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COAL SURVIVES GLASGOW: Ahead of the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, host Britain announced one of its goals of the conference was to consign coal to history.
But India and China had other ideas, staging an intervention just before a final agreement was adopted at the close of COP26 over the weekend by weakening an attempt to “phase-out” the use of unabated coal power to a pledge to “phase-down” use of the dirtiest fossil fuel.
Coal supplies over one-third of global electricity generation and is set to have a role for decades to come in developing countries, thanks to proposed new coal plants in China, and, to a lesser extent, India.
The stand to keep coal around signals that reducing coal use to meet the goals of the Paris agreement is no guarantee, and the problem is not just China and India.
Despite progress in rich countries weaning off coal due to market forces, the fuel still provides more than 20% of U.S. electricity, while countries like Germany are burning a lot of coal to make up for shortfalls in other energy sources.
It’s worth noting the U.S. also declined to sign on to a pledge made by more than 40 countries committing to a national coal phase-out, at least partially because it sought to not offend Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a key vote for President Joe Biden’s domestic climate agenda.
“The U.S., India, and China all have strong pro-coal interests, and the national governments of all these countries seem keen to maintain a bit of ‘strategic ambiguity’ over the specific implications of their climate targets for the coal industry,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, lead analyst at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
Why it still could be considered a significant step: Nat Keohane, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, said the coal commitment is a “huge step forward” considering, believe it or not, it’s the first nod in a UN climate agreement to the need to reduce fossil fuel consumption.
“It reflects the consensus of where we are. It’s not like there is an operational difference if they said ‘phase out’ versus ‘phase down,’” he told Josh.
What China and India are planning: China has set a target to start reducing its coal consumption in 2025, and aims to have non-fossil fuel energy sources exceed 80% of its total mix by 2060. Myllyvirta told Josh that the scenarios that Chinese researchers have published on meeting its 2060 carbon neutrality target leave a few percent of the current coal power capacity operating “unabated,” meaning without carbon capture and storage.
“This means that the CO2 emissions of those power plants must be offset by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere, which makes no sense at all economically, but avoids saying that the carbon neutrality target means a complete coal phase-out,” he said.
For India, meanwhile, meeting its target of adding 500 gigawatts of clean electricity would likely mean it has to start decreasing coal consumption “well before” 2030, Myllyvirta said.
George David Banks, former international energy adviser in the Trump administration, told Josh that meeting the less aggressive Paris temperature goal of 2 degrees wouldn’t necessarily require India to shut down all of its unabated coal.
“While India would likely argue against unabated coal in the developed world, it would point out that the science doesn’t suggest the necessary shutdown of all Indian coal,” Banks said.
Pressure on developed countries: India, which committed in Glasgow to reach carbon-neutrality by 2070, said that it would hinge on receiving at least $1 trillion in international financing from wealthy countries.
That’s orders of magnitude more than what a group of rich countries, including the U.S., pledged in a landmark aid package announced at COP26 agreeing to mobilize $8.5 billion over the next three to five years to help South Africa, another top coal user, quit consuming the fuel.
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SO, WAS COP26 A SUCCESS?: Pledges made during the climate summit meaningfully closed the gap of satisfying the most ambitious goal of the Paris agreement to hold warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, a threshold that, if breached, would bring the worst consequences of climate change.
“That was what COP26 was all about,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, Democrat of California, in an interview with Josh after he returned from Glasgow, for the next episode of the “Plugged In” podcast coming out tomorrow. “It wasn’t about solving the climate crisis. It was about keeping 1.5 degrees in reach. We have to reset the trajectory.”
The pledges that governments made to cut emissions between now and 2030 would put the world on pace to warm by roughly 2.4 degrees Celsius this century, according to Climate Action Tracker, a research group. The U.N. itself had a more optimistic take, projecting that new national emissions pledges announced before and during COP26, if enacted, could limit the range of global warming to between 1.9 and 2.1 degrees Celsius.
To put that progress into perspective, in 2014, before the Paris agreement was adopted, the world was heading towards close to 4 degrees Celsius of warming.
What comes next: The final agreement speeds up the timeline for improvements by requesting countries to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets to “align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal” by the end of next year, instead of reporting back every five years, as the Paris agreement called for.
Until the next check-in, the focus turns to countries’ implementing policies to achieve their targets.
“We can’t sit on our laurels and say, ‘we’ve done all these pledges, that’s great,’” Keohane told Josh. “We need to put much more focus on implementation and delivery of those targets.”
