Tag: COP21

From Paris to Parliament: Is there a climate for action?

Posted on by janet.crompton

The Paris Agreement reached at the COP21 late last year was a big success, and the UK played an important, constructive role in that. But the UK is going backwards in policy terms with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.

That was the general message I took away from an event I attended last week in Parliament on behalf of the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute. In truth, this wasn’t a big surprise to me. But what did strike me was the unanimity of the panellists who spoke: an MP, a scientist, an economist, a financial advisor, and an activist.* They were all more or less in agreement about the following:

  1. Paris was a big deal. There are certainly all kinds of things to be worried and dissatisfied about, and it would have been better to have had an agreement like this 20 years ago. (If you add up all the commitments national governments have made, we’re nowhere near keeping climate change under 2˚.) But it really does give us a much better shot than we had beforehand. In an important sense, to quote the scientist, December 2015 was when humanity really decided that climate change was “a problem we agreed to do something about”.
  2. Above all, Paris did two crucial things. First, it established a mechanism for making countries accountable to each other, and for making governments more accountable domestically. Second, it provided firms and investors with a clear steer: the world economy is going to decarbonise in this century. The private sector will appreciate the implications: some power stations will have to be decommissioned early; governments will sooner or later have to introduce policies favourable to renewables and unfavourable to fossil fuels; “climate risk” is going to be a huge issue for the financial services sector.
  3. And the private sector is not the problem. In a lot of ways, big companies are ahead of the government, and many are looking to governments to get with the programme and establish sensible, long-term targets and regulations. I found it striking that even an activist from Friends of the Earth and the former leader of the UK Green Party seemed to feel this way.
  4. Cutting carbon isn’t bad for the economy. Again, I wouldn’t have been surprised by a couple of the panellists saying this. But for all five to agree was impressive. They made the point in different ways. The scientist for example talked about employment growth in the clean energy sector, while the activist noted that greenhouse gas emissions have come way down in the UK in the last 25 years even as total economic activity has grown.
  5. Both of the UK’s major political parties–i.e., the Conservative Party included–have been positive forces shaping the global climate regime, and UK governments led by both parties have advised other countries on how to get their emissions down. This message too was striking to me.

All of the above just confirmed things I’ve thought for a while: That decarbonising is completely economically doable, and the reasons we’re not doing it fast enough are just political. And that at this point (in some contrast perhaps to 10 or 20 years ago) the private sector isn’t much of a problem politically.

What remains perplexing to me then is why the current government is not just doing so little, but actually going backwards–another more-or-less consensus view among the panellists. For example, revenues from environmental taxes have been flat or declining for years as a proportion of all tax revenues–directly contrary to what mainstream economics recommends. In the housing sector, the government has weakened energy-efficiency standards and killed off its flagship scheme to encourage better insulation. Subsidies for renewables have been cut (though the economic case for such subsidies is more equivocal). And this year’s Energy Bill is strangely silent on climate change.

So… What’s with the current government? I’m sure some of them are climate sceptics, but I wouldn’t expect a majority are (and I don’t think David Cameron is). Are they overestimating the economic costs of taking action on climate change? Maybe. But my best guess is that green issues just aren’t a big concern for them personally, and they don’t see the British public as too interested or supportive. As such, climate change is just constantly slipping down the agenda.

We may soon know more. The panellists noted that a number of big decisions are coming up in the UK within the next year, and in a sense this country will provide the first test of the Paris Agreement. Notably, there are questions about the climate implications of the Energy Bill, next month we will find out about funding for renewables post-2020, and we will see a new Carbon Plan by the end of the year. Let’s hope for some more positive news on those fronts.

* The panellists were Caroline Lucas (MP, former leader of the Green Party); Sir David King (formerly the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, and now Special Representative for Climate Change); Prof Michael Jacobs (various think tank and academic affiliations); Kirsty Hamilton (various finance affiliations); and Simon Bullock (Friends of the Earth). The event was a seminar of the All Party Climate Change Group (APPCCG) and Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRASEG).

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Malcolm Fairbrother, from the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. 

COP21 reflections: What next for the University of Bristol?

Posted on by janet.crompton

If you have read my previous blogs on my COP21 reflections (see links at bottom of this blog), that brings us to the University of Bristol and the Cabot Institute.  I hope that this year we also have made some steps towards being a trusted participant in shaping our city’s future. I have lived here over 15 years and so I know that has not always been the case.

We must contribute via our role as a business.  With the NHS, we are the largest employer in the city and our behaviour should lead by example.  This is why we have developed a district energy strategy with BCC and the NHS.  This is why we are planting trees all over the city.  That is why we collaborate with Bristol City Council and fund community initiatives. But we do need to do more.  We will be judged on how we build our next buildings.  We will be judged on how we procure our goods. We will be judged on how we engage with the other citizens of Bristol.

We must contribute via our role as an educational institution.  We are already committed to pan-University Education for Sustainable Development (and thanks again to Chris Willmore for championing that). Now we are exploring a new initiative to build sustainability, enterprise and global citizenship across the student experience; those of us in the Cabot Institute are very excited to have been asked to play a role in translating our ambitions for multidisciplinary, challenge-driven, environmental research to our Undergraduates.

