Copenhagen: time for clarity

Today, leading UK and international companies will present a communiqué endorsed by more than 850 companies to Prime Minister Gordon Brown, setting out the business case for a strong and effective UN climate framework. The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, which includes John Lewis, Shell, Tesco, Kingfisher, Vodafone, Unilever and Lloyds Banking Group, are backing the Prime Minister in the push for a deal at Copenhagen that can contribute to sustainable growth, jobs and prosperity.

Truett Tate, group executive director of Lloyds Banking Group, puts it bluntly: "It is hard to imagine that there is a single corporate or business customer that won’t experience the impact of climate change. For some it will be about increased risks but for others it will be the increased opportunities from new markets. However, for most it will be a combination of the two. An effective global agreement in Copenhagen is critical to give business the certainty and frameworks that are needed to boost global investment and speed us towards a low carbon economy."

The question is, can politicians be brave, decisive and forward-thinking enough to set the world on a path that will avert environmental disaster and allow for sustainable growth?

The UN has already admitted that time has run out for a legally binding agreement in Copenhagen. The ‘COP15 agreement’ was to replace The Kyoto Protocol’s binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which come to an end in 2012. Now the aim is a ‘political agreement’ in December to be transformed into a treaty as soon as possible after the conference – thought to be around June 2010 according to UN’s top climate negotiator, Yvo de Boer.

For some, this in itself is a disaster. If negotiations are being deferred already, more time is being lost which we just don’t have to play with. Procrastination is also the death knell for investment and change in business, which needs firm policy commitments in order to make decisions.

Speaking at this week’s Smart Energy Conference in London, Ben Earl, advisor for CSR and Climate Change at B&Q, said: “The Copenhagen Summit is our last chance to hold the earth to the two degree warming level that is imperative. The problem is the scale we have to move at when we have competition between businesses. We need clear Government direction. Copenhagen needs to be very clear. The talks must not go the same way as the Doha trade talks, which just went on and on for years and never reached agreement.”

Once again, say many activists, climate analysts and business leaders alike, the US is dragging the world behind it, unable to step up to the bar and commit to the amount of emissions reductions that are necessary for irreversible climate change to be averted, for fear of losing support of US voters and corporations. Even if other countries reduce their emissions dramatically, without the world's largest polluter taking on a significant reduction in its emissions, the world’s targets cannot be met.

For others, President Obama has made a shrewd political move, doing what he can by being involved in the talks, pledging to cut US emissions in absolute terms by at least 17 per cent below 2005 levels, but not making the same mistake as President Clinton did with the 1997 Kyoto agreement and committing to something before he’d got it through the Senate.

The declaration by Obama, limited as it is, set a domino effect in motion, prompting the all-important, most rapidly growing developing countries, China and India, to follow suit and set carbon targets too. China set the pace with a promise of 40-45 per cent cuts in carbon intensity – the amount of CO2 emitted per unit of GDP – by 2020. India followed this week by promising a 24 per cent cut.

Despite frustrations, there is still positivity in the air amongst the green and mainstream UK business sectors. Steve Howard, ceo of The Climate Group, an independent, international non-profit organisation bringing governments and business together, feels that Copenhagen can already be defined as a success. “COP15 is designed to provide an international framework and galvanise countries into action and it has – there’s been an incredible ‘goldrush’ style rush in the last few months.” He reels off the countries that have made announcements: Japan, Australia, Russia, Korea, Brazil and Indonesia. The Maldives is going carbon neutral, the EU has committed to 20 per cent reductions or 30 per cent if there’s an international deal. “This now means that almost all major economies now have something concrete on the table as they enter the final stage of negotiations. Everyone wants to do a deal in Copenhagen. If we’d have had this conference two or three years ago under Bush what would have been the possible outcome?”

However, Howard is not unrealistic in his optimism. He points out that while undoubtedly a major step forward, the current package of pledges still leaves us short of where we need to be in 2020, some 5 gigatonnes of CO2 above an emissions level that gives us a reasonable chance of keeping the global temperature increase below two degrees, the goal agreed by the leaders of all the world’s major economies earlier this year.

The task of the remaining days of negotiations therefore is to take the renewed momentum that has been generated by these announcements and use it to encourage countries to ‘up their game’ and raise the level of ambition for both 2020 and beyond. For example, these new commitments should make it possible for European leaders to follow Commissioner Dimas’ recent call for the EU to move to an unconditional 30 per cent reduction target for 2020.

“The biggest danger is that governments think they can do one thing rather than another,” says Paul Thompson, policy analyst at Renewable Energy Association. “The fact that the EU has said it will increase its targets of emissions reductions from 20 to 30 per cent if there is a good deal at Copenhagen is very useful as it makes it impossible for governments to argue that they can do one thing and not another – such as nuclear not renewables, or energy efficiency not renewables – that would be very dangerous. But upping the mid-term targets makes it pretty much impossible to think like that any more.”

That we are facing an imminent energy crisis is not in any doubt among those who are involved in the research. Jeremy Leggett, ceo of Solar Century, speaks forcefully about an impending energy crisis within the next five years because of the fact that we will have reached ‘peak oil’ – the point at which the depletion of existing reserves can no longer be replaced by additions of new flow capacity. “We really are in a battle of ideas at the moment and we have to be very canny and forthright. We can’t mince words – these are life and death issues. We need to confront it bravely. Renewables will be big business on our watch.”

Hard hitting straight talk is the name of the game now. Speaking in a tone that was once the preserve of hardened environmental campaigners, senior business people and policy makers are lining up to call each other to action. “We have the most important decade ahead,” says Nicky Gavron, deputy chair of the London Assembly. “The tipping point is 2016, therefore governments will have to face the same type of challenges as World War II. I think we are in 1939 now. We need to commit the same human and technical resources as during the war – we need proactive legislation, a lot of lobbying and policy changes that put local authorities in the driving seat.”

The good news to all this, is that such a breathtakingly massive surge in environmental technology will create jobs and could be an immensely positive economic force for good.

Speaking last week during his 'Road To Copenhagen' roadshow, Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change gave his backing for a strategy of zero carbon growth which would allow the UK to continue to prosper, create jobs, and maintain its climate change commitments.

On the roadshow, Miliband said: “A Labour Party member said to me “Martin Luther King didn’t say I have a nightmare, he said I have a dream”, and you’ve got to present the positive case around the jobs, the energy security, how we can make our world fairer.”

The immensity of the job at Copenhagen is overwhelming: 192 countries, 80 world leaders, more than 200 government ministers, 1000s of civil servants, lobbyists and NGOs, all with different requirements for their economies, environments, businesses and populations – and they are all supposed to come to a unanimous agreement in a few days. The pressure is certainly on.

But as Miliband points out: “The great thing now is that nobody wants to be blamed for Copenhagen going wrong. And that is a good position for us to be in.” 

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