The 2021 climate agenda

Anna Åberg

Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Chatham House members’ event. I hope you all managed to have a relatively nice and relaxing break over Christmas and New Year’s Eve, despite the difficult times we’re living through. My name’s Anna Åberg. I’m a Research Analyst in the Energy, Environment and Resources Programme here at Chatham House, and I’m really delighted to be chairing today’s event. At Chatham House, my work mainly focusses on international climate politics, the UN climate negotiations, and climate risks, and I also co-host a Chatham House podcast called The Climate Briefing.

Today’s event focuses on the climate agenda in 2021, and over the course of the next hour, we’re going to be discussing questions like, what are the main issues that would dominate international and national climate agendas in 2021? What can we expect from major emitters like China and the US, when it comes to addressing climate change? And what are the key priority areas of action, when it comes to strengthening adaptation or resilience, especially in the most poor and climate-vulnerable nations.

And I’m absolutely delighted to be joined today by three Chatham House colleagues, who are true experts on this topic. First up, we have Antony Frogatt, who is the Senior Research Fellow and Deputy Director of the Energy, Environment and Resources Programme here at Chatham House, and he has worked for Chatham House since 2007, and his most recent work focuses on the climate and energy policy implications of Brexit, and he has also done a lot of work on climate risks and international climate politics.

Our second speaker is Dr Sam Geall, who is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House and also Executive Director of China Dialogue. Sam’s research focusses on climate policy and politics, the energy transition, environmental governance in China, and the impact of Chinese investment through the Belt and Road Initiative.

Last but not least, we have Maliha Muzammil, who is a Research Fellow at Chatham House, where she works on key issues related to climate change, food systems and food security, and she also has extensive experience in the area of adaptation and resilience.

Before we kick off properly, I’d just like to run through the logistics quickly. The event is held on the record, it’s not held under Chatham House Rule, and the recording from the event will be released on the Chatham House website in a few days. You’re very welcome to tweet about this, and if you do want to tweet, we encourage you to consider using the #CHEvents, and we really want you to ask lots of questions. So, we will start with me asking the speakers a few questions, and towards the latter half, you as attendees will be welcome to post questions, and you do this through the ‘Q&A’ box, not the ‘Chat’ function, and unless you write otherwise, I will encourage you to ask the question verbally.

Great, I think we’re all set to go, and I’m really delighted to see that we have almost 100 people participating in today’s event. So, Antony, I thought I’d turn to you first, and ask you to really set the stage for today’s discussion. Why is 2021 so important when it comes to addressing climate change?

Antony Froggatt

Anna, thanks very much, and thanks, yes, to the nearly 100 people that are joining us over lunchtime. It’s great that this is a members’ event so near to the start of the year because climate change is really important this year on the domestic level, but also on the international level. I think first and foremost, we have the UK co-hosting a international organisation – international convention, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which will take place in November this year. This is the 26th meeting of the parties, so it’s abbreviated to COP26, and usually these have taken place on an annual basis. The one last year was postponed because of the COVID pandemic. But this one is particularly important. So, approximately on a five-year cycle, you have a more important COP event than others, and the previous ones were Paris and Copenhagen. So, it really is – needs to be thought about on that level, in terms of the international climate regime.

Why is it important? It’s important because countries are being asked to increase their ambitions of their national mitigation plans. So, for the Paris meeting in 2015, each country put forward its NDC, its nationally determined contribution, about how it proposed that it would reduce its emissions. And now the countries have been saying, “Actually, what we know more about climate change, what we know, in terms of if you added up all the emissions that were – the plans that were proposed at Paris, they were insufficient.” So countries are now putting forward more ambitious plans. And in December of last year, the UK Government did just this. So, it was the first of its NDCs as a outside of the EU bubble, and it proposed a 68% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels and this – it was an ambitious plan. We have to see how far it – or the policies and measures that it rolls out in order to achieve this, but it very clearly set a standard for others to follow.

Other countries have been putting forward revised NDCs. The EU, also in December, put forward a revised plan, whereby it would reduce emissions by 55% by 1990 levels, and that was an increase from its previous proposal of 40%. And then also, towards the end of last year, China, at the United Nations, put forward a longer-term carbon neutrality target, saying that – and yeah, for the first time it was saying that we will go carbon neutral by 2060. So, falling slightly short of the objectives of carbon neutrality by 2050, or net zero by 2050, but still a step forward, in terms of China putting this on the international agenda. We’ve had similar, then, proposals from South Korea and Japan.

So, in some ways, what we can see is there has been, over the last few months, a real step forward for the international climate agenda, and this sort of raises optimism about what could be achieved in the coming 12 months. I think the other thing that’s worth mentioning, obviously, is the United States. What we saw was President Biden going to be inaugurated within the next couple of weeks. Climate change was a very clear differentiating factor between him and current President Trump, and that they have – the administration have – or the Biden team have put forward very clear proposals for how they will reinvigorate the US, both domestically in terms of climate change, but also internationally, for example, to re-join the Paris Agreement.

So, very exciting times in that regard, and of course, also, yesterday, we saw the elections in Georgia, meaning that the Democrats now have control – or effective control of the Senate, which is important, in terms of it’s the Senate that signs international agreements. So, we could see the ratification of the Paris Agreement, hopefully in a relatively short period of time.