Students working with a local organisation in Bedminster, Bristol.

Of course, those students are driving us as often as we are leading them!  In the words of Hannah Tweddell of Bristol’s Student Union:

‘Our students and young people are the future. We’ve seen the amazing work they’ve done in partnership, helping Bristol Green Capital transition towards a more sustainable inclusive city. We’re committed to getting 100,000 hours of student engagement with the city to help make our city more sustainable every year – real action on the ground to tackle climate change, inequality and sustainability.’

And finally, the Cabot Institute will continue to conduct ambitious research in this area. Being at COP21 with Bristol City Council showed me the power of academic contributions.  Our Mini-Stern review and the STEEP Project sit at the foundation of Bristol’s Climate Change and Energy Security Framework.  Bristol is Open was repeatedly cited as an exemplar in Future Cities thinking. These partnerships were embedded in the argument by ICLEI and others that cities must be taken seriously as partners in this endeavour. Our climate change research was also on display and invoked at key stages as ambitions were raised.

It is not all about the Cabot Institute.  Sustainability policy is increasingly linked to health issues, whether it be the benefits of cycling and walking or of cleaner air; as such, the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute is also a central part of this conversation. The Brigstow Institute will explore the role of self, identity and community in the 21st century, issues that will be central to the social transformations that the Paris Agreement requires.  And there is no doubt that Big Data will be key to understanding, managing and navigating the future city; our new Institute (currently the Bristol Institute for Data Intensive Research) is poised to make major contributions.

Our research must continue and become more ambitious because we do not have all of the solutions – yet. So we will continue to innovate, whether it be exciting new functional nanomaterials to underpin the next generation of renewable technology or the mathematical expertise that will help us best extract tidal power from the Severn. We will have to help explore new financing tools to fund a new kind of global development; and there is a role for Bristol in shaping the emerging new forms of governance and economy. But new solutions require an engaged and interested public – and we do not intend to develop them in isolation or in our old disciplinary silos.

As our train pulled into Temple Meads, Alex Minshull told me that what he took from the Conference was a renewed awareness of what he already knew – do not get ‘locked in’ to the future you do not want. We must make the right choices today, choices that do not pile future carbon debt onto the future.  We must invest in our young people today so that they are prepared to lead tomorrow.  We must invest in new technology today so that it is ready when we need it.

It starts today.

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Prof Rich Pancost

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  

For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visitbristol.ac.uk/green-capital

Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:

What have we achieved and how do we go forward?
What next for our planet?
What next for Bristol?
What next for the University of Bristol?

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 reflections: What next for Bristol?

Posted on by janet.crompton

As you might imagine, especially given the focus on cities, it was an exciting two weeks for Bristol.  The City was everywhere.  In Paris with Anne Hidalgo; with its resilient partners in the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cites group; representing smart city investment on behalf of Eurocities; hosting a Bristol Green Capital display in the Green Zone; and also sponsoring the linked Cities and Regions Pavilion nearby. Our city is going global in reputation, stature and visibility . This is a great achievement for our city and a great opportunity.  We are viewed as ambitious, eager to embrace the new economy, and supportive of technology and creativity.  We also had hundreds of people come to our stand and ask about moving to Bristol – the best and the brightest of the next generation also see Bristol as a place to bring their talents.

We cannot be complacent, however.  A corollary to the message of ambition was that a new race to lead in the global energy transformation has already begun; the cities, regions and nations that drive the agenda will prosper and those that do not will be left behind.  Those that move slowly will eventually benefit from new innovations, but the skills, businesses and IP will have moved elsewhere. Bristol is one of the leaders but it will have to fight to remain so.

In this sense, it is exciting to see the European Green Capital year ending with some exciting consolidation around major themes. Among these are partnership, resilience and health and well-being.  Here, however, I want to focus on three others; two where our efforts are consolidating into deeply impressive and globally distinctive initiatives and a third where we need to do better.

One of the major themes of this year has been energy use, and Bristol’s Transformative Action Plan, The Bristol Billion, will dramatically accelerate residential energy efficiency. This TAP, by virtue of its concrete targets, themselves underpinned by the University of Bristol Mini-Stern Study and the STEEP Project, was a foundation to the ICLEI and Mayors’ argument that cities do have the appropriate ambition.  The Bristol Billion will work in tandem with the new City Council-owned Energy Company, launched on 1 November 2015. The company will initially focus on using its profits to improve energy efficiency and tackling fuel poverty, and it will eventually offer a renewable tariff. Crucially, the Company intends to complement rather than compete with existing and emerging community energy initiatives, such as that explored on 14 December 2015: Towards a Smart Energy City: mapping a path for Bristol.

Another emerging theme is the role of the Smart City, whether it be Bristol is Open or the Bristol Brain (Bristol’s other Transformative Action Plan). I have written about these extensively and won’t repeat that here!  Ultimately, however, I do not think these will be about techy solutions to our cities’ problems – although that will certainly be part of the smart, future city.  I think and I hope that smart city technology will yield ‘smarter’ citizens and ‘smarter’ leaders allowing us to make much harder – and smarter – decisions. What I mean by that is that smart technology can empower people to make their own observations, to be directly involved in the exploration and learning journey of their home and city.  We will be able to monitor electricity usage and heat loss in our own homes; urban planners will be able experiment in a virtual world to fully explore the implications of their decisions.  Ultimately, this technology could provide a place where many people can come together and discuss their future city. This is Colin Taylor’s vision for the UKCRIC-funded Collaboratory.

