A project to build a giant island providing enough energy for three million households has been given the green light by Denmark’s politicians.
The world’s first energy island will be as big as 18 football pitches (120,000sq m), but there are hopes to make it three times that size.
It will serve as a hub for 200 giant offshore wind turbines.
It is the biggest construction project in Danish history, costing an estimated 210bn kroner (£24bn; €28bn: $34bn).
Situated 80km (50 miles) out to sea, the artificial island would be at least half-owned by the state but partly by the private sector.
It will not just supply electricity for Danes but for other, neighbouring countries’ electricity grids too. Although those countries have not yet been detailed, Prof Jacob Ostergaard of the Technical University of Denmark told the BBC that the UK could benefit, as well as Germany or the Netherlands. Green hydrogen would also be provided for use in shipping, aviation, industry and heavy transport.
Under Denmark’s Climate Act, the country has committed to an ambitious 70% reduction in 1990 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and to becoming CO2 neutral by 2050. Last December it announced it was ending all new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea.
Energy Minister Dan Jorgensen said the country was simply “changing the map”.
“This is gigantic,” Prof Ostergaard told the BBC. “It’s the next big step for the Danish wind turbine industry. We were leading on land, then we took the step offshore and now we are taking the step with energy islands, so it’ll keep the Danish industry in a pioneering position.”
The plan is for the island to grow from an initial 120,000 sq m in size to 460,000 sq m Source: DANISH ENERGY AGENCY
Green group Dansk Energi said that while the “dream was on the way to becoming a reality” it doubted the North Sea island would be up and running by the planned 2033 start date.
But Danish politicians across the spectrum have given their backing to the plan. Former energy minister Rasmus Helveg Petersen of the Social Liberal party said energy islands had begun “as a radical vision” but there was now a broad agreement to turn it into a reality.
A smaller energy island is already being planned off Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, to the east of mainland Denmark. Agreements have already been signed for electricity to be provided from there to Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Last November the European Union announced plans for a 25-fold increase in offshore wind capacity by 2050, with a five-fold increase by 2030. Renewable energy provides around a third of the bloc’s current electricity needs:
According to the EU, offshore wind supplies a current level of 12 gigawatts
Denmark supplies 1.7 gigawatts
The new island would supply an initial 3 gigawatts, rising to 10 over time
The smaller Bornholm energy island would provide 2 gigawatts
While there is some secrecy over where the new island will be built, it is known that it will be 80km into the North Sea. Danish TV said that a Danish Energy Agency study last year had marked two areas west of the Jutland coast and that both had a relatively shallow sea depth of 26-27m.
In a country where over 80% of residents live in public housing, a government commitment to sustainable urban design could have huge implications. And when it’s a tropical country where convenience and air conditioning are a way of life, the impact could be greater still.
Promising 42,000 new homes across five residential districts, the eco-town of Tengah — the Malay word for “middle,” though it’s in the island’s western region — will be the 24th new settlement built by Singapore’s government since World War II. It is, however, the first with centralized cooling, automated trash collection and a car-free town center, which conservationists hope offers a roadmap for slashing carbon emissions in the Southeast Asian city-state.
The development is being dubbed a “forest town” by officials, due to its abundant greenery and public gardens. Once home to brickmaking factories, and later used for military training, the 700-hectare (2.7-square-mile) site has been reclaimed by an extensive secondary forest in recent years. A 328-foot-wide ecological “corridor” will be maintained through its center, providing safe passage to wildlife and connecting a water catchment area on one side to a nature reserve on the other.
Planners say the town has been designed with pedestrians and cyclists in mind. Credit: Courtesy The Housing & Development Board
The project has proven a tabula rasa for urban planners advocating green design principles and “smart” technology, according to Chong Fook Loong, group director for research and planning at Singapore’s Housing and Development Board (HDB), the agency overseeing the country’s public housing.
“Tengah is a clean slate,” he said in a video interview, explaining that roads, parking and utilities are being pushed beneath the town center. “We’re going for the ideal concept of segregation of traffic, (with) everything underground and then the ground level totally freed up for pedestrians — for people. So, it’s a very safe environment for all.
“We want a town that allows walking and cycling in a very user-friendly manner,” he added, saying that cycling has “taken off” in Singapore in the “last three to five years especially.”
The master plan will see the installation of electric vehicle charging stations, while the streets are also being “futureproofed” to accommodate emerging technologies, Chong said.
“When we planned the road network, we envisaged a future where autonomous vehicles and self-driving vehicles will become a reality,” he said.
Cooler by design
Although comparatively small, with a population of under 6 million people, Singapore’s per-capita emissions are higher than those of the UK, China, and neighboring Malaysia, according to the country’s National Climate Change Secretariat.
That’s due, in part, to air conditioning, which accounts for more than a third of typical household energy consumption. Global warming will only exacerbate this dependence. The Meteorological Service Singapore (MSS) has predicted that, by the end of this century, average daily temperatures in the city-state may be at least 34.1 degrees Celsius (93.4 degrees Fahrenheit) “almost every day” during the eight warmest months of the year.
An artist’s impression of the 2.7-square-mile site. Credit: Courtesy The Housing & Development Board
As such, keeping cool will, increasingly, be a necessity for residents. Rather than demonizing air conditioning, Tengah’s planners have instead sought to reimagine it. Cold water, chilled using solar power, will be piped though the district’s homes, meaning residents don’t need to install inefficient outdoor AC condensers (though they can still control the temperature in their own apartments).
According to the town’s energy provider, SP Group, this will generate carbon dioxide savings equivalent to taking 4,500 cars off the roads each year. The state-owned energy company reports that, of the apartments already sold in advance, 9 out of 10 future residents have signed up for centralized cooling.
Planners used computer modeling to simulate wind flow and heat gain across the town, helping to reduce the so-called urban heat island effect (whereby human activities and structures make urban areas notably warmer than the surrounding nature). Elsewhere, “smart” lights will switch off when public spaces are unoccupied, and trash will be stored centrally, with monitors detecting when garbage needs collecting.
