Big news: India is apparently OK with the Green Climate Fund being used to guarantee loans for climate finance – exactly what we’ve been pushing hard for at Climate Bonds. India’s lead climate negotiator Mira Mehrishi said it “would be extremely welcome because we are always looking to leverage money that’s available”.
She even said that India may consider agreeing to rules set down by the fund! Expect that to include removing remaining fossil fuel subsidies.
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At an OECD Roundtable, Torben Møger Pedersen, CEO of $16bn PensionDanmark: "A or AA rated Climate Bonds, made up for example of securitized renewable energy or energy efficiency loans and supported by multinational development banks would be very attractive to a pension fund like ours".
We love Torben!
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On stage as I write: EIB VP Simon Brooks to UK Minister for Climate Change, Greg Barker: "We'd be very happy if our shareholder countries wanted us to push up our lending to renewables and energy efficiency above the 25% we already target." Nice ask.
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Meanwhile, in the UK the Government, unnerved by the amount of coal-powered generation capacity that has to be closed down in the next few years under EU pollution rules, has decided on a gas gas gas budget. Apart from importing Qatari gas, they are hoping that shale gas deposits in the UK will give them cheap supply in coming years - buried deep in yesterday's budget papers is the assumption that gas prices will fall by 20% up to 2015-16.
So they’ve set up an “Office for Unconventional Gas and Oil” specifically to push through shale gas approvals.
Unfortunately, David Kennedy, CEO of the government's advisory Climate Change Committee, has warned the gas strategy is incompatible with meeting the UK’s long-term carbon budgets.
“Early decarbonization of the power sector should be plan A—and the dash for gas Plan Z.” He added: “Including these very different investment paths in the strategy exacerbates mixed signals already given by the government and is damaging for the sector's investment climate.”
And that’s before the science on methane leakage from fracking is settled – methane is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, so even a little leakage blows apart the emissions saving argument.
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A year ago in Durban I reported South African Planning Minister Trevor Manuel saying “The ravages of climate change are being felt in those parts of the world that happen to be poorest .... The number of severe weather events in place like the Philippines has increased dramatically. Every time their infrastructure gets washed away they have to rebuild. That ends up impoverishing the global Philippino population. While this happens we are debating punctuation in the Kyoto negotiations.”
This morning on TV was a report of Cyclone Bopha in Mindanao - 400 people killed, apparently the strongest cyclone they've ever experienced. And, unfortunately, warming seas mean they are going to get even stronger.
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The famous Bianca Jagger is in Doha, tweeting (@biancajagger): “RT @wbclimatechange: @WorldBank report: #ClimateChangeThreat in #Arab countries, how they can reduce impact: http://ow.ly/1PYUhj #COP18”
And yes, she’s right, the World Bank has just released a great report saying the Middle East will be especially hard hit by climate change, with less rainfall, more recording-breaking temperatures and rising sea levels.
World Bank VP Rachel Kyte had a good line at the Doha press conference: “we will have to build fridges to live in the oven".
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Amazing fact of the day: the China Development Bank has $1 trillion under management!
Supported by the Bank, China built 17 GWh of wind last year (biggest in the world), 3 GWh of solar - and 50GWh of coal power. Yep, even though renewables are growing amazingly fast, coal is still booming. We need the CDB to shift that brown money to green.
