path within reach.  According to a number of projections, the plethora of new commitments announced at the COP would, if delivered in full, lower the rise to somewhere between 1.8 and 1.9 degrees.  The UN noted that the actual nationally determined contributions ("NDCs") submitted by participating nations would result in an unsustainable global temperature rise of 2.4 degrees.

At the end of the day, the overall agreement reached by 197 countries — including new emissions reductions announcements, the move to more regular revision of national commitments, transparency requirements around that process, and the development of rules for the global carbon markets — at bottom kept alive the possibility of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by the end of the century and essentially transformed that temperature target into the new object of the UN process.虽然1.8度和1.5度之间的差值似乎不大,但实际上它代表着减轻气候变化最大破坏性影响的实质性差值。 广泛报道的争议涉及是否逐步停用煤炭和化石燃料补贴,发展中国家是否有足够的气候资金,以及是否向受影响国家提供补偿“损耗和损害”抑制了对协议的热度。 尽管如此,正如缔约方会议主席Alok Sharma得出的结论, “我们现在可以可信地说我们已经保住1.5度。But, its pulse is weak and it will only survive if we keep our promises and translate commitments into rapid action."

Paired with these science targets was a far more prominent voice given to the moral underpinnings to the proceedings that focused on the inequity created because the most vulnerable nations to climate impacts are those who have contributed least to the emissions causing such impacts, and a palpable sense of obligation to future generations.  The IPCC report drove home the concept that the COP process is not some future exercise with distant impacts, but that the delegates were poised to address an urgent crisis of the here and now.

The Paris Climate Framework Survived the Absence, and Accommodated the Return, of the United States as an Active Participant

The nations of the world remained committed to the UN Climate Framework Convention's goal of "the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" even in the absence of U.S.巴黎气候协议自下而上承诺框架由每个国家根据自身环境确定,体现了应对这一全球挑战的共同全球承诺,没有美国则保持稳定和适切性participation, and the reaffirmation of that framework may be one of Glasgow's greatest accomplishments.

The Paris balance had achieved a "bottom-up" system of emissions reduction commitments that flexibly accommodates the circumstances of individual countries, yet one that does not allow so much flexibility that there is no realistic hope of actually bettering the climate situation by addressing emissions mitigation, adaptation to the already locked-in effects of climate change, and assistance for climate-impacted developing nations.  Paris provided a solution and a directional sense of its goals, even as it admitted that its trajectory may need to grow more stringent over time, informed by meaningful science.  Glasgow refined that process with a commitment by the parties to revisit their NDCs in one year rather than five and with enhanced transparency around individual country goals and their implementation.  This process preserves the possibility that the collective emissions reduction actions are calibrated to avoid the worst climatic impacts.

The durability of the Paris structure was aided, to be sure, by the promise of new technology, which could allow for countries to enhance their emission reduction commitments through cost effective wind, solar, energy efficiency, and electric vehicle technologies — technologies that were still only on the verge in Paris — making a clean energy transformation that is consistent with the Paris climate goals today seem like an attainable objective.

When the United States did return to the negotiating table, it brought with it an ambitious NDC — pledging to achieve a 50-52 percent reduction from 2005 levels in economy-wide net greenhouse gas pollution by 2030, to achieve 100 percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035, and net zero emissions no later than 2050.  It also brought a bevy of other actions to instill more confidence in its commitment.This included leadership in assembling a global methane reduction coalition by which more than 100 countries agreed to cut emissions to tackle this highly potent short-acting greenhouse gas by 2030, a "first movers" technology coalition, as well as a series of whole-of-government financial and regulatory initiatives.

While the Biden Administration would have liked to have had its actions backed up by climate legislation, particularly power plant incentives and a range of clean energy tax credits in the reconciliation bill, it made a strong case nonetheless about the comprehensive approach it is taking to prioritizing climate outcomes across the government, whether that be in the financial sector, energy, or transportation.  And the United States demonstrated ambition in its diplomacy, reaching a surprise commitment with China to work collaboratively across a range of areas to keep alive the prospects for achieving 1.5 degrees.  President Biden's address to the COP was complemented by a widely praised speech by former President Obama speaking directly to youth climate activists who had taken to the streets during the COP, as well as by Congressional leadership.

The Global Focus on the Climate Crisis Puts a New Spotlight on the Importance of Business Solutions and the Business Opportunities Around Climate — Subject to Ever Greater and More Intensive Scrutiny

The first week of the COP brought a breathtaking series of collaborative public and private sector announcements to achieve carbon emissions reductions.  In many ways, these commitments seem almost as significant in accomplishing a clean energy transformation as the text of the UN agreement itself.