So yeah, geopolitics is changing. The other clear thing that’s worth mentioning is COVID, and this has clearly affected emissions to some degree, a reduction in emissions, but more importantly there is the large stimulus packages that have been rolled out around the world. To give an example in the EU, the stimulus package is rolled into the sort of framework expenditure that was agreed in December, and there we have 1.8 trillion euros that have been pledged to sort of build back better as it were, in terms of the post-COVID recovery, and the EU has pledged that 30% of all of that expenditure will be going to climate projects, and the rest of it will be do no harm, in terms of climate. So, we have significant shifts, in terms of government expenditure. It’s not always the case. Many of the stimulus packages will support fossil fuels, they will support industries that are not acting directly to meet the Paris Agreements, but in a number of cases, we are. So this is something to watch in the coming 12 months.

So I think we have the really important COP developments. I said at the beginning that Italy was – that the UK was co-hosting the COP, along with Italy, and so the EU is really much bound into the developments over the Glasgow Summit. But it’s also worth noting that the Italians hold the Presidency of the G20 this year, and the UK holds the Presidency of the G7. So we see – we will see, no doubt, these events also feeding into the climate agenda. So, yeah, politically, lots to work towards.

The other thing this year is that the International Panel on Climate Change does annual reports, or not annual, cyclical reports on the state of climate adaptation and mitigation. So, the next annual assessment, and the annual report, so it’s AR6, is due to come out in May 2022, but key chapters of this on mitigation and adaptation will come out next year. So, we will see stronger evidence of the need to take further action on climate change, from a scientific perspective next year, or this year.

And then finally, it’s just worth mentioning that there are key other developments. So, many events were postponed last year, and so there will be other key international fora such as on biodiversity, such as on deserts, such as on food, all of which will mean that there will be – all of which will feed into some of the general discussions on climate change.

Anna Åberg

Thank you so much, Antony. I’d actually like to swim in briefly on the United States. Joe Biden is to be sworn in as President of the United States later this month, and it’s now also clear, as Antony pointed out, that the Democratic Party will have a majority in Congress, which will have a significant impact on Biden’s room to manoeuvre, of course. So Sam, I’d like to ask you to dig in a bit deeper. I mean, what will Joe Biden’s key priorities be when it comes to addressing climate change in 2021? What does the outcome of the runoff elections in Georgia mean for this? And what type of role can the US play in encouraging other countries worldwide to step up climate action, climate ambition, ahead of COP26? Thank you.

Dr Sam Geall

Thank you, Anna. Should probably start by talking about the sort of domestic dimension of that, considering that any, kind of, international climate policy that the US tries to take will only be as credible as the US can sort of demonstrate domestically. And as you mentioned, the Democrats taking control of the Senate does give the United States more room to manoeuvre. Probably the United States, the best chance for climate action, since we – that we’ve seen since the early years of the Obama administration. It means that Biden doesn’t just need to rely on executive powers.

The greatest possibility is probably in advancing climate policies through broader legislation that has general appeal, such as around infrastructure, such as through a COVID stimulus package, which would likely have quite a major emphasis on infrastructure, on clean energy and so on, and is quite likely to be passed in the first six months of Biden’s term, and has a much better chance under a Democratic Congress. The reason being is partly that the – a key committee for the progression of climate legislation is controlled by Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Politician who famously shot a bullet into a – the cap-and-trade bill, in a political advertisement years ago, who chairs a, you know, a key committee, and is of course Senator for West Virginia, a kind of coal-producing state.

But nevertheless, Biden also can use executive powers to not only re-join the Paris Agreement, something which he, you know, frequently repeated on the campaign trail, but also, require clean energy adoption, restrict the extraction on public lands, to push forward infrastructure buildout and consumption of fossil fuels, and of course, he can reinstate and strengthen Obama-era environmental regulations that Trump rolled back. Those total about 104, according to the New York Times. So, there could be quite a comprehensive attempt to kind of rollback some of the Trump effect, and hawk new leases for fossil fuel extraction, for example.

Finally, it’s clear that Biden wants climate to be a key part of foreign policy. He’s, you know, repeated that frequently, not only talking about re-joining the Paris Agreement, but also the idea of holding a climate leaders’ summit within the first 100 days of his first term. But there are challenges here as well, not only in terms of where you would fit that within the kind of complex sequencing of the year to COP26, that Antony mentioned, including in the light of COVID, but also in the sort of context where the geopolitics has changed very, you know, significantly.

On China, for example, Biden has stopped short of re-committing to a sort of Obama-era climate change relationship with China. The Paris Agreement was made possible, in part, due to a very close relationship between the US and China, specifically on climate, that was sort of carved out, aside from sort of rising tensions in other areas. In this context, I don’t think we will see the return to that type of relationship. The US/China relationship has changed across a number of other dimensions, and Biden made very clear on the campaign trail that they want to really put an increased scrutiny on China’s emissions and specifically its emissions through the Belt and Road Initiative.

So there are very serious questions or open questions, I think, that we need to ask about the sort of ways in which climate co-operation can return internationally and how far the kind of geopolitics of these – of the sort of relationships that will underpin it, permit or prevent a return to international co-operation, and kind of what model of global climate governance we’ll be looking at.

