Climate Change & Climate Action - Atlantic Council

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

Africa Climate Change & Climate Action

Former staff

Willow Fortunoff

Americas Caribbean

EnergySource Aug 8, 2022

The Inflation Reduction Act places a big bet on alternative mineral supply chains

By Reed Blakemore, Paddy Ryan

The Inflation Reduction Act’s consumer electric vehicle tax credit will create strong demand for alternative minerals, sourced and processed outside of existing supply chains. The ability for these alternative supplies to meaningfully diversify mineral value chains hinges on further investment and policymaking effort.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

EnergySource May 6, 2022

Colombia can lead the energy transition in Latin America

By Juan Gomez

Colombia’s geography gives it a chance to take a leadership role in Latin America’s energy transition. But to do so, Colombian leaders will first need to address indigenous concerns, remove barriers to investment, and fix long-standing mismanagement issues.

Colombia Energy & Environment

EnergySource Aug 10, 2022

Does the Inflation Reduction Act take the right approach to shoring up clean energy supply chains?

By William Tobin, Daniel Helmeci, and Selin Kumbaraci

The IRA houses two distinct approaches to building up domestic and friendly clean energy supply chains. The approach based on incentives is likely to be more effective than the one based on penalties.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The Global Energy Center develops and promotes pragmatic and nonpartisan policy solutions designed to advance global energy security, enhance economic opportunity, and accelerate pathways to net-zero emissions.

The post How cities can drive the energy transition in the Western Hemisphere appeared first on Atlantic Council.

South Asia’s climate challenges are transnational. Its climate solutions must be, too.

Ahsan Butt — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 20:08:25 +0000

This northern summer has highlighted the transnational nature of the climate challenge. Wildfires in Canada have rendered air in the United States unbreathable, while heatwaves have killed citizens on both sides of the Rio Grande. South Asia is no stranger to such phenomena: Cyclone Biparjoy was, at one point, forecast to almost perfectly bisect Indian and Pakistani territory, albeit lands that are generally sparsely populated.

By luck or providence—even secular Karachiites, half-jokingly, repeatedly invoked the spirit of Abdullah Shah Ghazi in the week before the cyclone was to hit—Pakistan was spared the worst of Biparjoy. And while India was not so lucky as to avoid it completely, the damage it meted out was considerably less intense than initially predicted.

The cyclone highlighted the negligible level of cooperation between the Indian and Pakistani governments on climate issues. Despite its geographic trajectory, the days before the cyclone made landfall saw no communication, collaboration, or coordination between Islamabad and New Delhi, or even among the state governments most likely to be affected—Sindh and Gujarat. And while it is notable that Pakistan used data from the Indian Meteorological Department, which is better equipped than Pakistan’s, neither side acknowledged this help. More importantly, had the cyclone hit more densely populated border areas, each country would have handled its own disaster response.

This siloed strategy for dealing with Biparjoy is emblematic; the lack of a joint approach to climate disaster management reflects a wider lack of climate cooperation across South Asia, whose two billion people share plenty of problems but few solutions. Governments and officials in the region almost never talk about floods and droughts, nor heat plans for cities, nor data on river flow and glacial melt, nor farming techniques. Notwithstanding limited efforts by multilateral organizations such as the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development or the World Bank (through its One South Asia program), it is not controversial to claim that South Asia features the least amount of transnational climate cooperation of any region in the world, a travesty of epic proportions when one considers the region’s vulnerability to climate change.

The reason South Asia lags well behind other regions in transnational climate cooperation is simple: the geopolitical strife between India and Pakistan. In an alternate universe, where the pair had a normal, productive relationship, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation would be the venue for tackling the species-threatening challenge of climate change. Instead, the organization is a moribund joke, not even managing to hold a meeting in almost a decade.

In the same alternate universe, there would be high-level delegations from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh regarding the water cycle and changes in the monsoon, common air sheds that trap heat and pollution, negotiations over the next generation of water treaties, crop burning and air pollution, trade in electric vehicles, and, potentially, the construction of a region-wide renewable energy grid. Instead, in the real world, even Track II meetings—where information, ideas, and conversations were once exchanged by activists, journalists, and experts—have, since 2018, ground to a halt.

Above this structural baseline of regional connectivity, or lack thereof, Pakistan suffers disproportionately. India’s preponderant geopolitical position vis-à-vis Pakistan, especially economically and diplomatically, and its stated mission to isolate Islamabad, (which even manifests in India’s cricket team refusing to visit Pakistan for international tournaments), leaves Pakistan worse off than the typical South Asian country when it comes to tapping into regional networks of climate cooperation. In interviews I conducted in Pakistan this summer, some environmental activists allege that the country tends to be excluded from even multilateral, technocratic ventures run by outside actors such as the World Bank or the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and that Pakistan is suffering a “blackout of sorts.” This is before one even considers bi- or trilateral climate cooperation between national governments.

One illustration of Pakistan’s isolation is the electricity deal poised to be struck between India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. The agreement will allow India’s neighbors to trade surpluses in energy production to each other through India’s grid. This is a landmark achievement that, once formalized, has a great deal of potential to alleviate energy anxiety and promote clean energy throughout the region. But Pakistan is conspicuously absent from these discussions, which feature not just the three signatories but also the likes of Bhutan and Sri Lanka.

While the costs of this marginalization mostly accrue to Pakistan, the rest of South Asia also loses what it could gain from collaboration with Pakistani officials, activists, lawyers, scientists, mayors, farmers, and journalists. Pakistan’s experiences, for instance, with its reforestation of mangroves, widely lauded as one of the world’s most successful such efforts, may prove valuable to others. Even more checkered initiatives, such as Imran Khan’s ballyhooed Billion Tree Tsunami, can furnish important lessons, both in their successes and failures. One of my interviewees, a policy expert with experience throughout Asia, favorably rates Pakistan’s efforts with a carbon market, which outpace the likes of Sri Lanka’s or Nepal’s.

The fundamental reality is that, for South Asia, cooperation on climate change is not a nice-to-have, but a need-to-have. The best case for all concerned would be for India and Pakistan to resolve their geopolitical differences. But even absent such optimistic scenarios, cooperation on climate, easily the biggest political challenge of the twenty-first century, cannot be held hostage to twentieth century disagreements. Climate change is simply too extreme in its impacts, and its nature—transnational, viciously complex in its distributional effects across and within borders, and multifaceted across water, ice, air, heat, and soil—means that cooperation is not just necessary, but existentially urgent.

Given Pakistan’s present distraught and destabilized state, and the uncompromising mood in New Delhi on all matters Pakistan, one should not expect even a minor diplomatic thaw any time soon. Some analysts put hope in the 2024 elections in India, after which, the story goes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will have more room for maneuver for a breakthrough with Pakistan, and Pakistan itself might become a more stable and less dysfunctional polity able to deliver on whatever agreement the two countries reach.

If all that happens, fantastic. But waiting for intergovernmental cooperation on this score would be wrongheaded. There is a deep reservoir of potential in people-to-people contacts drawn from civil society, the academic and research communities, metropolitan authorities, and those who work in agriculture. Such meetings should be encouraged and institutionalized, preferably at a distance from the sharp glare of ministries, personalities, and government offices for whom, no matter how small the meeting or event, the political stakes will always be too high. Moreover, multilateral organizations devoted to tackling climate change in South Asia, including but not limited to UNEP and the World Bank, must do more to include Pakistan, even if this contradicts the goals of Indian foreign policy.

Ahsan I. Butt is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center and an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

SouthAsiaSource Apr 12, 2023

The geopolitics of the energy trilemma in South Asia

By Robert F. Ichord, Jr.

South Asian countries are being subjected to the consequences of China and Russia’s efforts to expand their influence in the region. In this complex geopolitical context, expanded US and G7 clean energy efforts are needed.

Bangladesh Climate Change & Climate Action

SouthAsiaSource Sep 9, 2022

Experts react: Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan

By South Asia Center experts

More than one-third of Pakistan is underwater amid catastrophic climate change-induced flooding. South Asia Center experts provide their analyses of the situation.

Climate Change & Climate Action Economy & Business

SouthAsiaSource May 23, 2022

South Asia’s climate crisis: Policymakers need to feel the heat

By Erum Haider

Few things unite South Asia more urgently right now than the climate crisis. We can only hope that policymakers are listening.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Southasiasource Blog

How four cities are building resilience to extreme heat

Kashvi Ajitsaria — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 19:14:19 +0000

The world broke the record for the hottest day ever this week—twice. On July 3, the average global temperature hit 17.01°C (62.62°F), exceeding the August 2016 record of 16.92°C (62.46°F). Then, on July 4, it rose to 17.18°C (62.92°F).

Already, cities around the world are facing intense heat waves. Several European and Southeast Asian countries broke records for their hottest temperatures. The southern United States has been hit by a long-lasting heat dome; parts of India have sweltered under 47°C (116°F) heat; and areas of North Africa reached temperatures of 50°C (122°F) this year.

The worse news? This summer will likely get even hotter.

As the urgency of this issue becomes impossible to ignore, many local governments are taking action to build heat resilience. At the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock), we work closely with cities around the world to protect the people most exposed to the dangerous impacts of climate-driven extreme heat. Here are four examples.

Seville: Naming heat waves is changing the way people understand extreme heat

Seville, Spain, has been leading the charge on naming extreme heat events. So far, Seville has experienced two named heat waves: Zoe in July 2022 and Yago in June 2023.

Seville has named heat waves through a naming and categorization system called proMETEO. This system, piloted by Arsht-Rock in collaboration with the University of Seville and Seville City Council, monitors the weather forecast and categorizes heat waves into three tiers ranging from least (Category One) to most severe (Category Three).

Seville is in its second year of naming and categorizing heat waves. In addition to better protecting Seville’s residents, this project is creating important social dialogue on the harmful impacts of extreme heat, and it is serving as a model for other cities to pilot similar initiatives.

Miami: The world’s first Chief Heat Officer is tackling heat head-on

Miami, where temperatures routinely hit the high 90s, was the first city in the world to appoint a Chief Heat Officer (CHO). CHOs are officials supported by Arsht-Rock’s Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance who are responsible for unifying their city governments’ responses to extreme heat.

Miami’s CHO, Jane Gilbert, has more than thirty years of experience working in climate resilience. She has worked closely with Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to launch the Miami-Dade County Extreme Heat Action Plan, which outlines nineteen key actions to protect people from extreme heat, including cooling schools and expanding access to shade and water.

In her role as CHO, Gilbert has implemented extensive heat season campaigns to raise awareness on the dangers of extreme heat. She also manages mobile Community Resilience Pods, which empower people to prepare for climate stressors through educational storytelling.

Freetown: Outdoor market shade covers are providing relief for more than 2,300 women

In Sierra Leone’s capital, extreme heat is devastating for outdoor and informal workers, who spend long hours laboring in extreme temperatures. Many of these workers are women and girls, who face disproportionate health and social impacts from extreme heat.

Arsht-Rock has been working with Eugenia Kargbo, Freetown’s CHO, and a network of partners to address this. Through the Freetown Market Shade Cover project, Arsht-Rock installed shade covers over three outdoor markets, expanding the daily window for safe and comfortable shopping in hot conditions.

The Market Shade Cover project has given more than 2,300 market women better working conditions and economic opportunities. By minimizing the health impacts, food spoilage, and financial losses resulting from extreme heat, this intervention has benefitted entire communities dependent on the market women.

Santiago: New partnerships are protecting the most heat-vulnerable workers

Even though Chile’s capital has a cool and temperate climate, Santiago has been scorched by extreme temperatures in recent years. Local authorities are taking a wide range of approaches to build heat resilience, from advocating for workers’ protection policies to providing air-conditioned ambulances to more than twenty-five communities.

Santiago’s CHO, Cristina Huidobro Tornvall, partnered with the Chilean Security Association (ACHS), an entity representing more than one million Chilean workers, to promote heat safety measures among outdoor workers. Together, they are educating employers on how to recognize and respond to the dangers of extreme heat.

The partnership’s goal is for employers to institute practices to protect their workers and provide health coverage for workers injured on the job. To this end, ACHS is planning to monitor how often workers seek medical care for exposure to extreme heat, which will help inform worker protection policies.

Cities are a crucial part of the solution

Severe heat can arrive with little or no warning. However, there are several steps cities can take in advance to prepare for extreme heat events.

Cities can conduct baseline heat risk assessments to understand which communities and parts of the city are most vulnerable to extreme heat.

Cities can create heat action plans that identify strategies and responsible actors in advance of extreme heat events.

Cities can implement educational campaigns in advance of heat seasons to build public awareness of the dangers of extreme heat.

Arsht-Rock’s Heat Action Platform brings together diverse case studies of these solutions with guidance on how to plan for, finance, and implement projects into one comprehensive platform. The platform is designed to be a step-by-step guide for those starting out their heat resilience planning, as well as a reference guide and implementation resource for cities already well into the heat-planning process.

Local leaders are positioned to take these ideas and run with them. Cities have an urgent responsibility to respond to climate change. Billions of people are already living with the impacts of extreme heat, and even more will become more vulnerable as the world continues to urbanize. We already have the solutions, knowledge, and resources needed to protect people from heat—now, we just have to take action.

Kashvi Ajitsaria is a project associate at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.

The post How four cities are building resilience to extreme heat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Iran and Afghanistan are feuding over the Helmand River. The water wars have no end in sight.

Holly Dagres — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 19:09:01 +0000

Water disputes between Iran and Afghanistan date back to as early as the 1870s. However, with the Taliban back in power in Kabul since 2021, the Helmand River has become an increasing topic of contention between the neighboring countries, particularly in recent months. A recent uptick in violence on the 580-mile border between Iran and Afghanistan came to a head on May 27, when border guards on both sides clashed, resulting in the death of one Taliban soldier and two Iranian guards. Fatemeh Aman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Middle East Institute with a focus on Afghanistan and Iran, speaks to IranSource editor Holly Dagres about why the Islamic Republic and Taliban are bumping heads on transboundary water issues and why the water wars are not ending any time soon.

IRANSOURCE: The Islamic Republic and the Taliban have been in high tensions recently since the militant group ceased power in Kabul. Both countries have a long-term dispute over shared transboundary waters, but what is different now?

FATEMEH AMAN: The difference this time was that two old issues—the dispute over shared water and clashes at the borders—coincided, which made the transboundary water issue more dramatic. First, let me explain the dispute over each country’s share of Helmand transboundary water.

Iran and Afghanistan’s water disputes have existed for over 150 years and go back to when Afghanistan was a British protectorate. Back then, a British officer drew the Iran-Afghan border along the main branch of the Helmand River. In 1939, serious discussions between the Iranian government of Reza Shah Pahlavi and the Afghan government of Mohammad Zahir Shah led to a treaty over water allocation to each country, which the Afghans never ratified.

The dispute intensified in the 1950s when Afghanistan built two dams on the Helmand River.

Renegotiations continued until 1973, when the then-Iranian and Afghan prime ministers signed a treaty. In recent decades, and under different governments, the issue has taken a more dramatic turn. War, displacement of populations, lucrative dam buildings, disastrous water management, and the impact of climate change have all intensified the dispute.

The good news is that there has been an agreement since 1973 known as the Helmand River Treaty. However, it needs to be reviewed and updated. Nevertheless, the prospect of both governments sitting down and finding a lasting solution is not very bright.

Turning transboundary water rights into a political issue is a terrible idea. Both Tehran and Kabul use rhetoric rather than dialogue. Just recently, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi warned the Taliban “to take the issue of [Helmand] water and Iran’s share of water seriously.” The Taliban hit back with their spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid stating that Iranian officials should present their request “using appropriate words.”

Besides the water dispute, there have been clashes at the border between Iran and Afghanistan. Tension and confrontation have happened frequently on the eastern border, including the most recent violent encounter in May, which occurred in Nimroz and Zabul, leaving several border guards from both sides dead.

However, such clashes did not start with the Taliban government and have happened under previous governments as well.

Both sides commonly blame each other for starting the fire, but eventually, Tehran and Kabul always calm down. The incidents are often called “mistakes” or “misunderstandings.” There are talks about forming a joint committee to quickly resolve the issues on the eastern border. However, I do not see any sign that the occasional clashes will end for good.

IRANSOURCE: Walk us through the Taliban’s relationship with Tehran. Is this the first time we’ve seen tension between the Islamic governments?

FATEMEH AMAN: Iran’s current relationship with Afghanistan has been chaotic since the Taliban took over in 2021. The Islamic Republic does not want to look like allies of the Taliban, as both view each other with mistrust. However, there are conflicting and somewhat confusing messages on the nature of the relationship.

Iran and the Taliban almost went to war in 1998 over a Taliban militant raid on the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e Sharif, which left nine Iranians—eight diplomats and a journalist—dead. Iran deployed two hundred thousand army troops and seventy thousand members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to the border area, but ultimately decided not to enter Afghanistan’s soil.

Iran has always tried to keep its presence in Afghanistan due to its significant concerns: shared transboundary water, drug trafficking, and border security. Iran takes the possibility of infiltration of terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K), into Iran from its eastern borders very seriously and firmly believes it is vulnerable from the eastern border it shares with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Since the Taliban was ousted from power in 2001, Iran kept some ties with some Taliban factions. Later, when the Taliban’s presence became more visible, Iran-Taliban ties also grew.

The emergence of IS-K in Afghanistan in 2015, as well as Tehran’s conclusion that the Taliban’s participation in Afghanistan’s future government was inevitable, prompted Iran to get closer to the Taliban. Iran tried to increase their influence within the group. The extent of the Taliban’s ties with Iran was revealed when the group’s former leader, Mullah Akhtar Mansour, was killed in a US drone strike when returning to Pakistan from Iran in May 2016.

In 2018, Iran admitted to having hosted Taliban delegations in Iran. Iran was actively involved in the intra-Afghan dialogue, inviting Afghanistan’s opposing factions to Tehran for negotiations. At the time, a best-case scenario for Iran would have been an inclusive government with the participation of Iran-leaning factions. This did not happen. The Taliban took control of the government in 2021 and did not plan to form an inclusive government.

IRANSOURCE: Most governments do not recognize the Taliban. Does the Islamic Republic, and how does this impact discussions?

FATEMEH AMAN: No country has recognized the Taliban regime, as no country wants to be the first to recognize them. However, I think once one does, the others will follow.

Iran has not yet recognized the Taliban regime. However, the Afghan embassy in Tehran and the Afghan consulate in Mashhad have been taken over by the Taliban regime since 2021. Iran, like other countries, wants to use recognition as leverage.

IRANSOURCE: Back to the dispute over shared water… The region has been going through a persistent drought. The Islamic Republic complains that Afghanistan is blocking the flow of water, and the Taliban claims there is not enough water to flow into Iran due to drought. How much is the drought in the southeast to blame on government mismanagement versus climate change?

FATEMEH AMAN: Several factors have contributed to the current situation, including the impact of climate change. Let us take the example of the Hamoun wetland drying up. The Lake Hamoun area is a transboundary wetland fed by the Helmand River.

Hamoun Lake, naturally fed by water flowing from the Helmand River, used to be the third-largest lake in Iran and played a vital role in the lives of people in southeastern Sistan and Baluchistan province. However, it has nearly dried up due to several factors, including the disruption of water flow from Afghanistan to Iran. Other factors include unsustainable and profit-driven dam constructions, extensive canal creation, diverting Helmand River water to four giant reservoirs in Sistan and Baluchistan province, construction of dikes on the Iran-Afghan border (on Helmand) to prevent drug traffickers from entering Iran, and the introduction of invasive fish species by the Fisheries Company in the 1980s, which destroyed the entire vegetation cover of Hamoun.

With the disruption of water flow from Helmand into Iran, I was referring to the killing of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e Sharif in 1998 and the subsequent conflict between Iran and the Taliban. This led to the Taliban closing the Kajaki Dam’s sluices, obstructing the water flow from Helmand River to Iran, which ultimately halted the water supply to Hamoun. So, there is never a single reason for a catastrophe.

Both countries took steps to revitalize the Hamoun wetland on the Iran-Afghanistan border in 2015 and 2016. However, the efforts were cut for several reasons, including economic sanctions imposed on Iran that restricted international funds.

IRANSOURCE: Anti-regime protests continue in some parts of Iran, particularly in the impoverished southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan. Some may interpret the dire water situation as the clerical establishment purposely punishing the population for participating in protests. What is your read on this?

FATEMEH AMAN: Sistan and Baluchistan province is the most deprived province in Iran. Yes, there has been an unbelievable level of discrimination by the Shia-centric government against the Sunni-majority province. Yes, there needs to be more investment to improve the livelihoods of millions in that region. There has been disastrous water mismanagement in many parts of Iran, including Sistan and Baluchistan. However, the province’s critical water issue is unrelated to recent protests.

The Islamic Republic had four decades since the 1979 revolution to invest in water and ensure that the region’s drinking water would not be dependent on transboundary water. But they failed. Their failed policies are more comprehensive than those in Sistan and Baluchistan. Many parts of the country face critical water shortages due to ineffective policies.

IRANSOURCE: Iranian lawmakers recently said Sistan and Baluchistan province only have three months of water left before it runs out. How will it impact the neglected population there?

FATEMEH AMAN: As I said, the Islamic Republic had over forty years to invest in improving the water management system. They missed all opportunities. Unfortunately, authorities not only ignored experts’ warnings for many years, but they also prosecuted and imprisoned environmental activists working on the issue. Unless Iran reaches a lasting agreement with the Afghans, I do not see how things can be improved or stopped from worsening. We will probably see mass migration and more conflict in the future due to water and climate change.

IRANSOURCE: How will this dispute impact Afghan refugees in Iran?

FATEMEH AMAN: Before the 2021 Taliban rule, Iranian authorities could blackmail the Afghan government by threatening to send back millions of refugees to Afghanistan. Right now, they do not have this luxury. The Taliban would not care about refugees being forcibly returned. The only leverage Tehran has is recognition of the Taliban, which Iran is not giving away without some concessions. Iran will continue the same approach if the situation does not change.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since the Taliban regained power in August 2021, an estimated one million Afghans have sought refuge in Iran alone.

Unfortunately, refugees in many countries are used as scapegoats, and Afghan refugees in Iran are no exception. With the deepening dispute, the Afghans will experience more hardship in Iran.

The post Iran and Afghanistan are feuding over the Helmand River. The water wars have no end in sight. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Meaningfully advancing the green agenda

Pepe Zhang — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 16:00:00 +0000

DOWNLOAD PDF

This is the 5th installment of the Unlocking Economic Development in Latin America and the Caribbean report, which explores five vital opportunities for the private sector to drive socioeconomic progress in LAC, with sixteen corresponding recommendations private firms can consider as they take steps to support the region.

How does the private sector perceive Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC)? What opportunities do firms find most exciting? And what precisely can companies do to seize on these opportunities and support the region’s journey toward recovery and sustainable development? To answer these questions, the Atlantic Council collaborated with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to glean insights from its robust network of private-sector partners. Through surveys and in-depth interviews, this report identified five vital opportunities for the private sector to drive socioeconomic progress in LAC, with sixteen corresponding recommendations private firms can consider as they take steps to support the region.

Meaningfully advancing the green agenda

The private sector identified the green agenda as a major opportunity, with more than half of survey respondents flagging “addressing climate change” as a top sustainable development and business priority to drive full economic recovery from COVID-19.¹ While climate action is critical on a global level, companies recognize that it is particularly pressing in LAC.

LAC is the world’s most economically unequal region and the second-most disaster-prone region in the world, highly vulnerable to climate consequences.² This vulnerability threatens to further entrench inequality and undermine the wellbeing of people and communities. Every year, between one hundred and fifty thousand and two million people in LAC are pushed into poverty or extreme poverty because of natural disasters, while as many as seventeen million people could migrate across LAC by 2050 due to climate change.³ Climate change also threatens food security, which can heavily impact rural communities.⁴ It will generate economic costs of up to $100 billion annually by 2050, which undercut growth and limit the ability of businesses to operate, prosper, and thrive.⁵

Recommendations for the private sector

Advancing the green agenda is not only imperative as a means of addressing the threat of climate change, but also as a means of unlocking massive business opportunities with the potential to drive private-sector-led economic recovery and growth in LAC. In particular, private firms have an important role to play by creating green jobs, promoting the circular economy, and partaking in green finance.

Creating green jobs: Firms can help create green jobs by adopting sustainable practices, seizing business opportunities in emerging green sectors, and providing upskilling, reskilling, and other support for workers displaced by the green transition.
Promoting the circular economy: Firms can help drive a transition to a circular-economy model by financing circular-economy efforts, supporting multistakeholder initiatives, and adopting and promoting sustainable business practices.
Partaking in green finance: The financial sector can help foster a green-finance ecosystem in the region by tightening environmental, social, and governance (ESG) requirements, aligning investments with green objectives, and nurturing green[1]bond markets in LAC.

About the author

Staff

Pepe Zhang

Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

China Coronavirus

Report Jun 5, 2023

Enhancing market size, scalability, and regional integration in Latin America and the Caribbean

By Pepe Zhang

To sustain the ongoing recovery against short-term headwinds and boost inclusive, productive, and sustainable development in the long term, governments cannot, and should not, act alone. The private sector can strengthen the hard and soft infrastructure supporting Latin America and the Caribbean’s economies, while drawing them closer together through trade, regulatory, and other integration.

Americas Economy & Business

Report Jun 16, 2023

Accelerating digitalization and innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean

By Pepe Zhang

To sustain the ongoing recovery against short-term headwinds and boost inclusive, productive, and sustainable development in the long term, governments cannot, and should not, act alone. The private sector can improve infrastructure, foster skills, and promote adoption to help the region transform its digital potential into development gains.

Americas Economy & Business

Report Jun 20, 2023

Improving state governance, institutional capacity, and transparency

By Pepe Zhang

To sustain the ongoing recovery against short-term headwinds and boost inclusive, productive, and sustainable development in the long term, governments cannot, and should not, act alone. Technological, governance, and other cooperation between the public and private sectors can enhance institutional capacity, integrity, government service delivery, and regulatory quality in LAC.

Americas Inclusive Growth

Report Jun 22, 2023

Addressing multidimensional inequality

By Pepe Zhang

To sustain the ongoing recovery against short-term headwinds and boost inclusive, productive, and sustainable development in the long term, governments cannot, and should not, act alone. Private-sector actions to reduce gender inequality, like level the playing field between SMEs and large firms and narrow the urban-rural divide, can enable a more inclusive economy for LAC.

Americas Inclusive Growth

Online Event Thu, February 17, 2022 • 9:00 am ET

#ProactiveLAC: A digital future for regional prosperity

A virtual conversation on the role of public-private partnerships and policy actions in increasing digital connectivity across Latin America and the Caribbean.

Coronavirus Digital Policy Inclusive Growth Latin America

The Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center broadens understanding of regional transformations and delivers constructive, results-oriented solutions to inform how the public and private sectors can advance hemispheric prosperity.

Leader perspective: Forging a green special relationship between the United States and United Kingdom” class=”gta-horizontal-featured–img” />

1 Opportunities and Challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Private Sector Perspective,” June 2022, question 10.

2 “GHO 2023: at a Glance,” Humanitarian Action, last visited January 25, 2023, https://gho.unocha.org/appeals/latin-america-and-caribbean#footnote-paragraph-136-1.

3 Carlos Felipe Jaramillo, “A Green Recovery of Latin America and the Caribbean is Possible and Necessary,” Latin America and the Caribbean World Bank Blog, September 11, 2020, https://blogs.worldbank.org/latinamerica/green-recovery-latin-america-and-caribbean-possible-and-necessary.

4 Enrique Oviedo and Adoniram Sanches, coords., “Food and Nutrition Security and the Eradication of Hunger: CELAC 2025: Furthering Discussion and Regional Cooperation,” Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, July 2016, 74–75. https://repositorio.cepal.org/bitstream/handle/11362/40355/S1600706_en.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

5 Walter Vergara, et al., “The Climate and Development Challenge for Latin America and the Caribbean: Options for Climate-Resilient, Low-Carbon Development,” Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Inter-American Development Bank, and World Wildlife Fund, 2013, 13–14, https://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/The-Climate-and[3]Development-Challenge-for-Latin-America-and-the-Caribbean-Options-for-Climate-Resilient-Low-Carbon-Development.pdf.

The post Meaningfully advancing the green agenda appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Leader perspective: Forging a green special relationship between the United States and United Kingdom

The Rt Hon. Chris Skidmore, MP — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 14:11:17 +0000

Nearly four years ago, back in June 2019, the United Kingdom enshrined its commitment to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions into law. The United Kingdom had long been a climate leader, with the pioneering Climate Change Act of 2008 and its introduction of carbon-budgeting into government decision-making, helping to halve Britain’s emissions compared to 1990 levels. With the 2019 legislation, the United Kingdom became the first G7 country to commit to net zero.

Since then, other countries have caught up. Today, 90 percent of global GDP is under some form of net-zero commitment, which would have been unimaginable in 2019. The progress made by both governments and corporate boardrooms across the world has been staggering. It is becoming ever-clearer that there is no future economy—and certainly no future financial investment—without a green economy and green finance at its heart. The United Kingdom, by working with its close ally the United States, can reassert its climate leadership through a green special relationship that can galvanize net-zero objectives domestically and abroad.

This paradigm shift toward net zero has created a global net-zero race. Countries are now seeking to demonstrate not only when they will achieve net zero, but also how net-zero commitments can catalyze and deliver the new clean technologies of the future. In the United States, the Inflation Reduction Act’s commitment of $369 billion in public investment in clean energy is a game changer that has sent shock waves throughout the world. The money is important, but what is also critical to the act is its long-term stability, with tax credits guaranteed until January 2033. The European Union also has its €1 trillion Green Deal, again with long-term funding commitments that can foster a new green economy. It is vital that the United Kingdom, once a climate leader, demonstrate similar ambitions if it wishes to re-establish climate leadership and avoid falling behind in the net-zero race.

The UK government recently embarked on a review of its net-zero readiness. That review sought to make recommendations on how net zero could be achieved in a more pro-growth, pro-business manner. The group’s final report, Mission Zero, concluded that net zero is not a cost but rather an opportunity, to secure £1 trillion of inward investment by 2030 and create 480,000 new jobs. Conversely, the cost of “not zero” would be far higher for the UK economy. The review also recognized the importance of ensuring that the United Kingdom collaborates with friends and partners to jointly address the world’s shared climate challenge. Carbon dioxide knows no borders. Like-minded nations should recognize that rivalry and competition, while healthy in driving markets forward and bringing costs down, must not be allowed to create new barriers and delay progress on climate action.

Many criticize the Inflation Reduction Act for being protectionist, for putting the United States first. Others claim the act will start a global subsidy race. That concern is overblown. While there is clearly a chance the law will lure companies to the United States by the promise of tax credits and investment, the wider deployment of these technologies will not be possible without establishing global supply chains and international cooperation. There is not enough skilled labor for the demand the green Industrial Revolution is creating, and new alliances for delivering net zero must therefore be forged. Without collaboration, net zero and the economic promise of the energy transition will fall short.

For the United States and the United Kingdom, an opportunity exists as like-minded friends and allies to work together to establish a new green special relationship. As advocates of democracy, liberty, and freedom, we can work with developing nations to support their own energy transitions. The net-zero prize for our nations is not simply an economic one: it can also strengthen the foundations of our shared democratic values across the globe.

Washington and London can also forge new partnerships across green industries where we cannot go it alone. Together, the allies can be greater than the sum of their parts in several strategic energy partnerships where they enjoy a comparative advantage. In new nuclear technologies, such as advanced and small modular reactors, TerraPower and X-Energy—both US companies—are seeking to locate in the United Kingdom where there are shovel-ready former coal sites with local populations that recognize the benefits of nuclear energy for workers. In carbon capture, the United Kingdom has vast geologic storage opportunities with up to 78 billion metric tons of capacity identified under the North Sea. In energy efficiency, Ameresco—another US firm—is partnering with the City of Bristol to invest £450 million in a new district heating network. These are joint opportunities from which both sides recognize the huge mutual benefits of cooperation. These can go much further, if stakeholders are willing to seize this moment to collaborate.

The Inflation Reduction Act has fired the starting gun toward delivering on net zero by providing the investment, certainty, and stability needed to allow private capital to flow and drive forward the green revolution. That investment will go far further, and achieve far greater value, if it is matched with partnerships to maximize comparative advantages that are shared by the United States and United Kingdom in achieving net zero. Now is the time to build a Green Special Relationship, for the future. Global ambitions to achieve net zero and combat climate change depend upon it.

The Rt Hon. Chris Skidmore, MP is chair of the UK government’s Net Zero Review and a former UK energy minister. He authored the government’s recent Mission Zero report. He delivered a speech on the “Green Special Relationship” at the Atlantic Council on Tuesday, April 25.

