对最后宣言文本的谈判自昨天以来似乎没有取得显著进展阻塞进度的问题与一开始确定为关键的问题相同:损耗和损耗缓冲漏洞自2020年起承诺给发展中国家的1000亿美元气候金融并倍增1000亿美元 用于适应项目埃及外交部长和缔约方会议双会长呼吁代表们寻找解决办法-尽管通常由东道国负责向前推进文本spanids.gle.com/spreteshes/d/1Z0wyEGOU_6da9Sgnsqyi8PE0fkeIY4Xcmezo>

目前的草案远非可编辑成形文本,而只是提供可载入定本中某些内容的选项从正面看,文本草案拒绝印度推送“逐步下调化石燃料”,转回原初COP 26“逐步下调煤炭 ” 。 食品现在也得到了一个重要的提法然而,当前文本中至少14次显示“当前谈判中相关结果的持有者”。Considering tomorrow is supposed to be the final day of COP 27, it would appear likely that negotiations will continue well into the night if the deadline is to be met.

The UN Secretary General flew directly from the G20 meeting in Bali to Sharm to try and give impetus to the talks, signaling his frustration at their pace and stating, "There is clearly a breakdown in trust between North and South, and between developed and emerging economies." As if to prove his point, the Guardian quoted a G77 negotiator, saying: "I've never seen us so united on an issue as loss and damage ...美国...不接受建立损耗基金的决定死锁就在那里77国集团表示不可接受问题很清楚,即曾一度激进概念“损耗和损耗”现已非常牢固地成为气候变化议程前端和中心点。

回埃及后,关于最后宣言措辞的协议仍然难以实现虽然新文本细节不多,但印度建议宣言最终引用“压倒所有化石燃料”,而不是缔约方会议第二十六届会议仅引用煤炭,支持似乎在增加更令人担忧的是,有迹象表明,最后宣言可能不再确认对1.5摄氏度目标的承诺,而代之以引用2摄氏度默默承认进展缓慢,澳大利亚气候变化部长被委以牵头商谈穷弱国家气候融资的关键问题。

G20国家对全球排放量的75%负责,G20公报中的强语似旨在刺激沙姆沙伊赫谈判延缓进展德国气候特使表示G20公报中包含1.5C表示“向COP 27的部长和谈判者发送重要信号”。..G20支持Glasgow气候协议,在沙姆沙伊赫无法反弹 。

COP27 was never going to be a ‘Big COP' in the way that COP26 in Glasgow was.  It was not originally designed to be one of the five-year ratchet reviews of NDCs set out by the 2015 the Paris Agreement and there were no major new climate change texts due to be negotiated.  Sharm's value is likely to be assessed, at least in part, on whether it effectively tees up important items for next year, including:

• the Global Stocktake (the technical dialogue will conclude in June next year, and the political phase at COP28);
• the Global Goal on Adaptation, due to conclude next year;
• the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, due to conclude in 2024!and
• the increasingly important future discussions on loss and damage. 

However, COP27 remains an important waypoint – not least in how successful it eventually is in avoiding acrimonious debate and significant tensions over loss and damage.

Glasgow was a five-year review point.  But the UNFCCC assessed that not enough progress had been made by countries' emissions reductions targets towards the 1.5 degree target and required all member countries to return to COP27 with improved goals.  So COP27 represents an important departure from the UNFCCC's agreed timetable and in that sense demonstrates the increasing urgency of reducing emissions: an urgency juxtaposed against the record high attendance of representatives from oil and gas companies and the anguished debate about the role of gas as a transitional fuel.

And COP27 was set against a difficult geo-political and geo-economic backdrop.  Russia's invasion of Ukraine has caused upheaval in international energy markets and pushed inflation up to record levels.Central banks have responded by raising interest rates, pushing countries already struggling with the hangover from the pandemic to the brink of recession.  Europe's search for non-Russian gas has put pressure on developing countries, which have turned increasingly to coal as a cheaper alternative source of energy (and an increase in interest in exploiting Africa's untapped gas reserves), leading to the highest use of coal since 2013 and resulting in 2022's emissions being the highest on record.  Meanwhile, the UNFCCC has warned that the world is currently on target for temperature rises of 2.8 degrees by the end of the century (with the UN Secretary General warning colourfully that the world is ‘on a road to hell, with our foot hard down on the accelerator').