“Instead of using a truck to collect garbage from every block, we will suck all the garbage through the pneumatic system to a chamber that serves several blocks,” Chong said. “From time to time, the (garbage) truck just needs to collect from the chamber.”
One of the town’s five residential districts, known as the Plantation District, will offer community farming. Credit: Courtesy The Housing & Development Board
Of the 42,000 homes being built at Tengah, more than 70% will be made available through the HDB on long-term leases. Prices for two-bedroom apartments currently begin at just 108,000 Singapore dollars ($82,000), with the first apartments set to complete in 2023.
All residents will have access to an app allowing them to monitor their energy and water usage. (“You empower them to take control of where they can cut down their energy consumption,” Chong said.) Digital displays in each block will meanwhile inform occupants of their collective environmental impact, which could even encourage competition between residential blocks, according to SP Group.
Regardless of whether the use of smart technology can significantly dent greenhouse gas emissions or not, engaging residents with their own consumption could instigate behavioral change, according to Perrine Hamel, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University’s Asian School of the Environment. This, she added, is a crucial part of Singapore’s goal of reaching peak emissions by 2030 and reducing them thereafter.
“Thinking about food consumption and thinking about the way people use air conditioning is all part of (achieving climate targets),” she said. “Changing behavior is going to be an integral part of it and, of course, urban design is the first way to affect and change behavior.”
Dubbing the project a “forest town,” planners aim to retain some of the site’s natural greenery. Credit: Courtesy The Housing & Development Board
Connecting with nature
For Hamel, the integration of nature and residential areas — which creates “more opportunities for people to interact with nature” — is where Tengah’s plan excels. In addition to the aforementioned forest corridor, the town’s residents will have access to community farming in the so-called Plantation District.
Beyond promoting and protecting biodiversity, conserving nature on the site can lead to further behavioral change, Hamel said.
“There are a lot of examples, from around the world, showing that changing our relationship with nature through everyday encounters does help people take environmental action,” she said. “On that front I think the biophilic design and (Tengah’s) master plan actually does a good job.”.
The Nature Society Singapore (NSS) has nonetheless criticized the plan for conserving too little — less than 10% — of the site’s existing forest. The environmental group has proposed two additional “core forest areas” at either end of the green corridor to promote biodiversity and protect migratory species.
The government said it is “refining” its plan based the NSS report, though Singapore’s Land Transport Authority has since disclosed that even more of the remaining forest — about 3% of the proposed corridor — will be felled to make way for viaducts connecting the town to a nearby expressway.
(In an email to CNN, the agency said it will later replant the trees in the cleared area and create “suitable temporary wildlife crossings … to provide a safe passage for animals during construction.”)
Yet, even Tengah’s critics have broadly welcomed the eco-town, with the NSS concluding its environmental critique by stating it is still “heartened by this bold plan.”
What these urban design initiatives mean for the rest of Singapore remains to be seen. When Tengah was first revealed in 2016, it was the first new town announced by Singapore’s government in two decades, meaning every other neighborhood was designed long before the era of autonomous vehicles and internet-enabled amenities. Chong readily admitted that “it’s not so easy” to retrofit underground road networks and pneumatic trash chutes in existing towns.
Nevertheless, he struck a positive note when asked what Tengah’s model offers future residential projects.
“We try to bring all the lessons forward — whenever we can and to the best of our ability,” he said. “You look at Tengah and, in a nutshell, you’re seeing the future of what the (government) is trying to build: the future of towns.”
A coalition of more than 50 countries has committed to protect almost a third of the planet by 2030 to halt the destruction of the natural world and slow extinctions of wildlife.
The High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, which includes the UK and countries from six continents, made the pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans before the One Planet summit in Paris on Monday, hosted by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Scientists have said human activities are driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, and agricultural production, mining and pollution are threatening the healthy functioning of life-sustaining ecosystems crucial to human civilisation.
In the announcement, the HAC said protecting at least 30% of the planet for nature by the end of the decade was crucial to preventing mass extinctions of plants and animals, and ensuring the natural production of clean air and water.
The commitment is likely to be the headline target of the “Paris agreement for nature” that will be negotiated at Cop15 in Kunming, China later this year. The HAC said it hoped early commitments from countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Nigeria, Pakistan, Japan and Canada would ensure it formed the basis of the UN agreement.
Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, the executive secretary of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, welcomed the pledge but cautioned: “It is one thing to commit, but quite different to deliver. But when we have committed, we must deliver. And with concerted efforts, we can collectively deliver.”
The announcement at the One Planet summit, which also saw pledges to invest billions of pounds in the Great Green Wall in Africa and the launch of a new sustainable finance charter called the Terra Carta by Prince Charles, was met with scepticism from some campaigners. Greta Thunberg tweeted: “LIVE from #OnePlanetSummit in Paris: Bla bla nature Bla bla important Bla bla ambitious Bla bla green investments…”
As part of the HAC announcement, the UK environment minister Zac Goldsmith said: “We know there is no pathway to tackling climate change that does not involve a massive increase in our efforts to protect and restore nature. So as co-host of the next Climate Cop,the UK is absolutely committed to leading the global fight against biodiversity loss and we are proud to act as co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition.
“We have an enormous opportunity at this year’s biodiversity conference in China to forge an agreement to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. I am hopeful our joint ambition will curb the global decline of the natural environment, so vital to the survival of our planet.”
However, despite support for the target from several countries, many indigenous activists have said that increasing protected areas for nature could result in land grabs and human rights violations. The announcement may also concern some developing countries who are keen for ambitious commitments on finance and sustainable development as part of the Kunming agreement, not just conservation.
Unlike its climate equivalent, the UN Convention on Biological Diversity covers three issues: the sustainable use of nature, sharing benefits from genetic resources, and conservation. The three pillars of the treaty can clash with each other and richer, developed countries have been accused of focusing too much on conservation while ignoring difficult choices on agriculture and providing finance for poorer nations to meet targets.
The HAC, currently co-chaired by France, Costa Rica and the UK, was formed in 2019 following the success of a similar climate body that spurred ambitious international action before the Paris agreement. By promoting action on biodiversity loss, it is hoped early commitments from the HAC will ensure a successful agreement for nature.