Anna Åberg

Thanks. You mentioned the US/China relationship, and Antony also mentioned China’s climate neutrality target in his remarks. China is, of course, the largest emitter and an immensely important country when it comes to combatting climate change. How ambitious is this climate neutrality target, and the target that was announced in December, which was that China will lower its emissions per unit of GDP by more than 65% relative to 2005? Yeah, it would be great to get your thoughts on how ambitious they are and what will it actually take to achieve them concretely.

Dr Sam Geall

Thanks, yeah, I think Xi Jinping’s commitment in September at the UN General Assembly was, you know, particularly significant. I think it was – I think it’s a really big commitment. It’s a real commitment, and it presents a very significant diplomatic signal and a market signal. When I say it’s big, I mean, you know, when you looked at that 2060 target, it very significantly shifts long-term projections of global temperature rise. Climate Action Tracker takes account of these things and sort of measures the impact of the various kind of national mitigation commitments of countries and how they impact things, and they found that this commitment alone lowered global warming projections by .2 to .3 degrees Celsius, and the largest single change they’ve ever recorded. And it’s big because of the shift in the economy that it represents. Essentially, the total electrification of the energy system through to the mid-century, and most of that electricity of course coming from non-fossil sources, essentially renewables and potentially nuclear, and the phasing out of coal power by mid-century as a result.

But it’s also real, I think, and what I mean by that is that, you know, we can see how it builds on previous five-year plans and the sort of rollout of strategic industrial policy across various sectors through things like strategic emerging industries, around electric mobility, renewables, and food and agriculture systems sort of change, and various other sectors, pretty significantly. And it was made unilaterally, which I think indicates its importance for Xi Jinping as an element of sort of geopolitics. It wasn’t announced jointly with the European Union, for example, which is something that China could well have done, if they’d wanted to sort of co-ordinate. It was something that Xi Jinping announced from the stage of the UN General Assembly, kind of going head-to-head with Trump, who made a speech that very – notably singled out China on its – for its carbon emissions record and took aim at the Paris Agreement.

And finally, I think there’s great opportunities because, you know, as Antony has mentioned as well, green recovery is a critical moment for renewing our efforts to prioritise a low carbon transition, and achieving a 2060 target will entail huge investment and enormous sort of transformation in the energy system, in the electricity sector, but also in transportation, in food, in urbanisation patterns, in all kinds of areas. It means China will need to see most of its primary – or almost all of its primary energy coming from electricity by mid-century, and most of that coming from fossil fuel – from non-fossil fuel, as I mentioned. And it will – that will all need to be co-ordinated through the 14th Five Year Plan that will be announced in March.

The – China’s National People’s Congress, its annual government meeting, will be taking place from the 3rd to the 15th of March this year, and at that point we’ll see the release of the 14th Five Year Plan. That will flesh out the mitigation commitment that Anna, you also mentioned, in December, and sort of put numbers on exactly what we’ll see, in terms of, for example, a higher commitment to renewables buildout as a percentage of the energy mix for example, as a proportion of the energy mix, and potential carbon intensity targets, sort of, carbon intensity reduction targets, even a total cap on carbon emissions for the five years to 2025, for example.

So, yeah, there’s a lot that will need to be fleshed out, but I do think that it’s a realistic target. The only other thing to mention is that the peak year target of 2030 is highly realistic, probably unambitious, to be honest, but it’s very likely that this fits with a pattern that’s frequently seen in China’s approach to international agreements, which is to under promise and over deliver. China’s very likely to come in on its peak year target, probably by 2025, and could probably have committed to that in its NDC. I’ll leave it there and look forward to further questions on this.

Anna Åberg

Excellent, Sam, thank you so much. Maliha, before I turn to you, I would just like to encourage those attending to submit your questions via the Q&A function. We will probably be addressing them a bit later on in the event, but you’re very welcome to post them now, thank you.

So, Maliha, enhancing adaptation and resilience has long been a key priority for developing countries, and the issue has really risen in salience on the international agenda more generally in recent years. For instance, the UK Government has launched a COP26 campaign to enhance adaptation and resilience, and the Netherlands is hosting this global climate adaptation summit later this month. I was wondering if you could begin by telling us how adaptation and resilience would figure at COP26, and then outline what types of actions that you think different stakeholders, you know, governments, climate funds, development banks, businesses, etc., need to take, like more generally, to really make a difference when it comes to enhancing adaptation and resilience worldwide.

Dr Maliha Muzammil

Thank you, Anna. I think, over the past year and the last few years, we’ve really realised that climate change adaptation and resilience requires urgent action, both at home and overseas. With the COVID-19 pandemic, especially, over the past year, we’ve come to realise how important it is for us to be more resilient and to better adapt. So while the race to net zero is essential to limit the rise in temperature, the social and economic opportunities of climate change adaptation need much better recognition, and like you mentioned, while least developed countries and developing countries have had to adapt to a wider range of impacts from climate change, I feel that developed countries like the UK are also being affected by climate impacts, which need to be better communicated, and adaptation really ramped up.