In addition to the methane pledge, leaders from over 120 countries, representing about 90 percent of the world's forests, pledged to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030.  Hundreds of financial firms, operating through the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), committed over $130 trillion of private capital — representing 40 percent of global financial assets — to transforming the economy for net zero.Various combinations of development organizations and private sector capabilities identified a range of opportunities they will pursue for investments in particular developing nation economies, such as in efforts to stem coal use in South Africa.  Nearly 30 national governments, joined by cities, states, major automotive manufacturers, fleet owners, and investors, signed the Glasgow Declaration on Zero-Emission Cars and Vans to end the sale of internal combustion engines by 2035 in leading markets, and by 2040 worldwide. Other transportation commitments touched on heavy duty vehicle electrification, green shipping, and enhancing the deployment of sustainable aviation fuels.

Glasgow in many ways represents a shift in focus from a governmental initiative to a recognition that the scale and pace of the energy and societal transformation and response demanded by climate change necessarily will require swift and credible action by the private sector as well.  As one Chief Executive Officer put it, the concept of a "climate-advantaged" company has taken hold, where sustainability has been transformed from a "nice to have" effort being done on the side, to a vital consideration at the center of business strategy, and where such companies can benefit from a substantial value premium.  As one of the UN's High Level Climate Champions put it: "Net zero has gone from extreme to mainstream."

Of course, with the proliferation of net zero pledges comes an increasing level of skepticism about the credibility of those commitments and the ability to deliver on them in the long run.  In the ramp up to the COP, the IPCC focus on the more stringent and nearer term emissions reductions meant that the Science Based Targets Initiative formally revised its goals for net zero corporate commitments to align with the new 1.5 degree IPCC target and issued a new standard for evaluating company emission reduction offerings.  Along these same lines, the so-called "Under 2 Coalition," representing commitments by some 60 percent of world's economy, is recasting itself as the "Net Zero Coalition."

Likewise, the UN Secretary General, at the Opening to the World Leaders Summit portion of the COP and prompted by developing nation and activist concerns over the credibility of emissions reduction commitments, characterized "a deficit of credibility and a surplus of confusion over emissions reductions and net zero targets, with different meanings and different metrics."  The Secretary General therefore announced that he will "establish a Group of Experts to propose clear standards to measure and analyze net zero commitments from non-state actors."  The Secretary General reiterated his intent to establish a high level group for this purpose at the conclusion of the COP as well.  These will likely complement a range of emerging national financial sector and ESG transparency requirements, including the announcement of the formation of a new International Sustainability Standards Board, along with other Paris Climate Agreement provisions, particularly the new carbon market rules.

Indeed, youth activists expressed particular concern over the pace and credibility of emissions reduction commitments, stating quite simply that "we don't believe you" and urging the business community to "prove them wrong."  This skepticism was heightened by the overall context of the final COP debate around the failure to honor in a timely way climate finance commitments of $100 billion per year to affected developing countries, the absence of a clear loss and damage compensation commitment, and the somewhat relaxed treatment of fossil fuels, particularly the insistence by some nations to preserve an ongoing role for coal.

Just as there will be these formal processes to help refine net zero expectations, there no doubt also will be enhanced activist group scrutiny of company pledges and climate impacts.  Companies will be called to task to demonstrate what they are doing to implement their net zero commitments.This scrutiny is likely to be even more acute given the inability of the formal negotiating process to achieve a level of ambition through country NDCs that will reach the 1.5 degree target or deliver in the short term the climate finance commitments for the developing world and the credibility gap that this outcome may perpetuate.  As France's former Climate Ambassador and the key architect of the Paris Climate Agreement, Laurence Tubiana, put it, "Greenwashing is the new climate denial."  Climate accountability in many ways will be the new currency.

We Can Expect More Focus on Climate Commitments Going Forward

Building on the Paris accord, the agreement follows the pattern of existing domestic environmental laws in recognizing that it may not be a perfect solution, in and of itself, and that the science will continue to evolve.But those frameworks recognize that it is critical to get started on the emissions reduction process even if the target may be revised in the future.  Similar to the Clean Air Act's five year review provision for fundamental health-based pollutants, Glasgow acknowledges the need to calibrate future emissions reductions based on new science more frequently and with greater transparency to assess the success of country measures in meeting the emissions targets, and that there is a fierce urgency of the now being expressed by climate advocates that should inform those evaluations.  While the global community has demonstrated that it can, in essence, walk and chew gum at the same time, the question this time is whether it can do so while running.That will be tested starting next year with submissions to the next COP.