TIME TO CELEBRATE BBF: Expect Biden to tout the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill as a win for the climate when he signs the bill at a White House ceremony this afternoon.
The bill acts as a precursor to Democrats’ larger climate and social spending bill, which could get a House vote this week, by providing more than $62 billion to support clean energy, mostly by funding a host of demonstration projects for next-generation technologies such as long-duration energy storage, advanced nuclear, and direct air capture.
The legislation also could crack into emissions sooner by creating a program to combat methane leaks from “orphan” oil and gas wells and providing subsidies to existing nuclear plants at economic risk of closing.
Biden is expected to be joined by some Republicans in celebrating the bill’s signing, including Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — who championed climate resilience provisions, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rob Portman of Ohio, along with Reps. Tom Reed of New York and Don Young of Alaska.
BIDEN-XI SUMMIT AGENDA: Biden hopes to set clear rules of engagement between the world’s two most powerful countries when he participates in a virtual meeting with a newly empowered Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Washington Examiner’s Naomi Lim reports.
The U.S. aim of this afternoon’s meeting, the pair’s first face-to-face encounter since Biden became president, is not geared toward addressing contentious topics such as the supply chain crisis or the fate of former President Donald Trump‘s trade war with China, but rather to “avoid miscalculation or misunderstanding” while “bounding the competition with common-sense guardrails,” according to a senior administration official.
Their meeting comes after the U.S. and China reached an agreement during COP26 to collaborate on curbing climate change by enhancing action reducing emissions this decade.
Ahead of the meeting, Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a call with his Chinese counterpart stressed the “importance of taking measures to ensure global energy supply and price volatility do not imperil global economic recovery.”
SCHUMER LOBBIES FOR SPR RELEASE: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer added his voice to a chorus of Democrats calling on the Biden administration to open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to high gas prices.
“Let’s get the price of gas down right now. And this will do it,” Schumer said in a press conference over the weekend.
A group of Senate Democrats, mostly from states in the northeast, which is seeing among the highest gas prices on average, wrote Biden last week and asked him to consider opening the SPR and imposing a ban on U.S. crude oil exports.
Judging by the responses of some industry groups and analysts, tapping the SPR seems to be the more likely route, but the administration has yet to act since Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm foreshadowed an announcement last Monday.
BLM TO CONSIDER 20-YEAR LEASING BAN NEAR CHACO CANYON: The Biden administration will move toward ending the issuance of new oil and gas leases on federal lands within a 10-mile radius of New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
Biden announced the plan during the Tribal Nations Summit today, making for another in a series of moves targeting resource extraction and transportation on or near federal and tribal lands.
SHELL ON THE MOVE: The board governing Royal Dutch Shell wants to move the oil giant’s tax residence from the Netherlands to the U.K. in an attempt to simplify its structure and make things easier for investors.
The company’s plan, which is subject to shareholder approval, is to amend its share structure to establish a single line of shares. The single line is “simpler for investors to understand and value,” Shell said.
Chair Andrew Mackenzie also said the move would put the company in a better position to reduce its carbon footprint in conjunction with its target of cutting absolute emissions by 50% of 2016 levels by 2030.
AND…CALIFORNIA’S TOP-DOLLAR GAS: The average price of gasoline in the state hit a record $4.682 per gallon today, breaking through the record $4.671 per-gallon average price gas reached yesterday.
The Rundown
Wall Street Journal Rising natural-gas prices pose hurdles for methane tax
Bloomberg Saudis, UAE signal OPEC+ will resist U.S. calls for more oil
Reuters As autos go electric, Toyota chases hydrogen dream
Los Angeles Times Drilling for ‘white gold’ is happening right now at the Salton Sea
Calendar
TUESDAY | NOV. 16
10:00 a.m. 366 Dirksen. The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will hold a hearing to examine global energy price trends, preceded by a business meeting held to consider the nominations of Laura Daniel-Davis to be an Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management and Sara Bronin to be Chairman of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
10 a.m. The House Natural Resource Committee’s Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources will host a remote oversight hearing titled, “Plugging in Public Lands: Transmission Infrastructure for Renewable Energy.”
10:30 a.m. Rayburn 2123. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a joint subcommittee hearing entitled “Securing America’s Future: Supply Chain Solutions for a Clean Energy Economy.”
THURSDAY | NOV. 18
10:00 a.m. House Natural Resources Committee Republicans will host a forum entitled “Supporting African Communities: Highlighting International Conservation Efforts Worldwide.”