Over the last decade, the world has failed to meet a single target to stem the destruction of wildlife and life-sustaining ecosystems.
On Monday, leaders from around the world met in person and virtually at the One Planet summit in Paris to discuss the biodiversity crisis, promoting agroecology and the relationship between human health and nature. Boris Johnson, Angela Merkel and Justin Trudeau addressed the event, which also included statements fromUN secretary general, António Guterres, and the Chinese vice-premier Han Zheng .
The UK government has also committed £3bn of UK international climate finance to supporting nature and biodiversity over the next five years.
Johnson told the event: “We are destroying species and habitat at an absolutely unconscionable rate. Of all the mammals in the world, I think I am right in saying that 96% of mammals are now human being or livestock that human beings rely upon.
“That is, in my view, a disaster. That’s why the UK has pledged to protect 30% of our land surface and marine surface. Of the 11.6bn that we’ve consecrated to climate finance initiatives, we are putting £3bn to protecting nature.”
The funding was welcomed by conservation and environmental organisations, including the RSPB and Greenpeace, but there were questions about the scale of the funding and whether it came at the cost of international aid.
“Increasing funds to protect and enhance nature is critical to help secure success at the global biodiversity conference in China this year. Siphoning off cash from funds already committed to tackling the climate crisis simply isn’t enough,” said Greenpeace UK’s head of politics, Rebecca Newsom.
“This announcement raises concerns that the UK’s shrinking aid budget is being repurposed to pay for nature and biodiversity. As important as these are, the first priority of overseas aid should be the alleviation of poverty,” said Oxfam’s senior policy adviser on Climate Change, Tracy Carty.
This article was amended on 12 January 2020 to better reflect that the High Ambition Coalition (formed 2011) and the High Ambition Coalition for People and Nature (formed 2019) are separate organisations
The end of 2020 marked the moment, under the Paris Agreement’s “ratchet mechanism”, when nations were supposed to formally submit more ambitious commitments for cutting their emissions.
However, just 45 “parties” (44 countries, plus the EU’s 27 member states viewed as one bloc) met this deadline.
After a year disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, nations representing only around 28 per cent of global emissions registered new or updated “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) on the UN’s official registry by the end of the year.
Some big emitters did register their NDCs in time, including the UK and EU. But major absences included the US, India and China.
Informal consultations at COP25 Madrid. Credit: Kiara Worth | IISD/ENB.
Even among the new submissions, many showed no increase in ambition since the first pledges made five years ago, or even backtracked with scaled-back proposals.
Here, Carbon Brief analyses the various new pledges and how they add up. However, one expert tells Carbon Brief that, while there was reason for hope among the new NDCs, the collective plans are still “totally off” what is required to achieve the Paris Agreement’s global warming targets.
Why were new climate pledges expected in 2020?
Every party that signed up to the Paris Agreement has to commit to a target for cutting its share of global emissions, known as its NDC, every five years.
In the run up to the COP21 climate summit in Paris, most nations had submitted intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs), which automatically became their first NDCs unless parties chose to submit updated versions.
A few countries like North Korea and Panama chose to hold off and submit their NDCs after ratifying the Paris Agreement.
According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), 190 parties, including the 27 EU member states, have now submitted first NDCs. A handful, including Iran, Iraq and Turkey have yet to do so.
Most of the pledges to reduce emissions within the NDCs were communicated as percentage reductions from a fixed baseline by a fixed year, although some, notably China and India, based theirs on cuts in “emissions intensity of GDP”. To add to the confusion, nations picked different starting points and target years.
Crucially, the initial round of INDCs was not enough to meet the climate targets set out in Paris, a point acknowledged at the time by world leaders.
Estimates suggest they would set the planet on a course for around 3C of warming, rather than the 2C or stretch target of 1.5C that nations had agreed in Paris in 2015.
Now, five years after the Paris Agreement was adopted, countries are obliged to renew and upgrade their NDCs. This is the first test of the “ratchet mechanism” embedded in the agreement, which seeks to scale up the ambition of pledges over time.
The chart below shows the progress some of the world’s major economies have made in cutting emissions from a baseline of 1990 – which is used by the EU and UK.
The coloured dotted lines indicate a linear trajectory of necessary further cuts to meet their NDC targets for 2030. China and India’s GDP-based NDCs are not shown, but the light grey line indicates the progress China, the UK and the EU must make towards their net-zero targets.
Change in greenhouse gas emissions, per cent, from 1990 for a selection of key economies, with rough pathways to NDC (coloured dotted lines) and net-zero (light grey dotted lines) targets based on a simplified and indicative linear trajectory, not actual projections of future emissions pathways. Historical emissions data includes all greenhouse gases and land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), but only goes as far as 2017, which impacts the trajectory of NDC and net-zero targets. Unlike other parties, the US has not submitted a 2030 NDC yet so its pathway only goes to 2025. China and India do not have NDCs expressed as emissions percentage reductions, so their NDC pathways are not included. The EU’s net-zero trajectory is difficult to see as it follows a similar trajectory to its NDC pathway. Source: Climate Watch. Charts made by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.
This chart, meanwhile, shows the progress some of the world’s major economies have made in cutting emissions from a baseline of 2005, which is used by the US.
Change in greenhouse gas emissions, per cent, from 2005 for a selection of key economies, with rough pathways to NDC (coloured dotted lines) and net-zero (light grey dotted lines) targets based on a simplified and indicative linear trajectory, not actual projections of future emissions pathways. Historical emissions data includes all greenhouse gases and land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), but only goes as far as 2017, which impacts the trajectory of NDC and net-zero targets. Unlike other parties, the US has not submitted a 2030 NDC yet so its pathway only goes to 2025. China and India do not have NDCs expressed as emissions percentage reductions, so their NDC pathways are not included. The EU’s net-zero trajectory is difficult to see as it follows a similar trajectory to its NDC pathway. Source: Climate Watch. Charts made by Carbon Brief using Highcharts.