There are many opportunities that will come from addressing climate change; but the full road to decarbonisation will be challenging, requiring hard choices and compromises.  In Bristol, home improvements will create jobs, fight fuel poverty, save money, improve health and reduce emissions – a win win win win win proposition! A Bristol transportation system that produces no carbon dioxide will be much harder to achieve.

To me, finding the pathway to that political consensus – and the inclusion that demands – is probably the third major theme of 2015.  And not because we did it terribly well.  Some successes include the fantastic new Sustainable Education Programme.  And I think we did okay in the Cabot Institute by putting on many events and getting out into the city to educate or inform, often with artists or other groups. Local initiatives have also raised awareness.

Rich Pancost at Hamilton House for a Cabot Institute Uncertain World public event this year

But we have not truly entrained new and diverse groups in a new dialogue; instead it feels as if the old dialogue has just had the volume turned up.  That’s fine but we can do more. This issue was the focus of the meeting I alluded to in the first blog and the subject of Helly’s blog on behalf of Ujima Radio.  Convened by Policy Bristol, the Green Capital Partnership, Ujima and ourselves, the meeting explored some of the challenges we face.  I’ll revisit this in the New Year, but I’d like to share a few initial thoughts.

We listen to each other but often do we understand. That is perhaps inevitable as we come from different backgrounds; nonetheless, we have to invest the time to really understand the wants, needs and (most of all!) capabilities of the many groups in Bristol.

Minority groups are invited to events but rarely given the opportunity to set the agenda. This must change.

Different groups have their own suggestions and ideas, often arising from our diverse cultures.  We need to pivot from preaching about solutions to sharing ideas.

Building mutual trust in one another – trust in our fellow citizens and our leaders – must be a focus of 2016 as we build on our Green Capital legacy and look to the future.  I do not have an easy answer to that; no one does.  But perhaps some small, positive steps together can help to build that trust.

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Prof Rich Pancost

 

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital

Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:
What have we achieved and how do we go forward?
What next for our planet?
What next for Bristol?
What next for the University of Bristol?

 
 
COP21 Daily Reports

COP21 reflections: What next for our planet?

Posted on by janet.crompton

After the problems of Copenhagen, the French were keen to avoid surprises, which was the rationale for the INDCs we have heard so much about over the past year – and this they did superbly well. This agreement is consistent with what most of us expected two weeks ago.  Having said that, most of us are still very excited by that achievement given the numerous potential pitfalls.

There was one surprise, however. As I wrote  a few days ago, the Conference was stunned by the emergence of a large and diverse group that demanded (and somewhat achieved) a more ambitious overall global warming limit – well below 2C rather than 2C. This is an achievement for science in that it acknowledges the impact of 2C warming on small island states and nations with extensive low-lying areas. Jonathan Bamber of Bristol’s Glaciology Research Centre was part of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative and Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research session on the Irreversible Impacts of Climate Change on Antarctica, a session that acutely underscored the implications of 2C warming just as the ‘Coalition of Ambition’ was preparing to reveal its agenda.

However, this increase in ambition and the surrounding rhetoric disconcerted many in the community.  As I wrote on Friday, the disconnection between these agreed limits and the INDCs and between the INDCs and national policies has led many to claim that the agreement represents ambitious grandstanding without concrete actions.

Strikingly, the Agreement makes no direct mention of negative emissions nor carbon capture and storage – although that is clearly implicit in directives for carbon neutrality and in the adopted limits themselves. We will need to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere to limit warming to this degree.  We will need new aviation and shipping technology to achieve this limit.  It is the gap between aspirations and technological capacity, social behaviour and political will that has caused some to disparage the Paris Agreement.

We will need new aviation and shipping technology to achieve the 2C limit.

It is too soon to say, but I don’t think that captures the complete picture of what happened in Paris over the past two weeks and it does not capture what this Agreement could eventually achieve.  In many senses, this Agreement is about empowerment, confidence and united commitment. No other COP has had such a deep engagement from non-national actors. It was not just the usual NGOs, but also a huge range of businesses from Coca Cola to New Holland to BMW to exciting new kids on the block that you’ve likely never heard of (like Gogoro!). Crucially, investors were also present – Moody’s and Santander but also a plethora of green bond developers and other alternative financiers. And more so than ever before, the cities were out in force, both collectively via groups such as ICLEI, C40, and the Covenant of Mayors (and the Compact of Mayors) and individually.  In our Pavilion alone, over 70 cities presented their plans for climate action.

The highlight of the cities initiative was when Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, launched and hosted the Climate Summit for Local Leaders at Paris City Hall.  Attended by 640 Mayors, thought to be the largest such gathering, the Summit presented its ambitions to UN Secretary General Ba Ki-moon. It is a great credit to Paris that not only did it host COP21 but that it did so with such a spirit of hope and optimism so soon after the tragic events of 13 Nov.