As if this set of circumstances were not unpropitious enough, this year has seen a sequence of climate-related natural disasters, with appalling flooding, wildfires and droughts afflicting countries across the globe.  The fact that COP27 was also billed as ‘The African COP' gave extra impetus to the calls from developing countries, which are bearing the brunt of the rapidly changing climate, for assistance with more than adaptation.  The issue of ‘loss and damage' (financing to address the actual impact that climate change is now having on developing countries) has been steadily increasing in importance: a shift developed countries have resisted out of concerns about potentially unlimited liability.

Initial negotiations around the content of the agenda (which took over 30 hours to reach an agreement) suggested a fraught and tense COP was likely.  But those negotiations resulted in loss and damage making its way onto a COP agenda for the first time.  Now that it is on the agenda, it is highly unlikely it will be removed at future COPs, meaning the developed world will have to address the issue eventually.  And in a welcome move on Saturday, John Kerry announced that the US was "totally supportive" of moves to address loss and damage and "100% ready" to discuss the issue in detail.

So COP27, which was supposed to have been about improved NDCs (though fewer than 30 countries came forward with revised offers), has been transformed into a COP which is all about the financing – both for adaptation and for loss and damage.  Whilst there is normally intense focus on the negotiations over UNFCC texts, with the focus on financing, such texts as were due to be negotiated were something of a sideshow, with negotiations only beginning late in the week.  This left negotiators working late into the night on Friday in order to try and finalize all decision texts before the closing plenaries of the Subsidiary Bodies on Saturday.

A COP of Few Announcements:

Although this COP has delivered fewer eye-catching initiatives than Glasgow, there are a few worth noting:

• A new US proposal to reduce methane emissions from oil and natural gas operations;
• US support for early warning systems for extreme weather disasters in Africa;
• US-Egyptian agreement to support solar and wind projects and decommission gas power plants;
• A UN plan for the Biodiversity COP15, due to be held in Montreal in December, to be "a Paris moment for biodiversity";
• Support for proposals for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty;
• Israel, Lebanon and Iraq announced plans to work together to reduce emissions;
• Norway postponed development of the world's most northerly oilfield exploitation;
• Israel and Jordan signed an MoU for a water-for-energy deal;
• The UK introduced "climate resilient debt clauses" by its export credit agency;
• France announced its support for the Bridgetown Agenda to reform the World Bank, to focus on providing climate finance;
• The US announced a new global carbon credit trading initiative;
• Barbados called for a global 10% tax on fossil fuel profits to fund loss and damage;
• China announced that Beijing and Washington are having ‘informal talks' and indicated potential support for a loss and damage fund;
• Kiribati, Rwanda, Malawi, Cabo Verde, Suriname, Barbados and Palau called for increased funding for loss and damage;
• The EU called for additional support for climate financing in the Global South;
• A new Report by Lord Stern estimated the cost of mitigation and adaptation in developing countries would be $2 trillion/year by 2030;
• The UK announced a doubling of funding for the Forest and Climate Leaders' Partnership to halt and reverse global forest loss by 2030;
• France doubled its domestic decarbonisation budget to help French heavy industry deacarbonise;
• The UN called for "red lines" to stop support for new fossil fuel exploration and overuse of carbon offsets;
• The UN called for the creation of a new "climate solidarity pact" in which rich countries would help poorer nations financially;
• New Zealand announced a climate fund for land and resources lost by developing countries to the effects of the climate crisis;
• The UN launched a plan for a $3.1 billion global early warning system for extreme weather events.

Comment:

The US position is clearly focused on mitigation on the basis that if not dealt with in a much more robust and accelerated way now and the world loses the opportunity to keep the goal of 1.5 degrees C within reach (it may already be in the rearview mirror), then the costs will continue to rise exponentially for adaptation and will make the feasibility of meeting those adaptation demands even more remote. 