We’re not really adapting fast enough, and between 1980 and the last ten years, there has been a five time increase in estimated economic loss due to climate change events. In the UK, the climate change risk assessment shows dramatic changes in our weather pattern and climate, and these, like many developing countries, include flooding, sea level rise, coastal emissions, hotter summers, water shortages, new pests, and infections. So, even with a Paris-compatible emissions reduction path, we need – we still need to take adaptation more seriously, and I think with the current COP Presidency, UK being – hosting the COP with the Italians, also with a lot of international pressure, there has been a lot of progress.

So, like Antony already mentioned, we are expecting the 2021 Food System Summit, which will launch bolder action to transform the way the world produces and consumes food and aligned with the 17 SDGs. You mentioned the adaptation action agenda that Netherlands produced last December, which they’re planning to launch at the Climate Adaptation Summit this month, and this paper discusses the climate shocks that are happening, intersecting with the impacts of COVID-19, and again, aims to ramp up ambition for climate change adaptation.

So, I would say pressure and importance of adaptation really has increased. Again, the UK Climate Change Committee for Adaptation has explicitly mentioned how important it is to ramp up action for adaptation in the UK. So, along with, again, increasing ambition for mitigation, it is essential that we know how we’re going to progress with adaptation, both in developed and developing countries. How do we better assess risks in the UK and overseas? And what – how do we have better frame – how do we create better frameworks for measuring progress and improving adaptation and resilience? It’s difficult to understand progress that we’ve made towards adaptation. It is also difficult to see funding that has gone – to count funding that has gone into adaptation, because while the benefits are long-term, the costs are very short-term, in terms of adaptation.

So, at COP26, we really need to focus on the challenges for action to adaptation, like the developing countries have been mentioning for a while, adaptation is severely under resourced compared to mitigation. Even in least developed countries, funding that goes via various climate finance channels, it has been seen that 80% of the funds go towards mitigation, and only 20% goes towards adaptation. Many of these developing countries have their own climate change funds, but even from that, there is no equal allocation of funding for adaption and mitigation, and many of these developing countries are asking for a 50/50 allocation of climate change funds, both national and overseas.

I think with the ramping up of ambition, it is also essential to increase communication regarding adaptation. So, while I would say adaptation is much better understood in developing countries, or at least developed countries, who’ve had to, you know, adapt for longer, so how do we kind of ramp that up? Again, adaptation is sometimes still framed as a failure to mitigate, whereas it is a risk mitigation strategy. Adaptation can support disaster risk reduction and a range of socioeconomic goals, especially with the Sustainable Development Goals that we want to – that we’re aiming to achieve by 2030. It’s now, more than ever, it’s really important that adaptation is aligned with our socioeconomic goals, with our development goals, and with our mitigation goals.

So, to talk briefly about the second question, what can governments, civil society, private sector and the others do? I’ll talk about three points. I think it’s really important to – that we take a more systems resilience perspective rather than a siloed approach, and this is seen a lot more in developing countries, where adaptation is kept separately for sectors such as water or food, and where sometimes adaptation wants – we want to adapt through specific adaptation plans. But that hasn’t been very successful ‘til date.

So, the second point would be trans-boundary climate risks. Adaptation is taken as a – usually perceived as a national problem, with national efforts that need to be put in, which are locally led. But we still frame adaptation within national boundaries, and we need to consider the greater overall shared impacts on trans-boundary climate risks and management, and I hope this is something that can be pushed forward at this COP as well.

Thirdly, again, similar to my first point, I think we need to ensure that climate policies are better aligned with the political economy and decision-making in each country. So, resilience planning is economy-wide and systemic rather than sectoral or contained in the climate change adaptation plan, which are expected to be funded with climate finance only. National climate change plans provide a framework and mandate on ramping action and adaptation, but implementation is hardly followed through. So, this needs – these national climate change adaptation plans need to be aligned with central development plans, and adaptation mitigation, sustainable development goals, they all need to be simultaneously implemented through the main economic development plan of these developing countries.

Anna Åberg

Thank you so much. You mentioned the importance of finance for adaptation and resilience, and of course, a lot of developing countries have been very hard hit by – well, COVID-19, but also the social distancing measures and the lockdowns that have been implemented in response to the pandemic. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on how kind of the economic implications of COVID-19 has impacted the ability of the poorest and most climate vulnerable nations to both adapt and, well, mitigate as well, and you know, have a green recovery after the pandemic, and if you – and elaborate a bit on if you are optimistic that there will be a kind of a step change when it comes to adaptation financing in the next year. I mean, of course, many traditional donor countries have quite strained fiscal positions now, but the UK is hosting this conference, for instance, in March, about climate and development challenges, where I expect that adaptation financing will be a big part of that. So it would be great to get your thoughts, thanks.

Dr Maliha Muzammil

So, with regard to the COVID-19 economic stimulus packages, as with the UK and a range of other developed countries, there have been lots of discourses around ensuring that these are green recovery packages, that they ensure that resilience is built, that it takes into account the climate change adaptation challenges, but unfortunately, from what we see in many of these developing countries, that they haven’t really been able to align or integrate climate resilience into many of these packages and how they would work.

So, that’s one thing, and you also mentioned about climate financing. So, developing countries have long been asking that climate finance is funded through the specific climate finance channels like the Green Climate Fund or not – to ensure that there’s no double counting, along with the overseas development assistance that many of these developing countries get from the developed countries. The UK as talked about – well, almost doubling aid to developing countries, but of course that is all to be seen. But there – to date there, I guess things look hopeful, because many of these developing countries also have created climate – their own national climate funds from their own budgets, so many of these least developed countries also own, you know, a climate finance fund, as long – as well as trying to access finance through the Green Climate Fund and the others.