EnergySource Aug 17, 2022

International cooperation is critical to the IRA’s climate and energy security impact

By Olga Khakova

Cooperation with allies could greatly amplify the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act. But it will take additional support to empower US agencies to forge partnerships and make global progress.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

Leader perspective: Forging a green special relationship between the United States and United Kingdom” class=”gta-horizontal-featured–img” />

EnergySource Feb 10, 2020

A new security challenge: The geopolitical implications of climate change

By Friedbert Pflüger

Discussions on energy and geopolitics over the last ten years have often focused on the need for energy security. Now, another challenge—climate security—is emerging and it must be urgently addressed.

Climate Change & Climate Action Geopolitics & Energy Security

Leader perspective: Forging a green special relationship between the United States and United Kingdom” class=”gta-horizontal-featured–img” />

EnergySource Mar 11, 2021

Can green finance compensate for London’s post-Brexit losses?

By Paddy Ryan

Supporters of Brexit suggest that making London a “world leader” in green finance could compensate for the City’s post-Brexit losses. Green financial leadership could boost Britain’s domestic industry and transform its foreign policy. But competitive advantages for its financial sector may not materialize.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post Leader perspective: Forging a green special relationship between the United States and United Kingdom appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The debt-ceiling permitting deal misses the real problems holding back the energy transition

Ken Berlin, Frank Willey — Thu, 08 Jun 2023 15:35:20 +0000

On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that raises the debt limit in exchange for concessions on federal spending. The deal also seeks to reform permitting for energy projects by introducing changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), commissioning an interregional transfer capability determination study, streamlining approvals for energy storage projects, and—most controversially—completing the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Shortening the review process for transmission projects and renewable interconnection to the grid is critical for accelerating the United States’ clean energy transition. Transmission lines take an average of five to ten years to build, largely due to the complex patchwork of stakeholders and permitting authorities involved in the review process. In addition, of the 2,000 gigawatts (GW) of generation capacity awaiting connection to the US transmission system, natural gas accounts for only 85 GW and coal merely 1 GW—the rest are zero-carbon technologies.

The critical permitting bottlenecks holding back the energy transition involve securing access to and approval of new transmission lines and the interconnection of new renewable projects to the grid. The legislation in the bill does not address either subject and will do little to clear the blockages in the permitting queue. To meet climate targets, legislators must adopt additional measures that are specific to transmission and renewable interconnection.

Source: Berkeley Lab

Completion of the Mountain Valley Pipeline
The Mountain Valley Pipeline, the most contentious of the provisions included in the bill, will proceed with development and could be completed as early as the end of this year. Some approve of the pipeline’s completion for its potential economic and energy security benefits, while others condemn its negative environmental impact. Construction on the pipeline is already 94 percent complete, but the impact on the environment and indigenous communities remains an open issue.

The Builder Act

The debt ceiling deal includes the Builder Act, which introduces reforms to NEPA that impose time limits on environmental reviews unless the project sponsor and agency agree to extend, designate a lead agency to coordinate federal project permitting, and allow project sponsors to conduct the NEPA study themselves, subject to agency review. In addition, the act revises language within the original NEPA legislation, requiring agencies to consider only environmental effects that are “reasonably foreseeable” and alternatives that are “technically and economically feasible,” potentially constraining which environmental impacts and alternatives a company must evaluate. Whether the updated legal language will result in a less comprehensive consideration of alternatives will be revealed in future litigation. Finally, the act shortens the length of NEPA documents, although the page limits do not apply to appendices, which could minimize the effects of this reform.

The provisions in the act that set time limits on the preparation of Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) and Environmental Assessments (EA) will shorten the federal review process but will not resolve the state and local jurisdictional issues that also hinder project deployment. Currently, it takes on average four-and-a-half years to complete an EIS. The Builder Act creates a two-year deadline for completing an EIS and a one-year deadline for an EA. The lead agency can extend the deadline in consultation with the project applicant but must complete the process within ninety days of a court order after the deadline. Projects, however, are not automatically approved if the timeline is not met, and significant barriers remain related to agency staffing to meet the shortened deadlines, an issue neglected in the debt ceiling reforms.

Contrary to widely expressed fears, these changes are unlikely to affect the integrity of the NEPA process. NEPA statements remain subject to the same judicial review as they were before the amendment, and if its conclusions are unsound, a reviewing court will send the NEPA document back to the agency for further review. The reviewing agency must still scrutinize any documents submitted by project sponsors and is responsible for final approval. If short deadlines prevent rigorous analysis from being completed, the NEPA document would not likely stand up in court. The environmental community, civil society, and businesses can still add comments or additional information to the administrative record but now have less time to review and comment on EISs and EAs, putting more pressure on interested parties to move swiftly.

Interregional Transmission Planning Opportunities Study

NEPA is not the biggest barrier to the rapid buildout of transmission and renewable infrastructure. The uncoordinated patchwork of federal and state permitting agencies involved in approvals, asynchronous review processes that stretch permitting times, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)’s lack of direct authority over transmission wires—in contrast to its authority over natural gas pipelines—play a much more significant role in holding back project development. In addition, disagreements about cost allocation have proven formidable obstacles to building transmission and getting new renewable projects onto the grid.

These barriers are being studied extensively. The US Department of Energy (DOE) is conducting a National Transmission Planning study to be released this summer. FERC also issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) in April 2022 to improve regional transmission planning and cost allocation procedures. Instead of using these and other studies to inform legislation, the Builder Act directs the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to conduct an interregional transmission planning opportunities study that will be published within eighteen months of the bill’s passage, followed by a year of public comment. FERC will then recommend statutory changes subject to their own review timeline.

Congress, FERC, and other federal agencies should not wait for completion of the NERC study. Instead, they should act using completed studies and the results of the DOE and FERC processes when considering additional transmission permitting and planning reform, as the infrastructure is needed as soon as possible. A Princeton study estimates the grid will need to expand by 60 percent by 2030 and triple in size by 2050. Building 60 percent more electricity transmission infrastructure within four years, starting in 2026 after the NERC study’s completion, is not feasible.

Permitting streamlining for energy storage

The bill also adds energy storage to the list of “covered projects” under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act, which improves federal-state coordination and enshrines tangible deadlines for review, but can pose additional eligibility criteria and procedural requirements that do not make the process simpler. Project proponents are subject to restrictions on review period extensions and must interpret new terminology in consultation with agencies to ensure compliance with the program. Overall, including energy storage projects under FAST-41—named after Title 41 in the FAST Act—is a welcome development. Such programs should be expanded but must be supplemented with reform of the standard permitting process.

Recommendation for permitting reform

The permitting reforms in the agreed legislation will not affect the integrity of the EIS and EA processes, despite concerns from the environmental community. However, they fail to address the substantive permitting issues related to transmission and interconnection that investors and developers face today. Bills that address primarily oil and gas leasing and permitting are counterproductive to both the permitting discussion and energy transition goals. Legislators must work together and compromise to address permitting issues.

This article is the first in a series on EnergySource discussing permitting reform in the United States. The next article will examine opportunities for permitting reform after the debt ceiling bill.

Ken Berlin is a senior fellow and the director of the Financing and Achieving Cost Competitive Climate Solutions Project at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Frank Willey is a project assistant at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Meet the authors

Fellow

Ken Berlin

Chinese Climate Change & Climate Action

Staff

Frank Willey

Project Assistant

Energy & Environment French

EnergySource Dec 3, 2021

Ensuring resilient clean energy infrastructure

By Andy Bochman, Jennifer T. Gordon

As the energy infrastructure of the future starts to spring up, ensuring its resilience to potential changes in climate will be pivotal. Modeling tools must evolve to forecast these coming challenges, and climate adaptation discussions must expand to include clean energy infrastructure.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Aug 8, 2022

How to build on the Inflation Reduction Act and incentivize truly clean electricity

By Ameya Hadap

The production tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act will lift up every carbon-free source of electricity in the United States. But there is no guarantee these clean energy sources will actually displace carbon from the grid. More legislation is needed to build on the bill and close the gap between clean energy deployment and carbon mitigation.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Dec 5, 2022

A nascent US offshore wind strategy? Permitting reform and the Inflation Reduction Act

By Joseph Webster

US strategy on offshore wind is steadily evolving. The attendant changes could lay the groundwork for emergence as an offshore wind powerhouse.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

Learn more about the Iraq Initiative

The post The debt-ceiling permitting deal misses the real problems holding back the energy transition appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Private roundtable on Iraq with Dr. Azzam Alwash

Atlantic Council — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 14:40:54 +0000

On May 18, the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative hosted Dr. Azzam Alwash, Founder and CEO of Nature Iraq, for a private hybrid roundtable discussion on Iraq’s environmental crisis and future efforts to address climate change. Iraq Initiative Director Dr. Abbas Kadhim moderated the conversation.

The post Private roundtable on Iraq with Dr. Azzam Alwash appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Natural gas reduced China’s urban air pollution. Can it be a global climate solution?

Joseph Webster — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 19:48:49 +0000

Greater uptake of natural gas has helped substantially reduce urban air pollution in Beijing, notorious until a few years ago for its apocalyptic, grey, smog-filled skies. The Chinese capital’s example offers a template for other developing world cities that face a similar challenge. By switching from coal, the dirtiest and most polluting energy source, these cities too can lower urban emissions, reduce harmful health outcomes, and dramatically improve quality of life, particularly among young children suffering from asthma.

While natural gas is demonstrably effective at reducing local emissions, more work is needed to reduce its global climatological impacts. Developed world natural gas exporters, including the United States, Qatar, Australia, and Canada, meanwhile, have a responsibility to constrain global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by limiting methane flaring and venting, and by capturing carbon in underground storage. Similarly, natural gas consumers, meanwhile, should consider not only the health benefits of reduced local air pollution, but also the climatological impacts of production abroad. Ahead of COP28 discussions this year, the United States, China, and other countries should encourage responsible natural gas production as a solution for reducing global emissions and urban air pollution.

Beijing’s improved air quality

Beijing’s local air quality has improved nearly continuously since 2013 as particulate matter (PM) 2.5 levels decreased. The US Environmental Protection Agency defines PM 2.5 as “fine inhalable particles, with diameters that are generally 2.5 micrometers and smaller.” These particles can cause serious health problems after inhalation. PM 2.5 may be particularly harmful for children, and early-life exposure is associated with an increased risk of childhood asthma.

Publicly available measurements of particulate matter concentration from the US embassy in Beijing show that the city’s average annual air quality index (AQI) fell sharply from 2013 to 2019, the last pre-COVID year in Beijing. Higher AQI values correspond to greater air pollution.

Figure 1: Beijing’s average annual Air Quality Index (lower scores indicate less pollution)
(Source: U.S. State Department, author’s calculations)

Several factors have contributed to improving air quality scores. Lauri Myllyvirta of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air identifies key drivers: implementing strong emissions standards and using of emissions-control technologies for power plants and high-emissions industries; eliminating coal-based heating and cooking in homes; and slowing growth in coal consumption.

An embrace of natural gas also undoubtedly played a major role in enabling Beijing to reduce local coal production while maintaining energy access. The city has shuttered over 2 gigawatts (GW) of local coal plant capacity, beginning in 2014, while opening nearly 6 GWs of cleaner natural gas capacity.

Figure 2: Beijing’s changing electricity generation landscape
(Source: Global Energy Monitor Global Coal Plant and Global Gas Plant Trackers, author’s calculations)

As local demand for natural gas rose, Beijing sourced more supplies from abroad. Pipeline natural gas imports along the Central Asia-to-China Pipeline (CACP) were particularly important. According to the Chinese National Petroleum Company, natural gas service enabled the shutdown of four thermal coal plants in 2015. The CACP’s Line C, which entered service in 2014 and has a capacity of 25 billion cubic meters (bcm) per year, undoubtedly played a role. The CACP’s A and B lines came online in 2009 and 2010, respectively, and have a combined capacity of 30 bcm per year.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports also played an important role in Beijing’s clean air transformation. From 2013–2018, China opened five LNG import terminals near Beijing, with capacity just under 40 bcm. In addition, the increased adoption of natural gas in the adjacent Tianjin municipality and Hebei and Liaoning provinces have also helped reduce coal pollution in the greater Beijing area. It’s clear that natural gas imports, especially LNG, have played an enormously important role in reducing Chinese urban pollution. China’s total natural gas imports more than quadrupled from 2011 to 2021, while its LNG imports rose from just under 17 bcm to 110 bcm in this period.

Figure 3: Chinese natural gas imports, by source
(Source: BP Statistical Review, author’s calculations)

Yet China’s victory over urban air pollution has been costly. The central government has often simply transferred coal generation from its biggest cities to less-populated locations. Therefore, while urban air pollution has declined dramatically since 2010, China’s emissions from steam coal used to make electricity have risen by 28 percent. China’s strategy has been to use natural gas selectively, reducing air pollution in politically important urban areas while increasing emissions in other parts of the country.

China also negated the environmental benefits of coal-to-gas switching by turning to Turkmenistan, almost certainly the world’s most methane-intensive producer. While coal produces far more carbon emissions than natural gas, methane emissions from natural gas production undercut that advantage. Methane has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but is more efficient at trapping radiation. China sources most of its Central Asian natural gas imports from Turkmenistan, which has a methane intensity of production of 1.37 kilograms of methane per gigajoule–a level more than six times higher than in the United States even before the IRA incentivized producers to slash methane output.

Worryingly, Turkmenistan has not agreed to any concrete steps to reduce methane emissions, despite growing evidence it will secure another pipeline deal with China. If a new, 30 bcm-per-year Turkmenistan-to-China pipeline comes online and Turkmenistan’s current methane emission rate remains constant, the pipeline’s raw methane content could exceed the methane emissions of the entire US LNG complex, which boasts an export capacity of around 150 bcm a year. If Turkmenistan’s methane emissions are not abated, China’s procurement of Central Asian gas may reduce local air pollution in its cities, but will ultimately raise global emissions and associated costs.

Natural gas should be a tool for both urban air quality and climate

While the overall impact of natural gas on the climate is currently somewhat ambiguous, due to the role of methane, there need not be a tension between urban air quality and decarbonization. While there is strong evidence that replacing coal with natural gas can help reduce urban air pollution in China, India, and other economies across the Indo-Pacific, natural gas’ climate impacts can be significantly mitigated.

LNG producers from the United States and elsewhere must reduce methane emissions by limiting flaring and venting, which contribute to GHG emissions. US natural gas producers are already cutting methane emissions ahead of implementation of a methane fee under the Inflation Reduction Act. More effort is needed to reduce US natural gas GHG emissions, including by storing carbon, but the world’s largest natural gas producer and LNG exporter is on the right path.

Natural gas production does incur carbon and methane emissions—but it’s also a tool for reducing air pollution and asthma rates in urban population centers in developing countries. Moreover, if methane can be abated, natural gas can reduce global emissions when replacing coal.

The US and other natural gas producers must therefore accelerate methane and carbon emissions reductions. Meanwhile, natural gas importers, including China, must also pressure producers to limit methane and carbon emissions. Washington and Brussels are working to ensure that responsible natural gas production and LNG exports serve as a climate bridge fuel and a tool for urban emissions reduction, but they will need cooperation from Beijing and other important natural gas stakeholders.

Joseph Webster is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and editor of the China-Russia Report. This article represents his own personal opinion.

Meet the author

Staff

Joseph Webster

Central Asia China

EnergySource May 1, 2023

China’s wind industrial policy “succeeded” – but at what cost?

By Joseph Webster

China has the world’s largest wind energy market in terms of generation and capacity. But China’s emergence as the world’s leading player in wind has been costly.

China Climate Change & Climate Action

EnergySource Mar 8, 2023

Chinese refining markets 101—and their implications for price caps on Russian oil

By Joseph Webster

Price caps on Russian crude and oil products have placed Chinese refineries in the spotlight. Their historical tendencies and political connections could shed light on what to expect from them as the oil market reorients itself.

China Energy & Environment

EnergySource Nov 1, 2022

China’s energy security realities and COP27 ambitions

By Joseph Webster, William Tobin

China will enter COP27 firmly playing both sides of the energy transition. The country is a global leader in clean technologies, but it is also pouring money into new coal plants and production. Beijing may have to choose between its climate aspirations and its coal realities to compete successfully with the West.

China Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post Natural gas reduced China’s urban air pollution. Can it be a global climate solution? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The G7 can take NATO-EU climate cooperation to the next level

Francis Shin, Rachel Rizzo — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 23:37:57 +0000

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, decarbonization has emerged as an increasingly high priority for the transatlantic community. The European Union’s (EU) early discontent with the US Inflation Reduction Act also demonstrates that transatlantic policy consensus will be essential to the success of any decarbonization strategy. In January, NATO and the EU released their latest joint statement on how the two organizations plan to cooperate in the years ahead, including expanding and deepening cooperation on “the security implications of climate change.” This is good news. Unfortunately, the same issues that impede increased EU-NATO cooperation on other projects will continue to affect deeper cooperation on climate and decarbonization strategies. However, the Group of Seven (G7) could be a good platform to help inform each institution on ways to better coordinate their individual strategies and work together where able.

In recent years, NATO has become much more active in identifying global warming as a threat and focusing on how it can do its part to combat climate change and bolster energy security. Following NATO’s Madrid Summit last year, it released its Strategic Concept, in which it proclaimed “NATO should become the leading international organization when it comes to understanding and adapting to the impact of climate change on security.” Furthermore, NATO policymakers have recognized that there is a potential danger of redundant replication of climate projects between the climate policies of NATO and member states that would not have additional value toward addressing climate change. The Strategic Concept does partially account for this, as it argues that NATO should strengthen its cooperation with the EU to accelerate the development of NATO’s climate strategy.

In contrast to NATO, the European Union has been a significant player in climate action dating back to as least 2001, when it issued Directive 2001/77/EC, which promoted renewable electricity generation. Moreover, some EU member states had already attempted to “mainstream” climate policy into NATO strategy. For example, some German senior officials hoped that the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) program, established in 2017, would introduce climate change as a challenge for NATO to face. Despite such efforts, these attempts with PESCO have had mixed success at best.

Likewise, NATO-EU cooperation is regularly hampered by the Cyprus dispute. Turkey, which is the only state that recognizes the breakaway republic of Northern Cyprus and has stationed military forces in its territory, is a NATO member but not an EU member, whereas Cyprus is an EU member but not in NATO. Turkey justifies its opposition to NATO-EU cooperation on the basis that doing so would imply its recognition of the Republic of Cyprus. In fact, following the aforementioned NATO-EU joint declaration, Turkish diplomats reportedly expressed discontent with the declaration and distanced themselves from it. As the Cyprus dispute is unlikely to be resolved soon, further NATO-EU cooperation on climate action beyond vague declarations is doubtful under existing channels.

On the surface, it might seem like NATO-EU cooperation should be easy (despite the Turkey/Cyprus issue) given that, for example, the two organizations are just a few miles from each other in Brussels. Unfortunately, when speaking with employees at both organizations, it’s always surprising at just how lacking the overlap and coordination truly is. Hence, any effort to develop, say, a NATO- or EU-led policy steering body to develop strategies to address climate change will likely run into the same issues most other NATO-EU cooperation projects run into.

To avoid this, the G7 could potentially act as a primary steering platform for NATO and the EU to develop climate strategies before being disseminated to NATO and EU member states to implement or deliberate further.

How would this work?

To start, the G7 could provide a permanent guest invitation to the NATO secretary general to attend G7 meetings, much like how the G20 provides permanent guest invitations to several intergovernmental organizations. This would ensure that the NATO secretary general has a direct means of communication with the European Commission and the United States simultaneously, which would help in preventing transatlantic discord like that seen over the US Inflation Reduction Act. It would also reduce chances of a NATO-EU impasse developing over the Cyprus dispute before consensus is reached at the most senior policymaking levels of NATO and the European Union, as neither Turkey nor Cyprus will be present in this channel.

Discussing climate change from a security perspective will not be a matter of ‘mission creep’ for the G7.

Beyond its membership structure and distance from the Cyprus dispute, the G7 is a suitable vehicle for NATO-EU cooperation because of its existing security and climate agenda, which is increasingly aligned with that of NATO’s. Except for Japan, every member of the G7 is a NATO ally, and the European Union is represented at the body by the European Commission. And, although it was originally formed as an informal forum to discuss economic policy following the 1970s energy crises, the G7 has put security on its agenda as far back as 1980 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. It has also addressed global warming since 1985. Discussing climate change from a security perspective will not be a matter of “mission creep” for the G7.

Additionally, the G7 has already incorporated a commitment to achieving net zero carbon emissions since 2015 and recognized climate change as an existential security risk in 2022. The same year, the G7 launched the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) to assist with global climate financing and introduced the G7-led Climate Club to tackle climate change, with membership open to all countries. Climate is a high priority for the recently concluded G7 Summit in Hiroshima as well, with the G7 ministers of Climate, Energy and the Environment releasing new ambitious targets for 2030, such as increasing offshore wind capacity.

The G7 has engaged in greater cooperation with NATO as well. Since February 2022, the G7 has coordinated closely with NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This included the convening of the 2022 G7 Summit just prior to NATO’s Madrid Summit, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in attendance at the latter. Later, during the G20 Bali Summit, the G7 and NATO issued a joint statement for the first time in their histories to express their concern about the missile strike in Polish territory.

Altogether, there is a strong opportunity for meaningful NATO-EU cooperation by using the G7 as a convening platform for climate change-related discussions. The demand to accelerate decarbonization campaigns has never been stronger in all three organizations, and they should seize this opportunity together.

Francis Shin is a research assistant in the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

Rachel Rizzo is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center.

The post The G7 can take NATO-EU climate cooperation to the next level appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Developing countries need a loss and damage fund for climate change. How can COP28 make it happen?

Lama El Hatow — Thu, 25 May 2023 17:16:59 +0000

One of the major outcomes of COP27 in Egypt, which occurred from November 6-18, 2022, was the agreement to establish a Loss and Damage Fund (L&D). Loss and damage has been discussed for over a decade, starting with COP16 in Mexico, but little progress has been achieved over that time. The concept entails looking at the irreversible losses and damages incurred by climate change impacts on states, such as loss of land, ecosystems, heritage, biodiversity, and people.

Loss and damage differs from mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation refers to the amount of Green House Gas (GHG) emissions that states need to reduce to reach the 1.5 C target (34.7 F). Adaptation refers to methods that will help states adapt to a warming climate irrespective of emissions reductions, such as coastal protection measures, heat resistant crops, and more. Loss and damage, however, implies that although we are reducing emissions and adapting to a warmer world, there are still complete losses of ecosystems, species, land, and people that require attention and consideration—and, ultimately, compensation.

Mitigation and adaptation have long been part of already-established climate finance mechanisms. Meanwhile, L&D is a new paradigm that not only requires a separate pot of money, but also needs significantly more resources, since irreversible losses may cost more to cover.

While following the cash flow of climate finance, it has been observed that, of the $100 billion pledged by developed countries to developing countries, a maximum of $80 billion has been dispersed since the Paris Agreement of 2015. Since the full allotment of climate finance for mitigation and adaptation has yet to be fulfilled by developed countries, one must wonder where and how this new pot of money for L&D will come from.

In March 2023, the first transitional committee met in Luxor, Egypt to discuss the L&D fund. It made promising steps to claim that the fund could be finalized and set in place by COP28 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 30-December 12.

The talks did not address controversial issues such as sources of financing or the type of projects the fund would cover, but there was agreement over a road map to create a fund. This came with the understanding and responsibility that part of the outcome in COP28 must be the definition of clear guidelines for financing the L&D fund, in addition to drafting the operational guidelines for the scope and mechanism of the fund itself.

Deciding the scope and mechanism of the L&D fund is also quite tricky, as setting criteria for which countries are eligible for financing and under what conditions is extremely contentious. After the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022—which killed over seventeen hundred people, with damages having been estimated at $14.9 billion and economic losses registering at $15.2 billion—the country representatives were vocal at COP27 about the necessity for compensation and assistance to developing countries in regard to the complete eradication of land.

Small Island Developing States (SIDS), including Vanuatu, have also spoken up about the complete encroachment of the sea on their islands and the erasure of their countries, heritage, and entire existence. The SIDS—with Barbados leading the narrative against this climate injustice—have also been forthcoming in arguing how essential the money from L&D is to their survival.

So, how does the mechanism decide who gets priority in financing? This is a daunting task for the transitional committee. The aim is to set criteria for economic and non-economic losses to put a structure in place for such a framework.

Many have ultimately criticized the actual outcome and agreement of the L&D fund in COP27, stating that it is essentially the failure of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) system as a whole. For decades, states have been meeting regularly to come to an agreement on providing climate finance to developing countries that have not contributed to the climate crisis. At the same time, states have attempted to put requirements on each other to reduce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. That being said, the latest assessments have shown that the pledged emissions reductions have not been sufficient to meet the 1.5 C target set in Paris. In fact, the world is heading towards an average temperature increase of 2.5-2.8 C (36-37 F).

Many countries in the developing world have come to the consensus that they will be left with irreversible damages in the near future if other developed countries do not sufficiently reduce their GHG emissions or disburse climate finance as promised. The battle and persistence for an L&D fund by these countries is a matter of survival. L&D is the last lifeboat for these countries after decades of struggle to achieve some form of global climate justice. How the L&D fund will be structured and operated will be a telling sign of whether the last lifeboat can save lives or not.

Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

The post Developing countries need a loss and damage fund for climate change. How can COP28 make it happen? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Green hydrogen: Loaded up and (long-haul) trucking

Joseph Webster, William Tobin — Fri, 05 May 2023 16:00:42 +0000

Long-haul trucking is a highly promising use case for the US hydrogen industry, and California and Texas are two large potential markets for pioneering hydrogen-fueled trucking. Both states have excellent green hydrogen potential and are taking initial steps to become hydrogen trucking hubs. When it comes to decarbonizing heavy-duty transportation, hydrogen is here for the long-haul.

Cleaning up hydrogen

Today, the vast majority of hydrogen is produced from reforming the methane in coal or natural gas in a process that produces ten times more carbon dioxide than hydrogen by mass. It is principally used for refining heavy sour oil and producing ammonia for fertilizer.

The most promising pathways to create zero-carbon clean hydrogen at scale are through renewables-produced green hydrogen or nuclear-powered pink hydrogen, both of which use zero-carbon electricity to separate hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis. There is also blue hydrogen, which comes from natural gas in a process paired with carbon capture. Blue hydrogen’s role in decarbonization, however, is contingent on the mass buildout of carbon transportation and storage infrastructure.

If deployed judiciously, clean hydrogen can have a meaningful impact on lowering emissions in hard-to-electrify sectors, which require a chemical feedstock, long-duration energy storage, or extreme heat.

Long-haul trucking is a viable clean hydrogen offtaker

For most forms of transportation, growing economies of scale have given batteries an edge over hydrogen fuel cells. However, long-haul trucking—which accounts for 7 percent of transportation emissions—may be too high a fence for batteries to climb.

As a vehicle becomes heavier, its battery must expand proportionately in volume to provide the requisite power. Electric freight tractors use battery packs that are significantly heavier than the weight of diesel a truck typically carries, which decreases range and payload capacity while requiring more frequent charging. This is meaningful in the freight industry, where time is precious, and downtime can come at a cost of over $50 per hour before accounting for costs of charging. An electric long-haul truck takes thirty minutes to charge to only 70 percent capacity even with megawatt charging. In comparison, hydrogen re-fueling can be done quickly. Refueling a hydrogen truck takes ten minutes.

Hydrogen fuel cell trucks are therefore likely to edge out batteries for trips surpassing 180 miles and payloads above 24,000 pounds, according to an industry study.

The US Department of Energy estimates that total cost of ownership for hydrogen fuel cell long-haul vehicles will become affordable by 2030 thanks to new production tax credits for clean hydrogen. Furthermore, the department cites evidence that the long-haul trucking sector is willing to pay a premium for clean hydrogen. This outcome, however, is contingent on a buildout of refueling infrastructure along freight corridors. To boost demand, infrastructure could be built along freight lines that support high volumes of freight, such as near seaports. This can help medium-sized refueling stations reach their breakeven utilization rate. To do so, industry and policymakers must overcome a chicken-and-egg problem. The development of refueling infrastructure is critical to enable hydrogen-powered long-haul trucks, and—conversely—hydrogen refueling stations will rely on long-haul trucking for their income, as hydrogen uptake in transportation is likely to be confined to this sector.

California and Texas: Unlikely hydrogen trucking partners

California and Texas are important players in both green hydrogen and long-haul trucking.

Not only do the two states have the largest populations and economies in the country, but they also have outstanding green hydrogen potential.

Both California and Texas have excellent renewable resources, including solar and wind. The two states have deployed nearly 74 gigawatts of solar and wind capacity with another 36 GW in development.

Texas and California are the nation’s largest and second-largest renewables generators. As more renewable electricity production grows in these states, so will green hydrogen capacity—although there will be tensions between providing renewables for power generation or hydrogen.

Long-haul trucking is a natural use case for green hydrogen in both states. Texas and California are the country’s largest users of diesel for the transportation sector, consuming 633,000 barrels per day in 2021, or about 21 percent of total US diesel demand. Both states rely heavily on trucking to transport cargo from ports along the coast of California and Texas to destinations further inland. Indeed, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Houston are the country’s first, second, and fifth-largest container ports by volume, respectively.

There is already evidence that Texas and California’s long-haul trucking sectors could see synergies between ports and green hydrogen production. California provides fiscal support for zero-emissions vehicles, plans to end the sale of fossil fuel-powered medium- and heavy-duty trucks by 2036, and continues to develop hydrogen refueling infrastructure. Tellingly, Hyundai Motor will soon operate thirty fuel cell electric trucks in California; Hyundai states this deployment will mark the largest commercial deployment of fuel cell electric trucks in the United States in the super-large vehicle class. In North Texas, Air Products and AES are teaming up to construct the country’s largest green hydrogen facility to service the trucking industry.

The trucking fleet is replaced very rapidly: the average lifespan of a super-large class truck is eight years, while the median truck on the road today is approximately six years old. In comparison, personal vehicles are replaced on average only every ten and a half years. Moreover, unlike the personal vehicle segment, most long-haul trucks are procured by fleet owners who pay very close attention to the total cost of ownership, not just the sticker price. If hydrogen-fuel trucks become more competitive than their diesel counterparts, there could be a relatively rapid adjustment.

Hydrogen: Here for the long-haul

Hydrogen’s technical and economic fundamentals are likely to improve as technology advances and the Inflation Reduction Act incentivizes investments in renewables. Owing to their renewables potential, large ports, and significant diesel demand, California and Texas are primed to lead the trucking market’s transformation. While trucking fleet turnover will take time, hydrogen appears poised to disrupt the US trucking market.

Joseph Webster is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

William Tobin is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Meet the authors

Staff

Joseph Webster

Central Asia China

Staff

William Tobin

Africa China

EnergySource Mar 14, 2023

Harmonizing hydrogen ambitions and realities

By William Tobin, Joseph Webster

Hydrogen’s chemical properties determine its most optimal uses. Policymakers should orient deployment toward areas in which hydrogen makes the most sense as a tool for decarbonization and away from areas in which it does not.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Mar 9, 2023

Sub-Saharan green hydrogen as a catalyst for development

By Daniel Helmeci

Green hydrogen has the potential to turn sub-Saharan Africa’s abundant renewable resources into fuel for a sustainable economy. If supporting infrastructure can be built to harness this potential, the entire region could see the benefits.

Africa Energy & Environment

EnergySource Feb 14, 2023

Hydrogen in the MENA region: Priorities and steps forward

By Giampaolo Cantini

COP27 marked a major escalation in the MENA region’s hydrogen ambitions. With several international partnerships now underway, sustained support and forward-thinking policymaking will be key.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post Green hydrogen: Loaded up and (long-haul) trucking appeared first on Atlantic Council.

China’s wind industrial policy “succeeded” – but at what cost?

Joseph Webster — Mon, 01 May 2023 17:57:46 +0000

The Chinese wind industry’s expansion is an undeniably impressive story. The world’s second-largest economy is the world’s largest onshore and offshore wind market in terms of both generation and capacity. China is not only firmly embedded across wind energy value chains—particularly in the mining and processing of rare earth elements—but it is also at the forefront of developing the world’s largest and most efficient wind turbines.

Yet China’s emergence as the world’s leading player in wind has been costly. Beijing’s wind capacity deployment to less-than-ideal locations has been inefficient, while its failure to build corresponding transmission connections stunted growth in some of its windiest provinces. Moreover, Beijing’s acquisition of wind technology—sometimes by outright theft—has increased tensions with the West. China has risen to the top of the global wind industry, but at tremendous financial and diplomatic cost. China’s successes and failures provide lessons to other countries seeking to use their own wind industrial policies to address climate challenges and strengthen economic growth.