Throughout, the message was that the world is at tipping point between the old fossil-fuel based economy and a new economy – and most are ready.  Cities, regions, businesses, investors are already working together.  They are already reconfiguring for this new world. What they demanded of the Agreement was that it formally recognise their involvement and that the Agreement be an ambitious and unambiguous statement of intent.  They wanted confidence to act boldly and a role in accountability.  They got both.

Unlike the Kyoto protocol, this Agreement formally recognises the role of sub-national governments as partners in this process.  This was one of the major goals of ICLEI, and I am very proud that via the Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, Bristol’s prominent presence as European Green Capital, and the concrete aspirations of our Transformative Action Plans, our city and our University helped ensure the inclusion of such recognition in the final document.

In the words of Gino Van Begin, “Pavilion co-hosts, Paris and Bristol, along with ICLEI, made possible an unprecedented show of unity by local actors at a COP.”  The City of Bristol, via George Ferguson but also via Bristol City Council and numerous partners, was everywhere at COP21 – and the University of Bristol was central to that, our contributions highlighted dozens of times.

As for a statement of intent?  That’s we got. When I spoke with Sir David King about the UK’s goals for the negotiations, he emphasised the need to emerge with the clarity to build confidence and support cooperation.  He went further by arguing that one of the UK’s main contributions will be via its Aid Budget, which will prioritise green growth and in turn, through technology development and scale-up of manufacturing, drive the global price of renewables below that of fossil fuels.

Similarly, Amber Rudd, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (and therefore, Britain’s senior negotiator in Paris), emphasised that the 1.5C target was about aspiration and sending a clear message of confidence to investors.  Alas, our visit was too fleeting for me to ask her whether that balances the investor confidence lost when renewable subsidies are removed… but she did address that Sunday morning with Andrew Marr.

Arguably, no other international diplomatic effort has had higher ambitions: the COP21 Agreement successfully asked all the nations of the Earth to commit to a fundamental transformation of their energy, economy and society.  The achievement, then, has been about unlocking capital, stimulating investment and establishing confidence.  It is still the same old economic model – the Agreement was never going to deliver the downfall of neoliberalism – but different levers are now being pulled.

Will it work? That rather depends on what your definition of success is. But it is estimated that 10,000 new initiatives were launched in Paris last week.  That is a good start.

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Prof Rich Pancost
This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visitbristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 reflections: What have we achieved and how do we go forward?

Posted on by janet.crompton

On Friday, I am helping Alex Minshull, Director of Sustainability for Bristol City Council, wrap up the Bristol and Paris Pavilion with our partners from ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. It was a great pleasure to be on the stage with Gino Van Begin, ICLEI’s Secretary General, and Yunus Arikan, ICLEI’s Head of Global Policy and Advocacy, both of whom have spent years advocating for the important role of non-state actors – an advocacy that was vindicated beyond all doubt over the last fortnight.

On Friday night, I am on the Eurostar, trying to make up for lost sleep and trying to wade through the penultimate draft of the text. Ironically, I have to buy bottled water at Paddington as there was no place to refill my new COP21 bottle… a reminder of how far we have to go. Ironically, I have to get a lift home from Temple Meads.

And then on Saturday, back home, I am admiring those who took to the streets of Paris with a message of hope, while waiting (and waiting) for the final announcement, following the Guardian and BBC news livestreams as a ‘shall’ became a ‘should’, as text was finalised, as countries read their final statements. And then at around 6:30 the agreement was ratified.

The next morning, Sunday, I am cooking breakfast on our gas hob and thinking: all of these – in tens of millions of UK households – will have to go in the next 30 years, less to limit warming to 2C.

What a challenge but what an opportunity.

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The dust is still settling; the full implications of an Agreement built on self-imposed commitments, peer pressure and united messaging rather than rigid and universal targets are not yet clear.

In Bristol we have made bold pledges on multiple international stages, but before we truly embark on realising those, we will hold a Mayoral and Council-wide election.

Nonetheless, every day this week on the Cabot Institute blog, I will offer a few reflections on what has happened and what must happen next – formulated between the agreement of the Agreement on the 12 December and the start of real work on the 14 December.

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Prof Rich Pancost
This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visitbristol.ac.uk/green-capital

Other blogs in this COP21 reflections series include:

What have we achieved and how do we go forward?
What next for our planet?
What next for Bristol?
What next for the University of Bristol?

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 daily report: Can we limit global warming to 1.5C?

Posted on by janet.crompton
abot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and other Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.

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One of the most stunning developments in the climate negotiations of COP21 – perhaps of the entire 20 years of negotiations – has been the emergence of major push to raise the accord’s ambitions.

After years of watering down language and creating flexible and non-binding targets, many of us anticipated that the pressure of compromise would weaken the COP21 accord. It might still be weakened in many respects.  And yet, in the past 72 hours, a group of 100 nations, including the European Union, the United States and dozens of developing nations, has emerged to propose the nearly unimaginable: to reduce the acceptable limit to human-caused global warming from 2C to 1.5C.

This has, for lack of a better word, stunned the scientific community.  Here in Paris, these raised ambitions resulted in applause and celebration – especially when they remained in place in the second draft circulated Wednesday.  But those of us who study climate change wonder whether this is possible.  Already this year, global warming reached 1C, and several more decimal places of warming are already baked into the system due to the slow response of the climate system. In short, there is some chance that our current 400 ppm CO2 is already enough to push the globe past 1.5C.