I think one thing that is essential to mention is that accessing climate finance needs to be made easier for developing countries. I’ve seen first-hand, while I was working with colleagues in Bangladesh, that the struggle to access funds from Green Climate Funds, because of course the structure or the way of working differs a lot when compared to developed countries. In terms of ramping up capacity, I think there needs to be more support to ensure that the governments from developing countries are able to access these complicated ways of, you know, getting fund – getting – or ensuring that they get these funds.

Anna Åberg

Great, thank you so much. So, Antony, you mentioned at the start that this year we’ll have a strong focus on COP26, of course, but that there are also a lot of other important environment and climate conferences. We do, for instance, have the UN Biodiversity Summit, which China is hosting. Sam, I was wondering if you could first begin, perhaps, by telling us about, generally, about some of these other conferences. What do they aim to do and so on? And then, also, discuss – because there seems to be quite a lot of discussion taking place within some governments and within kind of civil society and academia about how linkages between these different events and processes can be strengthened. But sometimes you wonder, okay, but what does that look like in practice? So, yes, we’d love to hear your thoughts on one, kind of the aims of some of these other key events during the year, and then your thoughts on how linkages between the different events and processes can be strengthened. Thank you.

Dr Sam Geall

Thanks, Anna. I think both of my fellow panellists have kind of already started to sketch that out really quite well, and it’s a question just sort of bringing together, you know, what Antony has already said and thinking about the sequence of environmental conventions and events and also, some of the big kind of global economic fora and so on that will be meeting over the next year to COP26 in Glasgow, and what Maliha was saying about the need for kind of systemic approaches to resilience across the Sustainable Development Goals, and sort of thinking through what it looks like to create kind of positive co-ordination and international co-operation around a healthy, low-carbon society, one that can link nature, climate and health and find sort of positive interplays between those themes.

I mean, the main things to say, I think, are that, you know, firstly, if it’s done right, the COVID-19 recovery could provide a really critical opportunity for government and international institutions to renew that kind of co-ordination across these different themes. 2020 was initially going to be the super year for the environment, and some of the key events there were specifically the renewing of the Global Biodiversity Framework for the next ten years at Kunming in China, which was initially going to take place in October 2020, and COP26 in Glasgow, which of course was supposed to take place at the end of last year. And you know, we of course saw those sort of derailed, and the opportunity really is for, in 2021, to see a new focus on, as Antony mentioned that, you know, all three of the Rio Environmental Conventions are meeting this year: on biodiversity in Kunming, which is now scheduled, somewhat tentatively I think still, for May, in Kunming in China, on desertification, which will be held in September, and of course, on climate in Glasgow in November. And then, of course, we’ve got the fact that the COP26 co-hosts, as Antony mentioned, are hosting the G7 and the G20 respectively, in the UK and in Italy. And of course, those countries can then play a key role in setting the meeting agendas there, and they can serve as opportunities for leaders and for Finance Ministers, in the case of the G20, to emphasize approaches to the recovery that that can speak to both climate and biodiversity in the post-virus recovery.

And then, of course, it’s about finding those themes that can work to bring out those linkages. One key theme that there’s been a lot of emphasis on has been nature-based solutions. The idea that the conservation of the most sort of carbon-dense and biodiversity-rich natural ecosystems can be a key priority for raising climate change ambition in the UNFCCC Framework, establishing a post-2020 Biodiversity Framework under the Convention on Biological Diversity, and reducing the risk of future zoonotic pandemics. So, you know, that sort of approach is really about how you can, as policymakers, stand above negotiating silos between, for example, the UNFCCC and the CBD, and send a strong political message for co-operation and sort of scaling approaches to a green economic recovery from COVID-19.

And you could see that also run, for example, through the World Bank and IMF’s Spring meetings this year, and you can see it in some of the other conventions and meetings that hopefully will be happening, such as the UN Ocean Conference, which should help not only to build linkages between climate and marine biodiversity, but also help to embed some of the outcomes of the biodiversity conference in China. Some of the key issues there around marine conservation sort of straddle both the biodiversity framework and some of the UN climate – UN ocean meetings. Also, I think mentioned earlier, the UN plans to hold a special summit on food systems, with a focus on delivering healthy food sustainably. Again, you’ve got the, you know, the opportunity to make these sort of linkages around overarching policies, a so-called arc of engagement between these different sorts of themes.

And finally, you need to sort of think about some of the underpinning longer-term sort of frameworks that exist in major economies and economic blocs, whether it’s China’s 14th Five Year Plan being rolled out in March, the European Green Deal, which should form a key pillar of Europe’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, or the net zero plans that countries will be announcing as part of their NDCs or nationally determined contributions, in the run-up to Paris – sorry, to Glasgow. Five years since Paris, at this critical moment, where we need to be showing that ratcheting up of ambition to meet the 1.5 degree goal. So I’ll leave it there and hope we’ll sort of come back to many of those themes in the questions. Thanks.