China’s expansive industrial policy

China’s total industrial policy spend comprised at least 1.73 percent of total GDP in 2019, more than four times that of the United States. China’s wind industry policies included enforcing localization requirements, using a feed-in tariff for initial sectoral development, employing massive direct and indirect subsidies, and obtaining—many would say stealing—foreign intellectual property.

China’s wind industrial policy began with feed-in-tariffs introduced in 2009 and domestic content requirements to achieve 1 percent of the country’s energy mix by 2010.

In addition to localization requirements and feed-in tariffs, China’s wind industry also benefitted from a range of direct and indirect industrial subsidies.

Chinese provinces often extend their own subsidies for wind energy. In 2021, Guangdong province issued subsidy standards for grid-connected offshore wind projects at 1500 Renminbi per kilowatt. At this scale, a similar program in the United States would yield about $109 million in subsidies for a 500 megawatt turbine, a remarkable level of support from a subnational government.

Chinese wind industrial policy’s supply chain secrets: subsidies for steel, ships—and even coal

The Chinese wind industry has received fillips from “cross-subsidies” for steel, coal, and shipbuilding.

Steel is an important cost driver for wind projects, accounting for about 90 percent of the materials used for an offshore wind turbine, which in turn represents nearly 40 percent of the installation cost for offshore wind projects. Steel is also a key component for onshore wind projects, although those installation costs vary far more dramatically.

In China, steel and coal are inseparable.

China’s steel production primarily employs blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace, which uses coal for 90 percent of the production processes. This reliance on coal makes China’s steel, which is heavily subsidized, highly carbon intensive.

Coal generation has long been subsidized by the Chinese government, with one estimate finding support of at least $37.7 billion in 2014; China’s total electricity sector subsidies stood at $30 billion in 2021, with much of that spending still directed to coal. Beijing also quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021, contradicting China’s climate pledges.

China’s steel-coal nexus has provided significant support for the development of its wind industry, but at significant environmental cost. To be clear: even China’s carbon-intensive wind turbines are orders of magnitude less polluting than coal or natural gas, and China’s wind turbine deployment is unambiguously a positive for the climate. However, these climate benefits are reduced by the Chinese wind industry’s dependence on a carbon-intensive, coal-consuming steel industry.

Finally, China’s steel and coal subsidies complement another industry vital for offshore wind: shipping. Beijing subsidized its shipping and shipbuilding industries to the tune of $132 billion between 2010 and 2018. Its ship manufacturing capabilities ensure it can produce wind turbine installation vessels and other ships for use in offshore wind deployment. China dominates this industry; in 2019, China accounted for about 55 percent of global shipbuilding orders, and employs 33 out of the 49 existing wind turbine installation vessels. Given its low-cost steel and extensive shipbuilding complex, China is extremely well-positioned to continue to deploy offshore wind rapidly.

Forced technology transfer and espionage

The PRC has obtained foreign intellectual property related to the wind industry via forced technology transfers and industrial espionage. In exchange for operating rights within China, Spanish company Gamesa was obligated by the Chinese government to train in-country competitors. As a result, the company’s share of the Chinese market fell from 33 percent in 2005 to just 3 percent by 2010. Many foreign companies saw their intellectual property stolen by Chinese firms, often with the support of Chinese intelligence services. For instance, American Superconductor Corp (ASMC), a computer systems supplier to wind turbines, had its source code hacked and its contracts with Chinese suppliers terminated in the early 2010s. Stories like ASMC’s abound throughout the wind industry.

China’s wind industrial policy has been, at best, a highly ambiguous success. China is indisputably the leader in wind energy markets, as it historically accounts for about half of all new wind installations by capacity. It is also the world’s leader, by far, in offshore wind deployment by capacity.

However, this progress has come at great and often unnecessary cost. China’s generous and holistic industrial subsides should have been deployed in a technologically agnostic manner, as much of its wind industrial policy spending was wasted. The Chinese wind market’s overall capacity factor has historically lagged other markets, with some research showing real capacity factors below 23 percent as late as 2019, compared to utilization factors of over 34 percent in the US market. This low rate is due in part to the stunted growth in China’s most wind-rich provinces in the early 2010s due to a lack of transmission capacity, leading to significant curtailment. China’s actual wind generation is much less impressive than its deployment of wind capacity.

Moreover, Beijing’s aggressive—often illegal—actions to secure wind energy intellectual property has alienated the West and provoked political distrust. Chinese leaders may now complain about economic de-risking, but their arguments ring hollow, as Chinese firms aggressively pushed Western companies out of their domestic wind market.

China’s wind energy industrial policy has ensured it is the world’s largest and most important wind producer, but it remains to be seen if the benefits will outweigh the considerable costs. Other countries considering their own wind industrial policies should apply lessons from China’s experience. To accelerate decarbonization, countries must be mindful of the unintended consequences of subsidies; nimbly adjust transmission networks to accommodate onshore and offshore wind generation; respect fundamental intellectual property rights; and use market mechanisms, such as a pollution fee on carbon. Otherwise, they risk misallocating resources and alienating vital partners, as China has done.

Joseph Webster is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and edits the China-Russia Report. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

Meet the author

Staff

Joseph Webster

Central Asia China

EnergySource Mar 31, 2023

Green investment takes the lead: Japan’s revamped approach in Africa

By Emi Yasukawa

Japan’s approach to Africa is becoming more investment-based, instead of relying just on aid. Japanese companies and banks have recalibrated their strategies and are looking to advance continent-wide development.

Africa Energy & Environment

EnergySource Mar 30, 2023

The US clean energy transformation can’t happen at the expense of national security

By Francis R. Fannon

The pace of the energy transition has, to this point, depended on low-cost Chinese production. But the supply chains that have driven clean tech deployment jeopardize US national security and must be remade.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Mar 28, 2023

Country spotlight: Unlocking a high-energy future for Zambia

By Maia Sparkman, William Tobin

Smart private sector investment in Zambia could drive a high-energy, high-growth future as the country reforms. This could make Zambia a model for neighboring countries looking to advance their own energy transformations.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post China’s wind industrial policy “succeeded” – but at what cost? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The geopolitics of the energy trilemma in South Asia

Robert F. Ichord, Jr. — Wed, 12 Apr 2023 19:36:00 +0000

The March 20, 2023 summit meeting in Moscow between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, combined with the coinciding remarks of United Nations (UN) Secretary General António Guterres for a “G20 Climate Solidarity Pact,” provide important context for considering the role of South Asia and its energy position and prospects.

The countries of South Asia are caught in the geopolitics of “great power competition,” with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka all abstaining on the February UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They are also on the front lines of the climate crisis and are experiencing severe impacts from floods, droughts, and heat while continuing to grow their carbon dioxide emissions. As a low per capita income region, South Asia demands increasing energy supplies to foster economic growth for its large and growing population, which is approaching two billion people.

In its efforts to meet these needs, the region faces the triple challenges of energy security, energy equity, and environmental sustainability, termed the “energy trilemma” by the World Energy Council. This blog provides an overview of the difficult and complex situation faced by countries in the region and the market and geopolitical factors influencing developments there. It concludes that while countries are taking positive steps in the transition to a sustainable energy mix, they face the risk of backsliding in their policies and investment efforts.

While countries in Africa and Southeast Asia are entering into Just Energy Transition Partnerships with Western and international organizations, South Asian countries are instead being subjected to the consequences of China and Russia’s efforts to expand their political and economic influence in the region. In this complex geopolitical context, expanded US and G7 clean energy efforts are needed.

The state of play

Energy security
Energy security is an important concern since South Asia—a major importer of oil, gas, and coal—has become more dependent on the volatile global energy market in recent years. The region consumed about 7 percent of world primary energy in 2021, with about 85 percent of this in India. Growth in energy consumption since 2011 has averaged about 4 percent per annum.

India is the third largest global importer of crude oil and products with over 82 percent of its consumption imported. Liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports constitute about 45 percent of Indian domestic gas consumption, with the US providing about 17 percent of these imports. With the cut-offs of oil and gas exports to Europe after the invasion of Ukraine and ensuing sanctions packages, Russia has been desperate to find outlets for its oil, and India has used the opportunity to buy discounted Russian oil well below the $60 G7 cap price, saving last year by one estimate $3.6 billion in import costs. Reported crude oil imports from Russia in December 2022 were one million barrels per day or about 25 percent of India’s normal imports.

Pakistan and Bangladesh are looking at importing discounted Russian crude oil and refined products after March 2023, but it is not clear whether the discounts will match those of India. High LNG prices and lower demand resulted in decreased LNG imports by both (six and fifteen million tons reduction respectively in 2022 compared with 2021) as LNG suppliers were focused on replacing Russian gas in Europe. With China’s economic recovery spurring a rebound in LNG imports, Europe’s continuing efforts to diversify gas supplies and refill stocks, and no new major supply coming online until 2026 due to lead times in new liquefaction capacity projects (especially in Qatar and the United States, although the Freeport LNG facility in Texas recently returned to full production capacity after an explosion last summer), the prospects are for a tight LNG market in the next few years.

Although Bangladesh is moving to resume LNG imports with the recent easing of spot prices, it hopes to reduce natural gas imports and convert its regasification plants to handle green hydrogen by 2030. Pakistan is reconsidering its position on new gas power plants and further imports of LNG. India, however, seems to be continuing with plans to increase the role of gas in its energy mix with regasification capacity expected to increase from the current forty-two million tons to seventy million in 2030.

In the face of growing energy demand, increasing imports, and geopolitical and energy security concerns, South Asian countries need to ramp up their domestic clean energy development to limit import dependency, reduce poverty, and improve environmental performance.

Energy equity
Over seventy-seven million South Asians lack electricity. India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka have all made major progress since 2010, connecting almost 350 million people. However, World Bank data suggests that Pakistan has made little progress in reducing its unserved population of around fifty-four million.

This problem stems from many factors, including the lack of a focused government effort, the financially weak position of Pakistan’s electricity distribution companies, devastating floods and glacial melt that have destroyed electricity infrastructure, widespread corruption, and the remote location and security issues of villages in the north and west. Proposals have been offered to create a Rural Electrification Board, as in Bangladesh, to spearhead a serious program to reach off-grid villages and introduce solar household and mini-grid systems. Yet progress remains slow.

In addition to conventional grid extension and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and World Bank-supported system of rural electric cooperatives, Bangladesh also has pioneered a rural solar energy program. It is being carried out by the quasi-governmental Infrastructure Development Company Limited in cooperation with non-governmental organizations and local companies and with support from the World Bank, USAID, and other donors. This effort has helped to deploy over six million solar home and microgrid systems to over twenty million people. The World Bank believes it is the largest-off grid program in the world.

The Indian government also funds rural solar deployment, but private companies have increased their presence in this area. Notably, the Tata conglomerate has established a subsidiary, TP Renewable Microgrid, dedicated to microgrid development. They have installed 161 microgrids in their start-up phase and aim to deploy ten thousand.

Through its roll out of innovative business models and technology, the private sector has an important role to play when it comes to access and equity in the power sector, building on and stop-gaping government policies.

Environmental sustainability
The environment in South Asia is under tremendous pressure from industrial development, urbanization, population growth, and climate change. With the region accounting for about 8.6 percent of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in 2021, international attention has focused on the future of coal. India is the second-largest global coal consumer and where coal in 2021 accounted for 57 percent of primary energy and 71 percent of electricity generation. Although the Indian government is making progress on an ambitious diversification program, including five hundred gigawatts (GW) of renewables by 2030, the government does not envision the country reaching net-zero emissions until 2070. Further, the Central Electricity Authority’s plans call for twenty-five GW of new coal-fired capacity by 2027.

In Pakistan and Bangladesh, after building several coal plants with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean financing, the governments adopted coal moratoriums in 2021 and were on a path to substitute LNG, renewables, and nuclear for coal; however, energy security and price factors led Bangladesh in September 2022 to announce plans to add 4.3 GW of coal-fired capacity, and in February 2023, Pakistani Federal Minister for Energy Khurram Dastgir Khan reversed policy and called for ten GW of domestically-fired coal plants over the next decade. Whether these coal plant additions can be financed given these countries’ serious debt problems and the announced policies of China, Japan, and South Korea to stop financing overseas coal plants remains to be seen.

Despite these policy shifts, Pakistan continues to pursue the former Imran Khan government’s target of 60 percent hydro and renewable energy by 2030, while Bangladesh aims to reach 4.1 GW of renewables by 2030 and 40 percent clean energy (renewable, hydro, and nuclear) by 2041. The smaller countries of the region have set more ambitious targets. Nepal, with its large hydro capacity, has advanced its net-zero target to 2045 and Sri Lanka, despite its current dependence on oil and coal for two-thirds of electricity generation, embraced a 2050 target with 70 percent renewables by 2030.

The pursuit of nuclear power is a small but significant dimension of the energy transition plans in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and these countries have turned to China and Russia for technology and financing. As part of an overall push to export its indigenous technology, China has supplied and brought online two Hualong One reactors in Karachi under a $6 billion loan. As part of its $120 billion global nuclear export program, Russia has provided two VVER-413 reactors which went into operation in 2013 and 2016 at Kudankulam and is working with India on four additional one thousand MW reactors. Russia loaned Bangladesh over $11 billion for two VVER-1200 V-523 units which are under construction at Rooppur and are expected to be completed by 2024 and 2025.

Protecting the region’s environment is critical for its human security; but cost and political interference make the line of equilibrium between clean and affordable energy hard to find—let alone to walk—for the countries of South Asia.

What should be done

In conclusion, global energy security and climate change issues will continue to play out in South Asia with Russia and China expanding their influence through oil, renewable, and nuclear technology exports and project financing.

As South Asian countries navigate the geopolitics of energy and address their energy trilemma challenge, it is critical that the United States, its allies, and companies expand their cooperation and energy investment in the region. The fall G20 meeting in India will be an opportunity to highlight Western intentions and offer concrete initiatives, such as when Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged $75 billion in regional investment for infrastructure and security as part of the “free and open Indo-Pacific” initiative during his recent visit to India.

As in the Indonesia Just Energy Transition Partnership agreement (co-led by the United States and Japan), Washington should partner with Japan and G7 allies on an expanded clean energy transition initiative in South Asia, with a possible endorsement at the G7 meeting hosted by Japan in May. Building on the US interagency Clean EDGE Asia Initiative and the five-year, $49 million USAID South Asia Regional Energy Partnership program, such an initiative might give special focus to the modernization and strengthening of the electricity transmission and distribution systems in the region. The goal should be to enhance reliability and resilience, improve financial viability, reduce technical and commercial losses, and increase system capacity to integrate the higher levels of intermittent renewables that the countries are aspiring to achieve.

The energy trilemma will represent a fundamental challenge to South Asia’s sustainable development for years to come. Strong government commitments, creative thinking and technology innovation, multilateral partnerships, increased Western support, and public-private collaboration can help this booming, emerging-market region power its people and industries in an efficient and affordable manner while also limiting damage to the environment and contributing to progress on global climate.

Dr. Robert F. Ichord, Jr. is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

The Global Energy Center promotes energy security by working alongside government, industry, civil society, and public stakeholders to devise pragmatic solutions to the geopolitical, sustainability, and economic challenges of the changing global energy landscape.

The geopolitics of the energy trilemma in South Asia” class=”gta-horizontal-featured–img” />

SouthAsiaSource Sep 9, 2022

Experts react: Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan

By South Asia Center experts

More than one-third of Pakistan is underwater amid catastrophic climate change-induced flooding. South Asia Center experts provide their analyses of the situation.

Climate Change & Climate Action Economy & Business

The geopolitics of the energy trilemma in South Asia” class=”gta-horizontal-featured–img” />

SouthAsiaSource May 23, 2022

South Asia’s climate crisis: Policymakers need to feel the heat

By Erum Haider

Few things unite South Asia more urgently right now than the climate crisis. We can only hope that policymakers are listening.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

The geopolitics of the energy trilemma in South Asia” class=”gta-horizontal-featured–img” />

SouthAsiaSource May 12, 2022

Rising sea levels and the climate crisis in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka

By South Asia Center

The South Asia Center brings together a panel of experts to discuss the effects of climate change on the economy, food and energy security, and migration in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh Climate Change & Climate Action

SouthAsiaSource Blog

The post The geopolitics of the energy trilemma in South Asia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Khakova joins BBC World to discuss the US-EU Energy Council

mzandi — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 15:53:01 +0000

The post Khakova joins BBC World to discuss the US-EU Energy Council appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Israeli-Arab cooperation on agriculture, water, and food security starts with building on existing innovations

Daniel B. Shapiro — Fri, 31 Mar 2023 22:18:56 +0000

The N7 Conference on Agriculture, Water, and Food Security—which I helped organize—convened in Abu Dhabi on March 14-16 with participants from each of the N7 countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). They were joined by attendees from Tunisia, Indonesia, and Burkina Faso, extending far beyond the Middle East and North Africa region. Plus, for the first time, an N7 Conference included Palestinian participation.

Water scarcity, the challenges of desert agriculture, and food insecurity are problems that are common to all these countries. Even so, this was the first opportunity for all of them to come together to discuss how to tackle these issues.

The depth and diversity of the projects that the participants conceived show how the climate crisis in these societies has given rise to a set of issues around which there is much consensus and a true openness to addressing them together. The ideas that had the most currency among participants were those that represented shared solutions, drawing on each country’s strengths and capabilities, that could be executed across the region. In many cases, the participants demonstrated that powerful solutions are already in the field, but their application in broader regional frameworks will make a material difference.

Take wastewater management. Israel has developed technologies and protocols for the use of treated sewage water for agricultural purposes. It is an important efficiency that ensures multiple uses of significant quantities of water. But applying the technology and Israel’s approach, without modification, would not be effective in every other location. Specific details such as the soil chemistry in which the reused water is deployed, the types of crops it irrigates, and education campaigns taking into account local cultural factors all have bearing on how successful these techniques will be in other countries.

Eliminating food waste is another area that calls for regional approaches. Most N7 countries have some programs—either government- or private-sponsored—to rescue food that would otherwise rot or be discarded. But much more can be achieved if the countries work together with cross-border public-private partnerships, harmonize food safety standards, liberalize and increase efficiency of trade in agricultural commodities, and fast-track crisis management and information sharing protocols—all designed to help N7 countries ensure that food gets to where it is needed.

Applying existing research and expanded training to unique conditions in each country to improve food security also received extensive attention. There is no shortage of expertise in desert agriculture in these countries, but what works in one set of geological and climactic conditions, or with one set of crops, may not succeed when those variables change. With precise experimentation and training, the N7 countries could improve the productivity of cereals and fruit trees by 30 percent in five years and reduce crop losses to pests and diseases by 20 percent in the same period.

All of these projects require the pooling of resources, talent, intellectual capital, and creativity across the boundaries of the N7 countries and beyond, coupled with the ability to influence policymakers by bringing them practical solutions. That work will be especially driven by those former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in his address to the conference, called the “change-makers,” mostly from the younger generation.

The collaborative atmosphere of the conference was notably warm, as these scientists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers forged personal connections that can translate into longer-term relationships. That included an outing to the Abrahamic Family House, the UAE’s newly opened compound with a mosque, a church, and a synagogue that symbolizes interfaith coexistence.

Even in a period of significant regional tension, governments gave their backing and encouragement to these discussions. Israeli National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, an attendee at the N7 Conference on Education and Coexistence in Morocco in December, engaged the conference in a virtual discussion. Israeli Ambassador to the UAE Amir Hayek was a constant presence.

Nawal Al Hosany, the UAE’s permanent representative to the International Renewable Energy Agency, and Kristofer Hamel, who leads the Food Security Initiative for the UAE as it plans to host the twenty-eighth United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28) later this year, addressed plenary sessions.

From the United States’ side, US Ambassador to Israel Thomas R. Nides and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Yael Lempert—who leads US efforts to advance the Negev Forum—and multiple congressional supporters of the Abraham Accords from both parties addressed the forum virtually. They included House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, Senator Cory Booker, Senator Joni Ernst, and Representative Brad Schneider.

What this participation tells us is that officials charged with managing relationships in the region see value in the work of such Track 1.5 conferences—that is, including government officials in an unofficial capacity along with non-governmental experts. This conference, hosted by the N7 Initiative (a partnership between the Atlantic Council and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation) with the support of the UAE government, mostly consisted of sessions conducted under the Chatham House rule of non-disclosure to ensure the comfort of participants and promote open exchanges between them. At a time when many official exchanges seem stalled or are moving slowly, these kinds of exchanges can have outsized value in finding areas of shared interest and forging common bonds.

Daniel B. Shapiro is director of the N7 Initiative and distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He is a former US ambassador to Israel.

The post Israeli-Arab cooperation on agriculture, water, and food security starts with building on existing innovations appeared first on Atlantic Council.

I was part of the Israeli National Security Council. Climate change has been an important security challenge for years.

Efrat Minivitzki Thein — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 14:55:47 +0000

As the global climate continues to warm—with implications that touch every facet of governance—more and more countries are taking the national security challenges associated with climate change seriously. Israel has been doing so for several years.

In 2019, I began working on climate change issues and was then appointed as the first-ever director of climate change policy at the Israeli National Security Council (NSC). The creation of the role was a significant step in recognizing climate change as a matter of national security, and our inter-agency team worked hard to address its various implications.

The decision to establish a climate change department at the NSC was long overdue. It was the outcome of intensive work and internal discussions in parallel with extensive analysis and research, which highlighted the various opportunities and risks that climate change poses to Israel’s national security. The department was eventually established following the recommendation of an NSC task force.

Naturally, the Israeli government decided to treat climate change as a national security issue because of its impact on different aspects of Israel’s security. For example, climate change could lead to more severe and frequent natural disasters—such as floods and wildfires—which could destabilize national infrastructure and lead to the mass displacement of people in the region. In addition, climate change could significantly intensify existing conflicts, such as those over water resources – something that is especially scarce in the Middle East – and could create new economic, social, and political tensions on issues such as food scarcity.

The NSC’s role in addressing climate change implications was critical, as it had the mandate to coordinate and integrate policy across government agencies and ensure that policies are aligned with national security priorities. As I started my new role at the NSC, I decided to convene an inter-agency team, bringing together representatives from various ministries, including the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Defense, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The NSC also facilitated broader consultations, engaging representatives from various NGOs, academia, and the private sector, to ensure a comprehensive approach to the challenges that could arise. One of our goals was to reach a consensus among the various aforementioned stakeholders. This included thoroughly reviewing existing work plans and strategies and identifying areas that required further action.

The newly established department has also played a critical role in assessing the impact of climate change on Israel’s national security. This includes monitoring the latest findings on climate change by worldwide experts and international organizations, assessing opportunities and risks for Israel, and developing strategies to assist in the mitigation and adaptation of national and international efforts.

Our team also engaged in strategic discussions on how agriculture, water, and food security are reflected in Israel’s national security policy, and on ways that relevant ministries dealt with them. These three areas are connected and have a significant impact on each other. Our policy recommendations are designed to address the various challenges for these sectors in the face of climate change and to ensure food security for the Israeli population.

The Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for developing policies to promote sustainable agriculture and food security. The NSC works with the ministry and other non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to develop policies that address the impact of climate change on agriculture. Taking advantage of Israel’s unique technology advantages, farmers are encouraged to increase usage of precision agriculture to optimize crop yields while reducing the use of water and other resources. This policy was aimed at improving the efficiency of agricultural yields while reducing the negative impact of agriculture on the environment.

Food security is a critical issue for Israel, given its dependence on food imports and the potential impact of climate change on global food production. The NSC has worked with different ministries and organizations to promote policies aimed at increasing food security, such as developing new varieties of drought-resistant crops, promoting sustainable farming practices, and increasing the use of locally produced food.

While significant progress has been made in addressing these issues, there is still much to be done. The government must keep investing in research and development to ensure that Israel remains at the forefront of innovation in agriculture, water management, and food security. Additionally, policies will need to continue to evolve to address emerging challenges, such as the impact of climate change on pests and diseases that affect crops and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture.

From March 14 to 16, the N7 Initiative, a partnership between the Atlantic Council and Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation, held a conference on agriculture, water, and food security in Abu Dhabi. The productive discussions between experts from Israel and ten Arab and Muslim countries demonstrated that there was an appetite for common approaches addressing these climate-driven challenges. Working together on water technology deployment, trade policies, and improved desert agriculture practices were at the heart of these discussions.

However, Israel’s experience of addressing climate change as a national security challenge is also an approach that bears sharing with its regional partners. Among other things, a consensus around climate change as a threat to national security could incentivize governments to adopt, fund, and implement a wide range of the proposals initiated at the N7 Conference and similar gatherings with focus and urgency.

Efrat Minivitzki Thein is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s N7 Initiative in the Middle East Programs. Thein spent the last fifteen years working for the Israeli government.

The post I was part of the Israeli National Security Council. Climate change has been an important security challenge for years. appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Humanitarian aid: Defining new areas of US-LAC collaboration

Pepe Zhang, Isabel Bernhard — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 15:00:00 +0000

DOWNLOAD PDF

Executive summary

The US humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) system—well practiced and extensively developed—could further serve US and partners’ needs in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and beyond through targeted improvements. Based on our experience as HADR practitioners with operational and academic expertise, we share insights from many years of working with partners in the Americas. The task is urgent: fragile governments and organizations further impacted by COVID-19 and climate change have exposed HADR deficiencies that need to be rapidly strengthened. Redoubling the US’s HADR commitment to allies and partners can also have strategic benefits during a period of renewed competition with the People’s Republic of China.

We believe that the United States can strengthen its HADR work globally, and particularly with LAC countries, through partnership and relationship building as well as education and exercises. By deepening its strengths and address- ing room for improvement, the United States can remain the partner of choice for LAC countries and conserve its positional advantage over China and other strategic competitors.

How can LAC and partner nations (such as the United States), nongovernmental organizations, and regional and other global organizations strengthen their abilities to respond to natural disasters? What can the United States do to improve its disaster preparedness and response in LAC? And what can Washington learn from Beijing’s approach to disaster assistance in LAC?

In crafting this report to address these questions, we drew from a roundtable discussion, verbal and written consultations with subject matter experts, and written material. A full description of the methodology is provided in the appendix.

The findings of the report include eight recommendations grouped under two mutually complementary areas: (1) partnership and relationship building, and (2) education and exercises. Not only are these recommendations timely and relevant for HADR practitioners, but taking these steps would strengthen Western hemispheric security by investing in the region’s infrastructure and human capital. As the United States and its LAC partners consider future room for cooperation and collaboration, HADR work will form an indispensable centerpiece of their strategies.

Report Feb 23, 2022

US-China vaccine diplomacy: Lessons from Latin America and the Caribbean

By María Eugenia Brizuela de Ávila, Bosco Marti, Riyad Insanally and Claudia Trevisan

The implications of diverging COVID-19 responses, notably at the onset of the pandemic’s rise in the region, will reverberate beyond the health sector. What might the differing US and China pandemic approaches portend for future influence in the region?

Caribbean China

Issue briefs and reports May 12, 2021

China-LAC Trade: Four Scenarios in 2035

By Tatiana Prazeres, David Bohl, and Pepe Zhang

Executive Summary Trade between China and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) experienced dramatic growth since the early 2000s. Going forward, China is poised to solidify its position as a leading regional trading partner. By 2035, trade values will likely reach unprecedented levels. This, accompanied by greater Chinese investment and financial flows, will further increase […]

China Economy & Business

The post Humanitarian aid: Defining new areas of US-LAC collaboration appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How the war in Iraq changed the world—and what change could come next

Atlantic Council experts — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 12:00:00 +0000

How the war in Iraq changed the world—and what change could come next

Twenty years on from the US invasion of the country, Iraq has fallen off the policymaking agenda in Washington, DC—cast aside in part as a result of the bitter experience of the war, the enormous human toll it exacted, and the passage of time. But looking forward twenty years and beyond, Iraqis need a great deal from their own leaders and those of their erstwhile liberators. A national reconciliation commission, a new constitution, and an economy less dependent on oil revenue are just some of the areas the experts at the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative highlight in this collection of reflections marking two decades since the US invasion.

What else will it take to transform Iraq into a prosperous, productive regional player? What can the United States do now, with twenty years’ worth of hindsight? And just how far-reaching were the effects of the war? Twenty-one experts from across the Atlantic Council take on these questions in a series of short essays and video interviews below.

Oula Kadhum on what March 20, 2003 was like for a young Iraqi

How the Iraq war changed…

Scroll and click through the carousel below to jump to a response:

The cause of democracy in the region

When the United States invaded Iraq two decades ago, one of the public justifications for the war was that it would help spread democracy throughout the Middle East. The invasion, of course, had the opposite effect: it unleashed a bloody sectarian conflict in Iraq, badly undermining the reputation of democracy in the region and America’s credibility in promoting it.

Yet the frictions between rulers and ruled that helped precipitate the US invasion of Iraq persist. The citizens of the region, increasingly educated and connected to the rest of the world, have twenty-first-century political aspirations, but continue to be ruled by unaccountable nineteenth-century-style autocrats. Absent a change, these frictions will continue to shape political developments in the region, often in cataclysmic fashion, over the next two decades.

The George W. Bush administration’s failures in Iraq severely set back the cause of democracy in the region. In the perceptions of Arab publics, democratization became synonymous with the exercise of American military power. Meanwhile, Iraq’s chaos strengthened the hand of the region’s autocrats: as inept or heavy-handed as their own rule might be, it paled in comparison to the breakdown of order and human slaughter in Iraq.

Citizens’ frustrations with their political leaders finally erupted in the Arab Spring of 2010 and 2011, but their protests failed to end autocracy in the region. Gulf monarchs were able to throw money at the problem, first to shore up their own rule and then other autocracies in the region. The Egyptian experiment with democracy proved short-lived; Tunisia’s endured far longer but also appears over. More broadly, the region has seen democratic backsliding in Lebanon and Israel as well.

The yawning gap between what citizens want and what they get from their governments remains. The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators show that, on aggregate, states in the region are no more politically stable, effectively governed, accountable, or participatory than two decades ago. Unless political leaders address that gap, further Arab Spring-like protests—or even social revolution—are probable.

Having apparently gotten out of the business of invasion and occupation following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States could play a new and constructive role here. It could both cajole and assist the region’s political leaders to improve governance for their citizens.

The United States exacerbated political tensions in the region two decades ago; now it has an opportunity to help ameliorate them.

—Stephen R. Grand is the author of Understanding Tahrir Square: What Transitions Elsewhere Can Teach Us About the Prospects for Arab Democracy. He is a nonresident senior fellow with the Council’s Middle East programs.

State sovereignty

Since the seventeenth century, more or less, world order has been based on the concept of state sovereignty: states are deemed to hold the monopoly of force within mutually recognized territories, and they are generally prohibited from intervening in one another’s domestic affairs. The invasion of Iraq challenged this standard in three important ways.

First, the fact of the war represented a direct attack on the sovereignty of the Iraqi state, which undermined the ban on aggressive war. While the Bush administration cast the invasion as a case of preemptive self-defense, it was widely seen as a preventive war of choice against a state that did not pose a clear and present danger. Moreover, the main exceptions to sovereignty that have developed over time, such as ongoing mass atrocities or United Nations authority, were not applicable in Iraq. Thus, the United States dealt a major blow to the rules-based international system of which it was one of the chief architects. This may have made more imaginable later crimes of aggression by other states.

Second, the means of the war, and especially the occupation, powered the reemergence of the private military industry. Driven by the need to sustain two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US armed forces became dependent on military contractors, which sometimes involved authorizing paid civilians to kill. The US effort to (re)privatize warfare brought back into fashion the use of private military force, generating a multibillion-dollar industry that is here to stay. Over time the spread of private military companies could unspool the state’s exclusive claim to violence and hammer the foundations of the current international system.

Third, the consequences of the war led to the spectacular empowerment of armed nonstate actors in the region and beyond, who launched a full-frontal assault on the sovereignty of many states. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, of course, emerged amid the brutal contestation of power in post-invasion Iraq and pursued its “caliphate” as an alternative (Sunni) political institution to rival the nation-state. While the threat has been contained, for now, in the Middle East, it is only beginning to gather force on the African continent. In addition, because Iran effectively won the war in Iraq, it was able to sponsor a deep bench of Shia nonstate groups which have eroded state sovereignty in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Iraq itself.

The US invasion of Iraq left us a world with less respect for state sovereignty, more guns for hire, and a dizzying array of well-armed and determined nonstate groups.

—Alia Brahimi is a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and host of the Guns for Hire podcast.

