At one of the final side events by the Turkish industry and business association, TÜSİAD, the talk is at first all about carbon. But carbon credits are not going to be a big driver of emission reductions in Turkey.
Turkey is growing fast, and energy demand is growing even faster as the middle class expands; but 70% of primary energy supply is dependent on fossil fuel imports, largely from sometimes capricious Russia. These fuel imports are responsible for the bulk of Turkey's sizeable current account deficit.
Turkey happens to have enormous solar resources, more than Spain, and good geothermal and wind resources. Shifting to renewables looks like a good opportunity to reduce the current account deficit, remove the geopolitical risk they face with energy dependency on Russia - and reduce emissions at the same time.
The country's climate change plan does have the ambition of doubling renewable energy over the next 8 years - but this is based more on hydro, with more modest ambitions for other renewables. Hydro is controversial in Turkey because of local environmentalist resistance to what are often poorly planned projects; and because available rainfall is expected to significantly decline under climate change.
Mithat Rende, Director-General of Multilateral Economic Affairs, Energy and Environment, in Turkey's Foreign Affairs Department, agreed with all the above. But then he went on to say that Turkey is looking more to the possibility of offshore gas (they're convinced some of that new Cyprus gas stretches into Turkish waters), shale gas and coal. "We can't just leave our 12 billion tonnes of coal in the ground" says Mithat.
You have to admit, he had cojones saying that at a climate change conference.
Unfortunately his comments seemed to betray the Turkish Government's poor understanding of the prize under their eyes - a chance to massively exploit solar and other renewables and become a green industrial centre for the region.
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Twitterers abound at the conference, including from negotiators leaking developments. Examples: @rjtklein, @HelenClarkUNDP, @pwatkinson, @cdoebbler, @PwCclimateready, @CHedegaardEU, @CFigueres. A Venezuelan negotiator is said to be one of the most prolific, but I haven't found her Spanish language account yet.
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At a Forum yesterday who should stand up and walk past my seat but the barking mad Christopher "Lord" Monckton. Soon afterward he was debadged and escorted out of the conference for "impersonating a delegate from Myanmar and violating the UNFCCC code of conduct". He's really just a comedy act.
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One of our supporters at the Climate Bonds Initiative has been Aviva Investors; insurers, financially exposed as they are to the greater weather volatility of severe climate change, have a vested interest in seeing it addressed.
Interestingly, according to Responsible Investor, this week Aviva (£260bn funds under management) tied 5% of investment desk heads’ salaries to ESG integration. That will help ensure climate change is taken into account. Full marks to Steve Waygood, Chief Responsible Investment Officer, and CEO Paul Abberley!
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Amazing fact of the day: institutional investors now control up to 80% of equity in major markets. The figure is 73% in the US. See Ronald Gilson and Jeffrey Gordon, “Capital Markets, Efficient Risk Bearing and Corporate Governance: The Agency Costs of Agency Capitalism” (2012).