Anna Åberg

Thanks, Sam, that was excellent. Okay, I’d now like to open up the floor for you attendees to ask questions, and we’ve received lots of good ones via the ‘Q&A’ function, and we’ll try to get through as many as possible. Perhaps I can start by turning to Mr Joe Kong, and I know you’ve asked several questions, but perhaps you can choose the one you find most pertinent to begin with. Thank you.

Joe Kong

Hello, can you hear me, Anna? Hello.

Anna Åberg

Great, very pleased, go ahead.

Joe Kong

Yeah, okay, so maybe I could pick my Scottish question to put to Antony, and my understanding is, of course, that the UK plan for achieving ends that is based on the total sum of UK renewable resources. So, to what extent, will the UK plan for carbon neutrality be derailed by hypothetically Scottish independence within the next ten years? And of course, yes, also Northern Ireland as well, but let’s focus on Scotland for the moment. And then, a subsidiary question, how well placed will an independent Scotland be to achieving N30 on its own? And here I understand, correct me if I’m wrong, Antony, I understand that Scotland aims to achieve N30 by 2040. So that’s my question, thank you.

Antony Froggatt

That’s, yeah, yeah, no, it’s a great question, and it’s sort of one of the – yeah, so it’s the fallout from Brexit, both in terms of the politics, is the – Brexit make Scottish independence more likely, but also, in terms of some of their issues around systems. So, obviously what we see or what we’re starting to see, in relation to Brexit and energy and climate, is that there are some very definitive implications. For one example, the UK imports and – or trades electricity with continental Europe and with Ireland, and this is no longer possible in the same regime from the 31st of December to the 1st of January. It doesn’t mean that trading no longer takes place, but it just is less efficient, and that is important as we decarbonise, because you want a system that is flexible and efficient to be able to integrate more renewables. So, there will be some very clear requirements needed, from a system perspective, were Scotland to become independent, to enable the networks to continue to function in the most optimum way. So I think there’s very clear messages from Brexit about Scottish independence and what we would need to think about.

In terms of the resources, I mean, I guess it will depend on the state of the agreements that would be made in the event of Brexit – an independent Scotland. It could be that Scotland remained part of the UK bubble, that there was trading of emissions, either virtual or actually, so that the Scottish resources, from a renewable perspective, could still be used within the sort of the GB or the English market, to enable the UK to maximise those, in terms of meeting its own targets. But as you rightly pointed out, Scotland has lots of renewable resources that will enable it in theory to decarbonise quicker, which would be detrimental to the English decarbonisation plans.

So, yeah, I think lots of uncertainties, it would depend on the type of deal. Oh, and probably, the final thing just to say is, it’s – what we’ve seen with Brexit is it’s a distraction from a climate change perspective. If you look at the number of policies and measures that were delayed over the last four years because there was less political space, there was less civil service space, in order to address these key questions, I think undoubtedly, a discussion around Scottish independence would reduce – and its implications on energy and climate would reduce the ability for Civil Servants and government officials in both countries to tackle the decarbonisation agenda. So, purely from that perspective, I think it would be detrimental.

Anna Åberg

Thanks, Antony, and Mr Kong. Robert Moreland, would you like to ask your question? Thank you.

Robert Moreland

Oh, you can hear me now. Can I ask, what are the difficult countries for COP in Glasgow? Australia, India, some of the Middle East? Can we be derailed a bit by them, if – even if we have America on our side?

Anna Åberg

Maliha, do you want to answer that?

Dr Maliha Muzammil

Yeah, yes, India, Brazil, are key global powers with a lot – and we have a lot to lose if we can’t – cannot bring them into the agreement, even if we have America on our side. So, it will be essential for the COP Presidency and for the UK and Italian Presidency, for the COP26, to ensure that we have all these highly emitting countries ramp up their ambition to curb climate change emissions.

Anna Åberg

Thank you. Antony or Sam, do you have anything to add to that?

Dr Sam Geall

Yeah, can I just jump in? I absolutely agree with that in terms of the high emissions. Obviously the other one is Russia, and I think from a – obviously it is a major exporter of fossil fuels, its economy is heavily dependent on oil, gas and coal, and so, it has an interest in delaying some of the carbon mitigation global plan – global targets. And in some ways, we’ve seen this, I mean, it’s not – there are very clear examples of where entities that are based in Russia have encouraged the de-prioritisation of climate change agendas, and I think there is, yeah, a very – one needs to watch very carefully, in terms of those countries that would seek – that would benefit from delayed action on climate, what they do over the next 12 months.

Antony Froggatt

I’ll throw out one more to watch, which is Mexico, a country that previously had been quite a key part of the kind of progressive coalition of countries pushing for sort of higher ambition on climate, but now under a much more resourced nationalist President has really become one of the sort of blockers, and potentially, a kind of quite a complicated swing, part of the geopolitics of getting a more ambitious agreement.

Anna Åberg

Thanks so much. We have an interesting question from Mike Spellman related to inequality. Mike, would you like to ask your question verbally, please? Thank you.

Mike Spellman

Anna, thanks very much. My key focus and my question is really on inequality. COVID, digital, climate change, all risk increasing inequality. The problem is that all the discussions that we tend to have are top down. We’ve made a lot of progress on things like country targets, decarbonisation, but it seems to me that we’re not spending enough time talking about some of the critical steps that are needed to help the losers. And so, I wonder whether in COP26, we shouldn’t actually balance top down more with bottom-up thinking and have much more focus on practical implementation steps and how, whether at the country level, industry level or personal level, you help the losers, because it seems to me that if we haven’t thought enough about that, it’s going to be one of the big blockers to actually achieving net zero.