In line with the Paris Agreement, nations that only set an initial NDC covering the period up to 2025, such as the US, must now produce one that goes to 2030, and those that already contained a 2030 target must “communicate or update” their NDCs.
The agreement also states “the efforts of all parties will represent a progression over time” and will reflect the “highest possible ambition”.
However, as the text does not explicitly require new pledges to be submitted if they already run to 2030, there is room to interpret it as meaning that previous NDCs can be re-communicated. Adopting clearer language on the need for ambition was a contentious topic at COP25 in 2019.
“There is a legal dispute on what is allowed and what is not allowed, Prof Niklas Höhne from Climate Action Tracker (CAT) tells Carbon Brief, adding that nevertheless he sees it clearly:
I would argue that in the last five years, for example, renewables have become much, much cheaper than they were projected five years ago, so the situation is completely different and every country can go back and check whether they can do a little bit more.
Niklas Höhne, founder, Climate Action Tracker
Parties were initially asked in the decision text following the Paris Agreement to inform the UN of their new NDCs nine to twelve months before the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow so that the UNFCCC secretariat could prepare a synthesis report based on their contents.
Just three nations representing around 0.1 per cent of the world’s emissions met this deadline.
This “symbolic” date was ultimately delayed after the Covid-19 pandemic led to the COP’s postponement.
Instead, the UNFCCC announced it would publish an initial version of the NDC report by 28 February 2021, based on the NDCs in its registry as of 31 December 2020. The report will then be updated with any new information closer to COP26.
While some nations expressed concerns about their capacity to assemble new NDCs by the end of the year, a letter written in August 2020 by UNFCCC executive secretary Patricia Espinosa made it clear that the end-of-year deadline was still considered important.
“I strongly encourage Parties to submit their updated or new NDCs in accordance with this timeline,” she wrote.
Which nations have announced new targets?
The table below shows the nations that heeded Espinosa’s advice and made their new announcements by 31 December 2020.
The EU, Russia, Brazil, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Argentina, Mexico, Zambia and the UK are the only economies each contributing around 1 per cent or more of global emissions that have announced new targets.
However, as analysis by CAT indicates, some nations that met the deadline merely restated past commitments or made new ones that did not substantially increase ambition. (See section below.)
Many of the first countries to come forward with updated NDCs were small island states and other nations that are highly exposed to climate impacts, but contribute very little to global emissions. The Marshall Islands, for example, submitted its new NDC almost two years earlier than most other parties.
Also included in the table are nations that have indicated an intention to “enhance ambition or action in new or updated NDCs”, as recorded by the WRI’s Climate Watch resource.
This group contains an additional 82 nations, accounting for around 33per cent of total emissions.
Many of these commitments came from an announcement made at COP25 by 103 countries to “enhance ambition of their NDCs by 2020”.
China, the world’s largest emitter, remains the biggest omission from the table, although its leader Xi Jinping announced at a UN climate ambition summit in December that his nation would aim for carbon neutrality by 2060 and scale up its 2030 NDC in line with this. However, China has yet to formally register its new NDC with the UN.
China’s proposed NDC changes include a cut to the CO2 intensity of its GDP by more than 65per cent from 2005 levels, compared to its earlier target of 60-65per cent. While this marks an increase in ambition, it suggests that – in the short term and depending on assumptions about GDP growth – China’s emissions cuts will be modest. (See Carbon Brief’s analysis of China’s new 2030 pledge.)
Meanwhile, the US does not appear in the table above, although president-elect Joe Biden is expected to set out plans for a new NDC after he has taken office later this month and the US re-joins the Paris Agreement.
Other major emitters that have not come forward with new plans include India, Indonesia, Iran, Canada, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Collectively, these six nations contribute around 17per cent of global emissions.
Do the new pledges reflect an increase in ambition?
Submission of a new NDC does not automatically mean a more ambitious commitment and commentators have pointed out that several of the plans released by large countries fall short of what is required.
At the “climate ambition summit” hosted online last month by the UN, UK and France to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, 45 nations came forward with enhanced NDCs.
According to Taryn Fransen, an international climate change policy expert at WRI, there has been a “mixed bag” so far, with the EU and UK in particular taking a “significant step up”.
She notes that a number of Latin American countries have also raised their ambition, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru.
Prof Niklas Höhne from CAT tells Carbon Brief that, while the situation is “much better” than he would have imagined six months ago, “it is still not sufficient”.
We have several countries that have submitted the same thing or even [gone] backwards, so there’s still a lot to do this year…What’s very clear is that we are not a little bit off we are totally off when you add all the different pledges of countries.
Niklas Höhne,founder, Climate Action Tracker
NDCs from major economies have been analysed by CAT to assess whether or not they represent an increase in ambition from previous commitments.
Lower ambition: Brazil and Mexico
Brazil has been the subject of extensive criticism for producing a new NDC that not only fails to raise ambition, but uses an accounting “trick” to make its initial pledge less ambitious.
The nation says it will cut emissions by 43per cent over the next decade compared to 2005 levels, the same as its previous proposal.
However, methodological changes in the emissions inventory since the first pledge was made mean this is now a considerably higher starting point.
The Climate Observatory, a Brazilian NGO, estimates this would mean an additional 400m tonnes of CO2e (MtCO2e) being released in 2030 compared to the original 2015 plan.
As of 2017, Brazil’s total annual emissions were around 1.4bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2).
The nation has also mentioned a potential 2060 net-zero goal, but said this is conditional on the payment to Brazil of $10bn per year in climate finance by other countries.
In a critique of the government’s plans, WWF says this request comes “despite [Brazil] being one of the 10 largest economies in the world”.
As a result, CAT has downgraded Brazil’s NDC from “insufficient” for meeting Paris goals to “highly insufficient”. President Jair Bolsonaro was also excluded from the recent climate ambition summit due to his nation’s insufficient plans.
Fransen says Mexico has similarly submitted a new pledge, based on a business-as-usual baseline, that is weaker than its original NDC.
“In the updated NDC they have revised those [baseline] projections upwards which of course means their achieving their target will result in higher 2030 emissions than it would have before,” she says.