Ensuring even a 50:50 chance of staying below 1.5C will require urgent action – far more urgent than what nations have committed through their INDCs which will only limit warming to 2.7 to 3C.  In fact, it will almost certainly require achieving zero emissions, a complete cessation of all fossil fuel use, in the next several decades – and then negative emissions. We will have to capture and store carbon dioxide (CCS) either through biology  or technology; and as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the UK has actually cancelled potential CCS projects.

It is laudable that countries want to push for a stronger global warming limit, but they must be honest about the distance between their ambitions and their policies.  By policies I mean not only the insufficient INDCs to which they are committing, but the actual policies back home to achieve them.  Many nations’ policies will help achieve 40% reductions – the low-hanging fruit – but are they really investing in the innovation and infrastructure to achieve a 100% reduction in any timeframe, let alone a timeframe to limit warming to 1.5C?  If 1.5C requires an almost complete decarbonisation with the next several decades, how can that be achieved when global shipping and aviation are not even in the current draft of the accord?

Consequently, many of my colleagues around the globe are as stunned and confused about the political agenda as I am.  Are the politicians idealistic and naïve?  Out of touch with the science? Grandstanding?

I am cautious about jumping to conclusions.

The underlying politics are complex. Maybe the leaders are caught up in the moment.  More likely, they are caught up in their needs; this initiative has been led by small island states – especially Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister of the Marshall Islands – and these nations do face an existential threat from 2C warming, and some even from 1.5C warming.  They have been demanding this increased ambition for over a decade; they are living on the sharp end of climate uncertainty (as we learned when hosting many of them last summer) and they know what is coming.

It is surprising that others have joined them.

If I had to guess, I think this change is designed to strengthen post-COP21 policy both internationally and domestically.  It could be related to putting stronger pressure on the ratcheting up process of the accord, the mechanism by which nations will impose more demanding targets on themselves.  It could also be related to enshrining more robust compensation for those nations that will be most impacted by climate change. Or it could also be the confidence-building statement that investors and businesses have been demanding all week long. It is too soon to say.

Nonetheless, there is a large disconnection between these targets and our commitments and between our commitments and our policies. I’d be more comfortable about a step-up in our targets, if these gaps were being more openly discussed.

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Prof Rich Pancost

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 daily report: Reflections from 9 December

Posted on by janet.crompton

Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and other Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.

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One of the dominant themes of COP21 has been the crucial role of cities, from the Blue Zone to Paris City Hall to the Sustainable Innovation Forum (SIF) at Le Stade de France.  In fact, on Tuesday at the SIF, Aron Cramer of BSR declared that ‘Cities have been the heroes of COP.’

The Compact of Mayors has grown larger and stronger.  The C40 group continues to set a more aggressive agenda than their respective nations.  And in the Green Zone, the Cities & Regions Pavilion, co-hosted by Bristol and Paris and facilitated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability has showcased the ambitions of dozens of cities.  Repeatedly, city leaders have said to national leaders – “no matter what you commit to, we will deliver it; and in all likelihood, we will push further and faster.”

In the Pavilion, there has been a non-stop buzz of workshops, presentations and debates.  From a Bristol perspective, this has been stimulated by an inspiring and demanding year as the European Green Capital.  From the Paris perspective, it has been stimulated by its role as host. However, a particularly deep and long-lasting contribution to all of COP21 has come from ICLEI.

ICLEI has been leading the mobilisation of sub-national actors for 25 years and is distinguished because it works with a wide range of entities of all scale: small cities, large cities, and regions.  However, ICLEI did not simply come to Paris to represent those groups; it asked them to make and share their own commitments, ambitions and strategies.

These projects are part of the Transformative Action Program (TAP), managed by ICLEI, and in many ways they are the city and region companion to the INDCs.

Bristol committed to finding 1 billion euros of investment to retrofit a third of its houses, a proposition based in part on research conducted by University of Bristol Cabot Institute academics.  It also committed to the Bristol Brain, a city emulator that will empower citizens and leaders to make bolder but more informed planning decisions.  Not to be outdone, Copenhagen committed to carbon neutral energy provision by 2025.

Kaohsiung City. Image from Wikipedia.

Today was East Asia’s turn and they produced some of the boldest proposals, appropriate given the fact that the Mayor of Seoul, Won Soon Park, is also the President of ICLEI.  A recurring theme was the integration of food, water and energy sustainability and the coexistence with nature.  Kaohsiung City, for example, aimed to achieve, among other goals: ‘…Prosperity with Mountain and Ocean and a Liveable Homeland.’  Taichung proposed a TAP for the ‘City Food Forest’ and highlighted the importance of integrating the next generation of farmers into their future city thinking.  Throughout the past week and a half, a recurring theme has been the need for breaking free of silo-ed thinking in order to achieve system change; these Asian cities are doing that.

Comparing these plans to those of European nations illustrates the particular challenge of political boundaries.  Bristol is an urban area of >1 million people, but its Mayor and City Council only govern a ‘city’ of 500,000.   It must find a way to develop integrated sustainability policies that support and include those 1 million people but also the wider hinterland – the surrounding countryside that supports nature, agriculture and wind turbines. 