Implementation of the various COP26 pledges will be a critical piece of the equation.  The test will continue to be how to turn commitments into action for this decade.  As the UN Secretary General indicated, "COP27 begins today."  In some ways, Glasgow represents a sharper focus on science-aligned plans — by governments and business and in the face of a new global climate consciousness — to maintain climate stability, and the focus will now shift to the implementation and refinement of those commitments.  For companies, growing global climate consciousness and risks and opportunities posed by the energy transformation present a new post-Glasgow dynamic necessitating climate engagement, but requiring a credible approach in doing so.

As discussed on our previous post on grid modernization, new transmission lines must be installed to allow high-capacity, long-distance power transmission, so that renewable energy can be efficiently transmitted from remote areas where it is plentiful to more densely populated locations where it is needed.

Here, we explore how the AJP's aim of securing investment for development of transmission infrastructure may advance a number of additional objectives:

• It can help bridge the physical and jurisdictional lines drawn between the Nation's regional power markets.
• It can improve the resiliency of the grid to the reliability threats posed by increasingly extreme weather events.
• And it can help stitch together the historical opposition between environmental and labor interests.

Power Lines, Political Lines, and Linkages

The contiguous U.S.eia.gov/todayinEnergy/detail.php?id=27152基本分离网格连接点很少,只能互传递小量能量The boundaries at which the grids abut (and minimally connect) are known as "seams."

Ongoing research from the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) suggests that fortifying these seams would provide substantial economic and environmental benefits, making it possible, for example, for solar power from the desert southwest to meet peak electricity demand in the northeast and then support similar demand peaks at later times in the west.

While NREL has yet to finalize its seams study, reportedly due to the prior administration's efforts to downplay those benefits, other studies have similarly projected tremendous return on investments in grid integration and improved power transmission.

• According to one such study, integrating the Nation's grids and installing high-voltage direct-current (DC) transmission lines – which can transmit energy over long distances more effectively than the alternating current (AC) lines that dominate the current grid – has the potential to save consumers over $47 billion annually.

In spite of the obvious benefits associated with a better-connected grid, overcoming the physical and jurisdictional boundaries separating the three interconnections will not be easy.

In particular, Texas has historically preserved its independence from oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) by not significantly participating in interstate energy transmission.

That independence may be increasingly difficult to defend, however, in the aftermath of the failure of much of the Texas grid operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) during this past February's extreme winter storm.

• Cities like El Paso, which are not part of ERCOT, fared relatively well, because they were able to receive power from neighboring balancing authorities and power markets.
• But the major metropolitan areas of Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth suffered catastrophic power losses because they were limited to the supply within ERCOT, which was designed to meet peak demand on a hot summer's day and could not keep up with the unprecedented winter demand.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the AJP's argument in favor of spending billions of dollars to improve our Nation's transmission infrastructure leads with a description of the Texas outages and prior research indicating that weather-related power outages cost the U.S.最大达每年700亿美元经济量。

This is the tenth in our series on "The ABCs of the AJP."

Jobs, unsurprisingly, are at the heart of the Biden Administration's ambitious, multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan.  After all, the plan also goes by the name The American Jobs Plan ("AJP").  Each of the sweeping goals of the AJP—from addressing climate change, to developing a resilient electricity grid, to competing with China over clean energy supply chains—promises to create thousands of new jobs.

These jobs fall into multiple categories, including, but not limited to:

• Repairing bridges and highways, upgrading ports, airports, and transit. The Biden Administration wants to invest hundreds of billions of dollars on transportation infrastructure and resilience.  This includes thousands of individual projects, and, as discussed in a recent blog post, a significant portion of this investment will be aimed at redressing inequities created by past investments in transportation infrastructure.
• Electric vehicles and related supply chains. The Administration has announced plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into the domestic electric vehicle market, including investing in manufacturing at various stages of the supply chain.  The AJP also signals the Administration's plan to leverage the federal government's procurement power to give this manufacturing—and other types of manufacturing—a head start to competing on the global scale.
• Updating and expanding our electricity grid. To develop a more affordable, reliable, and resilient electricity grid, the Administration is calling for the creation of additional generation facilities and transmission lines.  The Administration views a transition to renewable sources of energy as a way to both create jobs and advance environmental justice concerns.  To this end, the Administration wants to accelerate investment in distributed energy resources in historically neglected neighborhoods, and create fifteen "decarbonized hydrogen demonstration projects in distressed communities."
• Updating other utility networks. The AJP will also expand broadband transmission to rural communities, and update water systems throughout the country to ensure universal access to clean water.  Regarding clean water efforts, the Administration is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the removal of lead pipes and on investment in new drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems.元老院同政府联动hrefss/www.congress.gov/bill/gress/senate-bill/914exts/bill/a一年之久 数十万个工作丢失 行业行政局认为对更清洁、更具弹性经济至关重要 。最新消息可再生能源(下降6%)网格现代化和电池存储量(下降7%) 清洁车辆制造量增长(增长3%)
  Now,2020年后退并实现AJP对地平线的允诺,这些行业预期增长量将超过这些就业机会损失的补偿量。
  One
• s/mjbradley.com/sites/default/files/EDF_EV_Market_Report_Series_202020_Update.pdf'>sreport 估计电动车辆行业2019-a数雇用近130 000人部分估计这些数字会急剧增加,因为政府支持家电车行业。
• ahrfss/acc/report-transmission-itc-bell-decate-650000-jobs-spur-153b-in-Investment/''sreport 预测会增加650 000个新工作,因为我们利用投资税抵充来改造传输网格。
• Recently, the National Solar Jobs Census released its annual report, which explains that the industry anticipates 400,000 solar jobs by 2030, and will need over 900,000 employees by 2035 to meet the Administration's emissions target.