Anna Åberg

Thank you so much. Are you directing that question to a specific speaker, or do I have…?

Mike Spellman

Well, let me start with Sam, and then – but I’m sure the others can chip in.

Anna Åberg

Great, go ahead, Sam, thank you.

Dr Sam Geall

But, I mean, yeah, I completely agree, and in thinking about the kinds of agendas that we need to make linkages across, nature, climate and health, I probably should have included inequality and sort of financial, economic inclusion as another pillar of that, given how significant it is for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals as well. In the sort of more top down frameworks, it often falls under the just transition agendas, typically the way that it’s spoken about in the kind of UN climate context, and I think it will increasingly become a very important part of reaching any kind of successful agreement at COP26, and it’s certainly something that the Europeans think about a lot in the kind of EU Green Deal context.

But the other way that I would think about it is, again, to agree with you in the bottom-up context, what is sort of motivating a lot of the civil society mobilisation around climate change, which has driven so much of the kind of global concern and urgency around it in the past couple of years, has been the environmental justice agenda, and you know, in the US context, for example, a lot of the demand for a Green New Deal came from a alliance between labour, a civil rights, racial justice movement, and environmental activists, who certainly see the linkages between inequality and climate change is absolutely central to what they’re demanding. And I absolutely think that needs to have more of a voice, because it is really what’s driving much of the kind of bottom-up mobilisation. I don’t know if others want to jump in, maybe Maliha or Antony?

Dr Maliha Muzammil

Yeah, I just want to add, I think one of the best ways to address inequality is to ensure that the promised climate finance goes through, that UK ramps up the amount it has promised. For many of the least developed countries who have made and submitted their nationally determined contributions, they have now done the bare minimum, but with international support, support from countries – previous emitters, many of these countries have promised that they will ramp up their emissions targets. So, the only way to ensure that we peak faster and the developed – sorry, the developing and least developed countries also peak their emissions at the soonest, is to really support them with finance, so that they can transform their dirty sectors into more cleaner ways of working.

Anna Åberg

Do you have anything to add, Antony, or shall we move onto the next question?

Antony Froggatt

Move on to it, yeah.

Anna Åberg

Dina Mufti has posted a question in the ‘Q&A’ box, which she would like me to read. “To combat climate change, why don’t governments, as a collective create a policy that the oil and gas industry are responsible for the carbonising fossil fuels? What global government incentives are needed to enable this, and the creation of a carbon dioxide disposal industry, to achieve net zero emissions by 2050? So Antony, perhaps you would like to start addressing that question?

Antony Froggatt

Yeah, I mean, I think this is really – it’s a very good question. It comes back to some of the answers that have been given in some of the previous questions, is in terms of winners and losers, and the [audio cuts out – 56:05] sectors that, yeah, the fossil fuel sectors that are particularly – or they’re important for national economies and for regional employment. So, its constituents are often very loath to see the diminishing of these industries. So, I think that they’re powerful players within national and global economies, which is why it’s difficult for governments to come together on this issue.

I think it’s starting to change, and I think it is one of the other encouraging signs that we’ve seen in 2020, was multinational oil companies, and some national oil companies, starting to see, actually, yeah, we are sunset industries. We recognise that as more and more countries put in place net zero targets, as we have more ambitious NDCs, then we will have to make adjustments to our businesses. And I think that, coupled with the rise in other technologies, so obviously the oil industry is front and centre here. As we see electric vehicles and the price of these falling, companies that are making vehicles are jumping from one to the other, and so therefore, oil companies themselves are seeing, actually, well, maybe our business model is – hasn’t got that much longer to live, we need to be making adjustments. So, I think, politically, it’s difficult for countries to do it. It really is a head-on challenge for them, in terms of the fossil fuel companies and so, it’s taken slower than it might.

In terms of the final point, in terms of carbon capture and storage, I think there are, obviously, areas in which it is almost certainly going to be vital, in particular some of the heavy industries. I think some of the other questions about, as I’ve mentioned, in terms of the viability of alternatives, it will be then questionable whether or not you need to do CCS, because you have other alternatives that aren’t using fossil fuels in the first place, that become more economic. So, yeah, we’ll have to see if it works for industry, and then how that might rollout for other sectors.

Anna Åberg

Great, Antony, thank you so much. I think we’ll take two final questions, and then we’ll wrap up. So, I will read Simon Burkett’s question in just a minute. But Fernanda Bernaldo, would you like to ask your question first out loud, please? Thank you.

Fernanda Bernaldo

Awesome, can you hear me okay?

Anna Åberg

Yeah, sure, go ahead.

Fernanda Bernaldo

Great, so I was very curious, because you touched on the role of various industries, like civil society and the private sector, in helping further the climate agenda, so I was very curious as to what you believe Silicon Valley and tech’s potential role could be in the 2021 climate agenda. What can they do specifically? A lot of people have implied that maybe their role is in providing authoritative information, but I’m curious whether you believe there could be a larger role for them to have more impact, and how, specifically?