The NDC has also got rid of a reference to emissions peaking in 2026.
Lacking ambition: Russia and Vietnam
Russia states in its new NDC that it “demonstrates an increasing ambition compared to earlier commitments to limit greenhouse gas emissions”.
Its previous submission from 2019 contained a commitment to cut emissions by between 25-30per cent of 1990 levels by 2030.
The new one pledges to cut emissions by 30per cent. (Russia was one of the last nations to submit a first NDC, having only ratified the Paris Agreement in October 2019.)
But the ambition of this NDC is debatable given Russia’s emissions have already fallen by more than 30per cent since 1990.
Following the end of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the restructuring of the economy, the nation’s emissions dropped dramatically. But, in recent years, its emissions have been growing.
“[Russia] is basically proposing a target that would be met anyway,” says Höhne. He adds that Vietnam is also using a similar strategy.
According to CAT, Vietnam is set to “vastly overachieve its updated NDC”, as the business-as-usual emissions trajectory it is based on has been “hyper-inflated”, meaning no new policies will be required to achieve it.
Same ambition: Australia, Japan and others
Australia has faced criticism for submitting a “new” NDC without a substantial change to the old one. Therefore, it has been deemed “insufficient” by CAT.
While the new NDC states that it represents a “floor on Australia’s ambition” and that the nation “is aiming to overachieve”, energy minister Angus Taylor has said there are no plans to make a more ambitious pledge in the near future.
Other nations that have similarly made no significant changes include Switzerland and Singapore.
Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, having re-submitted their original NDCs with unchanged targets, have all announced plans to reappraise their submissions in 2021 and come forward with stronger pledges.
For the two east Asian nations, this news comes after their governments revealed plans to aim for net-zero emissions by 2050, commitments that will require new shorter term targets as well.
“I think that is a good sign of the Paris Agreement working…governments feel pressured to say ‘OK we need to do more’,” says Höhne.
How much climate finance has been requested?
Every nation that has signed up to the Paris Agreement is expected to cut its emissions, but there is an expectation that poorer nations will be helped by aid – known as “climate finance” – from richer ones.
Financing climate action is, therefore, an important component of many NDCs.
Reflecting the varying levels of detail in the NDC documents, some parties have provided precise figures for their financial requirements, while others are more vague.
The table below shows explicit mentions of international climate finance requests included in the new round of NDCs, as well as plans for domestic funding. (Carbon Brief produced a similar table of requests for international funds in the first round of NDCs in 2015.)
In the latest round, a total of $373bn in international climate financing has so far been requested by developing nations. A large chunk of this is the $236bn quoted by Ethiopia.
However, as Carbon Brief stressed in its 2015 analysis of finance requests, there are important caveats to consider when looking at the total figure. For example, the types of requests can be very varied and often not directly comparable.
Some NDCs mentioned sums of money, but did not specify whether the funds they required would be sourced domestically or internationally.
Many countries that did not include specific numbers made it clear their targets depended on some level of financial support from other countries.
Nations agreed in 2009 that they would provide climate finance of $100bn a year by 2020, primarily through the UN-backed Green Climate Fund (GCF).
The GCF has often struggled to raise enough money from richer nations. The only country that makes a specific reference to providing money to the fund in the new NDCs is Monaco.
More detail on international financial requirements will likely be revealed as more NDCs emerge in the coming months.
Fransen tells Carbon Brief that a trend she has seen with the latest NDCs is that the sums being requested are “much more robust” than the previous round. “Countries have just had a lot more time to build their capacity,” she says.
This story was published with permission from Carbon Brief.
Long seen as a critical emerging market for coal power, South and Southeast Asian countries radically reconsidered their commitment to it last year in the face of new economic realities following the spread of coronavirus.
According to a new analysis from Global Energy Monitor (GEM), four of the region’s largest emerging economies— Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam—may have cancelled nearly 45 gigawatts (GW) of coal power in 2020, equivalent to the total installed capacity of Germany.
Prospects for a revival of coal development plans in 2021 have also been limited by announcements from major coal financiers in South Korea and Japan of new restrictions on coal power investments beyond their borders.
Analysts have for years warned that coal power expansion plans in several countries in South and Southeast Asia risked overcapacity in the sector, wasted capital and asset stranding—not to mention greenhouse gas emissions and environmental costs. The year 2020 may prove to be when the regions’ coal power expansion plans were finally re-evaluated in the face of the pressing need for climate action and the reality of declining low-carbon technology costs.
Falling one by one
Perhaps the most dramatic development in Asia’s energy sector last year was the summer flurry of coal power plant cancellations and postponements. It started in Bangladesh in June when Nasrul Hamid, Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, unexpectedly announced that the government was planning to “review” all but three of the country’s under-development coal plants, capping coal power capacity at 5GW. Suddenly, planned coal plants totalling 23GW were in doubt. By November, Bangladeshi media were reporting that the plan to scrap most of the country’s planned coal was awaiting approval from the prime minister.
A month later, details of Vietnam’s draft Power Development Plan, which is due to come into force next year, became public. The draft plan proposed cancelling seven coal plants and postponing six others until the 2030s, by which point it is highly unlikely they will go ahead. The 13 plants represent almost half of Vietnam’s planned coal power development.
Then, in November, the Philippines’ Department of Energy proposed a moratorium on new coal power plants which, according to analysis by GEM, could lead to 9.6GW of cancellations. And, in December, on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, Pakistan’s Imran Khan announced that the country would not construct any new coal power plants, though the real-world impact of this grandiose announcement has been questioned.
Adding in proposed project cancellations in Indonesia, GEM estimates that the coal power pipeline in South and Southeast Asia’s four major emerging economies may have dropped by as much as 62GW in 2020. That leaves just 25GW under development, an 80 per cent decline from just five years ago. Exact figures for cancelled and remaining plants will depend on how last year’s flurry of announcements is manifested in specific policies.
