GWPF Newsletter: Paris Accord Is A Dead Deal Walking As $100 Billion Climate Fund Disappears

China's New Coal Boom

In this newsletter:

1) Paris Climate Accord Is A Dead Deal Walking As $100 Billion Climate Fund Disappears
The American Interest, 11 April 2017 
 
2) Emerging Nations Urge Trump Administration To Honour Obama’s $100 Billion Climate Funding Pledge
Reuters, 11 April 2017
 
3) No Consensus: G7 Energy Ministers Fail To Agree On Climate Change
Daily Mail, 10 April 2017 
 
4) Trump’s Climate Demands Roil U.S. Allies
Politico, 11 April 2017 
 
5) China’s New Coal Boom: China’s Coal-Conversion Plants Surge Back To Life 
Financial Times, 12 April 2017
 
6) British Anti-Fracking Campaigners Lose High Court Battle
ITV News, 12 April 2017 

Full details:

1) Paris Climate Accord Is A Dead Deal Walking As $100 Billion Climate Fund Disappears
The American Interest, 11 April 2017 

Shocking news—the magic $100 billion climate fund appears not to be taking shape! Even optimistic estimates sat the fund is $40 billion short, and developing countries say that understates the problem. 

The Financial Times:

Climate ministers from Europe, India, Brazil and South Africa have gone to Beijing in recent weeks, hoping to sustain momentum from the Paris talks despite the Trump administration’s dismantling of US regulations meant to limit American emissions.

But discussions have quickly run up against the issue of financing.  “Developed countries have not met their commitments. In their reports a lot of their commitment is in the form of development aid. That doesn’t meet the commitment to contribute to new funds,” China’s top climate change negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, told a briefing on Tuesday. “A lot of countries don’t want to chip in. I said to the European minister: that’s your problem as developed countries. It’s your responsibility to work together and sort it out.”

First world donors have been busily relabeling other foreign aid as contributions to the climate kitty. For developing countries, this is a cheat — they expect $100 billion in new money.

Or, to put it more accurately, they are not nearly stupid and naive enough to believe the lies Western diplomats tell when trying to bamboozle naive green voters at home that they are “Doing Something” about climate change. So they don’t really expect all that money, but hope to use these commitments to pry something out of the West. Also, since the West will certainly default on these bogus commitments, developing countries have all the justification they need to blow off their own commitments when the time comes.

This, one notes, is the house of cards that the last Administration claimed was a big piece of its legacy.

Full post

2) Emerging Nations Urge Trump Administration To Honour Obama’s $100 Billion Climate Funding Pledge
Reuters, 11 April 2017

China, Brazil, India and South Africa have urged industrialized countries to honor financial commitments made in Paris in 2015 to help developing countries fight against global climate change, they said in a statement on Tuesday.



Following a meeting in Beijing, climate change ministers from the “BASIC” bloc of four major emerging economies called on rich countries “to honor their commitments and increase climate finance towards the $100 billion goal”, and said more clarity was needed to “track and account for” those pledges.

Climate financing was a major bone of contention during negotiations to seal a new global deal to curb and reduce climate-warming greenhouse gases in Paris at the end of 2015, with China and other developing nations adamant that the bulk of the burden should fall to advanced industrialized nations like the United States.

As part of the Paris deal, developed countries agreed to make more funding available to a Green Climate Fund (GCF), which is designed to be used by poor and climate-vulnerable countries.

But the agreement has been plunged into uncertainty after U.S. President Donald Trump, who has questioned the scientific basis of global warming, last month proposed an end to payments to the GCF and signed an order to undo climate change regulations introduced by his predecessor.

At a media briefing after the Tuesday meeting, South Africa’s deputy minister of environmental affairs, Barbara Thompson, said recent changes in U.S. policy were “of major concern”.

But “the position of the U.S. is still very unclear to us”, she said, adding “we believe there are different views within the U.S. administration” on this issue.
At the same briefing, China’s chief climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, insisted China remained willing to work closer with the United States.

Xie told Reuters after the briefing that he expected China and the United States to hold talks on climate issues, and that discussions were going on at multiple levels.

Joint pledges made by China and the United States, the world’s two biggest emitters of climate-warming greenhouse gases, helped bridge the gap between developed and developing countries and provided the momentum to seal the deal in Paris.

