Collective and fast action: the road to COP26
The first edition of the EU Sustainable Investment Summit counted with two special guests for the closing session: Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, responsible for the Green Deal, Frans Timmermans and U.S Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. Just arrived from the Pre-COP meeting in Milan, they both agreed that progress is being made, but that there is still real distance to travel that will require collective efforts and faster action.
To get to climate neutrality by 2050 and to keep within the Paris Agreement, both foresee that the biggest challenge is getting the major emitters to do more.
“We need countries using the next 10 years, which scientist have told us are the key to reducing 45% of emissions, to do their proportion of mitigation,” said Kerry, who acknowledged that there is still a critical mass of nations that have to push harder.
For Executive Vice-President Timmermans “if we don’t pull together, things will get out of control and everyone will suffer; our children will be waging war over food and water.”
They both referred to China, the largest emitter of the world -accounting for 28% of global emissions-, to whom they urged to come forward with more ambition.
According to the Executive Vice-President of the European Commission, China can seal the deal. “In Paris China played a crucial role; I don’t see why it cannot succeed in Glasgow as well,” he said. “China has to decide whether it wants to be counted as a genuine leader in this topic and as a responsible nation with respect to global efforts,” added Kerry.
The U.S Special Presidential Envoy for Climate praised the EU for the ambition and scale of its Green Deal, and explained that the United States has its own roadmap to reduce emissions over 50% in 10 years. By 2035, the US will have a carbon free power sector and will only have electric cars, he announced. In addition, he said, the six biggest US banks have announced that over the next 10 years they will invest 4.16 trillion dollars as a floor in the climate sector.
The opportunities of investing in a new green economy
“It is far more expensive to manage the future if we don’t invest now,” indicated Kerry, who explained that the world is already spending hundreds of billions of dollars just cleaning up after storms and floods and with subsidies to fossil fuels. “We have 2.5 trillion dollars of subsidies that are going into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement was put into effect. It is a definition of insanity. We have to start turning this around,” he pressed.
Timmermans urged the global financial architecture to invest in the new economy. “It will create an unbelievable amount of jobs, more return on invest, greater stability in the global market place, better supply chains, better quality of health and better security, as well as making people a lot of money,” emphasised Kerry.
A battle against time
In meeting the climate change objectives, time is the deal breaker. “The problem is not only the volume of money we will be needing, the problem is if it can be mobilised at the pace that we need it,” said Timmermans. New technologies have to be discovered and scaled-up much more rapidly, renewables have to be deployed faster, and more money has to be quickly fuelled into chasing green hydrogen and building lithium-ion battery storage.
“I am convinced the world will come to a low carbon or no carbon economy at some point in time; the challenge is, will we do it in time to avoid the worst consequences of climate crisis? It is a race against time,” concluded Kerry.