This is why the TAPs can be so useful.  Many of the 120 publicly available on the ICLEI website are commitments but many are also mechanisms for policy change.  They allow us to compare and contrast, and therefore to learn and reflect. They are invitations to constructive criticism but also opportunities to share knowledge.  

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Prof Rich Pancost

 

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
 

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 daily report: The need for innovation (but do not call it innovation)

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and other Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.

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For the past two days, a delegation of us have been representing Bristol City Council and a group of Bristol businesses at the Sustainable Innovation Forum (SIF) at Paris.  Our group included Bristol Mayor George Ferguson, who spoke on Tuesday; Amy Robinson, of Low Carbon Southwest and the driver behind the Go Green business initiative; Bristol City Council representatives Stephen Hillton and Mhairi Ambler; and Ben Wielgus of KPMG and Chris Hayes of Skanska, both Bristol Green Capital sponsors.

This was the COP21 ‘Business event’ and aspects of this have been rather sharply targeted by Paris activists. There is a legitimate question of whether corporate sponsors are engaging in greenwashing, but this was not my perception from inside Le Stade de France.  There were some major fossil fuel dependent or environmentally impactful companies in attendance, but they seemed genuinely committed to reducing their environmental impact.  Their actions must be transparent and assessed, and like all of us, they must be challenged to go further. This is why it was fantastic that Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres, was speaking. Ceres is a true agent of change, bringing a huge variety of businesses into the conversation and working with them to continually raise ambitions.

The majority of these businesses, just like those that attended Bristol’s Business Summit in October, are clearly and objectively devoted to developing new technologies to address the world’s challenges,. Whether it be new solar tech that will underpin the PVC of 2050 or innovative new ways to deploy wind turbines cheaply and effectively in small African villages, it is no longer ‘business’ that is holding back climate action and in many cases they are leading it.

And we need them to do so.  We need them to develop new products and we need them to be supported by government and Universities.  We need them because we need new innovation, new technology and new infrastructure to meet our environmental challenges.

One of the major themes of the past two days has been leadership in innovation, an ambition to which the University of Bristol and the City of Bristol aspires – like any world-class university and city.  We have profound collective ambitions to be a Collaboratory for Change. These are exemplified by Bristol is Open, the Bristol Brain and the Bristol Billion, all endeavours of cooperation between the University of Bristol and Bristol City Council and all celebrated by George Ferguson in his speech to the SIF attendees yesterday.

This need for at least some fundamentally new technology is why the Cabot Institute has launched VENTURE. It is why the University has invested so much in the award-winning incubator at the Engine Shed. It is why we have devoted so much resource to building world-leading expertise in materials and composites, especially in partnership with others in the region.

We do not need these innovations for deployment now – deployment of already existing technology will yield major reductions in our carbon emissions – but we need to start developing them now, so that we can achieve more difficult emissions reductions in 20 years.  Our future leaders must have an electrical grid that can support a renewable energy network. Our homes must have been prepared for the end of gas.

And we will need new technology to fully decarbonise.

We effectively have no way to make steel without burning coal to melt iron – we either need new tech in recycling steel, need to move to a post-steel world, need to completely redesign steel plants, or some combination of all three.

We will need new forms of low-energy shipping. Localising manufacturing and recycling could create energy savings in the global supply chain.  But we will always have a global supply chain and eventually it must be decarbonised.

Similarly, we will need to decarbonise our farm equipment.  At heart, I am still an Ohio farm boy, and so I was distracted from my cities-focus to discuss this with Carlo Lambro, Brand President of New Holland.  Their company has made some impressive efficiency gains in farm equipment, especially with respect to NOx emissions, but he conceded that a carbon neutral tractor is still far away – they require too much power, operating at near 100% capacity (cars are more like 20-30%).  He described their new methane-powered tractor, which could be joined up to biogas emissions from farm waste, but also explained that it can only operate for 1.5 hours.  There have been improvements… but there is still a long way to go. I appreciated his engagement and his candor about the challenges we face (but that did not keep me from encouraging him to go faster and further!).

Finally, if we really intend to limit warming to below 2C, then we will likely need to capture and store (CCS) some of the carbon dioxide we are adding to the atmosphere. Moreover, some of the national negotiators are pushing for a laudable 1.5C limit, and this would certainly require CCS. In fact, the need for the widespread implementation of such technology by the middle of this century is explicitly embedded in the emissions scenarios of IPCC Working Group 3. That is why some of our best Earth Scientists are working on the latest CCS technology.

Unfortunately, CCS illustrates how challenging innovation can be – or more precisely, as articulated by Californian entrepreneur Tom Steyer, how challenging it can be to develop existing technology into useful products. The CCS technology exists but it is still nascent and economically unviable.  It must be developed.  Given this, the recent cancellation of UK CCS projects is disappointing and could prove devastating for the UK’s intellectual leadership in this area.  The consequences of this decision were discussed by Nicola Sturgeon in a panel on energy futures and she renewed Scotland’s firm commitment to it.