It figures to be more difficult to measure progress against one of the Administration's other promises: that these new jobs will be "good jobs."

One possible metric is wages.  Those who have begun analyzing the quality of the types of promised jobs appear to be optimistic on this front:

• In April, the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution released its report, Advancing Inclusion Through Clean Energy Jobs.发现清洁能源雇员(广义定义)比全国所有工人挣得更高更公平的工资。
• 补充报告发现清洁能源工作通常很少有正式教育需求Indeed, the report found that roughly 50 percent of clean energy employees have a high school diploma yet earn higher wages than similarly-educated peers in other industries.

Despite these promising figures, some are concerned that the transition away from fossil fuels concentrates job losses in certain communities, while opportunity remains concentrated elsewhere.  Although the Brookings Institution report concludes that clean energy jobs compare favorably to average jobs nationwide, the numbers are not as rosy when clean energy jobs are compared to the fossil fuel jobs they figure to replace.  This disparity is also noted in a recent report from Environmental Entrepreneurs, Clean Jobs America 2021, which explains that "wages in clean energy as a whole are lower than fossil fuels."

Another important consideration is that many of the hotspots for clean energy jobs are in states and communities with relatively high average wages, relatively high costs of living, and a relatively low concentration of the types of jobs that will be rendered obsolete as our economy moves towards zero emissions.  To this point, on April 19, 2021, the United Mine Workers of America ("UMWA") released its report, Preserving Coal Country, which voiced concerns about the number of coal jobs—and jobs in related and unrelated industries—that Appalachia has lost and will continue lose as our energy grid moves away from coal.  UMWA noted the need for a plan to support the people and towns that are being left behind.

This objective – often referred to as "just transition" – is relevant not only in the US, but has been broadly embraced as part of international efforts to address climate change, including in the Paris Agreement resulting from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's ("UNFCCC") Conference of the Parties ("COP") 21 in 2015, the Solidarity and Just Transition Silesia Declaration adopted at the COP 24 in Katowice, Poland in 2018, and as a major component of the European Green Deal.

The Administration appears sensitive to the need to assure a just transition for communities in Appalachia and elsewhere that depend on coal jobs, particularly given the even divide in the Senate and the need to either obtain bipartisan support or at least maintain the entire Democratic caucus to advance the President's infrastructure and clean energy goals.总统提名和参院一致 Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, §218.  Not long after UMWA released its report, the Interagency Working Group ("IWG") released its own report, focusing on job creation and workforce development in communities with the highest concentration of direct-coal-sector jobs.

The IWG identifies almost $38 billion in "existing federal funding that could be accessed by Energy Communities for infrastructure, environmental remediation, union job creation, and community revitalization efforts."  It also focuses on the job creation and environmental justice potential of environmental remediation projects in "fenceline" communities located near energy or industrial facilities, which are among the most polluted communities in the country and are often communities of color.  This includes remediation of abandoned mine lands, orphaned oil and gas wells, and brownfields in communities with closed or abandoned power stations or mining sites.

The IWG also emphasizes the amount of federal money available for carbon capture and storage projects at existing power plants and industrial facilities, as well as funding to extract critical minerals from coal waste streams for use in the manufacturing of batteries and other components of electric vehicles.  This would help advance the Administration's goal of developing a domestic supply chain for electric vehicles, while also creating job opportunities for coal miners and others in energy communities affected by the transition away from coal.

Whether these investments will be enough to gain support of key members of Congress remains unclear.  Given how closely divided both chambers are, however, it seems self-evident that any infrastructure package that advances with some of the AJP's key clean energy elements intact – either as a result of bipartisan negotiation or through reconciliation – will undoubtedly include targeted investments for those communities most likely to be impacted by decreasing reliance upon coal and other fossil fuels.