Source: Global Energy Monitor (GEM)
The financial drought continues
One contributing factor to the wave of coal power cancellations and moratoriums around South and Southeast Asia last year was the decline in finance. Banks faced growing public pressure to identify and manage the climate and biodiversity risks associated with coal power development and respond to the climate crisis by committing resources to renewables. A recent report from Greenpeace Japan estimates that Southeast Asia’s renewable energy market could be worth up to US$205 billion over the next 10 years.
In Japan, 2020 saw banks Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui, and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group announce restrictions on coal power investments. In Korea, state financial institutions Korea Export-Import Bank and KSURE both stepped away from involvement in coal power projects, while Samsung corporation and the state-owned Korea Electric Power Corporation pledged no further investments in overseas coal projects.
The Japanese government also committed “in principle” to limit investments in overseas coal power plants, declaring that such investments would be contingent on the use of ultra-supercritical technology and the host country having a decarbonisation strategy. There have also been strong moves within the Korean parliament this year to ban Korean financing of coal power overseas, with progressive MPs from the ruling Democratic Party proposing related bills on four occasions.
The wave of announcements comes on the back of Singapore’s three major banks announcing an end to coal power financing in 2019. This leaves Chinese banks increasingly the “lender of last resort” to coal power projects around Asia. According to the Global Coal Public Finance Tracker, Chinese banks have provided finance to a total of 53GW worth of under construction or currently operating coal power, far more than the 21GW propped up by the second biggest financier in overseas coal, Japanese banks.
Source: Global coal public finance tracker • Note: The data covers all projects under development since 2013, including currently proposed projects, which have received or are likely to receive public finance.
All eyes on China’s policymakers
But movement may be on the horizon in China too. At the beginning of December, a report released by the BRI International Green Development Coalition and supported by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment detailed how the Chinese government could establish a “classification mechanism” of overseas project types based on their impacts on local pollution, climate change and biodiversity. The mechanism labels coal power and coal mining as “red”, meaning that involvement of Chinese actors in such projects would be off-limits. Eyes are now on policymakers to adopt the report’s suggestions.
The growing number of national pledges to reach carbon net-zero has arguably given impetus toward “greening” the Belt and Road Initiative. Though China’s new 2060 net-zero goal is targeted at the domestic economy, numerous voices are calling for the expansion of the development target to overseas investments.
While these dizzying developments in Asian energy are certainly welcome news, “king coal” is still clinging on in several places. Countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia, despite their large-scale cancellations, are still pursuing the construction of significant quantities of coal power, while Cambodia has announced new coal power projects, backed by Chinese finance and construction. Meanwhile, despite its welcome net-zero announcement, China is still building new coal-fired power plants at an alarming rate at home.
Asia’s journey away from coal will be a long one but in 2020 many countries at least picked up the pace.
The Ocean Cleanup has partnered with Konecranes to series produce Interceptors
This partnership prepares The Ocean Cleanup for global Interceptor scale-up
New design updates improve efficiency for operations and mass production
Two Interceptors with these design changes are being built in tandem, in Malaysia right now
To rapidly address the urgent problem of plastic pollution, we must deploy Interceptors on an industrial scale, but we cannot do this by ourselves. Today, we announced that we are partnering with Konecranes to handle manufacturing and series production of Interceptors in their MHE-Demag facilities in Malaysia – with two in production right now. Over the last year and a half, we have gained valuable insights into the Interceptor technology and, together with Konecranes’ MHE-Demag, we have made updates to the design that improve its operational and manufacturing efficiency.
Interceptors 005 and 006 being manufactured side by side at Konecranes’ MHE-Demag
INTERCEPTOR DESIGN UPDATES
Laying the groundwork for global scaleup, Interceptors 005 and 006 are currently being built simultaneously at Konecranes’ MHE-Demag facility in Klang, Malaysia and are expected to be completed in May 2021. These two Interceptors will be different from the 1st and 2nd generations deployed in Jakarta, Indonesia; Klang, Malaysia; and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Because we have chosen an iterative design path, we continually learn about our technology in real-time and adjust the technology. This process is ongoing so that we are always learning, adapting, and iterating. The 3rd generation is the result of knowledge gained from these deployments to help improve its collection efficiency and ease of production. The key updates to the next Interceptors are:
Conveyor belt: The conveyor belt is now 2.5 meters (1.6x wider). The expanded width allows for a less obstructive flow and better distribution to the dumpsters.
Barge and dumpsters: To adapt to the new conveyor belt width, the barge and the six dumpsters inside the Interceptor are now widened as well, which makes transfer from conveyor to dumpster easier and more effective.
Power and energy system: The new Interceptor design features improved monocrystalline solar cell panels and a smart energy storage system, which is smaller but still meets the 100% solar energy demand required to operate the Interceptor.
Catamaran Structure: This updated version features a new frame and catamaran structure built from the ground up. The modular design is specifically designed to facilitate containerization and swift deployment globally.
Preliminary visual representation of Interceptor front view – 2nd Gen in the back and 3rd Gen in the front.
WHY KONECRANES IS OUR CHOSEN PARTNER
Konecranes is renowned for its market-leading technology and service in material handling and lifting products. Its engineering and design expertise, along with its global service network, will enable them to assemble and install Interceptors around the world. Moving forward, Konecranes will handle Interceptor manufacturing, installation, and maintenance; local partners will oversee operations, and The Ocean Cleanup will continue to act as the technology and best practices provider, lead business development for upcoming Interceptor projects, and further conduct scientific research.
GOING GLOBAL
Our aim is to address the 1000 most polluting rivers around the world to achieve our goal of clean oceans. Because we are a small team, we could not do this alone – and we never planned to. Thanks to partnerships like Konecranes we can benefit from their manufacturing expertise and global footprint while we continue to develop our technology. Interceptors 005 and 006 are expected to be completed in May 2021 with one more in the lineup for LA County.
The Yuchengco Group takes a hard stance against coal power plants, but notes that the shift toward renewable energy will be very challenging.
“No more coal, no more coal. I’ll say that slowly: no more coal!”
Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) president and chief executive officer Eugene Acevedo made it clear that the Yuchengco-led bank will no longer fund coal energy projects, as the Philippines moves to cleaner energy sources.