Abbas Kadhim on the opportunities missed

US-Turkish ties

By launching a war on Turkey’s border, against Turkish advice, in a manner that prejudiced Turkish interests, the United States in 2003 upended a strategic understanding that had dominated bilateral relations for five decades.

During and immediately after the Cold War, Turkey and the United States shared a strategic vision centered on containing the Soviet Union and its proxies. In exchange for strategic cooperation, Washington provided aid, modulated criticisms of Turkish politics, and deferred to Ankara’s sensitivities regarding its geopolitical neighborhood. With notable exceptions (e.g., Turkish opposition to the Vietnam War and US opposition to Turkey’s 1974 Cyprus operation), consensus was the norm and aspiration of both sides. After close collaboration in the Balkans, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan from 1991 to 2001, though, Ankara became increasingly alarmed about the prospect of a new war in Iraq.

Bilateral relations deteriorated sharply after the Turkish parliament voted against allowing the United States to launch combat operations from Turkish soil. The war was longer, bloodier, and costlier than its planners had anticipated. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known as the PKK and designated by the United States as a terrorist organization in 1997) ended a cease-fire in place since the 1999 capture of its founder, Abdullah Öcalan, and gained broad new freedom of movement and action in northern Iraq. US military aid to Turkey ended, while defense industrial cooperation and military-to-military contacts dropped. In July 2003 US soldiers detained and hooded a Turkish special forces team in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, on suspicions that they were colluding with insurgents. This event, coupled with Turkish anger over the bitter conduct and conclusion of the prewar negotiations, helped fuel a sustained rise in negative views about the United States among the Turkish public.

Sanctions and the war in Iraq damaged Turkish economic interests, though these would rebound from 2005 onward. The relationship of the US military to the PKK—first as tacit tolerance of PKK attacks into Turkey from northern Iraq despite the US presence, and later with employment of the PKK affiliate in Syria as a proxy force against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—rendered the frictions of 2003 permanent. That US forces train, equip, and operate with a PKK-linked militia along Turkey’s border today is fruit of the Iraq war, because US-PKK contacts were brokered in northern Iraq, and US indifference to Turkish security redlines traces back to 2003.

The story of US-Turkish estrangement can be told from other perspectives: that Ankara sought strategic independence for reasons broader than Iraq, that President Erdoğan’s anti-Westernism drove divergence, that the countries have fewer shared interests now. There may be truth in these arguments, though they are based largely on speculation and imputed motives. Yet they, too, cannot be viewed except through the lens of the 2003 Iraq War, which came as Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party was assuming power and greatly influenced his subsequent decision-making.

Many effects of the Iraq War have faded, but the strategic alienation of Turkey and the United States has not.

—Rich Outzen, a retired colonel, is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council IN TURKEY and a geopolitical analyst and consultant currently serving private-sector clients as Dragoman LLC.

China’s rise

As George W. Bush took office in 2001, managing the US-China relationship was regarded as a top foreign policy concern. The administration’s focus shifted with 9/11 and a wartime footing—which in turn altered Beijing’s foreign policy and engagement in the Middle East.

A high point in US-China tension came in April with the Hainan Island Incident. The collision of a US signals intelligence aircraft and a Chinese interceptor jet resulted in one dead Chinese pilot and the detention of twenty-four US crew members, whose release followed US Ambassador Joseph Prueher’s delivery of the “letter of the two sorries.”

But after the September 11 attacks, the United States launched the global war on terrorism, and the ensuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq became the all-encompassing focal points. While that relieved pressure on China, the US decision to invade Iraq raised serious concerns in Beijing and elsewhere about the direction of global order under US leadership.

American willingness to attack a sovereign government with the stated goal of changing its regime set a worrisome precedent for authoritarian governments. Worries transformed into something else following the global financial crisis in 2008. Chinese leaders became even more wary of US leadership, with former Vice Premier Wang Qishan telling then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson after the financial crisis, “Look at your system, Hank. We aren’t sure we should be learning from you anymore.”

The war in Iraq was especially troubling for Chinese leaders. Few believed that the United States would engage in such a disastrous war over something as idealistic as democracy promotion in the Middle East. The dominant assumption was that the war was about maintaining control of global oil—and using that dominance to prevent China from rising to a peer competitor status. The so-called “Malacca Dilemma” became a feature of analysis in China’s strategic landscape: the idea that any power that could control the Strait of Malacca could control oil shipping to China, and therefore its economy. Since then, China has developed the world’s largest navy and invested in ports across the Indian Ocean region through its Maritime Silk Road Initiative. Its defense spending has increased fivefold this century, from $50 billion in 2001 to $270 billion in 2021, making it the second-largest defense spender in the Indo-Pacific region after Japan, and higher than the next thirteen Indo-Pacific countries combined.

Since the Iraq war, the Middle East has become a much greater focus in Chinese foreign policy. In addition to building up its own military, China began discussing security and strategic affairs with Middle East energy suppliers, conducting joint exercises, selling more varied weapons systems, and pursuing a regional presence that increasingly diverges or competes with US preferences.

Would China’s growing presence in the Middle East have followed the same trajectory had the United States not invaded Iraq? Possibly, although one could argue that the same sense of urgency would not have animated decision makers in the People’s Republic of China.

—Jonathan Fulton is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and host of the China-MENA podcast. He is also an assistant professor of political science at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi. Follow him on Twitter: @jonathandfulton.

The country’s readiness to meet climate challenges

Over the course of the last two decades, Iraq has become one of the five most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change. It has been affected by rising temperatures, insufficient and diminishing rainfall, intensified droughts that reduce access to water, sand and dust storms, and flooding. Iraq’s environmental ministry warns that the country may face dust storms for more than 270 days per year in the next twenty years.

While not the sole cause of environmental mismanagement in Iraq, the muhasasa system of power sharing has exacerbated and contributed to a culture of corruption and political patronage that has undermined efforts to protect the environment and to sustainably manage Iraq’s natural resources. Muhasasa is an official system that allocates Iraqi government positions and resources based on ethnic and sectarian identity. It may have been a good temporary compromise to promote stability in the early 2000s, but today it is widely viewed as a harmful legacy of the post-invasion occupation period.

In the context of protecting the environment, the muhasasa system has led to a situation where some government officials are appointed to their respective positions without the necessary skills or qualifications to manage resources efficiently or effectively. Forced ethnosectarian balancing has encouraged natural resource misuse for political or personal gain to the immediate detriment of average Iraqis. While muhasasa was intended to promote political stability and prevent marginalization of minority groups, in practice it has contributed to a culture of corruption and nepotism, and undermined efforts to promote good governance and sustainable development.

To address its acute climate challenges, Iraq needs to move away from the sectarian-based power sharing and toward a more inclusive, merit-based system of governance. It must strengthen its environmental regulations, commit itself to sustainable development, and better manage its natural resources for the country and as part of the global effort to mitigate climate change. The international community has a role to play here through supporting technical assistance, capacity building, and providing financial resources to help address these concerns along the way.

—Masoud Mostajabi is an associate director of the Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council.

Iran’s regional footprint

From the outset of the invasion of Iraq, the United States’ decision was built on several dubious premises that the administration masterfully overhyped to build support for its aspirations of removing Saddam Hussein by force. The last two decades have tragically shown the consequences of this decision—with high costs of blood and treasure and a serious blow to American credibility. But from a strategic standpoint, one particular miscalculation continues to create blowbacks to US regional security interests: top US policymakers willfully ignored the need for an adequate nation-rebuilding strategy, leaving a power vacuum that an expansionist Iran could fill.

With the removal of the Baathist regime, Iran finally saw the defeat of a rival it could not best after eight years of one of the region’s bloodiest wars. This cleared the path to influence Iraqi Shia leaders who had long relied on the Islamic theocracy next door for support. Even as some Shia learning centers in Najaf and Karbala challenged (once again) Qom, new opportunities of influence that never existed before opened up for Iran.

By infiltrating Iraq’s political institutions through appointed officials submissive to its regime’s wishes, Iran succeeded in two goals: deterring future threats of Iraqi hostilities and preventing the United States from using Iraqi territories as a platform to invade Iran. Through its Islamic Revolution Guards Corps Qods Force, Iran trained and supplied several militia groups that later officially penetrated Iraq’s security architecture through forces called Popular Mobilization Units, which have repeatedly carried out anti-American attacks. Nevertheless, those groups would eventually prove valuable to the United States in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)—yet even then Iran succeeded in appearing as the protector of Iraq’s sovereignty by immediately equipping the Popular Mobilization Units, unlike the delayed US response that arrived months later.

Regionally, Iran’s military leverage and political allies inside Iraq provided it with a strategic ground link to its network in Syria and Lebanon, where the Qods Force ultimately shifted the political power dynamics to Iran’s advantage, especially as they crucially strengthened engagement in recruiting volunteers to support Bashar al-Assad’s fighters in Syria. Through the land bridge that connects Iran to the Bekaa Valley, Iran has helped spread its weapons-trafficking and money-laundering capabilities while reinforcing an abusive dictatorship in Syria and a crippled state in Lebanon.

Twenty years ago, the United States went to liberate Iraq from its oppressive dictatorship. What it left behind is a void in governance and an alternative system that fell far short of what the United States wanted for Iraq. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime continues to base its identity on anti-Americanism while it gets closer to its political and ideological ambitions. With US sanctions having so far failed to halt Iran’s network of militia training and smuggling—and the attempt to revive the nuclear deal stalled, despite being the main focus of US Iran policy—the question remains: How long will the United States tolerate Iran’s regional ascendancy before it intensifies its efforts toward restraining it?

—Nour Dabboussi is a program assistant to the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East programs.

How governments counter terrorist financing

Without the experience of the war in Iraq, US and transatlantic economic statecraft would be less agile and less able to prevent terrorist financing. However, more work and continued international commitment is needed to ensure Iraq and its neighbors are able to strengthen and enforce their anti-money-laundering regimes to protect their economies from corruption and deny terrorists and other illicit actors from abusing the global financial system to raise, use, and move funds for their operations.

The tools of economic statecraft, including but not limited to sanctions, export controls, and controlling access to currency, became critical to US national security in the wake of 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Sanctions and other forms of economic pressure had been applied against the government of Iraq and illicit actors prior to 2003. However, economic pressure and the use of financial intelligence to combat terrorist financing became increasingly sophisticated as the war progressed. Since 2001, the State Department and Treasury have designated more than 500 individuals and entities for financially supporting terrorism in Iraq. Following the money and figuring out how terrorist networks raised, used, and moved funds was a critical aspect in understanding how they operated in Iraq and across the region. Information on terrorist financial networks and facilitators helped identify vulnerabilities for disruption, limiting their ability to fund and carry out terrorist attacks, procure weapons, pay salaries for fighters, and recruit.

Sanctioning the terrorist groups and financial facilitators operating in Iraq and across the region disrupted the groups’ financial flows and operational capabilities while protecting the US and global financial systems from abuse. Targets included al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, among others. For example, the US Treasury recently sanctioned an Iraqi bank moving millions of dollars from the Revolutionary Guard Corps to Hezbollah, preventing terrorists from abusing the international financial system.

Notably, the fight against terrorist financing set in motion the expansion of the Department of the Treasury’s sanctions programs and helped the US government refine its sanctions framework and enforcement authorities and their broad application.

Equally important, the US government’s efforts and experience in countering the financing of terrorism increased engagement and coordination with foreign partners to protect the global financial system from abuse by illicit actors. The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the inter-governmental body responsible for setting international anti-money-laundering and counter-terrorist financing standards, strengthened and revised its standards, recommendations, and red flags to account for what the international community learned from the experience of combatting terrorist financing in Iraq. The United States and partner nations provided, and continue to provide, training and resources to build Iraq’s and its neighbors’ capabilities to meet FATF standards and address terrorist financing and money laundering issues domestically.

—Kim Donovan is the director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

—Maia Nikoladze is an assistant director at the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center.

The United States

Perhaps no event since the end of the Cold War shaped American politics more than the invasion of Iraq. It is fair to say that without the Iraq war neither Donald Trump nor Barack Obama would likely have been president.

Weirdly, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is still almost a forbidden topic in GOP foreign policy circles. After the Bush years, a kind of collective-guilt omerta about the Iraq war took hold among Republicans. It was as if US-Iraqi history had started in 2005, or 2006, with Democrats and a few Republicans baying for a needed defeat. It never came. The 2007 surge, as David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy came to be known, was the gutsiest political call by an American leader in my lifetime.

It happened also to be right when very little else about the war was: There were, of course, no weapons of mass destruction found. Iran did expand its power, massively. Iraq did not offer an example of democracy to the region: rather, it horrified the region. It became linked to al-Qaeda only after the invasion. The White House refused to take the insurgency seriously until it was very serious. Iraq pulled attention away from Afghanistan. And of course there were 4,431 Americans killed.

By 2016, the narrative favored by Republicans had become that the execution of the war was flawed. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, was the villain in this story: But for Bremer’s incomprehensible decision to disband the Iraqi army and institute de-Baathification in early 2003, so the story went, the Iraq war could have succeeded. But in retrospect these decisions were defendable. Bremer was erring on the side of satiating the Shia majority, not the Sunni minority, and trying to reassure them that a decade after they were abandoned in 1991 the United States would deliver them political power. And the one real success of the Iraq war, beginning to end, is that the United States never faced a generalized Shia insurgency.

The other villain was Barack Obama, who played in the sequel. (Obama largely owed his electoral victory to the Iraq war, brilliantly using Hillary Clinton’s vote for the invasion to invalidate her experience and judgment and thus the main argument for her candidacy.) In this version of events, Obama’s precipitous decision to withdraw troops from Iraq in 2011 contributed to the country’s near-collapse three years later under the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). This was basically accurate. The withdrawal of US forces eliminated a key political counterweight from Iraq, and the main incentive for then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to hedge his sectarianism and friendliness with Iran. This accelerated political support for Sunni rejectionist movements like ISIS.

Both the Bremer narrative and the Obama narrative allowed George Bush’s Republican party to avoid revisiting the core questions of American power: intervention, exceptionalism, and its limits—precisely the same questions that had featured prominently in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

This was the broken market that Donald Trump exploited: that Republican voters’ views on Iraq after 2008 looked much like Democratic voters’, but the Republican establishment’s views did not. And it was no accident, in the 2016 presidential primaries, that the two candidates most willing to criticize the interventionism of the 2000s, Trump and Ted Cruz, were the ones who did best.

This debate remains critical. More than any other decision, Bush’s war created the contemporary Middle East. Above all that includes the unprecedented regional dominance of Iran, the power of the Arab Shia, and the constraints on American power in buttressing its traditional allies. That imbalance, combined with a decade-long sense that America is leaving the region and wants no more conflict, has led Sunni Arab states to look for their security in other places.

Especially in the wake of Russia’s war against Ukraine, which if anything has sharpened foreign policy divisions, the Republican party and the United States need a dialectic, not a purge; a discussion, not a proscription; and a reasonable synthesis of the lessons of Iraq. People want to vote for restraint and realism, as much as or more than they want to vote and pay for interventionism and idealism. Was the Iraq War a mistake? Let us start this debate there, and produce something better.

—Andrew L. Peek is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs. He was previously the senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council and the deputy assistant secretary for Iran and Iraq at the US Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

Andrew Peek on the historical context of the 2003 invasion

US foreign policy

The US decision to invade Iraq twenty years ago was, to use the words of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, a wily French statesman and diplomat of the Napoleonic era, “worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.”

While Saddam Hussein was a monster, and had ignored numerous United Nation-mandated commitments, the US-led effort in 2003 to topple him as president of Iraq was strategically unnecessary. It became the center of a failed mission in nation-building—one that has proved disastrous for US interests in the greater Middle East and beyond.

Iraq was at the center, but it was only one of four failed American interventions in the region. The others were Afghanistan, Libya, and, to a lesser extent, Syria. The operation to take down the Taliban was fast and efficient, but consolidation of a post-Taliban Afghanistan never occurred. Part of the reason for that was the United States’ war of choice in Iraq, which began less than eighteen months after Afghanistan. That sucked up most of the resources and attention for the rest of that decade. But the other reason for US failure in Afghanistan was that we were beguiled by the same siren song that misled us in Iraq: that we could overcome centuries of history and culture and create a stable society at least somewhat closer to US values. Failure on such a scale is not good for the prestige and influence of a superpower.

But that is not the end of it. There is also the domestic side. The misadventures in the greater Middle East were a failure not just of the US government but of the US foreign policy elite. It was a bipartisan affair. Neoconservative thinking dominated the Republican Party throughout the aughts, while liberal interventionism prevailed in the Democratic Party. They were all in for the utopian policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

While the failures in the greater Middle East were widely understood even before the unnecessarily embarrassing 2021 departure from Afghanistan, there has never been a public reckoning. There was nothing like the Church Committee, which in the mid-1970s shined a very harsh light on US failures in Southeast Asia. Few prominent thinkers or officials have publicly acknowledged their failed policy choices. And the same figures who led us into those debacles are still widely quoted on all major foreign policy matters.

This has had the consequence in the United States of providing ground for the growth of neoisolationist thinking. In running for the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump was not wrong in pointing out the failures of elites in both parties in conducting foreign policy in the greater Middle East. Since then, populists on the right have used this insight to undermine the credibility of foreign policy experts. And like generals fighting the last war, they have applied their “insight” from the Middle East to the latest challenges to US interests, such as Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

In this reading, US support for Ukraine is comparable to US interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and will result in failure. There is no analysis—simply dismissal—of the dangers that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine poses to US security and economic prosperity. No recognition that, as Putin has stated numerous times, he wants to restore Kremlin political control over all the states that used to make up the Soviet Union—which includes NATO and European Union (EU) member states. In other words, he seeks to undermine NATO and the EU.

Furthermore, there’s no understanding that despite the presence of American troops, the United States’ local allies in Iraq and Afghanistan could not win—but without one NATO soldier on the battlefield, Ukraine is fighting Russia to a standstill. Indeed, Ukraine has destroyed between 30 percent and 50 percent of Moscow’s conventional military capability. These analogies with the Iraq war ignore the reality that if Putin takes control of Ukraine, the United States will likely spend far more in financial resources and perhaps American lives in defending its NATO allies.

These failures of understanding are not simply or mainly a consequence of US errors in the Middle East. Utopian thinking in the United States and especially Europe was a natural consequence of the absence of great-power war since 1945. Especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, people on both sides of the Atlantic got comfortable with the notion that Russia was no longer an adversary. And isolationism also has a long pedigree in US society. So it would be vastly oversimplifying to blame the confusion of today’s neoisolationists exclusively on US failures in the Middle East. But the strong US response to the challenge of a hostile Soviet Union was possible because a bipartisan approach on containment was endorsed by leaders of both parties. After the United States’ misadventures in Iraq, such endorsements carry less weight today. In US foreign policy as elsewhere, we still do not know what the ultimate impact of the decision to invade Iraq will be.

—John Herbst’s 31-year career in the US Foreign Service included time as US ambassador to Uzbekistan, other service in and with post-Soviet states, and his appointment as US ambassador to Ukraine from 2003 to 2006.

What Iraq needs now

Scroll and click through the carousel below to jump to a response:

William F. Wechsler on the future of Iraq

A reconciliation commission to rebuild national unity

One of the most devastating shortcomings of the 2003 Iraq invasion was the dismantlement of state institutions and the weakening of the Baghdad central government. That structural vacuum of power and services forced Iraqis back into tribal, religious, and ethnic allegiances, contributing to the nation-state’s fragmentation and exacerbating divisive sectarian discourses and intercommunity tensions. A quota-based constitutional system only served to institutionalize and legitimize the ethnosectarian distribution of power.

Conflicting groups grew further apart over the past two decades and became more motivated by accumulating political positions, hefty oil incomes, and territorial and symbolic gains rather than collectively seeking to rebuild their balkanized nation. Iraqi youth, on the other hand—who campaigned in the name of “We Want a Homeland” [نريد_وطن#] during the 2019 Tishreen (October) protests—seem to have understood what political elites might be missing: the necessity for national reconciliation and memorialization.

The bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra in 2006 unleashed the chaos trapped inside Pandora’s box and resulted in violent Sunni-Shia confrontations, which pushed the country to the brink of civil war. Today, political elites, aware of the fragility and precariousness of the political consensus, pretend the time of friction is over. My firsthand work in Iraqi prisons and camps, and the research projects I led in the country’s conflict zones off the beaten path, such as west of the Euphrates, in Zubair, and in rural areas in the Makhoul Basin, prove the absolute contrary.

A flagrant example of the sectarian ticking bomb that persists in Iraq is the mismanagement of the Sunni populations in the aftermath of the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Many pretended that ISIS fighters came from some fictional foreign entity and refused to face the fact that most of them, including their leader, were Iraqi-born and raised, which I observed as an eyewitness working with the International Committee of the Red Cross during the ISIS war in Nineveh and Salahuddin. Many people who were accomplices of the atrocities even engaged in rewriting the narrative altogether after 2017 in the name of national unity.

A number of Sunni populations in Iraq were mystified by their sudden loss of power with the toppling of Saddam Hussein and were in disbelief that the Shia they stigmatized as shrouguis—literally, “easterners,” a derogatory reference used by Sunni elites to refer to Shia Iraqis from the southeast—became the new lords of the land. Instead of engaging in meaningful mediation and reconciliation to work through these social changes, the majority parties preferred to bury their heads in the sand. This tendency led them to allow militia groups to displace and isolate the Sunni inhabitants of a key city like Samarra, to submerge under water the citizens of northern Kirkuk and Salaheddin, or to conceal the evidence incriminating Tikrit Sunnis during the Speicher massacre, in which ISIS fighters killed more than a thousand Iraqi military cadets, most of them Shia.

These are not isolated examples in a chaotic political and constitutional system in which many communities feel persistently misunderstood, including Kurds, Assyrians, Mandaeans, Baha’is, Afro-Iraqis, Turkmen—and even the Shia themselves. The only possible and plausible pathway for the country to be one again in the next twenty years is to engage in an excruciating but indispensable reconciliation process, through which responsibilities are determined, dignity is restored, and justice is served.

—Sarah Zaaimi is the deputy director for communications at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs.

A new constitution

Iraq needs a new constitution. A good constitution spells out the framework and structure of government. It provides essential checks and balances to prevent dictators from coming to power. It helps protect the people’s rights. It has measures to prevent gridlock or the collapse of a functioning government.

Judged by these standards, the 2005 Iraqi constitutionis only a partial success.

However, complaints have built up since 2005: over the muhasasa system under which the established political parties divide up ministerial appointments; over the failure of Iraq’s government or other institutions to deliver basic services like electricity and water; over perceptions of excessive Iranian meddling in Iraq’s politics; and over the inability of the government to provide meaningful employment for millions of young Iraqis—or to foster a private sector capable of doing so. These grievances came to a head in the 2019 Tishreen protests in which more than 600 Iraqis died.

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 in part to bring democracy to Iraq, so it is ironic that Iraq’s 2005 constitution was the product of mostly Iraqi political forces unleashed by the failure of the United States to ensure a democratic transition. It was expected that the Kurdish political parties, which had worked closely with the United States for years, would insist upon a federal republic to ensure their autonomy from a central government whose long-term character and leanings in 2005 were far from settled. Beyond this, however, the small number of Americans actually involved in advising the key Iraqi players in the constitutional process—in the room where it happened—actually had relatively little experience in constitutional mechanics or modern comparative constitutional practice. The American sins of commission during the first two years after Iraq’s liberation were replaced by sins of omission during the crucial months of negotiation of the 2005 constitution.

Genuine constitutional reform in Iraq is not likely to be accomplished directly through the parliament, given the interests of Iraq’s political parties and the parliament’s need to focus on legislative responsibilities. Instead, Iraqi civil society—including scholars, lawyers, religious and business leaders, and retired government officials and jurists—should initiate serious discussions about constitutional reform. Many of these voices were not heard when the 2005 constitution was adopted. Their effort can be far more open and transparent than the process was in 2005.

Foreign governments should have a minimal role, limited to supporting and encouraging Iraqi-led efforts, without trying to broker a particular outcome. International foundations, institutes, universities, and think tanks can offer outside expertise, particularly in comparative constitutional law and other kinds of technical assistance. But the overall effort needs to be Iraqi-led, with input from a broad spectrum of Iraqi voices.

While civil society discussions in Iraq could begin with considering amendments to the 2005 constitution, US experience may be relevant. The US Constitutional Convention convened in May 1787 to consider amendments to the Articles of Confederation decided to completely redesign the government, resulting in a Constitution that, with amendments, has been in force in the United States for more than 230 years. Sometimes it’s better to start over.

Iraq’s path to constitutional reform is not clear today, but there is a path nevertheless. Incremental reform is possible, but reform on a larger scale may achieve a more lasting result. The more promising outcome could be for a slate of candidates to run for office with the elements of the new constitution as their platform. A reform slate is not likely to gain an absolute majority, but if its base of support is broad enough, it may be able to gain support in a new parliament needed to send a revised constitution to the Iraqi people for their approval. A new constitution, done right, could propel Iraq towards a better future.

—Thomas S. Warrick led the State Department’s “Future of Iraq” project from 2002 to 2003, served in both Baghdad and Washington, and was director (acting) for Iraq political affairs from July 2006 to July 2007. He is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Thomas S. Warrick on the need for Iraqi-led constitutional reform

An economy diversified away from oil

The post-2003 political order, based on the muhasasa system of sectarian apportionment, came with the promise of a complete break with the past. The 2005 constitution, drafted by the new order, promised: “The State shall guarantee the reform of the Iraqi economy in accordance with modern economic principles to insure the full investment of its resources, diversification of its sources, and the encouragement and development of the private sector.”

As with other bold promises made, the economic promise was broken as soon as the constitution came into effect, as the political order pursued a decentralized and multiheaded evolution of the prior economic model, and persistently expanded the patrimonial role of the state as a redistributor of the country’s oil wealth in exchange for social acquiescence to its rule.

Over the last twenty years the economy developed significant structural imbalances, and was increasingly bedeviled by fundamental contradictions. Essentially, it was dependent on government spending directly through its provisioning of goods and services as well as public services, and indirectly on the spending of public-sector employees. However, this spending was almost entirely dependent on volatile oil revenues that the government had no control over; yet the spending was premised on ever-increasing oil prices.

The political order had the opportunity to correct course and honor the original promise during three major economic and financial crises, each more severe than the last and all a consequence of an oil-price crash: in 2007 to 2009, due to the global financial crisis; in 2014 to 2017, due to the conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham; and in 2020, due to the emergence of COVID-19. Yet, paradoxically, the political order doubled down on the policies that led to these crises as soon as oil prices recovered.

On the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the political order—buoyed by the bounty of high, yet unsustainable, oil prices—is planning a budget that is expected to be the largest ever since 2003, to seek legitimacy from an increasingly alienated public. These plans will only deepen the economy’s structural imbalance and its fundamental contradictions, and as such could likely lead to even greater public alienation if an oil-price crash triggers yet another economic and financial crisis. Even if oil prices were to stay high, however, the country’s demographic pressures will in time create the conditions for a deeper rolling crisis.

—Ahmed Tabaqchali is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs. An experienced capital markets professional, he is chief strategist of the AFC Iraq Fund.

Andrew Peek on the current state of Iraq and the US-Iraq relationship

An inclusive vision, representative of all its people

One of the enduring legacies of the 2003 invasion has been its deleterious effect on the many diverse ethnic and religious minority communities that make up the social fabric of Iraq. Yet it is that diversity and rich heritage that could now unlock a brighter future for the nation, if the political system can recognize and represent it.

Marginalized by an institutionally inscribed political system and few representative seats in parliament, Iraq’s minority communities have found themselves peripheralized by the state—and in the imaginations of the country’s future. Many have emigrated and now reside in diaspora, changing the ethnic and religious heterogeneity of Iraq.

Calculating the cultural toll of war goes beyond the destruction of shrines and artifacts, and the looting of museums and buildings: One of the biggest social and cultural losses for Iraq has been the exclusion of minority communities from the nation-building processes. This is a tragic state of affairs for Iraq, whose uniqueness, strength, and richness stems from its ancient histories and cultures, its religious, artistic, and musical traditions, and the languages that have contributed to its heritage and development. That heritage deserves to be protected and celebrated.

Until the day the muhasasa system is dismantled, and a new Iraq built on meritocracy can thrive, minority communities must be safeguarded and included in Iraq’s future. Yet, this can only be achieved through the protection of minorities’ rights in Iraq’s political life, and genuine and concerted effort to increase parliamentary seats and legal representation of minorities. Investment in areas destroyed by terrorism and conflict, more reparations for communities whose livelihoods and homes have been ruined, and more boots on the ground to protect communities and religious shrines should be a priority.

Twenty years of destruction, corruption, violence, and the subsequent emigration of many communities cannot be erased. Yet the twentieth anniversary of Iraq’s occupation ought to serve as a point of reflection for the kind of Iraq that Iraqis want now. There is certainly much hope in a new generation of Iraqis calling for new national visions, an end to muhasasa, more civil rights, and expanding economic opportunities.

Yet all of Iraq’s communities must be part of this conversation. A more inclusive Iraq that applauds its diversity and takes pride in difference could be the driving force needed to unify the nation.

—Oula Kadhum, a former nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, is a postdoctoral research fellow at Lunds University in Sweden and a fellow of international migration at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom.

Oula Kadhum on the reforms needed to reposition Iraq in the next twenty years

A new US Iraq policy focused on youth and education

As the global community reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq and looks to the future, it is time for foreign policy toward Iraq to move beyond its traditional, security-heavy approach.

While security threats persist, including a potential resurgence of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), and should be a priority, US aid to Iraq has historically been ineffective and financially irresponsible. Humanitarian assistance, meanwhile, tends to focus on short-term issues like the response to COVID-19 and assisting displaced individuals. And while such aid can be beneficial, continuing with the traditional avenues of support is not a sustainable solution to rebuild Iraq. The United States and the international community must begin to focus on long-term solutions that address human security, development, infrastructure, education, and the economy. At the center of all these issues are two key variables that must be the focal point of policy: education and the youth population.

A 2019 UNICEF report estimates that a staggering 60 percent of Iraq’s population is under the age of twenty-five. Learning levels and access to education in Iraq remain among the lowest in the region. The great challenges these two facts pose can also be seen as a unique opportunity: to place its large youth population at the epicenter of Iraq’s future through policy that increases the number of educators and trains them, ensures sanitary and competent learning conditions, and increases access to education.

The benefits of a long-term investment in Iraq’s education system and youth population go beyond simply educating its citizens: It would be the first step in unlocking the human potential of Iraq. More education means more qualified professionals; more doctors would increase the quality and access to healthcare, an increase in engineers will ensure that the country’s infrastructure continues to develop, and additional business leaders and entrepreneurs will assist in growing the economy.

To truly rebuild Iraq, the United States and the international community can no longer view the country as only a security issue. Rather, this moment must be seen as an opportunity to empower bright Iraqi youths, who hope to lead in rebuilding their own country—providing them with a fair shot of again being a cradle of civilization.

—Hezha Barzani is a program assistant with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME initiative. Follow him on Twitter @HezhaFB.

Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister Fuad Hussein reflects on the twentieth anniversary of the invasion

What the United States can do now

Scroll and click through the carousel below to jump to a response:

Recommit to the cause of Iraqi freedom

It’s hard to believe that it has been twenty years since the US invasion of Iraq. As I sat waiting to launch my first mission on March 20, the war’s historical significance was not my primary thought. How I found myself flying on the first night of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq was. That thought was accompanied by the tightness in the pit of my stomach that I always got before launching into the unknown.

We didn’t debate the case for the war among ourselves. It has been discussed thoroughly since, and I don’t claim to have any new insight to offer on that topic. We were focused on not letting down our fellow Marines and accomplishing our mission: to remove Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and replace it with a democracy that would give the people of Iraq the freedom that people everywhere deserve as their birthright.

Did we succeed? We certainly succeeded in rapidly destroying the Baathist regime and its military, the third largest in the world. The answer to the second question is less clear. On my second and third tours in Iraq, I saw the chaos from the al-Qaeda-fueled insurgency in 2005 and 2006 and the dramatic turnaround following the al-Anbar “Sunni Awakening” in 2006-2007. From afar, I watched the horrors that the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham inflicted on its people after US troops withdrew without a status-of-forces agreement.

Today, Iraq is rated “not free,” scoring twenty-nine out of one hundred in Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2022 report. Although not up to Western liberal democracy standards, this is an improvement over 2002, when it received the lowest score possible and was listed as one of the eleven most repressive countries in the world. Moreover, Iraq’s 2022 score is vastly better than most of its neighbors: Iran scored fourteen, Syria scored one, and Afghanistan scored ten.