Full story

3) No Consensus: G7 Energy Ministers Fail To Agree On Climate Change
Daily Mail, 10 April 2017 

G7 energy ministers have failed to agree a statement on climate change this afternoon because of ‘US reservations’, it has emerged.

Top officials from the Group of Seven industrial nations gathered in Rome, Italy today amid growing concerns over the US administration’s moves to unravel policies aimed at stalling global warming.

Environmental activists fear US President Donald Trump is dismantling Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which aimed at reducing carbon pollution from power plants.

Greenpeace was holding a sit-in outside Monday’s meeting, calling on officials to maintain their commitments to reduce greenhouse gases under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

However, the US ‘reserved its position’ on the text about commitments made by G7 countries under the Paris accord, said Carlo Calenda, the Italian minister for economic development, who chaired the meeting in Rome.

The ministers’ agenda had called for discussion of energy security, policies to move away from coal, natural gas routes and supply, sustainable development of electricity sources, alternative fuel scenarios and energy access and investments in Africa.

Lacking unanimity, Italy, which currently presides the Group of Seven, decided against proposing the joint statement, Calenda said.

Full story

4) Trump’s Climate Demands Roil U.S. Allies
Politico, 11 April 2017 

Documents show the administration pushed other G-7 countries to embrace larger roles for nuclear power and fossil fuels. They refused.

Andrew Restuccia

President Donald Trump’s abrupt turnaround on U.S. climate policy is fueling tension with several of America’s closest allies, which are resisting the administration’s demands that they support a bigger role for nuclear power and fossil fuels in the world’s energy supply.

The dispute blew up at this week's meeting of G-7 energy ministers, at which Trump administration officials pushed to include stronger pro-coal, pro-nuclear language in a proposed joint statement on energy policy. The fight had been simmering behind the scenes for weeks as the White House, Energy Department and State Department clashed with negotiators from other G-7 countries over the statement, according to an internal document obtained by POLITICO and interviews with diplomats.

After a tense back-and-forth at the meeting in Rome on Monday, the G-7 energy ministers — including representatives from Canada, Great Britain and several European Union countries — wound up scuttling the statement altogether.

The feud comes as Trump, who often touts his "America first" approach to foreign policy, is considering whether to pull the United States out of the climate change accord that the Obama administration and leaders of nearly 200 other nations negotiated in Paris in 2015. Some Trump advisers have suggested that he should remain in the deal — but in return, should demand concessions to aid the fossil fuel sector.

G-7 officials, led by the Europeans, refused to agree to stronger language touting fossil fuels without assurances from the United States that it would stay in the Paris climate change agreement, according to officials briefed on the discussions.
 

The U.S. emphasis on coal "was seen as an issue for all of us," one G-7 country negotiator told POLITICO, noting that Canada, Europe and Japan all expressed frustration about the Trump administration's position. The United States' refusal to discuss or mention the Paris agreement in the joint statement was EU’s "biggest” red line during the meeting, the negotiator added.

The meeting underscored the increasingly wide gulf between the Trump administration and its allies over climate change. The leaders of the other G-7 nations have all called for a shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy. Meanwhile, Trump has dismissed climate change as a Chinese hoax and sought to revive the ailing U.S. coal industry.

The draft joint statement obtained by POLITICO, which is dated March 31 and is labeled as a "second draft," provides an unfiltered look at the Trump administration's energy policy priorities.

In one instance, the U.S. rewrote part of the statement to stress that fossil fuels "including coal and natural gas will remain part of the global energy mix for the foreseeable future," striking vaguer language from an earlier draft that said countries would rely on fossil fuels for "some time, as countries progressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions of their energy system."

In another section, the U.S. added a mention of fossil fuels and nuclear power to a line calling on countries to "work together on policies to deploy clean, reliable and affordable energy."

The U.S. also proposed completely eliminating a line stating that since renewable energy will help cut carbon dioxide emissions, the G-7 nations would "take the lead in tackling the challenges of electricity systems with high shares of variable renewable energy and in addressing the resilience of the electricity system" as the energy industry transitions to cleaner sources.

And U.S. officials added a section promoting nuclear power that reads in part, "We note the importance of civil nuclear energy for providing reliable and clean baseload energy."

While the U.S. appeared to back language calling for phasing out "inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that lead to wasteful consumption" over the medium term, it proposed striking a line calling on G-7 countries to "increase efforts to phase them out by 2025."
 