The developing world also recognizes the importance of mitigation.  But their focus is increasingly on managing the impacts of climate change that they are already experiencing.  They argue they need financing now to address those impacts and there is frustration that the developed world is not doing enough to demonstrate recognition of and engagement with the climate justice issue of loss and damage.  Absent that recognition, the spirit of collaboration will be lacking: without that spirit, movement progress on mitigation is going to be slow at best, absent at worst.

John Kerry's Saturday evening comments about loss and damage are welcome as they demonstrate that the US recognizes the importance attached to loss and damage: that may be enough to open the door for progress. 

What that might look like is unclear, but one way forward would be a radical overhaul of the world's public financial institutions.布里奇顿议程引起全球关注,即世界银行需要将其业务焦点转向为发展中世界提供气候融资-以赠款形式而非贷款形式提供-这一变化将显示全球致力于为发展中世界寻找适应/损耗和损耗融资源,这可能解阻同样重要的缓解进展。 如果Gripsm实现这一点,我们毕竟会记住它为大COP.

As the world struggles to adjust to the harsh new reality of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the most recent instalment of the Sixth IPCC Report slipped out almost unnoticed.  And that is worrying, since the assessment in this section of the Report is even starker than previous assessments – noting in particular that in order to avoid global temperatures increasing by greater than 1.5 degrees C above preindustrial levels, the world needs to halve its emissions this decade: a reduction that the world does not currently appear to be remotely on course to do.

However, whilst the IPCC Report and the Russian invasion of Ukraine are not linked, Russian aggression in Ukraine may serve as a catalyst to speed up the European energy transition and accelerate its retreat from dependency on Russian gas and exposure to volatile international oil markets, which could in turn deliver a more rapid reduction in European emissions.  In the process, perhaps setting the world on a path to achieving an outcome that currently seems unattainable.

What is the IPCC Report?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a panel of the world's leading climate scientists.  The Panel publishes regular updates of global knowledge on the climate crisis.更新设计帮助政府决策。更新内容非常全面,每次需要5至7年完成The current Report is the Panel's Sixth Report since its establishment in 1988, and commentators have noted it may be the last to be published while there is still some chance of avoiding the worst impacts from climate change.

This Sixth Report is being released in four parts between August 2021 to October 2022.  The first part examined the physical basis of climate science (how the atmosphere is changing – and will change – and whether human influence is responsible).  The second part, which was released on 28 February, assesses the effects of climate change, such as extreme weather, droughts, floods and temperature rises, and how best to adapt to these changes[i].

What does the Second Part Say?

The conclusions of the most recent instalment of the Sixth Report make for sobering reading:

• The risks associated with lower levels of warming are greater than the previous 2014 IPCC adaptation assessment had concluded;
• The window to adapt to climate change is "brief and rapidly closing";
• The impacts on human systems, natural systems, and ecosystems are more widespread and accelerating;
• Ecosystems are reaching the limits of their ability to adapt to the changing climate, and the effectiveness of adaptation will decrease with increasing warming;
• Some losses are already irreversible;
• Sea-level rise is already inevitable, posing an existential threat for some small islands and increased vulnerability for infrastructure, including ports and energy systems;
• Up to 1bn people could be at risk from coastal flooding by 2060;
• Half the world's population live in areas that are "highly vulnerable" to climate change;
• Even at 1.5 degrees or less, 8% of current farmland will become unproductive.

Given that the world has already warmed by 1.1 degrees since the pre-industrial period and that there is a lag in the world's climate response to emissions, it is likely that the world will warm by 1.5 degrees within 20 years, even if deep greenhouse gas emissions cuts are achieved.COP26多次表示,本十年是决定性的十年:2030年前排放量必须减半,世界才有机会保持在1.5度以下变暖状态。

/p>若不将全球变暖限制在1.5度以下,将触发冰帽和冰川融化的灾难性链反作用增加野火和树死accelerating peatland dry-out and permafrost thaw – all of which would release additional carbon emissions further accelerating global warming.