Despite Afghanistan being widely seen as “the good war” of the two post-9/11 conflicts, where the casus belli was clear, today it is Iraq, and not Afghanistan, that gives me hope that twenty years from now, on the fortieth anniversary, we will see our efforts to promote democracy in Iraq come entirely to fruition. We owe it to the 36,425 Americans killed and wounded there, the thousands of veterans who took their own lives, and the many more still struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder to stay engaged in Iraq and the region to try and make sure that they do.

—Col. John B. Barranco was the 2021-22 Senior US Marine Corps Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. These views are his own and do not represent those of the Department of Defense or Department of the Navy.

Balance confidence and humility

I officially swore into the military at Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, on April 4, 2003, during the early stages of the US “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq. Having decided to join the Air Force following 9/11, the lengthy administrative process I’d endured to get to this point had been agonizing. I recall going through the in-processing line at Officer Training School on April 9, when an instructor whispered to us: “Coalition forces have taken Baghdad, stay motivated.” The thought that immediately went through my mind was: “I’m going to miss the wars.”

I had made the choice to pursue special operations and still had two years of training ahead of me. At the time, the war in Afghanistan seemed like it was nearing completion, and the swift overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq had me convinced that, by the time I was ready to deploy, there would be no fighting left. Little did I know that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with their expansions across the Middle East and Africa, would end up consuming a large majority of my twenty years of service, take the lives of many of my special operations teammates, and impact the health and well-being of a generation of US service members and their families.

It’s impossible to know how the war in Iraq shaped other US endeavors in the region. Did it take our focus from Afghanistan and put us on a path of increased escalation and investment there? Did it set conditions for the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham to take root many years later, setting off another expansive counterterrorism campaign?

More broadly, did it allow adversaries the time and space to study US capabilities and ultimately inform their strategies for malign influence? I often think of this today when I’m asked about what’s going to happen with the Russian war in Ukraine, or how prepared the United States is to defend Taiwan.

The United States needs the confidence to confront global challenges to peace and prosperity, but also the humility to know we get things wrong, and mistakes involving direct military intervention can be catastrophic. Given the escalatory risks associated with the security challenges in the world today, our pursuit of a balance of confidence and humility has never been more important.

—Lt. Col. Justin M. Conelli is the 2022-23 Senior US Air Force fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

William F. Wechsler on the current political discourse around Iraq

Recognize the successes as well as the failures

“Was the invasion of Iraq worth it?”

I’ve spent a great deal of my military and postmilitary career answering questions about Iraq, but this one—from a brigadier general in the audience—caught me off guard. It was 2018, seven years after the formal withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, and I found myself in front of a roomful of Army officers giving a talk on the future of US-Iraq security cooperation. By that time, such talks had become a little frustrating. The fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (aka the Islamic State group) demonstrated that Iraqi forces could rise to the immediate challenge; however, the conditions that led to their unceremonious collapse in 2014 had not much changed. As a result, there remained many questions about the best way to continue the security partnership to prevent future catastrophe.

The question I got that day, however, had little to do with how to partner with Iraqi forces. A co-presenter from Kurdistan jumped in immediately to answer the brigadier general’s question: the US invasion had removed Iraqi Kurdistan’s most significant threat—Saddam Hussein—and had provided opportunities for economic and political development it would not have had otherwise. Sensing a trap, I nonetheless walked right into it. While Iraqi Kurdistan was certainly in a better position, I pointed out that was not consistently so for the rest of Iraq. The US invasion had unleashed a sectarian free-for-all that allowed Sunni extremists, Shia militias, and their Iranian sponsors to fill the vacuum of oppression Saddam’s departure had left. Moreover, this vacuum had empowered Iran to challenge the United States and its partners regionally. So my answer was no, toppling Saddam likely did not outweigh the costs.

In previous years, the questions had been more policy-focused. For example, when I arrived at the Pentagon’s Iraq Intelligence Working Group in August 2002, the first question asked was how Iraq’s diverse ethnic and confessional demographics would affect military operations and enable—or impede—victory. By early 2003, the questions were about the larger effort to construct a new political order. Before long, we were asking how the confluence of Islamist terrorism, sectarian rivalries, and external intervention drove resistance to efforts to reconstruct Iraq.

In 2012, I became the US defense attaché in Baghdad, just after the last US service members withdrew. At first, the question I heard in this capacity was how to continue the reconstruction project with a limited military and civilian presence whose movement was often severely restricted in a sovereign, sometimes uncooperative, Iraq with frequent interference from Iran. Before I left, al-Qaeda had metastasized into the Islamic State group and the question became how to cooperate to prevent the group’s further expansion and liberate the territory it had seized. Meanwhile, Iran’s influence with the Iraqi government continued to grow.

In retrospect, the conditions I described in 2018 were accurate (and still largely hold today), but I wish I had given a more considered response. What I wish I had said was that a better question than “was it worth it” is: what have we learned about past failures to assess future opportunities? A prosperous Iraq that contributes to regional stability was not possible under Saddam. Now Iraq is an effective partner against Islamist extremists, and the Iraqi people, if not always their government, are in a position to push back on Iran in their own way, exposing Tehran for the despotic government it is. Moreover, Iraq’s hosting of discussions between Saudi Arabia and Iran was a catalyst to their recent normalization of relations.

The point is not to rationalize failure. Rather, the question now is: what have we learned from those failures to effectively capitalize on the success we have had, and how can we take advantage of the opportunities the current situation presents?

—C. Anthony Pfaff, PhD, is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative and a research professor for strategy, the military profession, and ethic at the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Tony Pfaff on the future of US-Iraq relations

Remember the price of hubris

For me, the memories of those first days and weeks in Iraq remain quite clear. I remember calling my family from a satellite phone on the tarmac of Baghdad International Airport to let them know I was alive, late night meetings with Iraqi agents in safe houses, wrapping up Iraqi high-value targets, the fear amid firefights and the carnage on streets strewn with dead and mutilated bodies, and a confused Iraqi population that at the time did not know what to make of US forces who claimed to be liberating them from the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Upon arrival in Baghdad in early April, there were few signs of the resistance that would haunt the United States for decades to come. Yes, there were still combat operations underway, but that was against Iraqi military and paramilitary units. So, as we tracked down Iraqi regime targets one by one—members of the famed “deck of fifty-five cards” that US Central Command had dreamed up and distributed like we were trading baseball cards—we saw this as part of a new beginning.

Yet soon after, the wheels began to fall off. Orders came from Washington policy officials with absolutely zero substantive Middle East experience both to disband the Iraqi military and purge the future government of Baath party officials, which immediately put tens of thousands of hardened military officers, conscripts, and officials out of work and on the street. The CIA presence on the ground protested, but to no avail. I had never seen Charlie, my station chief, so angry, including face-to-face confrontations with senior figures in the Coalition Provisional Authority. Charlie—the most accomplished Arabist in the CIA’s history—sadly predicted the insurgency that was about to come. If only Washington had listened.

I rarely think of Iraq in terms of big-picture strategy. As a CIA operations officer, I was a surgical instrument of the US government, and I gladly answered the bell when called upon to do so. I am proud to have served with other CIA officers and special operations personnel who performed valiantly. I suppose I can defend the invasion on human rights grounds. It seems we forget that Saddam was one of the great war criminals in history, and Iraq has been freed from his depravity. Yet two numbers are haunting: 4,431, and 31,994. Those are the number of Americans killed and wounded in action, per official Department of Defense statistics.

War is a nasty business, and many times a terrible price is paid for hubris. The casualty figures noted above paint a stark picture of the historic intelligence failure that the analytic assessment that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction was. The CIA in particular suffered a credibility hit that has taken decades to recover from.

—Marc Polymeropoulos, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, served for twenty-six years at the CIA before retiring in 2019.

Thomas S. Warrick on the lessons to learn from the Iraq War

The post How the war in Iraq changed the world—and what change could come next appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Banks quoted in The New Republic on the impacts of the IRA

mzandi — Fri, 10 Mar 2023 19:31:25 +0000

The post Banks quoted in The New Republic on the impacts of the IRA appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Ellinas in Cyrus Mail: UN treaty to protect high seas has been agreed

mzandi — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 19:33:51 +0000

The post Ellinas in Cyrus Mail: UN treaty to protect high seas has been agreed appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Recap: Alliance for Green Cities launch event

Global Energy Center — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 14:52:44 +0000

Last week, the Alliance for Green Cities, a new initiative under the Partnership for Transatlantic Energy and Climate Cooperation (P-TECC), was launched by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) during an event hosted by the City of Split, the American-Central European Business Association, and the Atlantic Council. The Alliance was inaugurated with a conference in Split, Croatia, convening leaders to explore how to enhance climate action at the municipal level. This initiative highlights the role cities play in promoting a clean energy transition by upgrading inefficient energy management systems, decarbonizing transportation, and building resilience against the impacts of climate change.

The conference was joined by mayors from Croatia, representatives from US cities and DOE’s National Laboratories, and leaders from the non-profit and private sectors engaged in city-level decarbonization efforts. Kicking off with keynote remarks from Ivica Puljak, Mayor of Split, and Andrew Light, Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs at DOE, the two leaders emphasized their commitment to empowering cities to play a key role in enabling policies that leverage technological innovation and unlocking funding to realize the energy transition. By recognizing cities as laboratories of change, the initiative aims to disseminate best practices in decarbonization, with an eye towards scaling policies to the national and international level.

As cities assess their emissions and press ahead with decarbonization, many are finding that buildings and transportations are their two most emissions-intensive sectors. Decarbonizing commercial and residential buildings through data-driven energy management retrofits of inefficient stock is one of the most cost-effective ways to lower carbon emissions in cities. Speakers highlighted the ways cities can work to improve building performance to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has accelerated the transition by increasing the price of fossil-based energy and demonstrating the interconnection between energy security and decarbonization. The war’s impact has pushed cities in Europe to make buildings more energy-efficient with support from municipal co-financing. Through this initiative, DOE’s National Laboratories will work with city leaders to deploy energy-efficient technologies.

Electrifying transportation will be key to a clean energy future. Regional power grids must be modernized to accommodate the increased demand created by a growing electric vehicle fleet. Panelists expressed desire to improve low-carbon transportation between cities, highlighting the need for national governments to support regional-scale mobility. Cities must take a much more holistic approach when planning for a decarbonized transportation sector by improving walkability and bikeability, spreading amenities beyond downtowns, and improving access to public transportation. However, providing financing at scale to address these changes is daunting. In Croatia, for example, the Environmental Protection and Energy Efficiency Fund provides investments for the public and private sectors, as well as directly to citizens, to retrofit buildings, install renewable energy sources, and decarbonize transportation.

The conference concluded by discussing opportunities for cities to become more resilient to climate impacts and to engage with citizens to respond to extreme heat, floods, and droughts. The conversation detailed the work between DOE’s National Labs and cities to develop a shared vision on maximizing economic growth and equity as it relates to a clean energy transition. A resilient city builds policies with co-benefits to address disparities in health, education, and resource access, and to engage with the communities most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

The conference provided a starting point for transatlantic cooperation on city-level decarbonization, but central to lowering emissions is improving education and communication with local community members to empower them to be agents of change. The Alliance for Green Cities promises to be an invaluable incubator for ideas to advance global decarbonization efforts, starting at the city level.

Photos

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

Associate Director, Digital Communications and Community Engagement

The post Recap: Alliance for Green Cities launch event appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Lula is back. Are Brazil’s climate credentials?

Lizi Bowen, Maia Sparkman, William Tobin — Fri, 24 Feb 2023 14:50:43 +0000

Following Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva’s presidential win in Brazil, Lula and President Biden met at the White House this month to set out a new agenda to further decarbonization and climate change efforts in the Western hemisphere. Early actions taken in Lula’s return to office show positive signals that Brazil is committed to implementing environmental and energy policies to address climate change while balancing economic development and environmental justice.

These actions are welcome, given the troubling environmental legacy of the prior administration. Deforestation rates surged under former President Jair Bolsonaro’s term, reaching the highest levels in 2021 since 2008. The Bolsonaro administration weakened environmental agencies intended to protect the Amazon rainforest, eased protections on protected land, and fired the head of Brazil’s National Institute for Space and Research (INPE) after it released data showing that deforestation rates had increased. Lax environmental policies resulted in land robbery and the increase of illegal activity, particularly related to logging and mining. Illegal mining saw a 46 percent increase in the Yanomami Indigenous territory in northern Brazil from 2020 to 2021, raising environmental justice concerns as the uniquely impacted Yanomami community experienced increased violence and diseases due to polluted rivers as a result of ore processing.

Lula’s return to office marks a return to the protection and conservation of the Amazon and its people while balancing the sustainable development of the region. The president created the country’s first Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, representing 307 indigenous groups. Lula also welcomed Marina Silva back to the federal government as Minister of Environment, the position she held during Lula’s first term as president. A well-known environmentalist from the Amazon state of Acre, Silva’s return to the Ministry signals Lula’s commitment to prioritizing environmental protection.

The return of the Amazon Fund

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon has made the forest a net carbon emitter since 2016, accelerated by Bolsonaro’s policies and the shuttering of the Amazon Fund. Soon after Lula’s victory, however, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled to reactivate the fund, which he signed on his first day back in office. With this reversal, Brazil is taking steps to once more be a clean energy and decarbonization leader in the region. But in order to reach these goals, expanding and diversifying funding is crucial.

Deforestation is a major factor in driving up greenhouse gas emissions, with tropical deforestation being responsible for roughly 20 percent of annual emissions. The Amazon rainforest holds 48 billion tons of carbon and its preservation is essential in the global fight against climate change and reaching ambitious net-zero goals. To assert low-carbon leadership in the region, Brazil should take advantage of the momentum behind the Amazon Fund right now.

The fund has historically been supported by Norway and Germany, but its support is set to grow. The Norwegian government—after backing out of the fund while Bolsonaro was in power—is keen on resuming donations immediately, and Germany signed a new pledge committing to donations following Lula’s October win. Additionally, following President Lula and Biden’s meeting this month, the two leaders released a joint statement in which Biden committed to work with the US Congress to contribute funds to conserve the Brazilian Amazon, including directly to the Amazon Fund. France, the European Union, and the United Kingdom have also announced their intentions to contribute to the fund.

While the addition of some of the world’s wealthiest countries are a significant step to broaden the fund’s scope, it is not enough. At COP27 in Glasgow, over one hundred world leaders representing more than 85 percent of the world’s forests pledged to halt deforestation by 2030, but little momentum has been seen since. As governments raise their ambition in forest preservation and funding, the focus must next turn to industry whose spending power and contributions in technology will be vital to expanding conservation efforts.

Private-sector participation in conservation funding would prove beneficial for Brazil, where although early satellite data shows deforestation in the Amazon has been declining since Lula’s return to office, experts say it may take years to show major progress following environmental setbacks under Bolsonaro. This progress will more effectively be accomplished with a suite of multi-sectoral funders. The fund’s potential for impact should be marketed to a broad coalition of funders from government, finance, and industry alike, with the option to contribute using verifiable carbon credits.

Building an even cleaner energy mix

Brazil’s environmental leadership need not be confined to the management of its ecosystems, however. Brazil already has one of the world’s highest shares of renewable energy in primary energy consumption, where clean energy sources meet 46 percent of total energy supply—not just electricity—in Brazil. By such a measure, Brazil is a clean energy powerhouse. Nonetheless, there are areas for Brazil to expand its low-carbon leadership.

Much of Brazil’s high share of clean energy in its energy supply is owed to biofuels, which are used in the industrial and residential heat, and transport sectors, at 50 percent and 25 percent, respectively. The country has been a pioneer in the use of biofuels for transportation, and in 2017 issued the RenovaBio policy which links the use of biofuels in transportation with Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement to reduce its emissions by 43 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The country has committed under its NDC to increase the use of bioenergy, with high blending standards to support this. However, as an alternative to biofuels, Brazil could benefit from more targeted investment and policy support for electromobility, which does not pose the same concerns associated with the carbon intensity of land use. Brazil surpassed 100,000 cumulative electric vehicle sales in 2022, but deployment is limited by a lack of charging infrastructure. The country has less than 5,000 charging stations, while Germany, for instance, has over 1 million.

Furthermore, the country has a genuine opportunity to increase the share of clean energy in the power grid above 86 percent. Much of this share is owed to hydropower, which accounts for about 65 percent of total generation. Brazil is being eyed as a prime destination for wind development, with a potential of 1.8 terawatts (TW) onshore and offshore. The Ministry of Mines and Energy has taken steps to clarify the regulatory and legal frameworks for offshore wind development, which are severely lacking across Latin America, and could be catalytic for investment beyond the 17 GW of offshore wind already planned in Brazil.

However, the integration of intermittent renewables onto the electric grid will require more power system balancing to ensure generation matches demand. This comes amid a troubling outlook for hydropower in Brazil, historically a reliable baseload energy source, but whose generation is forecast to be more variable, as climate change leads to abnormal weather patterns. Increasingly frequent droughts and less predictable rainfall may increase the need for energy storage or gas peaker plants, if necessary, to ensure the consistent delivery of electricity to consumers.

Another area for Brazil to lead is by modernizing Petrobras and orienting it towards the energy transition. Petrobras is the largest oil company in Latin America and Brazil’s flagship state-owned enterprise. Prior to Lula’s victory, core energy advisors expressed a desire to make Petrobras more active in investing in renewable energy assets. After his election, Lula appointed Jean Paul Prates to the role of CEO, a senator and political ally of Lula. Prates has a history of introducing sustainability-focused legislation, even during Bolsonaro’s term. This background could bode well for the management of Petrobras at a critical juncture. Debt-constrained Petrobras will need to find innovative models if it desires to pair energy-transition ambitions with returns for the Brazilian public, but if it succeeds, it could offer lessons for national or state-owned oil company modernization on a global scale.

Bolstering Brazil’s environmental and clean energy leadership will require careful planning in the years ahead. The re-emergence of Lula does not seal this fate. While it can showcase its clean electricity sector, Brazil will need to balance using resources for conserving the Amazon and expanding electrification amid competing domestic economic and political priorities. For instance, Brazil will need to invest to maintain its social welfare state, amid a high benchmark interest rate of 13.75 percent and conflict between the Lula administration and the Central Bank of Brazil over fiscal policy, challenges which will impact the investment climate and Lula’s domestic political efficacy in tandem. Despite these challenges, Brazil has the potential to act as a first mover among emerging markets in making progress towards net-zero.

Lizi Bowen is associate director for digital communications and community engagement at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Maia Sparkman is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

William Tobin is a program assistant at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Meet the authors

Staff

Lizi Bowen

Energy & Environment Media

Staff

Maia Sparkman

Africa Climate Change & Climate Action

Staff

William Tobin

Africa China

EnergySource Feb 21, 2023

The power of renewables: Productive use appliances as climate change solutions in sub-Saharan Africa

By Sharmila Bellur

Productive use appliances can mitigate emissions while encouraging climate adaptation and resilience in sub-Saharan Africa. They can push households up the energy ladder and stimulate economic development, if managed correctly.

Africa Energy & Environment

EnergySource Feb 14, 2023

Hydrogen in the MENA region: Priorities and steps forward

By Giampaolo Cantini

COP27 marked a major escalation in the MENA region’s hydrogen ambitions. With several international partnerships now underway, sustained support and forward-thinking policymaking will be key.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Jan 31, 2023

Africa and the global LNG crunch: Balancing energy security, development, and decarbonization

By Robert F. Ichord, Jr.

As Europe looks to replace Russian gas and Asia looks to switch off coal, African LNG could play a central role. Gas development in Africa could unlock new revenues and, in turn, drive development across the continent.

Africa Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post Lula is back. Are Brazil’s climate credentials? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

What came out of the Lula-Biden meeting?

Caroline Arkalji — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 01:36:11 +0000

US President Joe Biden welcomed Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the White House on Friday by noting that “both of our democracies have been tested of late.” As the two nations rekindled relations with Lula’s trip to Washington a little more than a month after he returned to the presidency, the January 8 riots in Brazil and their similarities to the US insurrection on January 6, 2021, topped the agenda. But the symbolism and the substance of this visit go beyond democracy. Here are four takeaways from Lula’s big day in Washington:

1. Lula pitches a global sustainability fund

Lula proposed the creation of a new global fund for sustainability, which would designate funds from developed nations to sustainable efforts across the world. There seems to be a willingness from the United States’ side to contribute to the existing Amazon Fund, joining Norway and Germany, on efforts to protect the Amazon rainforest.

Brazil is home to the largest portion of the Amazon and is an indispensable partner for the United States on climate and sustainability. As Biden prioritizes sustainable infrastructure and equitable clean energy domestically and more ambitious climate goals abroad, Brazil is an important ally in the hemisphere. Of Brazil’s available energy resources, around 80 percent are from renewables, and, as an agricultural powerhouse, it has the potential to be an even greater asset in solving the global food crisis. The US-Brazilian cooperation on climate and the environment is expected to deepen as the United States Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry plans to visit Brazil soon.

2. UN Security Council reforms are on the table

Lula has proposed to be a peace broker in Ukraine by pushing the rhetoric around the conflict to be about finding peace rather than continuing the war. He told reporters after the meeting that he and Biden discussed “the need to create a group of countries that are not involved directly or indirectly in the war with Russia in order to find a way to make peace.”

In this context, Lula also advocated for the need to reform the United Nations Security Council to become more representative of current geopolitical dynamics—a long-standing demand of the Brazilian president—to which Biden seemed to agree, Lula said.

3. Lula embraces progressive stardom

Lula met with prominent progressives on Friday morning before heading to the White House. With Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Lula discussed ways to increase international cooperation to protect the Amazon rainforest and preserve the environment for future generations. The Brazilian president also met with Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), and Ro Khanna (D-CA). They discussed shared commitments to environmental, social, and economic justice—and US-Brazil cooperation to fight authoritarianism and strengthen relations between the two countries’ legislators. The meetings represent an important effort to extend cooperation beyond the executive level, but in order to be effective and long-lasting, this kind of outreach must be bipartisan.

4. The presidents have a small window for cooperation

Lula’s Washington visit opens a new chapter as he seeks to position Brazil as a critical player regionally and internationally. Next month, he will travel to China, and he is also planning a trip to Angola, Mozambique, and South Africa.

But both Lula and Biden face challenges at home, as expectations rise for Lula to deliver on key campaign promises and Biden prepares for the 2024 elections. The window of opportunity for furthering cooperation is slim, but the stage is set for both countries to capitalize on new momentum. Particularly on the environment, Friday’s visit was a promising start.

Caroline Arkalji is a Young Global Professional with the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

The post What came out of the Lula-Biden meeting? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Goldwyn in The Hill: How to address vulnerability at our ‘third border’

mzandi — Tue, 07 Feb 2023 20:02:13 +0000

Flagship Event Sat, January 14, 2023 • 12:01 am ET

The post Goldwyn in The Hill: How to address vulnerability at our ‘third border’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2023

Andrea Ratiu — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2023

We don’t see them, but they’re out there.

Rare, elusive, and well-camouflaged, snow leopards are exceptionally hard to spot. When sighted, these majestic cats seem to have come out of nowhere. And yet they were around us all along.

In the discipline of global foresight, as the Atlantic Council’s Peter Engelke wrote last year, a “snow leopard” is “a known but underappreciated—perhaps even forgotten—phenomenon” that has the potential to change the world and shape its future even though appearances might suggest otherwise.

The snow leopards discussed here are not predictions, but rather prompts for us to scrutinize overlooked phenomena. A technological breakthrough, for example, may not seem world-changing when still in development. Other phenomena might be so woven into our daily lives that they’ve become invisible to us, as with the recommendation algorithms highlighted below. The actors involved also influence how much weight we give to events and trends: If a head of state were to announce a country’s economic disengagement from China, we would sit up and pay attention, but companies deciding one by one to proceed with such “decoupling” may fly under the radar.

Our next-generation foresight experts at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security brought a fresh perspective to the task of spotting the hard-to-spot. Check out their list of six snow leopards to watch closely in the year ahead.

The tightening regulation of algorithms

Algorithms are everywhere yet almost invisible, serving as the silent sifters and sorters of our lives. Their influence is baked into everything from email and smartphones to GPS and government services. On search engines and social media, “recommendation algorithms” leverage user data and history to curate information for billions of people. In their simplest form, algorithms are instructions or sets of rules—often used by computers—for completing a task. At their most complex, they drive machine learning and enable artificial intelligence (AI) to grow smarter and more sophisticated by the second.

With such sweeping capacity to shape how individuals and societies order and consume information—from the mundane recommendations of photo feeds and shopping lists to the grave amplification of extremist conspiracy theories that cause real-world terror—algorithms (and their designers) hold some responsibility for the social and political consequences of the content they propagate and the decisions they advance.

The need for AI governance, particularly to rein in algorithms, is increasing—and policymakers have demonstrated an appetite for it. This October, the White House published an AI Bill of Rights with a blueprint for addressing “algorithmic and data-driven harms” and potential remedies. Lawmakers in the US Congress have proposed legislation to limit algorithmic promotion of extremist content by holding social-media platforms liable if certain forms of amplified content lead to offline violence, with other bills on the subject under consideration as well. China implemented a law in 2022 to reduce algorithmic influence on public opinion by enabling users to decline algorithmic recommendations on websites and apps. (The law was part of China’s pursuit of “positive energy” online, under the country’s aggressive censorship.) The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, the first major, still-pending regulatory framework for AI that could set global standards, strives to curb algorithmic bias. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) also offers guidelines on when companies can and can’t use algorithmic automated processing for decision-making—for example, regarding who to offer a loan to or at what interest rate.

Regulating algorithms is a broad and complex challenge, and pushback by the tech industry along with legal hurdles could halt even the most ambitious regulators. The public, and even policymakers, often lack the conceptual clarity to identify, define, and classify algorithms. And because it can be difficult to prove causation between algorithmic decision-making and the behavior or opinions of individuals influenced by it, accountability is hard to track.

Further breakthroughs may happen below the national level. New York City is reviewing the use of algorithms in decision-making across its government agencies and offices. The City Council curtailed the use of AI algorithms in decisions about hiring and promotion. And these steps are just the beginning, as state houses and activists energetically join the race to shape this new frontier.

Danielle Miller, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Miller worked in the US House of Representatives and was a research assistant at the University of California Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies.

The rise of preemptive corporate decoupling from China

In the days after the Kremlin launched its illegal war on Ukraine, Western companies based in Russia started fleeing the market, fearing unprecedented transatlantic sanctions, consumer backlash for continuing to do business with an invader country on an imperialist bender, and investor pressure to maintain profit margins. Now, as tensions between the West and China escalate, wary investors and multinational corporations may be starting to preemptively shift their market presence, supply chains, and investments away from China to insulate themselves from similar future impacts should the Sino-transatlantic relationship deteriorate.

Among the most interesting early developments: Apple, which has a huge production footprint in China, has decided to shift production of its iPhone 14 model to India, while some of Google’s production for the new Pixel phone will likely be heading to Vietnam. Another space to watch is pension funds, as growing concerns about political risks are prompting discussions about potentially exiting or at least reducing exposure to the Chinese market.

While it’s still early to call such decisions formal decoupling, these signs point to Western companies’ unease about the state of the Sino-transatlantic relationship, as well as a preemptive, corporate-led fragmentation of markets and supply chains in case tensions between China and Western countries bubble over. The private sector’s concerns about China’s restrictive zero-COVID policies, which have led to recurring lockdowns and disruptions at factories, may also be a factor in these developments, but the roots of these corporate moves can be traced back further to extensive tariffs and other economic tit-for-tat measures between China and the West—as well as nervousness about China’s own pursuit of self-sufficiency via efforts such as its “Made in China 2025” initiative. At stake in how these trends play out is nothing less than the future of globalization as we know it, along with the shape of the multipolar geoeconomic order, in which countries such as India will likely play an enhanced role.

Anca Agachi, Associate Director, Transatlantic Security Initiative

Previously, Agachi worked for the EU’s European Defence Agency on defense capability development projects in the information security and space domains, and served as a United Nations Youth Representative for Romania, focusing extensively on the UN 2030 Agenda and sustainable development goals.

The battery revolution that will democratize electric vehicles

The two main reasons why consumers are reluctant to buy electric vehicles? They cost a lot and can’t get very far on a charge. But a battery that could make electric cars cheaper, more efficient, and thus more popular may be on the horizon. The next breakthrough could come not by way of an updated lithium-ion battery—the kind that powers most electric vehicles on the road today—but rather by using current battery technology in different form through structural batteries built into a car’s frame. This has the effect of reducing the car’s weight (a chassis made of battery cells isn’t as heavy as a chassis plus a separate battery) and a lighter car can travel farther on a single charge. The potential benefits go far beyond increasing range. Integrating the battery into a car’s chassis could also cut down on manufacturing costs and make cars cheaper, while strengthening the body of the car as well.

Tesla has experimented with structural batteries in its Model Y cars and GM used them in the electric model of its Hummers, but their versions have yet to yield broader adoption. Yet technical development among automakers and other actors is ongoing and promising. Researchers at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, for example, recently developed a more efficient structural battery that performs ten times better than its predecessors. Right now, electric vehicles are driven mostly by the wealthy: In the United States, for instance, 78 percent of federal electric-vehicle credits go to those with incomes over $100,000. If structural batteries can deliver on their promise, it will result in many more electric vehicles on the road around the world, democratizing ownership.

Imran Bayoumi, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Bayoumi graduated with his master’s degree in global affairs from the Munk School at the University of Toronto where he held a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship. He also holds a BA from Queen’s University in political studies.

The early glimmers of a global, platform worker-driven labor movement

An uneven post-COVID-19 economic recovery has stoked a labor-rights movement in the United States and efforts to unionize in some of the country’s largest corporations—from Starbucks to Amazon to Trader Joe’s. Around the world, meanwhile, similar fallout from the pandemic has produced another phenomenon: Platform workers—those who work for organizations that provide services directly to consumers through an online platform—are leading efforts to create better working conditions for themselves. Strikes and other protests from Brazil to the United Kingdom to the Philippines and beyond speak to rising unrest among these workers. The causes for disputes and the types of protest vary across regions, but concerns about pay are often a primary driver of the activity.

Such developments are significant in part because platform workers are a subset of the informal economy, which encompasses economic activities that are not monitored by the state. These activities include a wide range of work—from domestic labor to rideshare driving to market stands. More than 60 percent of the world’s adult labor force operates, at least part-time, in the informal sector, and on average that sector represents 35 percent of gross domestic product in low- and middle-income countries. In many cases, particularly in emerging markets and developing economies, platform workers are not aiming to formalize their economic activities. But their budding efforts to improve their working conditions could alter the world of work for the better, more strongly linking them with government protections and helping curb global poverty and precarious employment.

Caroline Multerer, Deputy Director of Operations, Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Prior to joining the Atlantic Council, Multerer was a program associate at Jones Group International, a global consulting firm owned by General James L. Jones.

The risky promise of geoengineering

One approach to combating climate change is geoengineering, or deliberate, large-scale, technologically based interventions in the environment to mitigate some of the effects of climate change. These include removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reflecting the sun’s rays back into space. Futuristic though it may sound, geoengineering is already here. China and the United Arab Emirates have undertaken efforts to “seed” clouds by artificially increasing the amount of precipitation they hold and creating rain. Researchers from the UAE’s National Center of Meteorology have looked into creating an artificial mountain that would induce cloud formation and rain. Other countries, including China, India, and the United States, are making steady progress in advancing their geoengineering capabilities. The 2022 federal appropriations act, for example directed the US Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a multi-agency group for coordinating research on solar geoengineering. This form of climate engineering, where sunlight is sent back into space, seems most likely to have the biggest impact on limiting the consequences of climate change and thus most likely to be pursued.

But along with its promise solar geoengineering also brings numerous risks, including the potential alteration of regional weather patterns. There’s also the increasing likelihood that, given the pace of climate-driven impacts such as floods, droughts, severe storms, and heat waves, a country or multiple countries will attempt to geoengineer the planet unilaterally, before the underlying science is solidified and before adequate global governance mechanisms are in place.

Imran Bayoumi, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

The Japan-South Korea rapprochement that could shake up the Indo-Pacific

Although Japan and South Korea normalized diplomatic relations in 1965, their relations have continued to be complicated by the legacy of Japan’s colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945, memories of World War II, and disputes over how to compensate Korean women who were forced into wartime sexual slavery by the Japanese military.

Despite this history, deeper reconciliation between the two countries, while politically difficult, is not an impossibility. In one indicator of a coming thaw, a meeting between South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on the sidelines of the 2022 United Nations General Assembly, framed as a brief, informal gathering to avoid setting off domestic opposition at home, marked the first bilateral meeting between the leaders of these nations in three years. In another sign, the Japanese and South Korean publics are coalescing around concern about China. Were such a rapprochement to occur, it would dramatically alter the geopolitical environment in Asia while delivering significant benefits to both countries. Japan and South Korea face common and acute threats from China, North Korea, and Russia. With better relations, the two countries could pursue closer bilateral military ties, reach mutual understandings of regional threats, and develop responses to crises as they emerge. South Korea, one of the world’s leading advanced economies, could get more involved in the Quad grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. The United States would be able to count on both nations to counterbalance China’s influence in the region, while the three could promote shared values throughout the Indo-Pacific.