Acevedo’s statement comes months after the Department of Energy announced that it will no longer accept new applications for greenfield coal power plants.
However, he noted that coal projects that were funded before will be on their balance sheets “for a while,” and admitted that it would be difficult for the country to rely entirely on renewables.
“It’s not to say that it will be all renewables, because the clouds can come, the waves can stop…to create a robust energy grid, there has to be a combination of renewables plus a few power plants that are rapidly ratcheted up…and those plants are usually gas-fired,” Acevedo said in a forum by the Yuchengco Group on Thursday, December 10.
PetroEnergy Resources president and chief executive officer Milagros Reyes added that while the coronavirus pandemic underscored problems with fossil fuels, particularly price volatility, the shift to green energy will remain challenging.
For instance, Reyes said that while funding for coal will be taken out, it will not necessarily go to wind, solar, or geothermal energy projects.
“It’s going to be mostly natural gas, that’s ‘deplete-able.’ But it’s clean. It’s not like coal. So like what Eugene is saying, they’ll probably be funding a lot of the LNG projects,” she said.
“However, and this is a big however, we do not expect immediate change because the fossil fuel and its products still have a big demand, but the demand will eventually scale down especially here in the Philippines.”
PetroEnergy has interests in oil exploration, geothermal, wind, and solar energy.
Reyes also noted that there are various coal-fired power plants under construction now, which will be up and running by as early as 2022.
Some Philippine banks have started to move away from funding coal projects and have set milestones in sustainable finance.
In the case of RCBC, it issued its first green bonds in 2019 amounting to $290 million or around P15 billion. It also raised P8 billion from its first peso-denominated sustainability bonds, and another $300 million in September 2019.
These bond issuances have funded a total of 9,797 green and social projects amounting to more than P56 billion.
RCBC’s sustainable lending portfolio comprised 10% of total loans as of end-September 2020.
When you look at a lush, green, delicious plant, you probably tend to think it comes from a fertile land somewhere in the world. Well, that might no longer be the only option out there. A vertical farm just opened up in an old warehouse without windows in Copenhagen and it expects to produce 1,000 tons of produce per year by 2021, showing that vertical farms really do have a solid future.
Image credit: Nordic Harvest
They won’t see the light of day or have access to soil, but hundreds of tons of lettuce, herbs, and kale (among other produce) will soon be coming out of the vertical farm. The advantage of the vertical farm is that it takes less space than a conventional crop, helping to meet the world’s food demand and producing food locally instead of importing it.
Around 37% of the earth’s landmass is used for agriculture, according to the World Bank. But climate change and conflicts can challenge the availability of land for farming, not to even mention soil erosion — one of the major environmental issues that often fly under the radar. A quarter of the world’s productive lands have already been degraded, according to the World Food Programme, challenging food security.
The project is run by YesHealth Group, a Taiwanese company with a long record developing vertical farming technology, in partnership with Nordic Harvest, a Danish start-up that wants to use technology to make food production more sustainable. YesHealth already runs in Taiwan the largest vertical farm in China.
It’s not actually a brand-new idea, as vertical farms have been around for almost a decade. They first took in Asia and the United States, which has the world’s biggest vertical farm, located in a steel mill in New Jersey and producing two million pounds of produce every year. But the idea is now also catching up in Europe.
“We offer a more sustainable way of producing food year-round, locally, without disturbing nature,” founder of Nordic Harvest, Anders Riemann, told Reuters. “We take some of the food production back into the cities where you can grow in a much smaller land and space-optimized in the height.”
The farm is installed in a 7,000 square meter hall and has 14 shelves of greens stacked up toward the ceiling in aluminum boxes. It’s all automated, with robots used to move the shelves into position and stack the produce. When fully operational, the farm will be hermetically sealed to secure the farming conditions.
Image credit: Nordic Harvest
Water consumption will be between 90% and 95% lower compared to traditional farming. No artificial fertilizers, pesticides, or other toxic chemicals will be used. About 200 tons of produce will be harvested in the first quarter of 2021 but this would reach 1,000 annually when the farm runs at full capacity by end of 2021.
The project also addresses one of the frequent criticism vertical farms have, the fact that they require a vast amount of electricity to provide artificial light — but for Denmark, that won’t be too big of a problem. The farm uses 20,000 specialized LEDs lightbulbs, manufactured by YesHealth, that are powered by renewable energy from Denmark’s extensive wind farms.
“A vertical farm is characterized by not harming the environment by recycling all the water and nutrition or fertilizer,” said Riemann. “In our case, we use 100% energy from windmills which makes us CO2-neutral.”
Denmark reported record-breaking wind power in 2019, covering 47% of the country’s electricity demands for the entire year. Out of the 47%, most came from onshore (29%), although offshore also generated a healthy amount (18%). The country expects to keep expanding renewables as a way to reduce its emissions.
Green hydrogen development advanced further this week after the world’s first pilot project for green hydrogen heating of homes was approved. While proponents of green hydrogen—the low-carbon emission hydrogen made from electrolysis with power from renewables—cheer this world-first trial, the structure of the project’s funding offers a glimpse into what green hydrogen desperately needs to become a feasible solution to emission reductions—solid government support.
Green hydrogen has been the hype of the past year in clean energy technologies. From governments to oil majors, everyone is talking up green hydrogen solutions to cut emissions in sectors where this is more difficult than in electricity production, such as chemicals and ammonia production.
Today, nearly all—or 99.6 percent—of global hydrogen production comes from fossil fuels—coal, oil, or natural gas.
“Although there is a tremendous amount of hype regarding green hydrogen, it barely registers across the full value chain for hydrogen’s uses,” Wood Mackenzie said in a report this year.
The first-ever trial of 100-percent green hydrogen use for home heating and cooking is expected to offer insights into how feasible it could be in replacing natural gas. The trial also shows that for green hydrogen to become mainstream in technologies, not only in media, government support, incentives, co-funding, and collaboration with industry is a must.
