It is not fast enough that countries are ramping up renewable energy plans
The COP29 Conference Summary: Addressing the ‘Colonial Nature of the COP’, and Indigenous Nationhood Issues
He said it was important to unchain ourselves from the colonial nature of the COP. “The COP is predicated on the erasure of Indigenous nationhood. It’s built around the upholding of state nationhood, and as a result, we won’t see significant change until the nationhood of Indigenous peoples is acknowledged and incorporated.”
Graeme Reed, Indigenous North American representative for the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform at COP29, says his group will focus on ensuring that there’s no additional harm to Indigenous peoples and on building global Indigenous solidarity.
Eriel Deranger is a member of the Athabasca chipewyan First Nation and is the executive director of Indigenous Climate Action.
The people who are at these meetings are Indigenous. They can give advice to states that are willing to listen to Indigenous peoples’ desires and needs when it comes to negotiated text and agreements.
Revisiting IRENA: Delivering Renewable Energy Capacity for the Next-Generation of the Solar Era and the Global Warming Climate
The gains have put solar on schedule to reach the 2030 goal of tripling capacity. When the weather is not great, wind power and batteries are needed to store renewable energy. The International Energy Agency said that power grids around the world will need to increase energy storage by 15 times by the year 2030.
Last year, more than 130 countries pledged to triple the global renewables capacity. The EU makes up 95 percent of global electricity demand. It found that only eight countries — all within the European Union — had actually updated their national renewable energy targets over the past year (before late October). Their updated national targets would only increase global renewables capacity by a meager four gigawatts, leaving plenty of room for improvement. Countries’ existing plans in 2023 were already enough to double global renewable energy capacity. It would take an additional 3,758GW to achieve the goal of tripling capacity.
“It is still possible to achieve this goal, but each year the target falls further out of reach,” Francesco La Camera, IRENA’s director-general says. At COP28, we made a commitment. Now it is time for us to deliver.”
The Trump-Breakdown: How the US is refusing to reopen the window for tackling climate change in the 21st century
The US has cast a shadow over the negotiations for a global deal to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Donald Trump wants to take the US out of the Paris agreement and spread misinformation about renewable energy.
In 2009, developed countries set a goal of giving developing nations $100 billion a year by 2020 to deal with climate change. In 2015, countries extended the pledge to 2025. They said that they would set a new goal that reflected the priorities of developing countries before the old one expired. That’s the new target to be negotiated at COP29.
Climate scientists say the clock is running for averting the worst threats from global warming, but nowhere near enough is being spent.
The director of energy and development at The Breakthrough Institute thinks success is when the money is delivered. The increase of resources to poor countries will allow them to tackle climate change. Instead, what we are seeing are these pronouncements.”
The annual meeting is a chance for world leaders, as well as scientists, activists and corporate executives, to hash out plans to rein in global warming, and to prepare communities for threats they already face from rising temperatures. The United States is the single biggest contributor of greenhouse gas pollution in the world and Donald Trump’s return to the presidency raises questions about the country’s work on global climate initiatives.
The Challenge of 2030: Lesser, Meyer, and the U.S. Climate Change Outlook for the 21st Century and the Baku Summit
Rich Lesser says he remains optimistic on the technology side. “The challenge is that the timeline to do this is not set by us.”
In Copenhagen in 2009, industrialized countries agreed to provide $100 billion of climate finance each year to developing countries, to help them with their climate actions (though this target was achieved for the first time only in 2022). In Paris in 2015, the countries agreed that a bigger target should be set for helping developing countries during the second half of the century. And so the NCQG was born.
It requires virtually every country to pledge how much planet-warming pollution they’ll cut and to update those plans every few years. The goal is to limit global warming to 2 degrees and no more than 1.5 degrees, as well as reduce the risks of floods and tornadoes, by using less water in the oceans.
The senior associate at climate change think tank E3G says that President-elect Trump will pull out of the Paris agreement on his first day in office.
If the U.S. withdraws, the process takes a year. But the threat is already reshaping the diplomatic landscape. At the Baku summit, countries won’t rely on U.S. leadership as they would have if Vice President Kamala Harris had won the election, Meyer says.
Meyer believes that people will look to other countries to pick up the slack with Trump’s victory. “Particularly the European Union and China.”
What to Look Out For at the Sherpas of Climate Change Conferences in the Next-to-Leading Agenda for the Energy and Climate Change Movement
Industrialized countries like the United States built their wealth producing and using fossil fuels — and that’s driven most of the planetary warming so far. Developing nations, on the other hand, have contributed far less pollution. They are suffering disproportionate harm because of their small economies.
Developing nations are in a bind. They need help, but whatever money is pledged will almost certainly be a fraction of what is needed. Wealthy neighbors that have been unreliable will be relied on by them.
At these conferences, held every 12 months, everyone has a microphone—small islands with 10,000 inhabitants sit next to the giant countries of the world as they try to make decisions on how to curb climate change and its impacts.
Tomorrow will be the day when heads of state and their environment ministers will speak at the meeting. The sherpas, also known as negotiators, are the people who prepare the text of the conference’s decisions.
To avoid stalemate, these final decisions are approved by consensus rather than voted on; approval is obtained in the absence of overt objections, though the decisions’ text may be repeatedly amended in order to reach an agreement. Here is what to look out for.
“Renewables markets have moved, but governments’ ambitions have not,” Katye Altieri, electricity transition analyst at energy think tank Ember, said in a press release published alongside the new report.
The good news is that industry forecasts look brighter than what’s reflected in national policies, and renewables can grow, even with lawmakers dragging their feet on climate action. Solar and wind are already more affordable power sources than fossil fuels in most of the world, with solar deployment on track to see a 29 percent increase in installations this year compared to last, according to Ember’s estimates. There was an 87 percent surge in solar installations in 2023.
Climate Change, Energy Policy, and the Trump Inflation Reduction Act: What Will They Mean if They Don’t Act at Home?
Trump has also said he would rescind unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes $369 billion in federal funding on climate and clean energy and has triggered more than $200 billion in clean energy investment in the US.
A Trump-inspired “retreat” on renewable energy could be a boon to competitors including China that already dominate clean energy markets. Repealing the Inflation Reduction Act would be a blow to the US’s manufacturing and trade and it would likely leave $80 billion in investment opportunities for other countries.
After all, an underlying question gnaws at every round of climate negotiations: how big of an impact can these splashy summits have unless delegates can turn promises into action at home?