Imran Bayoumi, Assistant Director, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Global Foresight 2023

In this year’s edition of Global Foresight, the Atlantic Council’s senior experts identify the top risks and opportunities for 2023. Our foresight team spots “snow leopards” that could have major unexpected impacts in 2023 and beyond. And we share findings from our survey of global strategists and foresight practitioners on how human affairs could unfold over the next decade.

Learn more Full survey

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Jan 9, 2023

Welcome to 2033: What the world could look like in ten years, according to more than 160 experts

To survey the future, we polled global strategists and foresight gurus on our most burning questions about the biggest drivers of change over the next decade. Check out their forecasts on everything from the prospect of nuclear proliferation to the probability of great-power war to the potential for more global volatility.

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Jan 20, 2023

Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2023

Atlantic Council foresight experts spot the underappreciated phenomena that could have outsize impact on the world, driving global change and shaping the future.

Brazil China

Atlantic Council Strategy Paper Series Dec 23, 2022

The top 23 risks and opportunities for 2023

The war in Ukraine changed the world in 2022. How will it continue reshaping global affairs in 2023 and what else looms on the horizon? The Atlantic Council’s top experts brought their globe-spanning expertise to the task of forecasting the near future.

Africa Americas

The post Six ‘snow leopards’ to watch for in 2023 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Bahamian prime minister urges action on climate change, financial inclusion, and regional cooperation

Nick Fouriezos — Wed, 18 Jan 2023 21:54:08 +0000

After three years of economic stress heightened by COVID-19 and international conflict, The Bahamas and the rest of the Caribbean are ready to move toward a future of energy security, economic development, and greater regional integration according to Philip Davis, prime minister of The Bahamas and chair of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

To get there, though, they’ll need other nations to provide more help than they have in the past, said Davis. “We are gratified that the United States has reengaged with us,” remarked Davis, referring to the United States as “kith and kin.”

Speaking on Tuesday at an Atlantic Council Front Page event, Davis was hopeful following a meeting with US Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, DC.

Still, the Bahamian leader did not mince his words when speaking of the challenges the Caribbean faces, as climate change continues to increase the frequency of deadly hurricanes and global instability continues to drive some of the highest energy and food prices in the Western Hemisphere.

Read on for more highlights from his remarks and conversation with Jason Marczak, senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council.

“Climate change must be more than a buzzword”

“Small-island and developing states throughout the Caribbean must come to terms with the full extent of our vulnerability,” Davis said in light of the rising threat that climate change poses to the region. He cited the particularly grim challenge facing Dominica, an island nation in the Lesser Antilles, which is still recovering nearly five years after Hurricane Maria hit. Davis said that the hurricane inflicted so much damage that 50 percent of the country’s gross domestic product essentially blew away in a single night—a fate more Caribbean countries could face if climate change continues unabated.
As hurricanes and rising water levels further threaten Caribbean islands, it is becoming more urgent to fully fund climate initiatives. “What we need is more access to climate-change-specific funding to mitigate the damage being inflicted each day,” Davis said.
On working toward a switch to renewable energy: “We must first acknowledge that this is not a one size fits all discussion,” Davis said. The issues facing oil-rich countries, such as Trinidad and Tobago, are vastly different from those of his own country, Davis added, where the pivot to solar energy is more immediately necessary as energy costs soar.

More banks, more security

Since 2015, access to global finance has quickly worsened for many Caribbean countries and businesses as many international banks and financial institutions operating in the region have chosen to de-integrate and de-bank, cutting off their services from the region. Countries whose economic development depends on remittances, such as Jamaica and Haiti, or tourism, such as The Bahamas and those in the Eastern Caribbean, have been hit particularly hard, Davis explained.
“Sixty percent of unbanked adults in the region cite cost as a barrier to financial services,” Davis said, stressing the need to give Caribbean citizens access to financial services. “In the Bahamas, on less populated islands, people have been left without a single commercial bank.” He highlighted the work of the Atlantic Council Caribbean Initiative’s Financial Inclusion Task Force, calling it “a conduit for solving these persistent issues.”
Caribbean citizens are feeling the effects of global crises in the form of worsening financial access, high electricity prices, and food insecurity. “CARICOM suggests that as much as 57 percent of the English-speaking Caribbean faces food-security issues,” Davis said. Together, Davis said, CARICOM’s “work can save lives and livelihoods” as “we have an opportunity to make historic advancements in regional energy security, food security, and financial inclusion.”

A partner to the north

Davis was happy to be able to meet “one on one, face to face” with Harris, hoping that Washington and Nassau will continue to strengthen relations after a period of relative silence from the White House. “Nature abhors a vacuum,” Davis said, “and if attention is not paid, someone else will pay the attention.”
The Bahamas can also be a partner to the United States on regional security issues. “We are on the migratory path to the United States, and many don’t get there. They stay in The Bahamas,” Davis said, while referencing a recent wave of Haitian migrants making their way to the United States in the wake of severe political instability in Haiti.

Nick Fouriezos is an Atlanta-based writer with bylines from every US state and six continents. Follow him on Twitter @nick4iezos.

Watch the full event

The post Bahamian prime minister urges action on climate change, financial inclusion, and regional cooperation appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Dispatch from Abu Dhabi: How to reduce carbon emissions without blocking progress

Frederick Kempe — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 18:01:29 +0000

This article was updated on January 16 to reflect the fact that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and Masdar, where Sultan Al Jaber serves as CEO and chairman, respectively, are sponsors of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum.

If the world gets lucky, this could be the year fossil fuel producers and climate activists bury their hatchets and join hands to reduce emissions and ensure our planet’s future.

If that sounds hopelessly utopian, take that up with the leaders of this resource-rich, renewables-generating Middle Eastern monarchy. The United Arab Emirates is determined to inject specificity, urgency, and pragmatism into a process that often has lacked all three: the twenty-eighth convening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, from November 30 to December 12.

To kick off 2023, the oil and gas and climate communities gathered this weekend for the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum, launching the annual Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week. After decades of mutual mistrust, there is a growing recognition that they can’t live without each other.

Thank Russian President Vladimir Putin’s criminal war in Ukraine, and his ongoing weaponization of energy, for injecting a new dose of hard-headed reality into climate conversations. It’s seldom been so clear that energy security and cleaner energy are indivisible. The guiding principle is “the energy sustainability trilemma,” defined as the need to balance energy reliability, affordability, and sustainability.

What’s contributing to this new pragmatism is a recognition by much of the climate community that the energy transition to renewables can’t be achieved without fossil fuels, so they must be made cleaner. They have come to accept that natural gas, in particular liquified natural gas (LNG), with half the emissions footprint of coal, provides a powerful bridging fuel.

Once derided by green activists, nuclear power is also winning over new fans—particularly when it comes to the small, modular plants where there are fewer concerns over safety and weapons proliferation.

For their part, almost all major oil and gas producers, who once viewed climate activists with disdain, now embrace the reality of climate science and are investing billions of dollars in renewables and efforts to make their fossil fuels cleaner.

“Every serious hydrocarbon producer knows the future, in a world of declining use of fossil fuels, is to be low cost, low risk, and low carbon,” said David Goldwyn, the former State Department special envoy for energy. “The only way to ensure we do this is to have industry at the table.”

Nowhere is this shift among climate activists more evident than in Germany, where Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, the Green Party leader, is serving as the pragmatist-in-chief.

Habeck, who serves as federal minister for economic affairs and climate action, has been the driving force behind extending the life of the country’s three nuclear plants through April and in launching Germany’s first LNG import terminal in December, with as many as five more to follow.

“I am ultimately responsible for the security of the German energy system,” Habeck told Financial Times reporter Guy Chazan in a sweeping profile of the German politician. “So, the buck stops with me. … I became minister to make tough decisions, not to be Germany’s most popular politician.”

Some climate activists were aghast this Thursday when the UAE named Sultan Al Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), as president of this year’s COP28.

“This appointment goes beyond putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” said Teresa Anderson of ActionAid, a development charity. “Like last year’s summit, we’re increasingly seeing fossil fuel interests taking control of the process and shaping it to meet their own needs.”

What that overlooks is that Al Jaber’s rich background in both renewables and fossil fuels makes him an ideal choice at a time when efforts to address climate change have been far too slow, lacking the inclusivity to produce more transformative results.

Full disclosure: Al Jaber’s companies ADNOC and the clean-energy innovator Masdar (where he was founding CEO in 2005 and is now chairman) are sponsors of the annual Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi, a fact that has given me a close-up look at his years-long commitment to reducing emissions and promoting renewables.

Al Jaber also represents a country that despite its resource riches has become a major nuclear power producer, was the first Middle East country to join the Paris Climate Agreement, and was the first Middle East country to set out a roadmap to net-zero emissions by 2050.

Over the past fifteen years, the UAE has invested forty billion dollars in renewable energy and clean tech globally. In November it signed a partnership with the United States to invest an additional one hundred billion dollars in clean energy. Some 70 percent of the UAE economy is generated outside the oil and gas sector, making it an exception among major producing countries in its diversification.

Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, has explained his country’s approach this way: “There will be a time, fifty years from now, when we load the last barrel of oil aboard the ship. The question is… are we going to feel sad? If our investment today is right, I think—dear brothers and sisters—we will celebrate that moment.”

Al Jaber, speaking to the Global Energy Forum, captured his ambition to drive faster and more transformative results at COP28.

“We are way off track,” said Al Jaber.

“The world is playing catch-up when it comes to the key Paris goal of holding global temperatures down to 1.5 degrees,” he said. “And the hard reality is that in order to achieve this goal, global emissions must fall 43 percent by 2030. To add to that challenge, we must decrease emissions at a time of continued economic uncertainty, heightened geopolitical tensions, and increasing pressure on energy.”

He called for “transformational progress… through game-changing partnerships, solutions, and outcomes.” He said the world must triple renewable energy generation from eight terawatt hours to twenty-three and more than double low-carbon hydrogen production to 180 million tons for industrial sectors, which have the hardest carbon footprint to abate.

“We will work with the energy industry on accelerating the decarbonization, reducing methane, and expanding hydrogen,” said Al Jaber. “Let’s keep our focus on holding back emissions, not progress.”

If that sounds utopian, let’s have more of it.

This article originally appeared on CNBC.com.

Frederick Kempe is president and chief executive officer of the Atlantic Council. You can follow him on Twitter @FredKempe.

THE WEEK’S TOP READS

#1 A new world energy order is taking shape
Rana Foroohar | FINANCIAL TIMES

In this smart piece, the FT’s Rana Foroohar warns of a China-led energy order and how that could shift the global balance of power.

“What does that mean in practice?” Foroohar asks. “For starters, a lot more oil trade will be done in renminbi. [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] announced that, over the next three to five years, China would not only dramatically increase imports from [Gulf] countries, but work towards all-dimensional energy co-operation.”

“This could potentially involve joint exploration and production in places such as the South China Sea, as well as investments in refineries, chemicals, and plastics. Beijing’s hope is that all of it will be paid for in renminbi, on the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange, as early as 2025.”

This is something any serious thinker on energy should bear in mind. Read more →

#2 Ships going dark: Russia’s grain smuggling in the Black Sea
ECONOMIST

In this thought-provoking narrative, the Economist highlights the growing economic potential of the North Sea, particularly as a producer of wind power.

While the Economist acknowledges significant hurdles, from the vagaries of weather to the threat of cheaper competition in Southern Europe, it also writes that if “these problems can be overcome, the new North Sea economy’s impact on the continent will be momentous.

“As Europe’s economic epicentre moves north, so will its political one, predicts Frank Peter of Agora Energiewende, a German think-tank. Coastal Bremen, one of Germany’s poorest states, could gain clout at the expense of rich but landlocked Bavaria. At the European level, France and Germany, whose industrial might underpinned the European Coal and Steel Community, the EU’s forebear, may lose some influence to a new bloc led by Denmark, the Netherlands and, outside the EU, Britain and Norway.” Read more →

#3 Time is not on Ukraine’s side
Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates | WASHINGTON POST

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, two of the most perceptive international strategists out there, deliver a compelling argument for how President Joe Biden’s administration should do more for Ukraine now.

The only way to avoid Russian domination of Ukraine, they write, “is for the United States and its allies to urgently provide Ukraine with a dramatic increase in military supplies and capability — sufficient to deter a renewed Russian offensive and to enable Ukraine to push back Russian forces in the east and south. Congress has provided enough money to pay for such reinforcement; what is needed now are decisions by the United States and its allies to provide the Ukrainians the additional military equipment they need — above all, mobile armor.”

“Because there are serious logistical challenges associated with sending American Abrams heavy tanks, Germany and other allies should fill this need,” they write. “NATO members also should provide the Ukrainians with longer-range missiles, advanced drones, significant ammunition stocks (including artillery shells), more reconnaissance and surveillance capability, and other equipment. These capabilities are needed in weeks, not months.”

One hopes Biden is reading. Read more →

#4 Robert Habeck was Germany’s most popular politician. Then he took office
Guy Chazan | FINANCIAL TIMEs

Don’t miss Guy Chazan’s brilliant, sweeping profile of German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who oversees his country’s energy and economic policies, and his struggle as a Green politician to diversify resources away from Russia.

“As the energy crisis continued, traits that distinguished Habeck from other politicians came to the fore,” Chazan writes, reporting on Habeck’s willingness to make tough decisions. “On the day of the invasion last February, amid rounds of emergency meetings, he found time to visit Andrij Melnyk, Ukraine’s ambassador to Berlin. ‘That was the most important meeting I had since the war began,’ Melnyk told Der Spiegel, ‘because he offered real human sympathy.’ Habeck also spoke openly about the uncertainties the government faced.”

Read this for a profile of the type of leader who, understanding the importance of compromise and pragmatism, will be vital in making the energy transition a success. Read more →

#5 American Democracy is Still In Danger
Erin Baggot Carter, Brett L. Carter, and Larry Diamond | FOREIGN AFFAIRS

This week’s must-read is a clarion call on the importance of US democracy and the dangers it faces, from Erin Baggot Carter, Brett L. Carter, and Larry Diamond.

“The health of American democracy,” they write, “is both a domestic and a national security concern. China and Russia—the United States’ principal authoritarian adversaries—have been using (and exacerbating) America’s democratic divisions and travails to gain advantage in the competition for global leadership. To regain the advantage, the United States must both repair its own democracy and reinvigorate its voice for democracy in the global arena. Democracy must go on the offensive.”

To do this, they argue, “Washington must rejoin the battle for global soft power, in a manner that reflects American values. It must transmit the truth, and in ways that engage and persuade global audiences. The goal must be not only to counter disinformation persuasively with the truth but to promote democratic values, ideas, and movements. In order to counter disinformation and report the truth that autocracies suppress, multiple credible streams of information are needed. Furthermore, they must be independent; while the US government may provide material support, these outlets must operate free of editorial control. That way, they will be seen to be independent because they are.” Read more →

Atlantic Council top reads

Global Energy Forum Jan 14, 2023

COP28 president-designate: With the world ‘way off track’ on Paris goals, ‘transformational progress’ is needed

By Daniel Malloy

In his first remarks since being named the incoming president of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber spoke on Saturday morning at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Fast Thinking Jan 9, 2023

How Brazil can respond to its democracy stress test

By Atlantic Council

Now that authorities have cleared the protests and launched an investigation into security failures, our experts break down what’s to come.

Brazil Democratic Transitions

New Atlanticist Jan 13, 2023

Russian War Report: Russian hacker wanted by the FBI reportedly wins Wagner hackathon prize

By Digital Forensic Research Lab

In December 2022, Wagner Group organized a hackathon that was won by a man wanted by the FBI for his connection to computer malware.

Conflict Cybersecurity

The post Dispatch from Abu Dhabi: How to reduce carbon emissions without blocking progress appeared first on Atlantic Council.

COP28 president-designate: With the world ‘way off track’ on Paris goals, ‘transformational progress’ is needed

Daniel Malloy — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 07:07:34 +0000

This article was updated on January 16 to reflect the fact that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, where Sultan Al Jaber serves as CEO, is a sponsor of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum.

With a pivotal United Nations climate change summit set to take place in the United Arab Emirates at the end of this year, “the world is playing catch-up” to implement emissions-reduction goals, said UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and COP28 President-Delegate Sultan Al Jaber. But, he added, there’s ample opportunity to accelerate new technologies and refashion old ones to reach net-zero emissions, a milestone that would represent “the greatest economic and human promise since the first Industrial Revolution.”

In his first remarks since being named the incoming president of the twenty-eighth UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28), Al Jaber spoke on Saturday morning at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum in Abu Dhabi, a two-day gathering of policymakers, government officials, and business leaders that sets the energy agenda for the coming year.

Al Jaber acknowledged that the world is “way off track” in hitting the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accords, intended to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But in his first opportunity to set out the vision for the landmark conference—which he said will be a COP of “solidarity” and “action” as it engages in the first “global stocktake” progress report—Al Jaber offered a roadmap to the “transformational progress” he envisions.

Al Jaber called for tripling renewable energy generation by 2030, more than doubling low-carbon hydrogen production, and supercharging investment in agriculture technology and smart water use. “And we need to do all this in an accelerated time frame against a fast-approaching deadline,” he said.

Watch the full event

2023 Global Energy Forum

The 2023 Forum will have a special focus on the challenge of managing energy security priorities and decarbonization efforts in tandem, including the continuing impact of the crisis in Ukraine on the energy transition. This two-day conference starts at 9:00 AM in Abu Dhabi and virtually at 12:00 AM ET (midnight).

Africa Americas Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

Though the UAE is one of the world’s top oil producers and a member of the OPEC cartel, it has also made a fifty-billion-dollar investment in renewables and clean technology. Al Jaber, who also serves as group CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which is a sponsor of the Global Energy Forum, pointedly noted that 70 percent of the country’s economy is outside the oil and gas sector.

But the world still has an enormous thirst for hydrocarbons, a fact proven once again over the past year with the disruptions caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine. So, Al Jaber said, climate mitigation must include the fossil-fuel industry working to reduce carbon and methane emissions.

This kind of work requires the “breaking of silos” said Frederick Kempe, the CEO of the Atlantic Council, as he opened the Global Energy Forum. “I’m confident that Dr. Sultan is more than capable of rising to the opportunity of a new energy pragmatism which brings the climate and energy communities together in the name of shared action,” Kempe added.

After leaders at COP27 in Egypt agreed to the first-ever loss and damage fund to support countries of the Global South that are the most affected by climate change, Al Jaber said financing for this fund must double to forty billion dollars a year by 2025—with each taxpayer dollar matched by two or three from private capital. That will require, he said, “inclusive reform of the multilateral development banks and international financial institutions.”

Al Jaber will be at the forefront of climate diplomacy as the Persian Gulf state of ten million people assumes its place under a global spotlight this year, with the future of the planet on the line.

“The UAE approaches this task with humility, a clear sense of responsibility, and a great sense of urgency,” he said.

Daniel Malloy is the deputy managing editor at the Atlantic Council.

The post COP28 president-designate: With the world ‘way off track’ on Paris goals, ‘transformational progress’ is needed appeared first on Atlantic Council.

H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber on the COP28 agenda, how to transform climate progress, and the role of fossil fuels

Atlantic Council — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 06:54:05 +0000

On January 14, 2023 at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Forum, H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, UAE minister of industry and advanced technology and special envoy for climate change, called for a transformational shift in the race to combat the climate crisis. Below are his remarks as delivered at the forum, which took place just days after Al Jaber was designated the COP28 president.

Watch the full event

Flagship Event Sat, January 14, 2023 • 12:01 am ET

2023 Global Energy Forum

Africa Americas Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

Good morning. Your excellencies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, welcome to the United Arab Emirates, to Abu Dhabi, and to the seventh Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum.

And thank you, Fred, for your kind introduction. Thank you for your leadership, for your partnership, and for making sure that we always have the right mix of expertise participating in this very important forum.

And as the opening event of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, this forum helps set the energy agenda for the year ahead. And as the UAE prepares to host COP28, the Emirates Climate Conference this year carries a very special significance.

The UAE approaches this task with humility, a clear sense of responsibility, and a great sense of urgency. Like all countries around the world, the UAE is exposed to the risks of climate change. We have always considered environmental stewardship as an integral part of our economy and view climate action as central to the successful development of our nation.

We are proud to be the host country of the International Renewable Energy Agency, IRENA; the first country in our region to commit to the Paris agreement; the first in the region to submit a nationally determined contribution; and the first to set out a roadmap to net zero. And we will continue to focus on this very important journey.

More than eighteen years ago, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates, had a long-term vision of the future, and he took a bold step when he decided to establish Masdar. This was our first major practical, proactive move into the energy transition. Under His Highness’ guidance, Masdar has grown to become one of the largest renewable energy investors in the world and is aiming for a hundred-gigawatt portfolio by 2030.

Over the last fifteen years, the UAE has invested a total of fifty billion US dollars in renewable energy and clean tech globally and plans to invest another fifty billion US dollars in the years ahead. And beyond investing in new energies, it was His Highness who said there will be a time when we load the last barrel of oil. And he continued: If our plans are the investments today are right, it will be a moment of celebration.

This call to action by His Highness at the World Government Summit in 2015 clearly underscored his vision for sustainable development delivered by economic diversification and enabled by a rapid transition of our energy systems. And today, over 70 percent of our economy is generated outside the oil and gas sector. And as the founding CEO and chairman of Masdar, and the MD and CEO of ADNOC, I will continue to follow our leadership’s vision and guidance in making today’s energy cleaner while advancing and continuing to invest in the clean energies of tomorrow.

And we will use our experience, our ambition, and deep and rich network of partnerships to inform our approach to COP28. During the course of the year ahead, we will work very closely with COP27 Egyptian presidency, the UNFCCC Secretariat, and of course all relevant parties to build on and accelerate progress made before us.

Yet, we must be honest with ourselves about how much progress we have actually achieved, and how much further and faster we truly need to go. Of course, we have collectively achieved major milestones along our journey. In Glasgow, 90 percent of the world’s economies committed to net zero by 2050. Sharm El Sheikh elevated the voices of the Global South, put loss and damage firmly on the agenda, and started to address reforming the climate finance system. COP28 will have particular significance, as it will mark the first global stock-take, a comprehensive assessment of progress against the goals of the Paris agreement.

And we don’t need to wait for the stock-take to know what it will actually say. We are way off track. We are way off track. The world is playing catch-up when it comes to the key Paris goal of holding global temperatures down to 1.5 degrees, and the hard reality is that in order to achieve this goal global emissions must fall 43 percent by 2030. To add to that challenge, we must decrease emissions at a time of continued economic uncertainty, heightened geopolitical tensions, and increasing pressure on energy security.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is no other way to really address our climate challenge. We need to make transformational progress. And for that to happen, we must be prepared. We must be prepared to transform the process with the support of all parties and stakeholders.

We want COP28 to transform systems and accelerate 2030 trajectories through game-changing partnerships, game-changing solutions, and real tangible outcomes. We want it to be a COP of solidarity that bridges Global North and South and includes public and private sectors, scientists and civil society, women, and youth. And we want it to be a practical COP, a COP of action, a COP for all, a COP that raises ambition and moves from goals to actually getting it done across mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and, of course, finance.

Allow me to elaborate on those points one by one. On mitigation, we know that many of the—we know many of the solutions do exist: scaling renewables and nuclear and hydrogen and carbon capture and energy efficiency and, of course, the least carbon-intensive oil and gas as well as new technologies yet to be developed and deployed.

Wind and solar added record growth of 550 gigawatts between 2020 and 2022 and are on course to grow more over the next five years than over the last twenty combined. The market is actually telling us something here. The market is telling us something. We are at a turning point in history.

Low-carbon growth is the future, but we must get there much faster. We must triple renewable energy generation from eight to twenty-three terawatt hours by 2030. We must more than double low-carbon hydrogen production to at least 180 million tons for hard-to-abate sectors. We also need to transform our food and our agriculture systems because we know that agriculture accounts for one-third of global emissions.

Much greater investment in agri-tech, smarter water use, and food production is needed to transform this critical sector, alongside many other sectors, and we need to do all this in an accelerated time frame. Again, it’s a fast-approaching deadline.

Let me just add this. Our world is on its way to being home to 9.7 billion people by 2050 and will have to produce 30 percent more energy than what is available today. We, and as long as the world still uses hydrocarbons, we must ensure they are the least carbon intensive possible.

We will work with the energy industry on accelerating the decarbonization, reducing methane, and expanding hydrogen. Let’s keep our focus on holding back emissions, not progress.

On adaptation, the number-one priority is very clear. We must do more to protect our most vulnerable communities and our most critical systems from extreme weather and biodiversity loss.

We must protect our rain forests and invest in nature-based solutions like mangroves that act as powerful carbon sinks while protecting coastlines and preserving natural ecosystems.

We must ensure that our global food system is resilient to the changing weather patterns that threaten farmers around the world, and to enable this progress we must double adaptation finance for the Global South to forty billion dollars annually by 2025.

On climate finance, we simply need more. We need it to be more affordable. We need it to be much more accessible. We need to ensure that every concessional dollar is matched by two or three dollars of private capital.

To make this happen, we need to answer the call from the international community for inclusive reform of the multilateral development banks and international financial institutions. In fact, that is a critical success factor. And to encourage this process the UAE, as chair of the World Bank-IMF Development Committee, intends to play a proactive, supportive, and facilitating role.

And on loss and damage, we need to help the most vulnerable to rebuild after climate-related disasters. Together with the international community, we must build on the progress made in Sharm El Sheikh and fully operationalize the loss-and-damage fund.

Distinguished delegates, dear friends, as an ambitious young nation that continues to evolve, the UAE has grown through partnerships, opened up to new ideas, and learned many, many lessons along the way. We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we believe we have something valuable that we can contribute. At the crossroads of north and south, east and west, we will listen. We will engage with all those who wants to engage. We will listen and we will engage with those who want to engage. We will build bridges and we will pursue global consensus in this very important collective effort.

Together with the high-level champion Her Excellency Razan Mubarak and the youth champion Her Excellency Shamma Mazrui, we will work very closely with the UNFCCC to move from ambition to real action. And we will mobilize the private sector and all other sectors to deliver greater, more meaningful impact.

So let me extend an open invitation to all parties across government, private sector, and civil society: cooperate, collaborate, share your ideas, and talk to us. I am here to listen, and I am here to engage. We can only succeed if we have an open and constructive dialogue. Let us together create a paradigm shift for tangible progress. And let us remember that reaching net-zero emissions will deliver the biggest market transformation with the greatest economic and human promise since the first industrial revolution.

I urge all parties to help make COP28 a COP of concrete outcomes and practical solutions. We are united by our common goal. We are united by our common humanity. And we look forward to hosting you all in the United Arab Emirates, where together we can ensure sustainable development for this generation and all generations to come. Thank you.

Watch the full speech

The post H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber on the COP28 agenda, how to transform climate progress, and the role of fossil fuels appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Pakistan’s foreign minister pitches more global aid and investment—and ‘less chaos’

Nick Fouriezos — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 16:16:49 +0000

Watch the full event

Public Event Tue, December 20, 2022 • 4:00 pm ET

A conversation with Foreign Minister of Pakistan Bilawal Bhutto Zardari

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – The South Asia Center hosted a conversation on the Pakistani government’s foreign policy goals, opportunities for deepening the Pakistan-US relationship, and Pakistan’s plan to address the climate crisis and resulting economic challenges.

Climate Change & Climate Action Economy & Business Pakistan Politics & Diplomacy

The role Pakistan plays in the international scene may depend on how the global community responds to its growing litany of challenges, as the South Asian nation grapples with heightened political and economic insecurity, as well as the aftermath of a historically devastating monsoon season.

“The way in which we engage with each of these issues, the solutions we find for them, and our ability to implement those solutions will decide the direction of Pakistan’s policy in the coming decade, two decades… and it will decide the direction of Pakistan’s foreign policy in the times to come,” said Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari on Tuesday at an Atlantic Council Front Page event in Washington.

Pakistan’s youngest ever foreign minister— the thirty-four-year-old whose mother was prime minister and father was president assumed the post in April under the new government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif—spoke at length about the mounting challenges his nation is facing and his vision for rallying the international community to address them. Read on for more highlights from his remarks and conversation with Uzair Younus, director of the Pakistan Initiative at the Council’s South Asia Center.

Coping with climate disaster

“We experienced this year what can only be described as a climate catastrophe of biblical proportions,” Bhutto Zardari said of the monsoons that raged over Pakistan from June until the end of September, affecting thirty-three million people, roughly one in seven Pakistanis. By the time the rains had stopped, one third of Pakistan’s land mass—an area roughly the size of Colorado—was underwater, with damages topping thirty billion dollars.
Nations could see serious geopolitical consequences if Pakistan’s already teetering institutions worsen. “If we get this wrong, this is a crisis situation waiting to explode in our faces,” Bhutto Zardari said, even as he acknowledged that asking for humanitarian relief funds was a challenge given the fiscal constraints on economic powers because of COVID-19, inflation, and Russia’s war against Ukraine.
However, Bhutto Zardari hoped nations would rally to help Pakistani citizens now and use it as a test case for building resilience against future climate disasters, wherever they should next arise. “Granted it will take time, but once we address their needs and we rebuild, we can do so in a manner that they are better off than they were before,” Bhutto Zardari said.

More than security

In the past decade, Bhutto Zardari said that 90 percent of US-Pakistan conversations were focused around counterterrorism. Now the agenda has broadened to include everything from climate to agriculture to health care. “We have a far more comprehensive itinerary around which we are engaging,” he said.
Still, particularly after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last year, security remains a critical discussion. Bhutto Zardari said he would try to work with the Taliban, particularly when it comes to striking back against the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan terrorist organization. “We can’t change what happened in the past” in Afghanistan, Bhutto Zardari said. “What we can do is be serious about what we’re going to do going forward. Are we going to learn from our mistakes?” The answer, he added, will define “the safety and stability of our region.”
Bhutto Zardari recently visited Singapore and Indonesia, the latter of which is the world’s largest Muslim nation yet doesn’t even have a direct flight to Pakistan. He imagines Pakistan could become a hub between Southeast Asian and Central Asian nations. “In order to get there, I need to get my house in order,” he said.
“Of course, it’s far more appetizing, the less chaos we have,” Bhutto Zardari said, adding that there are “definitely” still questions about Pakistan’s political and economic stability. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not trying to address it. Questions? Yes. But does it mean shutting the door? No.”

His investment pitch

Pakistan hopes to expand and deepen its financial arrangements with a broader group of partners, particularly after it was removed in October from the “gray list” for terrorism financing operated by the global watchdog Financial Action Task Force—although this week’s hostage crisis hasn’t helped assuage Pakistan’s reputation for insecurity. “The main selling point we have is that we can become a logistical and trade hub… it’s the geographical location,” Bhutto Zardari said.
The challenges facing Pakistan represent a major risk for businesses, but that risk also is a key part of Bhutto Zardari’s message to investors as he believes the country will be a story of opportunity within a decade or two. “My pitch to everyone is get in now, while you can—when everyone doesn’t see that opportunity—so you can maximize your benefit later.”
Google has opened an office in Pakistan, and Meta has invested in fiber optic cable infrastructure. Bhutto Zardari noted that Facebook accepts rupees and could pursue a monetization model that rewards content creators in Pakistan. However, existing “data protection” policies—including Pakistan’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act of 2016—have kept tech companies from fully investing in the country, with Bhutto Zardari revealing that Pakistan leads the world in requests to remove content on Facebook.

Nick Fouriezos is a writer with more than a decade of journalism experience around the globe.

Watch the full event

The post Pakistan’s foreign minister pitches more global aid and investment—and ‘less chaos’ appeared first on Atlantic Council.

COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes

Global Energy Center — Wed, 23 Nov 2022 19:56:44 +0000

A last-ditch communique is reached, but with skepticism

Requiring an additional thirty-six hours of negotiation, official delegates finally reached a settlement and final communique early Sunday morning. The deal is underpinned by the landmark agreement to create a fund for climate compensation, bringing a nearly three-decade journey for “loss and damage” closer to the finish line. Even if details are sparse regarding contributions to the fund and the criteria for disbursement to vulnerable or impacted nations, bringing forth a commitment from two hundred participating countries is representative of the amount of influence the Global South has wielded throughout the past two weeks.