This week, the UK and Scottish authorities announced they would fund the world’s first trial of a 100 percent green hydrogen generation, storage, and distribution network to heat 300 homes in Scotland as part of the UK and Scottish ambitions to achieve net-zero emissions within three decades.
The UK’s energy regulator Ofgem on Monday said it was awarding US$24 million (18 million British pounds) to the H100 Fife project in Fife, Scotland, which will see 300 homes heated with and cooking with green hydrogen made from electrolysis from offshore wind power. The project also receives a further investment of US$9.2 million (6.9 million pounds) from the Scottish Government.
“I see this project as a critical step towards understanding our decarbonization options for heat and will deliver a purpose-built end-to-end hydrogen system, so I warmly welcome Ofgem’s investment in the project,” said Scotland’s energy minister Paul Wheelhouse.
Exploring the options for hydrogen production and ways to cut hydrogen costs is one of the key pillars in the UK’s The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, which the government unveiled last month.
Political momentum in support of hydrogen has grown over the past year, but governments need to strongly support hydrogen, especially low-carbon hydrogen, in the near term and include it in long-term policies for emissions reduction, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Hydrogen report this year.
“Low-carbon production capacity remained relatively constant and is still off track with the SDS [Sustainable Development Scenario],” the IEA said, noting that “More efforts are needed to: scale up to reduce costs; replace high-carbon with low-carbon hydrogen in current applications; and expand hydrogen use to new applications.”
Companies are working on developing green hydrogen projects. One of the latest announcements came from Italy’s major Eni, which, together with top utility Enel, plans to produce green hydrogen through electrolyzers powered by renewable energy and located near two of the Eni refineries where green hydrogen appears to be the best decarbonization option.
Offshore wind developer Ørsted and fertilizer producer Yara in October said they were developing a project to replace fossil hydrogen with renewable hydrogen in the production of ammonia in the Netherlands.
“If the required public co-funding is secured and the right regulatory framework is in place, the project could be operational in 2024/2025,” Ørsted said.
Green hydrogen requires a lot of policy support, collaboration, funding, research and development (R&D), and private capital to become an industry.
Green hydrogen costs are set to fall by up to 64 percent by 2040, according to WoodMac research from August.
“Even with a multitude of challenges that await the nascent green hydrogen market, we firmly believe there will be some form of low-carbon hydrogen economy soon,” said Ben Gallagher, Wood Mackenzie Senior Research Analyst.
“Given the degree of explicit policy, corporate and social support that has blossomed in 2020, green hydrogen will successfully scale and realise huge production cost declines,” Gallagher noted.
The Climate Action Tracker group looked at new climate promises from China and other nations, along with the carbon plans of US President-elect Joe Biden.
These commitments would mean the rise in world temperatures could be held to 2.1C by the end of this century.
Previous estimates indicated up to 3C of heating, with disastrous impacts.
But the experts are worried the long-term optimism is not matched by short-term plans to cut CO2.
For more than a decade, researchers from the Climate Action Tracker have kept a close eye on what countries’ collective carbon-cutting pledges mean for our warming world.
After the failed Copenhagen summit in 2009, the group estimated that global temperatures would rise by 3.5C by the end of this century.
Source: Climate Action Tracker Source: BBC
But the creation in 2015 of the Paris climate agreement, which was designed to avoid dangerous warming of the Earth, made a considerable impact. As a result of the international deal, countries slowly started to switch away from fossil fuels.
In September this year, the group concluded that the world was heading for warming of around 2.7C by 2100.
Japan and South Korea have both followed suit, pledging to reach net zero by 2050. South Africa and Canada have also announced their own net zero targets.
The other significant change is the election of Joe Biden in the US.
Source: Climate Action Tracker / Source: BBC
Tackling climate change is a major part of his agenda. He has promised to bring the US to net zero emissions by 2050. That move would reduce global temperatures by 0.1C by 2100.
“We now have north of 50% of global emissions covered by big countries with a zero emissions by mid-century goal,” said Bill Hare from Climate Analytics, who helped lead the Climate Action Tracker analysis.
“When you add all that up, along with what a whole bunch of other countries are doing, then you move the temperature dial from around 2.7C to really quite close to two degrees.”
“It’s still a fair way off from the Paris Agreement target, but it is a really major development,” he told BBC News.
President-elect Joe Biden has selected former US Secretary of State John Kerry to be his climate envoy. Source: REUTERS
Potential difficulties
The CAT researchers say they have taken a fairly conservative approach but they readily acknowledge that their optimistic analysis comes with some major caveats.
The biggest problem as they see it, is that the near-term plans to cut carbon by 2030 are just not up to the job.
“Countries have not yet adjusted their short-term actions to be on a pathway towards the long-term target,” said Niklas Höhne, from the NewClimate Institute, who also works on the Climate Action Tracker.
“Long-term targets are easier, they are far away. But short-term actions are happening right now and they affect citizens, they affect voters. And that’s why this is much more difficult,” he told BBC News.
Politicians have been under pressure to act on climate change from protestors, including Greta Thunberg. Source: REUTERS
The countries that have signed up to the Paris agreement are expected to lodge new carbon-cutting plans for 2030 by the end of this year.
It’s expected that a number will do so, including the UK and the EU.
But there are several countries who are still reluctant to set goals, and many poorer nations are still looking to invest in coal.
“There are countries that still remain bad actors, including Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Australia, Russia, and a few others,” said Bill Hare.
“And we also have a pipeline of coal plants in the region where I’m working now in Asia. It has not collapsed, it has not gone away, so yes, there’s much to be concerned about. And there’s much that can go wrong.”
A hydrogen-powered train – the green form of the gas could help decarbonise transport
What about the response to Covid-19?
According to observers, the response of countries to the Covid crisis is a huge opportunity to focus their short-term spending on renewable energy and increased decarbonisation.
“The pandemic opened a window to not only get countries to outline their long-term goal, but to actually move onto the right path so that they can actually achieve the long term goal,” said Dr Maisa Rojas, who is the director of the Center for Climate and Resilience Research at the University of Chile in Santiago.
“Are we going to harness that opportunity? My impression is that many, including the EU, are harnessing it.”