This issue exemplifies a wider topic of conversation at the SIF: social and technological innovation and development requires financing, but securing that financing requires safety.  Skittish investors do not seek innovation; they seek safe, secure and boring investment. And SIF wrapped up by talking about how to make that happen.

First, we must invest in the research that yields innovations. We must then invest in the development of those innovations to build public and investor confidence.  Crucial to both of those is public sector support. This includes Universities, although Universities will have to operate in somewhat new ways if we wish to contribute more to the development process. We are learning, however, which is why George Ferguson singled out the Engine Shed as the world’s leading higher education based incubator.

Second, and more directly relevant to the COP21 ambitions, businesses and their investors need their governments to provide confidence that they are committed to a new energy future.  It has been clear all week that businesses will no longer accept the blame for their governments’ climate inaction.

Instead, most businesses see the opportunity and are eager to seize it. As for the few businesses that cling to the past? Like all things that fail to evolve, the past is where they shall remain.  The new generation of entrepreneurs will see to that. Whether it be the new businesses with new ideas or the old businesses that are adapting, the new economy is not coming; it is already here.

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This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost

 

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

COP21 daily report: Will we trust governments on climate?

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and other Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.
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Whatever comes of the climate summit that kicked off Monday in Paris, the negotiations will be intense. Signatories of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change meet every year, but this year is exceptional. The stakes are high, with governments and their negotiators seeking to finalize a landmark treaty that will guide the world’s actions for many years to come with respect to greenhouse gas emissions and the climate change they cause.

Despite the heat that the negotiations in Paris will surely generate, though, in a sense dealing with climate change could actually be… surprisingly easy. The world’s leading climate economist thinks it would cost only about 2% of GDP to get the world on track to avoid the worst effects. That’s not a lot to pay to solve perhaps the most serious challenge confronting humanity.

Why then is it proving so hard for us to buy a climate-friendly economy?

Part of the problem is that public opinion is pretty hostile to the number one thing that could get us there: making polluters pay taxes if they want to pollute.

The logic is simple. People buy less of something when it gets more expensive. Raising the price of polluting activities is therefore the most effective, direct, and time-tested way of getting people to live–produce and consume–in ways that cause less damage to the environment.

“Raising the price of polluting activities is therefore the most effective, direct, and
time-tested way of getting people to live–produce and consume–in
ways that cause less damage to the environment” ~ Malcolm Fairbrother.

In principle, there should be no reason for people not to like the idea. Governments can lower taxes on things that do no harm (income and labour) while raising them on things that do (emitting greenhouse gases, leaching waste into groundwater, driving a car on congested streets at rush hour). Tax shifts of this kind have no net effect on public finance, and at most a very small one on household budgets–but they can make a big dent in environmental degradation.

Take the case of Canada. In 2008, a right-of-centre government in the western province of British Columbia (BC) introduced a C$30/ton tax on carbon emissions. The rest of Canada did not. Over the course of the next several years, consumption of fossil fuels in British Columbia dropped significantly, while consumption elsewhere didn’t. Meanwhile, BC enjoyed faster economic growth than the average across the other provinces.

But cases like British Columbia’s are exceptional. In most places, public opinion has been too hostile to new taxes of any kind for governments to raise taxes even on pollution and the use of scarce resources. In 2013, for example, Australians voted out a government that had brought in a carbon tax much like British Columbia’s, and they voted in a government that repealed the tax. Earlier this year, the Swiss voted down new carbon taxes in a referendum.

Perhaps the biggest reason why people around the world don’t want green taxes is political distrust. Even though such taxes have a great track record, people simply don’t trust governments to make good use of taxes–of any kind. They worry that tax revenues disappear into the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats, never to be seen again. Some think it’s unfair to tax people for behaviours that are hard to avoid–like heating your home or catching a flight for the occasional family holiday. So they don’t like green taxes, and that’s true even though most people say they believe in the seriousness of climate change, and of environmental problems generally.

To illustrate the point, in an experiment I conducted in Britain last year, I randomly assigned survey respondents to different versions of a question about their willingness to pay higher taxes to protect the environment. People were much more open to the idea if they were told that other taxes they pay would be reduced to compensate. So it seems that revenue neutrality can win over a lot of people. But telling respondents that the offsetting cuts to other taxes were only a government “promise” reduced much of the positive impact of revenue-neutrality. Clearly, government promises don’t cut much weight, at least with Britons. (Experiments with other populations elsewhere are ongoing.)

Advocates for better environmental policy have typically focussed on getting the word out about the seriousness of the problems the policies are meant to address. But, in another recent study, I conducted a head-to-head test of the scope for expanding public acceptance of environmental taxes if only one of (a) concerns about environmental problems or (b) political trust were to increase. Because there is already a lot of concern about environmental problems, but not a lot of political trust, it turns out that the potential impact of the latter looks much greater in most countries.

For that reason, along with alerting people to all the ways in which people are doing serious harm to the environment globally and locally, it would also be good to get the word out about the many environmental policies that have been tremendously successful. Globally, we’ve built a regime to stop depleting the ozone layer; many countries have reduced acid rain dramatically; some formerly endangered species are no longer endangered. If more people thought about how much good past environmental policies have done, they might be more inclined to support efforts to do more.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Malcolm Fairbrother, from the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from Policy Trajectories, the blog of the American Sociological Association’s Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology.
This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:
Monday 30 November: COP21 daily report
Tuesday 1 December: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans
Wednesday 2 December: Reflecting on the science of climate change
Thursday 3 December: The politics and culture of climate change
Friday 4 December: Be brave, work together and involve the next generation
Monday 7 December: While the politicians negotiate, the science does not stop

COP21 daily report: While the politicians negotiate, the science does not stop

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and other Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.