The disappointing absence of increased emissions reduction targets in the communique is an indicator of how the needs of the developing world have underpinned this COP. Ambitions for economic development amidst a global energy crisis have given enough influence to global oil and gas producing states that room for a significant push to reduce the role of oil and gas in the energy mix has been significantly limited.

That energy security loomed large in this year’s conference should instead be seen as a boon for deploying a diverse range of decarbonizing energy solutions, rather than a detriment. In fact, a draft cover decision on Thursday contained one piece of wisdom in particular, stipulating that resolving the energy crisis will require “immediate and massive deployment of all available clean and efficient energy technologies.” The text of the final cover decision emphasized the “importance of enhancing a clean energy mix, including low-emission and renewable energy.” While this notably opens the aperture to rhetorically include a broad range of technologies such as nuclear, hydrogen, and carbon capture, it is also seen as leaving room for gas.

COP27’s status as Africa’s COP has prompted an overdue shift towards empowering nation-state actors on the African continent to lead their own energy transition on the road to net-zero. This was exemplified in Frans Timmermans’ Wednesday press conference, where he acknowledged that “gas can play a transitional role” in Africa’s energy transition, a development which was welcomed by African Union members. The bloc had been calling for the capacity to develop their gas reserves for domestic use, amid a surge in interest from European importers, to aid the effort to provide energy access to over 600 million individuals on the continent and industrialize their economies in tandem with the accelerated deployment of renewable energy resources.

Nonetheless, there remains an urgent need to drastically reduce global emissions and the failure to make some progress on that front has clearly weakened confidence in the COP process. As noted by Timmermans over the weekend, “Many parties—too many parties—are not ready to make more progress today in the fight against the climate crisis,” he noted after reaching the COP27 agreement. The final deal “is not enough of a step forward for people and the planet.”

Progress made on the sidelines

However, there are still points for optimism outside of the official COP process as the conference came to a close. Thursday emerged as a particularly productive day as a Global Methane Pledge Ministerial was held. Here it was announced that more than 150 nations had now become signatories to the pledge, an increase of roughly fifty since COP26 (even if China and India are still significant outliers).

Also on Thursday was a formal meeting between Xie Zhenhua and John Kerry, following the meeting between President Joe Biden and Xi Jinping on Monday at the G20 Summit in Indonesia. While it’s an unfortunate retread of the progress that was made last year in Glasgow, getting the world’s largest economies back on track for a formal climate dialogue is a critical piece of the climate puzzle.

Another highlight is the progress being made on Just Energy Transition Partnerships, which has accelerated over the previous two weeks. This includes the official launch of the ambitious new JETP by the International Partners Group (the United States, the G7, Japan, Denmark, and Norway) to assist Indonesia in phasing down its coal-fired power generation. The agreement is the largest single-country climate finance partnership, in a model of public-private collaboration—with $10 billion USD being routed from public sources, and $10 billion being routed from a consortium of private financial institutions. This area also saw the arrival of an investment plan for South Africa’s JETP, and increased interest in JETP deals for additional middle income countries Vietnam, Senegal, and India.

The outlook for Paris: Sluggish, but positive

COP27 concludes not having lived up to its “implementation COP” billing. The absence of widespread action to drive forward the ambitions set in Glasgow is insufficient to meet the urgency of the moment—particularly in a year where the impacts of climate change have only accelerated.

A needed reframe of the COP process may now be on the horizon, but Sharm el Sheikh may have created the opportunity for the UNFCCC to do so effectively and equitably. An energy crisis has triggered closer collaboration between Global North and South, and walls between the energy industry and climate action camps are also being broken down as the conference gathers an ever-wider array of stakeholders engaging in constructive dialogue in an era of “post-denial.” Progress is inexcusably slow compared to the pathways and ambitions set forward in Glasgow, but the legacy of COP27 will be the opening of an opportunity to build on the inclusivity of Sharm el Sheikh and ensure a “whole-of-system” transition is accomplished.

GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All

The Atlantic Council Global Energy Center will be at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, to work alongside government, industry, civil society, and public stakeholders to devise pragmatic solutions and ideas to achieve net-zero #AmbitionsForAll.

EnergySource Nov 13, 2022

COP27 readout: Week 1 comes to a close

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center react to the first week of COP27 proceedings.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

EnergySource Nov 11, 2022

Partner perspectives: In emerging markets, partnerships and proof points are key to driving the energy transition

By Roger Martella

COP27 is an opportunity for emerging economies to lead the energy transition. Public-private partnerships can help drive progress towards their goals.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Nov 10, 2022

Partner perspectives: The next unlock: Why software is key to the energy transition

By Scott Reese

The energy transition requires scale, but it also requires speed. Through the marriage of human ingenuity with data and computing power, software integration can enable the acceleration of electrification and decarbonization, moving the world closer to loftier climate ambitions.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The big success and bigger failure of COP27

Atlantic Council — Mon, 21 Nov 2022 14:12:54 +0000

GET UP TO SPEED

The Global South won, but did the climate? Negotiators at the UN climate-change conference known as COP27 extended their stay in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt to hammer out a final agreement that will create a loss and damage fund to compensate developing countries harmed by climate change. But the deal barely addresses other urgent topics such as reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, even as the consequences of climate change become clearer by the day. Have negotiators done enough to help save the planet and the people on it? What other surprises cropped up at COP? Our experts, who were on the ground in Sharm el Sheikh, are here to weigh in.

TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION COURTESY OF

Kathy Baughman McLeod (@KBMcLeodFLA): Senior vice president and director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center
Jorge Gastelumendi (@Gasteluj): Director of global policy at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and former climate negotiator for the government of Peru
Landon Derentz (@Landon_Derentz): Senior director of the Global Energy Center and former director for energy on the US National Security Council and National Economic Council

A damaging loss?

While the creation of the loss and damage fund was “immensely welcome,” Kathy tells us, the lack of new emissions-reduction commitments by the countries gathered at COP27 represents an “utter failure” that is “devastating to plans to keep global heating to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius” above pre-industrial levels, as pledged in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Jorge says ”current major emitters” such as China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia are let off the hook by the lack of those commitments—and by the fact that, as developing nations, they won’t have to contribute to the loss and damage fund, “which could have been one other leverage point to” make them cut emissions. As a result, countries like these are poised to replace developed countries as the primary cause of climate-related loss and damage.
The structure of the loss and damage fund “also lacks a clear focus on the most vulnerable, which poses fundamental questions about the future use of the funds by recipient countries,” Jorge notes.

Subscribe to Fast Thinking email alerts

Fossil flip-flop

Kathy attributes much of the conference’s failures to attack global warming to the fact that “the fossil-fuel industry is still so deeply influential over country delegations,” with more than six hundred fossil fuel-tied delegates in attendance according to the advocacy group Global Witness.
Vladimir Putin had a say too: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has contributed to a near-term global energy crisis that at times has sidelined long-term climate concerns. The COP results “did not match the level of urgency many in the climate community were hoping for,” Landon tells us, because “climate action appears to have an energy-security problem.”
Fossil-fuel geopolitics also helped deliver the Global South’s big win. “Europe’s present hunt for conventional oil and gas resources in Africa and Latin America,” a major break from the West’s recent anti-fossil fuel stance, may have “served to disarm” long-running Western efforts to block a loss and damage fund, Landon says.
That’s because this year’s mad hydrocarbon dash is forcing Western countries “to grapple with the consequences of failing to move more swiftly to abate global emissions,” Landon adds.

Adapt or die

For real progress, Kathy says, you have to look beyond the negotiators: “NGOs and civil society, young and indigenous activists, philanthropy and the private sector (particularly the finance and insurance sectors), and mayors and governors played their largest role yet in driving new solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation.”
One example, as Jorge points out, is the Sharm el Sheikh Adaptation Agenda (SAA), a commitment from non-state actors to build climate resilience for four billion of the world’s most vulnerable people. The Resilience Center team helped secure a commitment in the SAA to mobilize some three thousand insurance companies to finance climate-adaptation projects. “In short, we managed to elevate a business-led effort into a global policy platform,” Jorge adds.
Next year’s COP will be a short hop away in the United Arab Emirates, and Kathy says the agenda “will need to focus on adaptation and resilience, and taking the next steps in detail on the loss and damage facility.” But once again, she adds, the formal negotiations will only be part of the story: “I expect action by the non-state actor community, especially around finance, to outpace the official process.”

The post The big success and bigger failure of COP27 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

COP27 readout: Week 1 comes to a close

Global Energy Center — Sun, 13 Nov 2022 18:16:20 +0000

As COP27 reaches its midway point, technical discussions are set to gain speed in Week 2. The twin realities of an energy security crisis and the sweeping impacts of climate change on the developing world remain at the forefront of discussions throughout Sharm el Sheikh. The multi-stakeholder drive to surmount both challenges is drawing stronger linkages between climate action and energy security, opening new avenues for collaboration between governments, civil society, and industry.

US climate leadership is achieving legitimacy through action

Midterm elections at the start of COP27 served only to further energize a US delegation already operating with confidence following passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). President Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, the Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese, and many others arrived in Egypt emphasizing an optimistic outlook for the energy transition in the United States, while underscoring the need to unlock “trillions” in private financing to replicate US momentum in the developing world. The steadfast presence of US congressional delegations from both sides of the aisle further reinforced America’s commitment to addressing the climate crisis.

As World Resources Institute’s Dan Lashof highlighted during a Global Energy Center “Ambitions for All” fireside chat, this should be seen as “COP1” for the United States—for the first time, US delegates have been capable of espousing domestic action as a model to the world. It is evident on the ground in Sharm el Sheikh that the escape velocity of the IRA and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) are helping to reinforce US credibility in negotiations and legitimizing conversations throughout COP27 about translating ambitions into action. The addition of cement industry to the First Movers Coalition, the proposed launch of a $15 billion USD Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) in Indonesia, and the informal reopening of US-China climate collaboration following a meeting between Secretary Kerry and Xie Zhenhua are important signposts of how US engagement is a critical momentum-builder. The United States, however, remains a laggard in climate finance, and reaching President Biden’s target of $11.4 billion USD in international climate finance by 2024 will be complicated, at best, if a divided congress materializes, as many political analysts anticipate.

No longer a Western-led narrative

The introduction of “loss and damage” to the COP agenda illustrates how the global south has successfully used the conversation in Europe and the West around energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to underscore the need for access to sustainable energy resources that enable economic growth. Gulf leaders built upon the developing world’s cry by publicly drawing attention to their role in providing reliable supplies to markets, further propelling a conversation around sustainable energy access to the fore of the “African COP.”

African leaders haven’t minced words, with climate finance increasingly seen less as a request and more as a demand. The chairman of the African Union, President Macky Sall of Senegal, has made the call to double the climate finance pledge of $100 billion USD per annum which was made at COP15.

While many saw the conversations around loss and damage as one of the trickiest corners to navigate headed into the COP, the inclusion of the agenda item passed quickly at the start of this conference. The Global North, it seems, won’t leave Sharm without some level of accountability. The goal of $40 billion USD per annum for adaptation finance which was agreed to by OECD countries at COP26 has been resonating as an insufficient benchmark at side events and in the blue zone.

A post-denial world

All to say, the hard conversations which have often been missed or dodged at prior COPs are now front-and-center. As discussed earlier this week, the transition from the COP to a broader convention of stakeholders is representative of this dynamic—representation from corporate stakeholders across the board, and from all sectors, including constructive dialogue from oil and gas supermajors, shows a desire to understand and be a part of the transition. It is necessary for policymakers and the private sector to work alongside each other to reach net-zero, and COP’s larger scope is a true reflection of the scale of the effort required.

Overall, the twin realities of a global energy security crisis and a developing world at the forefront of a majority of the worst impacts of climate change has created an opportunity to better integrate the policy spheres of climate action and energy security.

GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All

EnergySource Nov 11, 2022

Partner perspectives: In emerging markets, partnerships and proof points are key to driving the energy transition

By Roger Martella

COP27 is an opportunity for emerging economies to lead the energy transition. Public-private partnerships can help drive progress towards their goals.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Nov 10, 2022

Partner perspectives: The next unlock: Why software is key to the energy transition

By Scott Reese

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Nov 9, 2022

COP27 readout: Days 1 and 2

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center experts are on the ground at COP27. Here’s what they observed over the first two days.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post COP27 readout: Week 1 comes to a close appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The target of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees is practically dead. Why do emissions per capita matter?

Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou — Fri, 11 Nov 2022 22:45:35 +0000

As the world keeps warming and the frequency of natural disasters rises (figure 1), government officials and private and public sector leaders are convening in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort for the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. More commonly known as COP27, participants will discuss the climate challenges facing global communities and economies. Rising global temperatures, extreme weather events, and droughts are front and center at COP27, especially during times when close to a billion people are facing hunger and food insecurity around the world.

However, achieving the target to limit global warming to below 2, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels by the end of the century seems more unfeasible than ever. The reason is simple. This target, adopted by 196 parties at COP21 in Paris, on December 12, 2015, necessitates global greenhouse gas emissions to decline as soon as possible. Nevertheless, as seen in figure 2, global CO2 emissions—the most critical of greenhouse gases—have continuously risen in the past decade (excepting 2020 as a result of the pandemic shutdowns and lower global economic activity).

CO2 emissions are only expected to grow more in 2022 and for the foreseeable future. That increase is mainly due to coal’s strong comeback after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The subsequent financial and energy warfare between Russia and the Group of Seven (G7) has led to global shortages in crude and natural gas, forcing many economies to make a shift back to coal. Coal, used mainly in electricity generation and the industrial sector, emits twice as much CO2 than burning natural gas, setting the world even further back from its 1.5 degrees Celsius target by 2100. According to the United Nations Environmental Program, global temperatures have already increased by 1.1 degree Celsius in comparison to pre-industrial levels. Levels will rise by more than 3 degrees Celsius by 2100 if business continues as usual and global emissions aren’t reduced drastically. The world’s largest emitters must take meaningful steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Little to nothing should be expected from those economies —such as Small Island Developing States—that have contributed minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions but bear the brunt of global warming’s impacts.

As seen in figure 3, responsible for more than 31 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions, China is the largest CO2 emitter in the world, followed by the United States and India at 14 percent and 7.2 percent, respectively.

Clearly, reducing emissions of the world’s largest CO2 emitters can lead to substantial gains in reducing global warming. However, to achieve the most effective and efficient global outcomes, it is important to put these numbers in perspective. While China is by far the largest CO2 emitter in the world, in per capita terms, twenty-seven countries in the world had higher CO2 emission than China did in 2019. As seen in figure 4, twenty-one of these countries—representing about 30 percent of global CO2 emissions—were high-income economies and four were from the G7: Canada, the United States, Japan, and Germany. Specifically, Canada—with 15.4 metric tons per capita—and the United States—with 14.7 metric tons per capita—had about twice the per capita CO2 emission than China’s 7.6 metric tons per capita. This is while China is responsible for 28.7 percent of the world’s manufacturing—which is much more energy-intensive than services and agriculture, as compared to 16.8 percent in the United States, 7.5 percent in Japan, and 5.3 percent in Germany (figure 5). As part of its manufacturing, China produces 70 percent and 40 percent of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines, respectively. In other words, even though China is the world’s largest factory producer for the global market—including the global renewable energy industry—twenty-seven other economies attending COP27 have higher CO2 emissions per capita than China.

This does not mean that China, as the world’s largest CO2 emitter, has a less important role in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Not at all. However, it certainly means that a majority of high-income advanced economies—especially the United States—must play a more significant and active role on this front. This is for three main reasons. First, as seen in figure 6, CO2 emissions per capita in high-income economies are on average more than 1.5 times, 5.5 times, and 33 times that of upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income, and low-income economies, respectively. Second, from budgetary and technical perspectives, high-income economies have more resources to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without significantly impacting the well-being of their economies. Most other economies, especially those in the lower-middle-income and low-income categories, simply don’t have the economic capacity to reduce their emissions. Third, a significant share of CO2 emissions in high-income economies is “luxury emissions” versus those in poorer economies which are mainly “subsistence emissions” in nature. The share of global emissions of the world’s richest 1 percent (mainly residing in high-income economies) is expected to reach 16 percent of the world’s total by 2030 (from 13 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2015). Furthermore, the world’s richest 10 percent are responsible for a third of global emissions. Achieving global climate justice means reversing the rise of inequality in the world’s emissions. If increasing emissions from poor economies is not an option, which certainly is not, the only remaining path to achieve climate justice is to reduce emissions of the world’s richer population.

To conclude, high-income economies account for more than 35 percent of global CO2 emissions while they host only 12 percent of the world’s population. Their CO2 emissions negatively impact the lives of the world’s most vulnerable and the poor, the vast majority of whom reside in lower-middle-income and low-income economies. The 1.5 degrees Celsius target is practically dead, and the Paris Agreement has become non-binding. The good news is that CO2 emission per capita in most high-income economies have declined over the past decade —for example by 16% in the case of the United States and Germany—but as seen earlier in figure 4 they remain to be at elevated levels and more needs to be done faster. Coal’s strong comeback is creating a strong headwind for this trend and could reverse it in some of these economies. COP27 needs to pave the path for a renewed international cooperative and enforceable framework to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by the world’s top emitters both in absolute terms and in per capita terms. Unfortunately, the current geoeconomic and geopolitical rivalry and confrontation between the world’s largest economies does not help in this regard, but we have no choice but to remain hopeful.

Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou is a macroeconomist with the GeoEconomics Center and leads the Atlantic Council’s Bretton Woods 2.0 Project. He is also an assistant professor of economics at American University in Washington DC. @AMohseniC

Econographics Apr 21, 2022

The North-South divide is growing. Can a new Bretton Woods help?

By Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou

The growing divide is under the scanner as US Treasury Secretary Yellen and Colombian Finance Minister Restrepo both voiced a need to modernize the institutions.

Americas China

Econographics Apr 11, 2022

Democratic challenges at Bretton Woods Institutions

By Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou

Voting quotas at Bretton Woods Institutions continue reflecting the 1944 power structure, despite significant changes to the global economy.

Africa Americas

Econographics Apr 11, 2022

“Inequality starts at the top”: Voting reforms in Bretton Woods Institutions

By Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou

Full democratization of BWIs is not realistic. A more pragmatic approach would work towards a “double majority” system.

Africa Americas

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

Online Event Thu, November 10, 2022 • 6:15 am ET

The post The target of limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees is practically dead. Why do emissions per capita matter? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress

Katherine Walla — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 21:28:59 +0000

Watch the full event

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on climate and resilience at COP27

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – How can the US and allies bolster climate action and change the trajectory of global warming?

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment United States and Canada

The United States is officially back “in the game,” leading the fight against climate change, said US Representative Kathy Castor, chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. “And we’re not leaving the playing field ever again.”

Castor and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke on Thursday about how the United States is addressing the climate crisis at an Atlantic Council Front Page event hosted by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at the United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

While the United States—which withdrew from the Paris Climate Accords in 2019 but rejoined the agreement in 2021—has seen its climate leadership questioned, Castor said the country now has the tools to meet its emissions reduction goals. Those tools, she explained, include the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the latter of which she deemed the “most important climate bill” in US history.

At COP27, Pelosi hopes that US and global leaders will “find common ground” to address climate change, especially because of how pervasive the effects will be on health, economies, and even security globally. “The competition for habitat and resources can cause conflict,” Pelosi noted. “We have to avoid that.”

Below are highlights from the event moderated by Kathy Baughman McLeod, senior vice president and director of Arsht-Rock:

Armed and ready

Speaking as votes are still being tallied from Tuesday’s midterm elections, Pelosi, a Democrat, recalled how Republicans have called the climate crisis a “hoax.” “We have to get over that,” Pelosi said. If Republicans do take over the House of Representatives—the outcome was still up in the air as of Thursday with many races too close to call—they will “nix the climate committee,” Castor said.
But with legislation to fight climate change in place, Castor said that the United States is arriving at COP27 with “not just talk anymore but with real concrete action.” At the convening, Castor said she hopes that allies and partners will see that the United States “is ready to participate in a much higher level through science, technology, resilience.”
Castor pointed out that the United States has “cutting-edge science” at its disposal to assist in that participation. She recalled the infrastructure law’s and IRA’s investments in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which studies and tracks the planet’s changing climate, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which gathers data on climate change’s impacts and building resilience. Pelosi praised the agencies, saying “science… will get us to where we need to go,” to adapt to and mitigate climate change.
Castor asked if the United States wasn’t going to lead on science and technology, “who is? We’re not willing to cede that to another country.” Pelosi agreed, saying that US leadership in science and technology “can be a resource to [other] countries.”

Resilience for all

Pelosi explained that the IRA has a focus on “justice, fairness, inclusiveness, [and] diversity.” She added that the law provides sixty billion dollars strictly to “build infrastructure that unites communities.” She also pointed to an emphasis on STEM education across both laws that “enables everyone to participate” so that the country has access to the “best thinking” on climate change solutions “wherever it springs from.”
Accessing the best thinking on climate change will also require “a commitment globally to the education of women,” Pelosi argued, because women bring “brainpower” and make a “big difference” in their communities. “We have to have a systemic way for that to happen” for women across the world, she explained. Castor pointed to research showing that improving access to education and family planning for young girls is “one of the clear climate solutions.”
Pelosi noted that supporting women entering the workforce through child tax credits and family and medical leave will “enable women to be in the game” of developing climate solutions. The United States, Castor added, must work with its partners “around the globe to do better by girls and women, no matter where they live.”

What next?

Now that the United States has passed an “historic” package of investments in climate solutions, Castor said that there’s “a whole lot more left to do,” especially for the private sector, which now needs to develop technology to adapt to and mitigate climate change. She explained that private companies will be able to leverage tools such as tax credits to develop clean-energy technologies.
Pelosi noted that she’s seen companies shift to more green practices because “it’s a moneymaker” or it “honors their responsibility to their shareholders.” But she pointed out that they should be doing so because it is good for their stakeholders: “the community, their employees, [and] their customers.”
In the end, Castor said, the government’s goal is to boost US technological capacity and then transfer it to the rest of the world, and especially to developing countries. For example, she said that “Africa wants to modernize and develop,” but countries there need to choose between powering that development with cheap, but destructive, coal and gas or with sustainable, clean energy. The United States leadership in the latter could help them “pivot,” Castor argued.
From floods in Pakistan to hurricanes in her home state of Florida, “no one is immune to the cost of the growing risk of the climate crisis,” Castor said. And since the atmosphere is already full of greenhouse gases, there’s a bleak future ahead, she added, “unless we act now.”

Katherine Walla is an assistant director of editorial at the Atlantic Council.

Watch the full event

The post Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Transcript: Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor speak after the midterm elections about the future of US leadership on climate change

Atlantic Council — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 13:28:06 +0000

Watch the full event

Online Event Thu, November 10, 2022 • 6:15 am ET

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on climate and resilience at COP27

AN #ACFRONTPAGE EVENT – How can the US and allies bolster climate action and change the trajectory of global warming?

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment United States and Canada

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I’m Kathy Baughman McLeod, director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center at the Atlantic Council. Welcome to the Atlantic Council’s Front Page event. We are here at the resilience hub at COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. I am delighted to be hosting this conversation with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Chairwoman Kathy Castor of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

At Arsht-Rock, we are focused on building climate resilient for a billion people around the world. We focus on the most deadly of climate risks, extreme heat. You are feeling it right now. Let me encourage you to take your jackets off, if you can. This is the coolest we can make the room, we understand. But it is emblematic of the crisis we are facing.

Let us just get right into the conversation. We are at such an interesting time in our country and in the climate debate. We are here, seeing all sorts of challenge, suffering, loss and, at the same time, opportunities in every direction, in all of the pavilions here at the COP and beyond. The US plays a critical role in the debate, the action, the investment, as an emitter, as investment in the transition to a cleaner energy future, and to helping build resilience to climate impacts people are facing every day. When we think about the big packages of climate action, this is the very best place to have the conversation.

Speaker Pelosi, can I ask you at this critical moment, where is the US role in the energy transition, and all the turmoil we’re facing? And how do the midterm elections affect it?

NANCY PELOSI: Well, thank you, Kathy. It’s wonderful to be here with you at the Rockefeller and Adrienne Arsht Center for—and thank you for what you do in that regard, because the nonprofit sector is so important. No political agenda, just saving the planet for the children. Whatever we do is under the guidance of our distinguished chair of our Select Committee on Climate, Kathy Castor. She has been chairing the committee and listening to all of the stakeholders, whether it’s people of faith or concerned scientists, whether it’s business or labor, environment or labor or business, whether it’s farmers, whether it’s venture capitalists. You name it, every aspect to listen, so that people do not feel that they are left out or not taken into consideration.

So when you ask, what are we doing? We’re doing it in that way. And I salute Kathy for years of listening and putting together a report that was historic. And on that report, inspiring the legislation the Inflation Reduction Act, which has in it $370 billion to address the climate crisis. For the children, in a fair and just way. And Kathy will speak more about it, but I want to acknowledge three of our colleagues who are here. Mr. Meeks is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee. He has been fighting and trying—and it’s a challenge; we haven’t succeeded yet—to get the global funding that we need to be good neighbors on this planet. And that is a fight that he has been making, again, part of the report from the committee.

Much of the committee—much of the committee worked on tax credits, and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Richie Neal, is here, and his committee. Mike Thompson of California, under the leadership of our distinguished chairman, has the bulk of the bill. How we can come together, private sector, public sector, nonprofit sector. And Mr. Espaillat, the senior member of the Appropriations Committee from New York, he’s been—we’ve traveled to Puerto Rico after disasters, and the rest, about workforce development and how you—if you’re going to reconstruct, or transition, or have resilience, all of it, you have to have workforce to be able to do it. And so part of his contribution is that aspect of it. Other members of our delegation are Chellie Pingree as far as agriculture and the food issue. Barbara Lee roaming around here someplace, maybe will arrive, chair of the Subcommittee on Appropriations that would be funding so much of the global aspects of this.

So I really—it’s hard to speak in terms of the midterm elections and this subject, because we have had, shall we say, a disagreement on the subject. When Kathy had her bill on the floor, our colleagues said why are we having this discussion? There is no climate crisis. It’s all a hoax. We have to get over that.

I place my confidence in their children, who hopefully will teach their parents that this is urgent, long overdue. But again, how we will address it is to get working together.

Maybe Kathy would like to add to that.

KATHY CASTOR: Well, good afternoon. It’s—we come to this COP with not just talk anymore but with real concrete action out of the United States Congress, led by the most effective speaker in the history of the United States of America in Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

She has been at this—tackling the climate crisis has been her flagship issue. And many of you remember, over a decade ago she led the charge in a different Select Committee on Global Warming. And we passed in the House climate action. Unfortunately it didn’t get through the Senate. This year, finally, we delivered through the Inflation Reduction Act the most important climate bill in the history of America.

But that was the follow-on to the bipartisan infrastructure law that also doubles down on building resiliency across the country, especially vulnerable communities and frontline communities, doing more on environmental justice, doing more on the transition to the vehicles that we drive, but also significant progress in chips, in manufacturing in America, and science, because what we want folks here at this COP, want our friends across the globe, to understand is that America is ready to participate at a much higher level through science, technology, resilience, that you all—that the Atlantic Council and the Arsht-Rockefeller Center so focused on.

So this is a time of action. I know we’re talking about this COP being the implementation COP. And now, thankfully, the US is going to have the tools to implement and meet our goals of getting to net zero as quickly as possible, and no later than 2050.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: Thank you very much.

Speaker Pelosi, at the Aspen Ideas climate event, you said sometimes you have to take a punch for the children and sometimes you have to throw a punch for the children. What does that mean at the COP?

NANCY PELOSI: Well, I come here again—I do believe that this is God’s creation and we have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of it. So in that spirit, I would hope that we could come to our common ground for the children, for their future.

It’s a health issue in the here and now as clean air, clean water, for the children. It’s an economic issue for their families, green technology for all over the world, for everybody to participate in the new technologies economically. It’s a national-security issue. We’re told by national-security experts that the competition for habitat and resources can cause conflict. And we have to avoid that. And it is a moral issue, as we know, for the children to pass this planet on to future generations, as I believe God’s creation. If you don’t share that belief, you certainly share the belief that we have to do that for the children.

But let me just add this one thing, and that is in all of the measures that Kathy, Madam Chair, mentioned, whether it was the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, where we got thirteen Republican votes, bipartisan, and all of the bills that we’ve passed—the CHIPS Act, all of that—the president and the Congress—we worked together to make sure there was justice, fairness, inclusiveness, diversity, so that—and this was sixty billion dollars in infrastructure strictly for diversity and building infrastructure that unites communities rather than divides them, but in every bill making sure there’s education and research and STEM that draws in everyone and enables everyone to participate, so that we have the best thinking wherever it springs from. So the justice piece of it is central to how we go forward for the children.

I know sometimes that I use that phrase about the punches—to quote a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt—about the arena. When you’re in the arena, you’re no longer a spectator; you’re in the arena, and I just take it to the next step. When you’re in the arena you have to take a punch, right? That’s what it is. You also have to be ready to throw a punch for the children. That’s why.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: I love it. I love it.

Chair Castor, I wanted to ask you about the work of the Select Committee. You have invested in immense advancements in all regard for climate and climate resilience and looking at the health effects if climate. What is the next chapter for that work, and how can that work help countries and partners all over the world?

KATHY CASTOR: Well, talk about the midterm elections, it’s quite likely—if for some reason the GOP ekes out control of the House of Representatives, they will nix the climate committee. They have not really been partners in tackling the climate crisis, and it’s inexplicable because the world’s top scientists tell us we are running out of time.

They said in the last IPCC report there is a rapidly closing window for action and that’s why we’re just so grateful that President Biden was where he was at that point in time, that the Senate—we still had control, and we’re able to finally deliver the most historic climate law in the history of American and really the world.

Now, we have a whole lot more left to do, and—but this will provide the important groundwork that we can build upon. We’re not in it alone. The private sector now has got to match the resources in our investments, and that’s why tax credits are front and center to develop the technologies on clean power—whether it’s wind or solar, the battery storage—and then, help us transfer that to the rest of the world, especially the developing world, the vulnerable nations that are going to need help because they—here in Africa, Africa wants to modernize and develop. And they can—there’s a pathway in the road where they can go the cheaper, but more dangerous and destructive—coal and gas. Or we can pivot and help provide sustainable clean energy and clean energy jobs.

So that’s why the structure of the Inflation Reduction Act and our dedication of resources to frontline communities, environmental justice communities, is an important roadmap that can be replicated as we expand technology and financing to the rest of the developing world.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: Thank you. Wonderful.

One of the aspects of the private sector’s involvement, we’ve heard that this is the implementation COP, and while we’re not reaching our mission’s reductions goals, that a lot of the action is taking place in the hubs, not in the government negotiations, and innovation, investment, and private sector.

Speaker, how do you think the private sector is doing? Are they playing their very best role that they can play to advance our climate goals?

NANCY PELOSI: Well, let’s hope so, but let’s make sure we shine a bright light on it. As you know, technology enables us to identify emissions. I mean, we have—knowledge is so, shall we say, enlightening, too.

But here’s the thing. It is, in my belief, in the fiduciary responsibility of the private sector to go down a green path. It is—you can’t say, well, I have a fiduciary responsibility to my shareholders so I can’t spend this money on that.

No, talk about the future. There are experts in the field who may—contend this—that you really are thinking backward, unless you’re thinking in terms of how to do this in a green way. I have so many examples of the people I encountered—both in friendship and professionally, officially, and in every way—who have said my company’s change came from my children, who just said “what are we doing”—especially when there was a family interest in the company—”what are we doing, we cannot be part of this.”

So some are because it’s the right thing to do. Some are because it’s a moneymaker and it honors their responsibility to their shareholders.

But they have to be thinking of their stakeholders, too. Not just the shareholders but the community, their employees, their customers, honoring every aspect of their purpose as they used to do.

I was raised in the mayor’s house. My father was mayor my whole life growing up in Baltimore. When I was in first grade, he became mayor. When I went away to college, he was still mayor. My brother was mayor. And the mayors are doing great work.

So I would say, as I do say sometimes to the nonprofit sector, be in touch with the mayors for what they are doing because it gets very personal as well as official—at a very personal—a very personal level.

But I don’t think that we should be contending with—I think we should be cooperating but understanding that there’s a different pace. But everybody has to know we have to pick up the pace.

I’m always telling this story, if I may, about when the private sector wasn’t so cooperative. A long time ago, I took a delegation to Alaska to see what was happening there, and, as you know, the glaciers are melting before your very eyes. You know, it’s been bad—the thermal management of the planet, so—the acidification of the ocean, the cannibalizing of the—every aspect of this right there in Alaska.