The Report identifies five areas as priorities for future climate adaptation.  One of those areas is the reform of energy systems, where the Report makes a number of recommendations:

• Energy generation diversification.
• Improved demand-side management through better storage, and energy efficiency.
• Climate responsive energy markets, smart-grids, robust transmission systems, and improved supply-deficits response capacity.

So How is the Russia-Ukraine Crisis Relevant?

A Commission Communication ("Joint European Action on Affordable, Secure and Sustainable Energy") was due for release on 2 March!however, the Commission has announced a delay to the publication in order to revise it in light of the Ukraine crisis.  A leaked draft of the original Communication set out a number of recommendations that were very closely aligned to the IPCC Report recommendations set out above – though the Communication's conclusions were motivated as much by geopolitical and economic, as climate change factors.

It is likely that Putin's aggression in Ukraine will shift the focus of the redrafted Communication to an accelerated switch to renewables, which would also help deliver against the IPCC Report's demands.  In his twitter feed, Commission Vice President Timmermans noted on 28 February: "It's time we tackle our own vulnerabilities.以闪电速度跳入可再生能源我们自己清洁廉价无穷能量越快移动,越快减少对他人依赖度,我们站在一起越强。

Whilst远非唯一文件显示欧盟通向2050NetZero目标,尽管即将修改,看通信初始草稿仍然有启发作用,它清楚地表明欧盟从依赖俄罗斯燃气向可再生能源过渡的方向。

Even before the Ukraine crisis, the draft Communication was crystal clear on the dangers of European "dependence on a single supplier of fossil gas" demanding "diversification of gas supply and using the full potential of green and low carbon energy sources" including increasing the use of LNG to "reduce our dependence on imported Russian gas and strengthen security of supply."

The draft Communication argued that "[s]ustained high energy prices are impacting the entire economy….廉价燃气价格.使可再生清洁能源投资更有利可图,这意味着“快速清洁能源过渡需求从来就没有更强和清晰”,提高燃气价格缩短了“从易变化石燃料向更廉价可再生能源技术过渡的回溯时间.减少对进口依赖并推倒物价”。

通信草案建议多项需求方响应,包括提高能效清除监管屏障加速天然气存储投资The motivation may be different – "to make Europe less vulnerable to fluctuations on the fossil fuel markets" – but the sense of urgency is the same "as soon as possible."

Once again, mirroring the IPCC's conclusions, the draft Communication proposed an "ambitious combination of funding and regulatory measures [to] accelerate the green transition."  Although it does not feature in the original Communication, it would not be a surprise to see the amended version place an expanded role for nuclear power as a green alternative back on the agenda again – not least given the recent announcement by the German Government that they would consider postponing the decommissioning of German nuclear reactors as part of the national response to the Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Conclusion

Although perhaps reached for different reasons, the conclusions of the IPCC Report and the Commission are identical: an accelerated shift away from dependence on hydrocarbons for energy and an increased focus on the rapid deployment of renewable energy is essential.  For the EU, the shift is necessary not only for climate change reasons, but also for its long-term political, economic and social well-being.

The EU was already heading down the renewables path: the Russian invasion of Ukraine will accelerate that process in the medium- to long-term and will force the EU to seek other sources of natural gas in the short-term.  The process of seeking new sources of gas will have an impact on global gas prices, which will in turn further accelerate the global shift to an increasing reliance on renewable energy.

No one should be under any illusion that the energy transition will be rapid, pain-free, or easy, but the EU's experience with dependence on Russian gas demonstrates clearly one of the real geopolitical vulnerabilities of continuing to rely on the existing model.

Covington's mixed teams of regulatory and public policy experts are uniquely placed to advise clients on how to navigate the turbulent geopolitics of international relations and their impact on the energy transition.

We would be happy to discuss with you how these complicated inter-relationships may affect your company and your business.

[i] The report of the third working group, which will examine how to cut emissions, will be released at the end of the second quarter.第四即最后一次工作组报告综合其他三个工作组报告的结论,将于10月在COP27前发布-定于2022年11月举行。