Anna Åberg

Thank you very much. Maliha or Sam, do you want to take this question?

Dr Sam Geall

I can start. I mean, the first thing that I – well, actually, the two immediate thought that came up, neither of which immediately talk about Silicon Valley’s sort of role in information provision, which I also do think is critical, and one is to really to think about the extent to which a lot of the sort of telecommunications infrastructure, that you’re sort of talking about in this question, now touches much more into the kind of internet of things and the kinds of infrastructures that will be needed in an increasingly digitised, decentralised and decarbonised energy and electricity sector. So, there’s actually a lot happening broadly in sort of technology that intersects with the sorts of, broadly speaking, Silicon Valley kind of developments, that I think will also shape the ways that we, you know, live our lives and consume energy, and indeed, food and transportation and products and production.

So I think there’s a lot that is happening in that sort of sector. Do I specifically think about it as being about Silicon Valley? That’s the other very complex thing, because of course, there is increasing sort of bifurcation between various parts of sort of technological innovation, particularly between China and the United States, there’s a lot happening in both contexts, which I think will be very transformative, but also potentially quite divisive in the way that we develop that kind of ecosystem that will potentially transform the way we consume energy. When it comes to information provision though, absolutely, there needs to be an incre – you know, there’s a crisis of trust, which has been exacerbated particularly by the Trump administration in the kind of degradation of climate science and, you know, Silicon Valley hasn’t covered itself in glory there. But how to remedy it, I think, is also, you know – well, I don’t have enough time or expertise to really address it. I don’t know if anyone else has immediate thoughts on that.

Anna Åberg

Antony or Maliha, do you want to add anything?

Dr Maliha Muzammil

And yeah, I’m – not about Silicon Valley, but I guess I was just going to mention that we need more transparency, in terms of, you know, the technology that we’re using. I guess a lot of people, and including me, I didn’t really know for a long time as to how much carbon emissions I was emitting from sending an email or uploading a picture on Instagram, so how can tech companies be much more transparent about emissions or the kind of impact we’re making through our usage, I think would be an effective way to get them involved as well.

Anna Åberg

Thank you so much. Okay, we’re almost at the end of this event. We’re going a few minutes past the hour, but there have been so many interesting questions. So, I wanted to take this last one, but now it’s disappeared from the ‘Q&A’. Oh, here it is, great. So, Simon Burkett has asked me to ask this question to the speakers. “UK Ministers have said their ambition for COP26 is to get countries to improve their NDCs. Shouldn’t the UK be setting a much higher and objective bar, such as commitments to keep us within 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees?” Antony, do you want to go ahead?

Antony Froggatt

Yes, sorry, I’d started writing, ‘cause I wasn’t sure we were going to get time to respond to it. So, yeah, it’s a really important question. I think I guess my feeling is, the UK Government has set a relatively ambitious target compared to what it had before. The 68% is going to be a stretch. For me, the really important thing is actually putting in place sector proposals for action. And to give an example, which answers one of the other questions in there, is for example, energy efficiency in homes. Unless we really start retrofitting homes, we haven’t got a hope of meeting the 2030 target, because around a third of emissions are coming from homes and buildings. So, we need to be moving ahead very clearly in this area. This is difficult. It’s not a single technology, it’s a suite of technologies, that is labour intensive, which is good for the green recovery, etc., but it requires significant upfront investment. And so, something like that, if the government were putting forward, okay, by 2030, X% of houses and buildings will be net zero, or energy plus buildings that are producing more energy than they consume, and we saw real financing and real measures to train people, etc., etc., then you’d have much more confidence on the existing targets. And I think really that’s what’s needed, is in certain areas, we can see transport, we can see buildings, we can see food and agriculture, we need to have much clearer plans and much more investment, in terms of people and money, to deliver those. And I think that’s what’s really needed, rather than a necessarily, a higher 2030 target.

Anna Åberg

Good, thank you. Sam and Maliha, any final words before we conclude?

Dr Maliha Muzammil

I think Antony has really described it in detail, but again, not only for the UK, but for all other countries, we need specific – a specific set of actions or plans as to how we’re going to reach these NDCs. I think we need – the current policies are inadequate in the fact that they don’t really spell things out. So, we need short-term policies to reach these long-term policies, and they need to be much more clearer for the sectors. Thank you.

Dr Sam Geall

And I’ll just add, to kind of come back to my earlier points, there will need to be an emphasis on those kinds of linkages that you can find between the various environmental processes and treaties, and so on, that will be worked on and negotiated this year. Particularly in the NDC, you could look at the role of nature-based solutions and the ways that the UK and China as – or the UK and Italy and China, as hosts of the UNFCCC and the conventions this year, can co-ordinate around nature-based solutions, in a way that actually increases that work around nature, climate, health, and indeed, inclusion and addressing inequality. Thanks.

Anna Åberg

Excellent. Well, thank you so much. This is the end of the event. A huge thank you to Antony, Sam and Maliha. You’ve all been really great, and a huge thank you to everyone who has attended. Sorry for not being able to go through all your questions, but they were very insightful and good. So, just to wish you a wonderful day and this, the recording for the event will be released on the Chatham House website shortly, so if there is anything you want to revisit, keep an eye out for that. Thank you very much.

Antony Froggatt

Thanks very much, everyone.