2013

Record temperatures, a downer in Doha, rising coal use, and falling investment in renewable energy: 2012 was not a banner year for progress on climate change. But as we enter 2013, I’m (very cautiously) optimistic about efforts outside the UNFCCC negotiating track and renewed attention from US politicians.

Michele de Nevers

2012: A Very Hot Year

2012 was the hottest year ever recorded in the US and the 10th warmest year on record globally. There were severe droughts in the US, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Brazil while western and central Africa flooded. In Australia, 2012 temperatures rose so high that the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s weather forecasting chart deployed new colors – deep purple and pink. Temperatures over the next few decades are only expected to get hotter and extreme weather more likely.

What Will Happen Post-Doha?

There was incremental progress in fleshing out the Durban Platform during the late November UN climate talks in Doha, Qatar. The Doha Platform extended the Kyoto Protocol until 2020 but Kyoto's second round doesn’t cover much in the way of global emissions. Little headway leaves me questioning  the world’s ability to meet the Copenhagen goal of containing climate change to 2 degrees Celsius—or perhaps we’ve already failed.

The Doha Gateway initiated a work program to compensate poorer countries for the “loss and damage” suffered from climate change. It’s not a legal obligation on historical emitters, but CGD President Nancy Birdsall and I analyze how that could be the next step. The REDD+ program lost momentum in Doha. But this may not be all bad as some experts see a chance to bring agriculture and other land use changes into the Durban Platform. As for climate finance, the Green Climate Fund inches ahead. Questions around operations and how to mobilize resources remain unanswered, following setbacks at a January meeting.

As attention shifts to efforts outside the official UNFCCC negotiating track, a group of 16 middle-income countries is working with the World Bank to develop new market instruments and market solutions to reduce emissions in the Partnership for Market Readiness. Arvind Subramanian and Aaditya Matoo propose an entirely new approach to global cooperation on climate change in Greenprint. Nancy Birdsall and Lawrence MacDonald propose a new climate institution that can provide nonfinancial services for climate management, a bit like the World Bank’s research and data activities for poverty reduction and IMF surveillance of its members’ macroeconomic health.

Rising Coal Use; Falling Clean Energy Investment

The IEA’s 2012 Energy Outlook points to a resurgence of oil and gas production in the US and growing coal use in China (almost as much as the rest of the world combined in 2011). With fossil fuels projected to be the dominant source of energy for decades, efforts to develop and deploy affordable carbon capture and storage technologies will be crucial.

A new report on clean energy from Blooomberg New Energy Finance finds that clean energy investment declined 11% in 2012, resulting from policy uncertainty, the ongoing European fiscal crisis, and continuing sharp falls in solar and wind technology prices.

Hope in the US

President Obama’s inaugural address pledge to “respond to the threat of climate change” left me cautiously hopeful (an unusual feeling for someone working on climate change). And who knows, perhaps this is the first time a task force in DC will accomplish something. With or without Congress, the President has room to act. Here’s what I want to hear from him in his State of the Union on February 12. Climate action advocates will be pushing him to use the full extent of his executive powers during a planned February 17, Forward on Climate rally at the White House.