Ultimately, the Trump administration's demands proved too difficult to overcome, and the G-7 nations scuttled the joint statement. Carlo Calenda, Italy’s economic development minister and the chair of the summit, instead released a written summary of the meeting, which noted that the delegation heads of every country but the United States reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris deal.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who led the U.S. delegation to the meeting, said the Trump administration "is in the process of reviewing many of its policies and reserves its position on this issue," according to the summary.

It's not the first time the U.S. has been the odd country out in an international meeting since Trump took over. During a March G-20 meeting of finance ministers in Germany, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin pushed for the removal of language calling on countries to help finance efforts to tackle climate change.

In the run-up to the G-7 meeting, Trump administration officials had asked foreign officials not to pack the joint statement with mentions of renewable energy and climate change, noting that they wouldn't be able to sign off on the text because the White House was still weighing its stance on the Paris deal, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

But sure enough, early drafts of the joint statement included frequent mentions of climate change. And U.S. officials sought to revise the drafts, sparking a fierce round of edits between representatives of the G-7 nations ahead of this week's meeting. One diplomat who worked on the text called it a "slow and complicated process."

At one point during the gathering, tempers flared so high that a European official accused a U.S. official of trying to "internationalize" the Trump administration's focus on fossil fuels, according to one person briefed on the exchange.
 

Full post

5) China’s New Coal Boom: China’s Coal-Conversion Plants Surge Back To Life 
Financial Times, 12 April 2017
Lucy Hornby

Water-guzzling coal-conversion projects are springing to life in arid western China, setting the stage for the large-scale deployment of what was previously a niche industry. 

A three-year downturn in coal prices has revived projects that convert coal to motor fuel, petrochemical feedstock or gas, after many were shelved in 2008 because of concerns about water supply and pollution.

Successful development in China opens the door to the export of coal-intensive technologies, undercutting international efforts to limit emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases.

Coal conversion is not only highly polluting, it also consumes large amounts of water.  “It’s certainly something China is focusing on,” said Benjamin Sporton, chief executive of the World Coal Association.  “As the energy mix diversifies, coal producers are coming under pressure and they are looking at other ways to use coal.”

Chinese coal-conversion projects have been stop-start for years. They are plagued by technical difficulties, billions of dollars in losses and bureaucratic reversals. New coal conversion targets were set in January after Chinese president Xi Jinping endorsed a mammoth coal-to-oil plant in Ningxia, a desert region with some of the world’s richest coal reserves.  [...]

China’s coal giants want to promote coal conversion overseas, especially as part of China’s “Belt and Road” initiative. “We are pushing overseas projects where there are low-cost coal resources,” Mr Zhang said.

Projects that work in China’s state-dominated economy may not be practical elsewhere. Coal conversion has become profitable in China because of an unusual combination of low coal prices relative to state-set gas or petrol prices.

Coal-to-liquids projects normally make economic sense only when oil prices are high or supply is limited. The technology was first developed in Nazi Germany, and commercialised in apartheid-era South Africa.

Natural gas prices are set relatively high in China to justify pipelines running thousands of miles from central Asia to population centres in the east. That gives an opening to gas derived from coal, which is projected to supply 12 per cent of China’s gas consumption by 2020. The switch to gas forms part of Beijing’s Paris agreement pledge for emissions to peak around 2030.

Full story

6) British Anti-Fracking Campaigners Lose High Court Battle
ITV News, 12 April 2017 

Fracking looks set to go ahead on a Lancashire site after campaigners lost a High Court challenge.



Opponents urged the court to find a government decision approving planning for the site in Fylde either unfair or unlawful.

The planning application, by developer Cuadrilla, was refused by Lancashire County Council in 2015 but later granted following an appeal.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid gave the scheme the green light last October.
The Preston New Road Action Group lost their challenge at the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday.
 

Fracking looks set to go ahead at Preston New Road. Credit: ITV News 
Shale company Cuadrilla originally made an application to drill up to four wells at Preston New Road.

The plan was supported by Lancashire County Council officials but turned down by the planning committee.

But following a public inquiry, the planning inspector recommended the scheme.

Environmentalists and local campaign groups reacted angrily to the decision, which they said went against the wishes of residents.

Full story

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.