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I am on the train from Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington and then on to Paris. It seems appropriate leaving from a station that was built by Brunel, a symbol of the industrial revolution but also innovation. Tomorrow, I will be joining George Ferguson, Stephen Hilton of Bristol City Council, Amy Robinson of Low Carbon Southwest and others at the Sustainable Innovation Forum. I appreciate that addressing climate change means changing some aspects of how we live, but it also requires some fundamentally new technology; I am excited to see where the cutting edge thinking is.  Meanwhile, over a relatively calm weekend, the draft accord has been made public – there have been some significant advances but also a ways to go.  Negotiations will be continuing in earnest!  More on all of that tomorrow (I hope – it will be a long day).  



Today, however, my attention is elsewhere as our postgrads, research fellows and academic staff make their final preparations for the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).  The science goes on – as it must and will, regardless of the Paris negotiations. We still know far too little about the complexity of this magnificent planet, how to best live on it sustainably, and the imminent and the longer-term impacts of climate and wider environmental change.  
In my own research group (the OGU), my colleagues will be talking about increases in extreme rainfall during a past global warming event that is potentially analogous to the warming of today (see Matthew Carmichael’s research); the latest reconstructions of how carbon dioxide concentrations have changed over the past 3 million years (see Marcus Badger’s research); and the long-term controls on the hydrological cycle of the Mediterranean region (see Jan Peter Mayser’s research). All of them are collaborating with climate modellers in BRIDGE. Others in BRIDGE will be discussing how to improve the next generation of Earth System models, how to forecast land use impacts on the atmosphere, and examining the biological consequences of past ocean acidification events.  Anita Ganesan and Matt Rigby are both presenting talks on methane cycling and monitoring – a reminder that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas and that cars and cities are not the only cause of global warming.  Our glaciologists are exploring the future of the ice sheets and glaciers. Our civil engineers and geographers are presenting the latest research on all aspects of the hydrological cycle: improved models of catchments; better flood and drought forecasting; and better understanding how land use change has affected the chemistry of our rivers.  


Through all of this, there is a persistent and recurring theme of constraining uncertainty as well as understanding uncertainty in the context of decision-making. Scientists, industry and leaders must develop better tools for navigating environmental uncertainty, a focus of the Cabot Institute in 2015 and for which the need has been aptly demonstrated by Storm Desmond’s impact on Cumbria.
It is a remarkable variety of research – and that is just a sample from the University of Bristol.  
I’m never apologetic about promoting Bristol achievements and activity – it is what I know best, it is world-leading and it is my job!  Here, however, singling out these Bristol-centric contributions makes a stronger point; the above are just a few examples of the research conducted in just one institution.  Some 20,000 scientists will attend AGU!  There is profound and diverse effort devoted to understanding our planet and improving how we live upon it.


A fantastic example of some research being led by our colleagues will be on display in London on Monday as part of a Royal Society Discussion Meeting on the Biological and Climatic Impacts of Ocean Trace Element Chemistry. The event is co-convened by our Oxford friend, colleague and frequent collaborator, Gideon Henderson. Chatting to Gideon a few days ago, he emphasised the importance of the ocean in regulating our climate: ‘The oceans consume 27% of the carbon we emit, after all, and the ocean biosphere naturally consumes 11 Gtonnes of C per year.’ This is a huge issue. Currently, the ocean buffers the atmosphere against human action – but it is unclear how long this will continue.  Moreover, the ocean does so at a cost:

 

  • As the ocean absorbs energy, it warms. 
  • As the ocean absorbs this carbon, its pH declines. 
  • As marine phytoplankton assimilate this carbon and sink, they change the chemical state of the ocean, from top to bottom, creating oxygen dead zones and transforming the redox state of trace but biologically vital elements.   

 

This research is an important reminder that the issues associated with rising greenhouse gas concentrations encompass more than just the weather – greenhouse gases are changing the chemistry, physics and biology of our planet, with unclear consequences.  Their full synergistic effects, through these complex biogeochemical systems, remain difficult to anticipate. Their consequences difficult to predict. 
 
And so, as the negotiations continue, we continue our research.  On the oceans and the tropical rain forests; the deserts of the Sahara and the Arctic; the peatlands and permafrost; the soils and the bedrock beneath; the atmosphere and the cryosphere.  On the plants, animals and microorganisms that coexist with and co-regulate these ecosystems.  And of course, the people dependent on them.
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This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost

 

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:
 
Monday 30 November: COP21 daily report
Tuesday 1 December: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans
Wednesday 2 December: Reflecting on the science of climate change
Thursday 3 December: The politics and culture of climate change
Friday 4 December: Be brave, work together and involve the next generation
Sign up to our weekly newsletter for all the latest news, events and opportunities at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/subscribe. Find out more about our unique Master's by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot-masters.