And the indigenous people there told me that thirty or forty years previous to that, so, say, forty or fifty years from now back, the elders told the scientist that something different was happening with flora and fauna and habitat, and the scientist told them that that was anecdotally interesting but scientifically insignificant.

And it bothered me so long until I realized the scientist probably worked for the oil companies. But now, of course, it’s very obvious. How many times have these communities had to move and then transition? So obvious.

But we should be paying attention to indigenous people. That was my first bill in Congress called the International Environmental Protection Act, better known as—later known as the Pelosi amendment when it was reduced to an amendment, and it was to listen to the indigenous people, not allow any American director of any multilateral development bank support an initiative unless there was an environmental assessment made and unless that assessment was made known to the indigenous people as well as globally, and that has saved many things.

So, and speaking in that regard, I want to yield to Kathy because we’ve been talking about how working with the multilateral development banks…

KATHY CASTOR: Yeah, that’s key. And you all know if you’re reading up on what’s going on behind the scenes at the COP, is empowering our multilateral banks, the development banks, the IMF, the rural bank, giving them a forward-looking mission focused on climate—on the climate crisis, just like they had a mission after the rebuilding after World War II.

And then the special envoy—the US Special Envoy John Kerry—he is now talking about an idea to bring those private dollars off the sideline from the large banks, the corporations, the hedge funds, through an emissions trading program to try to get them in the game faster because it’s all about urgency now.

We are running out of time. If we do not do this now it’s going to be a much steeper climb and then people around the world will continue to suffer these climate catastrophes and that’s why we know already warming is baked in. If we stop today, the atmosphere is full of greenhouse gases and it’s a bleak future unless we act now.

So everyone now this is the—I hope it will turn out to be the implementation COP and a COP where we are doing new and innovative things, and I hope, again, people are inspired by, finally, the United States of America passing the most historic investment in clean energy, climate change, resiliency, and climate justice in our history.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: Hear, hear.

NANCY PELOSI: Not one Republican vote, sadly.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: In terms of the urgency and the investment, we—and the Resilience Hub represents this, and the race to resilience—that we need to invest equally in adaptation and mitigation because we are now in this situation of what you described. So how will the investment packages and the legislative packages that you’ve passed—they’re the biggest ever, as you’ve said, and so historic, and have such big impact. How will we best leverage those packages for private and multilateral investment in both adaptation and mitigation? Would you like to—

NANCY PELOSI: She likes talking about it.

KATHY CASTOR: I do. You know, we’re so proud to be representing the United States of America, because we have the cutting-edge science at our disposal. But what we’ve done through the bipartisan infrastructure law, through just our plain appropriations, through the Inflation Reduction Act, is give more resources to NASA. NASA inspired the world in the 1960s to get to the moon and back. And now look at what the images coming back with the new telescope. NASA has an important role to play, not just for the US, but for the entire world. Same thing for NOAA. NOAA is the leading scientific organization gathering the data we need to build resilience, to make sure that countries around the world and people around the world know what the impacts are so that they can plan. And use—and we can devote the scarce resources we have to the most effective adaptation strategies.

NOAA, NASA, and our national laboratories are big winners, frankly, in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure. And if the United States of America is not going to be in the lead on science and technology, who is? We’re not willing to cede that to another country. We’re not. We are the—I think after—you’d have to say, we’re the strongest—one of the strongest democracies—it was a little shaky there for a while. But we—our values tell us to use our God-given resources and the blessings of science and technology to help tackle this crisis. And that’s what we intend to do.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: Hear, hear. So turning to the inclusive nature and the justice aspects, 80 percent of the people displaced by climate change are women. Seventy percent of the 1.3 billion people living in conditions of poverty are women. In urban areas, 40 percent of the poorest households are headed by women. And we know that when women are empowered with resources, the entire community benefits. With all that we have on our plate, how do we continue to push for more women in leadership to solve the climate crisis, and protecting and empowering women at the short end of the stick of climate impacts?

NANCY PELOSI: When we were in—right before COVID-19, when we were in Spain, I spoke to a big women’s event there. And my biggest—I was talking about climate, but one of the lines I had, which got more attention than anything else, is: If you really want to succeed with this, you have to make a commitment globally to the education of women. It’s so central to all of this. I also think we have to have a fight against corruption in some of our, shall we say, economic systems around the world. And that will open the doors for women to be involved.

But to go back to where Kathy talked about the other bills, one of the pieces of it that is so important in our own country—and we would say as a model, again, to help others—is many things that are in there, like the child tax credit—thank you very much, Richard Neal—the child tax credit, childcare, family and medical leave, home health care that enable women to be in the game, in the workplace. Now, it’s men too who have—are caregivers, so they too. But to unleash women in that, as well as what we have in the CHIPS Act, with the increase of participation of women in science and technology and—well, we call it STEAM in San Francisco. So we have the arts in there as well.

But the role of women is—I mean, just think of the brainpower, just think of the value systems and the rest that would make—that are—that are making a big difference. But we have to have a systemic way for that to happen. And starting with the education of women, whether it’s women in the poorest situations in the world or women in the United States of America, there’s still a need to involve in a stronger way. And the president is very much committed to that.

It is—it’s very exciting. It’s very exciting. And you see so many women participating in these meetings, as well. So let’s hear it for the women. OK.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: And let me give a plug for the Women in Resilience reception right here tonight at 6:30. So you are all welcome. And the catering is coming.

Kathy, would you like to say a few words about that? That’s such an important topic.

KATHY CASTOR: About the reception? I’m pro-reception. No—the—well, if you do see Congresswoman Barbara Lee here this week, she has been leading the charge for international family planning and the education of girls and women across the globe. And in fact, as we developed our climate action plan in the Congress—and the charge was don’t just focus on the electricity and power sector, don’t just focus on clean cars; really do broad-based outreach. And one of the clear climate solutions is the education of young girls and family planning. Project Drawdown, if you all are familiar with that, highlighted it as I believe one of the top five climate solutions.

So, fortunately, again, here is a place where the United States of America under Democratic leadership especially has been leading the charge. And now we hope we can work with all of our allies and all countries around the globe to do better by girls and women no matter where they live.

NANCY PELOSI: In that regard, we also want them to have the opportunity to determine for themselves the size and timing of their families.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: Hear, hear.

So I think our time has begun to draw to a close. Any final thoughts that you would like to share with us before you go on and do good things here?

KATHY CASTOR: Well, it was about little over a month where I was boarding up my home in Tampa, Florida, as a monster storm, Hurricane Ian, was barreling towards the coast of Florida. And two weeks ago, I had an opportunity to take a Coast Guard overflight of Southwest Florida, and now here’s another late-season hurricane bearing down. So this is—this is personal for everyone now. Our hearts go out to the people of Pakistan, where over 1,700 people died in the floods. Same in Nigeria, where six hundred; the wildfires in California; everywhere.

No one is immune to the costs and the growing risks of the climate crisis. And that’s why I emphasize again: Join us in this urgent action. When you talk to people, tell them we cannot wait anymore. The time is now. We must implement. We must act. The US is in the game leading and we’re not leaving the playing field ever again.

NANCY PELOSI: Associating myself with the remarks of our distinguished chair, I would only add—and not really add, but further emphasize—that, as she has done in her magnificent way as chairman, we want to proceed with respect to not be menacing to those that we need to win over, but to show them a path and how it is in all of our interests, and that doing that we have to listen to them.

We, as the United States of America, hope, as Kathy has said earlier, that with what we’re doing technologically and all the rest, that that can be a resource to these countries as well. But our president has asked for more money for the countries for us to make—recognize that funds are needed globally. We have responsibilities. We’ve made commitments. And again, we invited your entire committee—Democrats and Republicans—but none of them came—well, unless they’re going to surprise us, but we have two planes that have come and so far we haven’t had any of them. But we really need to convince them that none of us is protected from this unless all of us is protected from it. That’s not a values-based, it’s a pragmatic-based reason, but, in fact, for the children. We have to save all of the children.

And these countries—when we were in Spain, when we were in Madrid, we were talking to the conference of the vulnerable countries, and it was urgent then. It was urgent in Copenhagen. It’s long overdue. So we cannot just have any political disagreement or the power of the fossil-fuel industry cramping our style as we go forward with this, but to show a path that gets us to where we need to be. And we’re good enough, the need is great enough, and the urgency is clear enough.

I just want to say one thing. When I was watching—when we were watching the NASA presentation, I was taking great satisfaction in the fact that on the Intelligence Committee in the 1990s we were advocating for the satellite capability—smaller satellites and other things—to take a measure of all of this. And now they’ve just taken it to, shall we say, new heights in terms of what they can see, what we can learn, and again, enabling us to make the scientific argument.

Four words—science, science, science, and science, again, with our values—will get us to where we need to go. So we have to have our respect for that.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: So I think it’s safe to say that you are among friends here. And can I please thank you both for your climate leadership and your commitment to this issue and the work that you have put in year over year over year over year that puts us where we are? It’s a moment of opportunity, and you’ve put us here. So thank you for spending time here.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Thank you for joining the Atlantic Council’s Front Page event here from COP27 and the Resilience Hub as a part of the Race to Resilience. We look forward to the next conversation.

NANCY PELOSI: Let us thank the Rockefeller-Adrienne Arsht Resilience Center and COP.

KATHY BAUGHMAN MCLEOD: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Watch the full event

The post Transcript: Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor speak after the midterm elections about the future of US leadership on climate change appeared first on Atlantic Council.

COP27 readout: Days 1 and 2

Global Energy Center — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 15:11:58 +0000

COP27 kicked off with a two-day World Leaders Summit culminating in a symbolic step in bridging the long-standing divide between the Global North and Global South as leaders agreed to place “losses and damages” on the formal COP agenda. Overall, however, the “implementation COP” has, to date, been scarce on tangible results, with the majority of action occurring outside of the negotiating room as a diverse coalition of industry and NGOs descends on Sharm el Sheikh. To their credit, delegates arrived in Egypt in the shadow of an expansive global energy crisis that looms large over efforts to implement the high bar set for climate action last year in Glasgow. Though on a collision course, energy security concerns and the imperative for climate action are not hindering international efforts to maintain progress on the climate agenda, with clear signs emerging that should offer optimism as technical groups dominate the balance of the next two weeks:

Finance remains center stage. Financing both energy transitions and climate adaptation has, at least thus far, remained front-of-mind for policy leaders over the past two days. Commitments from a handful of European countries seeking to accelerate international climate adaptation finance are one such bright spot, despite the relative lack of optimism for progress leading up to the COP this year. Yet this box is still largely unchecked, with the developing world seeking to vastly expand the current climate finance target of $100 billion USD per year. Meanwhile, support is mounting for investment across the energy mix to support access to affordable and secure energy supplies.
Private sector participation. COP’s transition from a largely technocratic convening to an increasingly multifaceted climate convention filled with corporations and civil society continues. Observers should be encouraged that the dialogue is moving past simple greenwashing, in favor of efforts to establish a widespread coalition of parties engaged in the climate conversation. Ultimately, this broad new collation of stakeholders could enhance the authenticity of new solution sets necessary for achieving climate progress. Early industry advances at COP27, like the addition of cement and concrete to the First Movers Coalition, reflect how the COP evolution is a positive catalyst for change.
Implementation is in limbo. Though COP is meant to focus on acting on the pledges laid out in COP26 and the Bonn intersessional, homing in on details that expose the current tension between energy security and climate ambitions is proving to be more difficult than gaining commitments from governments for these pledges in the first place. Several issues are emerging as major—but still highly challenging—focus areas, including 1.) mechanisms to equitably route climate finance from OECD countries to developing countries, and 2.) global efforts to achieve the Global Methane Pledge.

Significant work remains to be done in the coming days. Given the circumstances shaping the energy transition over the past year, COP27 has nonetheless opened with more upside opportunities than might have been anticipated only months earlier.

GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All

EnergySource Nov 8, 2022

Partner perspectives: With COP27 underway, there’s no time to waste—public capital is a key conduit to a just energy transition

By Susan Flanagan

The sheer scale of needed investments to enact the energy transition will require an unprecedented mobilization of capital. Given its unique capabilities, public capital must play a significant part in this effort.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Nov 4, 2022

Just Energy Transition Partnerships: Will COP27 deliver for emerging economies?

By Christopher Cassidy, Rainer Quitzow, and Maia Sparkman

The JETP model is poised to deliver results in South Africa. Now, at COP27 and beyond, the true test will be translating the model to other country contexts.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

EnergySource Nov 4, 2022

To meet energy security and climate goals, Africa needs investment in infrastructure

By William Tobin, Maia Sparkman

To this point, Western engagement in Africa has primarily taken the form of aid. For the continent to achieve widespread electrification and form the foundation for robust economic growth, that engagement will need to morph into investment and partnership.

Africa Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

Check out all our work on COP27 here.

The post COP27 readout: Days 1 and 2 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Live updates from COP27 as leaders battle climate change amid global crises

Atlantic Council — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 18:35:14 +0000

Activists, experts, and leaders flocked to the beaches of Egyptian resort town Sharm el Sheikh for the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP27). Over the two-week convening, global leaders discussed topics ranging from ways to finance their emissions-reduction goals to new ambitions to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Dubbed the “African COP,” this year’s conference was expected to see Global South countries rally together to press rich countries on their role in driving climate change. For the first time, global leaders promised to set up a “loss and damage” reparations fund, paid for by wealthy countries, to help low-income countries pay for the consequences of the climate crisis.

COP27 took place after a season of extreme weather events and natural disasters that saw catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, droughts across Africa, and more. And as the conference unfolded, leaders kept their eyes on the global energy crisis spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has pushed energy security to the fore—sometimes at the expense of the climate.

Have countries heeded this year’s wake-up calls with bold commitments at COP27? Our experts—many of whom were in Sharm el Sheikh—dispatched their insights and recommendations for world leaders throughout the course of this critical conference. This post was continuously updated as their reactions streamed in.

The latest analysis from Sharm el Sheikh

COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes
The big success and bigger failure of COP27
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 23, 2022 | 3:30 PM WASHINGTON | 10:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes

EnergySource

Nov 23, 2022

COP27 readout: The good and the bad as COP27 concludes

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center experts take stock of two weeks of COP developments in Sharm el Sheikh.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 21, 2022 | 8:57 AM WASHINGTON | 3:57 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The big success and bigger failure of COP27

Read their takeaways

Fast Thinking

Nov 21, 2022

The big success and bigger failure of COP27

By Atlantic Council

What other surprises cropped up at the conference? Our experts, who were on the ground in Sharm el Sheikh, are here to weigh in.

Brazil China

Stepping up ahead of negotiations

Solutions for achieving net-zero emissions and improving energy access for all
How climate change affects peace and security across the world
Insurance for a climate-safe future
Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: Why countries can’t give up on the 1.5 degree Celsius cap on warming
Will countries step up on loss and damage?
Saudi Arabia’s take on aligning energy security needs and decarbonization goals
How Freetown is addressing extreme heat
Addressing Africa’s rapidly rising energy demand
Why now is the best time to address energy security and climate change in tandem
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 18, 2022 | 6:18 AM WASHINGTON | 1:18 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Solutions for achieving net-zero emissions and improving energy access for all

Our Global Energy Center pulled to the side top thinkers, leaders, and innovators on climate solutions at COP27 to talk about their ideas for achieving net-zero ambitions while ensuring energy access for all.

Watch the full playlist

NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | 9:28 AM WASHINGTON | 4:28 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How climate change affects peace and security across the world

By Lama El Hatow

As climate change impacts intensify—fueling migration and competition over scarce resources—so does the risk that conflict that may emerge. That risk has only been exacerbated by recent economic shocks, energy-supply disruptions, and increasing food insecurity.

While climate-linked migration and displacement (or “human mobility”) are discussed extensively at COP27, they are not officially on the agenda. The US Center, as well as several other pavilions at COP27 like the Climate Mobility Pavilion, have hosted series of events discussing the connections between climate change, conflict, peace, and security. At these events, speakers explained how, with assessments by officials from the US Departments of State and Defense, the United States is looking at hotspot zones around the world that are at risk from severe climate impacts—including how fragile and conflict-affected countries are negatively affected by these impacts. The United States is conducting these assessments in an attempt to provide an early warning about which regions are most at risk from climate change.

One of the most concerning ways that climate change will impact these regions is by contributing to increasing food insecurity. According to a report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, up to 205 million people across forty-five countries are expected to face acute food insecurity, while up to 45 million people across thirty-seven countries are projected to face severe malnourishment that may result in starvation or death. The report also explains that more than 70 percent of people facing acute food security over the last year were living in conflict-affected countries; and in several countries and regions, climate change and extreme weather events are driving increases in food insecurity. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has only added to the crisis by elevating prices for food and energy, the latter key to distributing food worldwide.

The report also identified nineteen hotspots—seventeen countries and two regional clusters—that are most at risk of worsening food insecurity over the next few months due to climate change effects, increasing conflict, economic shocks, and more. The 970,000 people who are projected to face the most severe conditions are located in five countries—Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen.

With the number of climate refugees increasing, countries are beginning to assess how to manage this new movement of people, which will likely have spillover effects across regions. Although climate change is impacting the world all over, some countries have more capacity and resilience to manage the crisis than others; hence, migration flows in the Global South are steering toward countries with better resilience. Many at COP27 have argued that developed countries have a moral and ethical responsibility towards the migrants from the Global South, since they are coming from countries that didn’t contribute as much to the world’s emissions problem. Historically, however, there has been a pervasive anti-immigration sentiment that fuels restrictive policies and a general reluctance to provide legal protection to people fleeing their home countries due to conflict or climate change. Additionally, there has not yet been an established finance arrangement or action protocol on climate-linked mobility at the global level. Extensive work with significant cooperation still needs to be done to address this worsening crisis.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | 1:55 AM WASHINGTON | 8:55 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Insurance for a climate-safe future

With COP27’s focus on climate change adaptation, in addition to mitigation, the insurance sector now has an “absolutely integral role to play” in helping people manage disasters after—and even before— they happen, said Francis Bouchard, Marsh McLennan’s managing director of climate.

In conversation with Jorge Gastelumendi, director of global policy at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, Bouchard explained that insurance still has a very “traditional” role in terms of signaling to people the risks they may be acquiring in a new venture and paying claims after events unfold.

But there’s a new way that the insurance sector is helping send those risk signals earlier: Anticipatory finance, in which some companies offer a way to pay before a disaster strikes. “So if you statistically know that at some point [an] event is going to turn into something that would’ve been insured, you can actually put money in peoples’ hands before the event,” Bouchard explained. “They can spend that money to protect their families, their businesses, their cattle, their farms, whatever it is; but they can take steps before.”

Bouchard warned, however, that the idea hasn’t been scaled yet, as companies undergo a “mindset shift” from paying a claim after an event to making a claim never happen. Yet, he added, with momentum sparked by the global focus on risk reduction, which has resulted in new initiatives like the Group of Seven’s Global Shield, “the time is now for the insurance industry to lead.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 7:18 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | 2:18 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: Why countries can’t give up on the 1.5 degree Celsius cap on warming

If countries that signed the Paris Agreement agree that we’ll exceed 1.5°C & change the temp, it means accepting more floods, fires & extreme heat+more people vulnerable to climate impacts. We must accelerate solutions that protect people &communities from climate disasters pic.twitter.com/4jIWd2JZgH
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 17, 2022

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 12:04 PM WASHINGTON | 7:04 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Will countries step up on loss and damage?

By Lama El Hatow

While loss and damage is near the top of the agenda at COP27, it has been a sticky point for many countries as they debate how to finance the loss and damage payments.

Climate mitigation looks to avert climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the development of zero-emission solutions; climate adaptation aims to minimize the chance that climate change impacts a given community. But loss and damage addresses the harms and costs induced by climate change, which is already happening.

In Pakistan, for example, the recent disastrous floods, which put one-third of the country under water, damaged over a million homes, and killed over a thousand people. The damage has been estimated to cost more than thirty billion dollars and it displaced more thirty million people from their homes, raising an immediate need for loss and damage compensation. Overall, while some countries like Belgium and Scotland have been willing to pledge funding for loss and damage, other leading economies, including the United States, showed resistance.

At the same time, climate finance has traditionally been in the form of loans to developing countries. So essentially, developing countries are borrowing money from developed countries for a problem they mostly haven’t caused—and are being asked to pay it back with interest. Additionally, when climate disasters cause significant damage, they bring significant costs for the impacted country and, for developing countries, wipe out their financial resources, so the net outcome of the loan is almost nil. This essentially is why Pakistan has called for debt restructuring and debt relief after the flooding, to change this unfair setup.

At the institutional level, the Vulnerable Twenty Group (V20), a “cooperation initiative” of finance ministers from the countries most vulnerable to climate change, was formed in 2015 to present a unified voice on climate action. V20 members are also members of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a non-treaty organization of fifty-five member countries which are estimated to have collectively lost $525 billion from 2000 to 2019 due to climate change. These two forums are actively pushing to promote a loss and damage payments mechanism.

While reaching a consensus on loss and damage has been challenging, some developed countries proposed alternative funding mechanisms for vulnerable countries. For example, the Group of Seven-led Global Shield announced at COP27 provides immediate financial support to V20 countries when climate-change-related disasters strike. With Germany’s contribution of $175 million, and with additional contributions from France, Austria, Denmark and Ireland, the total financial coverage of the Global Shield is about $207 million. But the V20 countries also warned earlier this year that they could stop paying their debt service (estimated at about $685 billion) if lenders are not willing to restructure these debts and deduct the climate induced costs. In the words of Ghanaian Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, by leaving nations at the mercy of climate catastrophe, “you could be triggering a global economic meltdown.”

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 11:00 AM WASHINGTON | 6:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Saudi Arabia’s take on aligning energy security needs and decarbonization goals

Global Energy Center Senior Director sat down with Khalid M. Abuleif, chief negotiator for the climate agreements for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to talk about Saudi Arabia’s latest plans to meet its commitments in the Paris Climate Accords and the world’s needs for energy security.

The Paris Agreement has the potential to “be very costly for Saudi Arabia,” Abuleif explained. “The countries that will be most impacted… [are] going to be oil producers, developing countries; the reasoning is because their economies are not fully diversified and they rely heavily on limited sectors.”

But now is still the time for global climate action, Abuleif said. So as Saudi Arabia moves forward, it is working on making the country more resilient “to any kind of measures that could be taken,” Abuleif explained.

Watch the full interview to hear about Saudi Arabia’s latest initiatives geared toward improving energy security, boosting the country’s economy, and meeting its climate obligations.

Watch more

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 9:05 AM WASHINGTON | 4:05 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How Freetown is addressing extreme heat

Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone, caught up with Kathy Baughman McLeod at the Resilience Hub and explained how her city is using an affordable and “simple solution” to protect women from extreme heat at markets across the city.

Watch the full conversation

We’re coming #TogetherForImplementation with our partner @yakisawyerr! https://t.co/pPQr4to3pO

She stopped by the @COPResHub to chat with @KBMcLeodFLA about how Freetown is building a cooler future with adaptation solutions. Watch our latest #COPChat now! pic.twitter.com/vOdCaHuo7u
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 16, 2022

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 2:03 AM WASHINGTON | 9:03 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Addressing Africa’s rapidly rising energy demand

The African Development Bank Group’s Kevin Kariuki joined Global Energy Center Deputy Director Reed Blakemore at COP27 to talk about sustainable development and energy access across Africa.

“Africa has endemic energy poverty which must be addressed,” Kariuki said, “and at the same time, we must address the issues of the climate crisis.”

To do that, Kariuki explained that he hopes leaders at COP27 realize that “what is actually required today is synergizing growth in energy demand with climate action.” He said that would help “[meet] the needs of Africa.”

“But we must also be realistic,” Kariuki added, “that renewable energy on its own will probably not be able to provide the security of supply and affordable power that is required to be able to underpin Africa’s social economic development.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 1:10 AM WASHINGTON | 8:10 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Why now is the best time to address energy security and climate change in tandem

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz joined the National Grid’s Rhian Kelly at COP27 to talk about addressing energy security in tandem with the energy transition.

“I think in many ways they’re more aligned than they’ve ever been because if we want to get ourselves off Russian gas, the cheapest form of self-reliant energies are renewables,” Kelly explained. She added that because global politics have changed, she thinks it’s “the best time to be thinking about energy security and climate change together.”

Watch more

A strategy for the Global South

How cities in the Global South are adapting to climate change
The first global ambassador for heat action lays out his top priorities
Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: How women are impacted by climate change
How to inhabit an uninhabitable region
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 5:07 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 16, 2022 | 12:07 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How cities in the Global South are adapting to climate change

At the Thailand Pavilion, Mauricio Rodas talked about urban resilience and climate adaptation in cities across the Global South. “Extreme heat is the climate hazard that [effects] more people than any other, and it is particularly severe in cities,” he explained. He pointed out the innovations that are addressing extreme heat, such as the Cool Capital Stack investment portfolio recently launched by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and its partners.

See the highlights

Today at @COP27P discussing in different sessions the need to implement Nature based Solutions in cities, and highlighting the importance of the recently launched Cool Capital Stack as an innovative financial mechanism to address extreme heat related risks. @ArshtRock pic.twitter.com/sTtcx5lgtA
— Mauricio Rodas (@MauricioRodasEC) November 15, 2022

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 10:05 AM WASHINGTON | 5:05 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The first global ambassador for heat action lays out his top priorities

Newly appointed Global Ambassador for Heat Action Felipe Calderón outlined his agenda for tackling extreme heat in conversation with Mauricio Rodas, the senior advisor for heat and city diplomacy at the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center.

“The first thing we need to do is gather information… [and] second, to transmit that information to the right people,” Calderón said.

He said that he believes “the main problem is the lack of awareness about the importance of the problem, about the magnitude of the problem.” But, he added, getting information out to leaders, the media, and other stakeholders can help boost the urgency among leaders to address heat.

Afterall, Calderón explained, “the most cost effective way to avoid human deaths… [is] preventing or taking action on heat waves.”

He also stressed the importance of nature-based solutions like planting trees in cities. That, he said, is an effective one because it “combines an adaptation solution with a mitigation solution.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 7:49 AM WASHINGTON | 2:49 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the Resilience Hub: How women are impacted by climate change

Arsht-Rock’s Director @KBMcLeodFLA shares that “80 percent of the people displaced by climate change are women, and women are 14 times more likely to die from climate disasters.” Action here at #COP27 is to understand how to better protect them from climate change. pic.twitter.com/RPUx2fN6vW
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 15, 2022

NOVEMBER 15, 2022 | 7:17 AM WASHINGTON | 2:17 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How to inhabit an uninhabitable region

By Lama El Hatow

The latest analysis from the United Nations (UN) indicates that we are still nowhere near limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius—the target set by the Paris Accords—and are actually headed towards 2.8 degrees. That means we may see regions around the globe become completely uninhabitable. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about six hundred million people across the Middle East and North Africa will face heat waves that go beyond the human survivability threshold by 2100. The Middle East North Africa (MENA) region is already a hot arid climate, and it will get hotter and drier with the impacts of climate change—with summertime temperatures that make it dangerous to be outdoors.

In this respect, we are heading toward an uninhabitable world and need to consider how best to adapt to it, particularly during the summer months. The immediate impact will be for people to spend more time indoors with the safety of air conditioning, which increases the demand for energy even further—bringing greater urgency to the search for clean renewable energy to power a smooth green transition. Additionally, within this year’s COP there have been many discussions about the possibilities of heat resilience within cities, including urban reforestation that can create cooler micro climates, shaded areas above bicycle lanes, and holistic urban planning with an eye toward resilience.

Consider the way many cities in Canada and the far north have adjusted to their harsh winters by creating underground infrastructure to minimize outdoor exposure, including public transportation, tunnel systems, and connections to buildings. Similarly, countries in MENA such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are already working to enhance their infrastructure to limit outdoor exposure by connecting their metro lines through tunnels to buildings, along with tailoring cultural attractions to the climate from the world’s largest indoor ski slope in Dubai to indoor stadiums and indoor golf courses. The MENA region is already building its cities to adapt to an uninhabitable world. The biggest risk, however, does not lie in wealthier countries that have the capacity to do this, but in the most vulnerable communities that will suffer tremendously in an environment made uninhabitable by climate change.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

The future of climate adaptation

Water Day comes to COP27
Delivering on UPS’s emissions-reductions commitments
Here’s what to know heading into week two of negotiations
Dispatch from virtual reality: How games are informing decision makers on climate adaptation
What to make of USAID’s new adaptation and resilience plan
The United States is finally stepping up—but it there are also other climate leaders to watch
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | 2:37 PM WASHINGTON | 9:37 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Water Day comes to COP27

By Lama El Hatow

Monday was Water Day at COP27; it was a reminder that putting water in the center of the climate debate is imperative, necessary for crucial action, and long overdue.

Water access is still a challenge for many local communities. While the world leaders are striving to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6 (clean water and sanitation for all), they are in many ways moving backwards.

For example, in many parts of the world, the privatization of water has shifted communities away from bodies of fresh water hat sustain their livelihoods. Water is a public good, and commodifying water takes away very basic human rights. Private companies have bought the rights to use bodies of water for profits, while poor and marginalized communities struggle to pay the higher prices on water. In many cases, private companies are not only limiting access to this public good but also polluting it further with industrial processes.

Several groups at COP27 have discussed how vital it is to preserve water as a public good. With the impacts of climate change, the world is seeing water scarcity in some regions (such as the Middle East and North Africa), and floods and extreme rainfall in others. The COP27 president and the World Meteorological Organization launched the Action for Water Adaptation and Resilience initiative to focus on the climate and water nexus and on water adaptation.

Climate adaptation and covering loss and damage will require more climate financing, and much of that money needs to go toward water—specifically, toward efforts supporting water security for vulnerable communities. During Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the New Orleans area lacked sufficient access to clean water for days. Similarly, the floods in Pakistan left millions without access to clean water as some of the infrastructure needed to provide it was severely destroyed. Drought-stricken countries are banding together to share their technologies and expertise to manage water scarcity. For example, a group of countries led by Spain and Senegal launched the International Drought Resilience Alliance at COP27 to “shift drought management from emergency response to resilience against climate change impacts.” Spain is committing five million euros to start it off.

As countries continue to partner with one another on water action, it will be crucial to ensure that there is appropriate focus on action for adaptation and resilience.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 14, 2022 | 10:38 AM WASHINGTON | 5:38 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Delivering on UPS’s emissions-reductions commitments

Laura Lane, executive vice president and chief corporate affairs and sustainability officer of the United Parcel Service (UPS), sat down with Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz at COP27 to talk about UPS’s emissions-reductions goals.

Lane hopes that COP27 ultimately helps foster a “greater sense of collaboration between government, the private sector, and the NGO community. If they all come together, they “can solve a lot of the challenges that lie ahead for companies like [UPS],” that, Lane explained, are part of “one of the… hardest to abate industry sectors.”

She pointed out that while UPS has a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050, global tensions and supply chain shortages are making it difficult to hit key checkpoints. For example, the global shortage of microchips is making it more difficult to electrify their ground fleet.

“And so we are trying to find other ways to be able to get the emissions out of our… operations,” Lane explained. She said that UPS is searching for alternative fuels for its ground fleet and is working with other companies to incentivize the production of sustainable aviation fuel to power its operations in the air.

Watch more

NOVEMBER 13, 2022 | 1:16 PM WASHINGTON | 8:16 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Here’s what to know heading into week two of negotiations

By the Global Energy Center

As COP27 reaches its midway point, technical discussions are set to gain speed in week two. The twin realities of an energy security crisis and the sweeping impacts of climate change on the developing world remain at the forefront of discussions throughout Sharm el Sheikh. The multi-stakeholder drive to surmount both challenges is drawing stronger linkages between climate action and energy security, opening new avenues for collaboration between governments, civil society, and industry.

After week one, a few things are clear:

US climate leadership is achieving legitimacy through action. Midterm elections at the start of COP27 served only to further energize a US delegation already operating with confidence following passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. President Biden, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, the Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese, and many others arrived in Egypt emphasizing an optimistic outlook for the energy transition in the United States, while underscoring the need to unlock “trillions” in private financing to replicate US momentum in the developing world. The steadfast presence of US congressional delegations from both sides of the aisle further reinforced the United States’ commitment to addressing the climate crisis.

Next, the narrative at COP27 is no longer Western-led. The introduction of “loss and damage” to the COP agenda illustrates how the global south has successfully used the conversation in Europe and the West around energy security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to underscore the need for access to sustainable energy resources that enable economic growth.

And finally, the hard conversations which have often been missed or dodged at prior COPs are now front-and-center.

Overall, the twin realities of a global energy security crisis and a developing world at the forefront of a majority of the worst impacts of climate change have created an opportunity to better integrate the policy spheres of climate action and energy security.

EnergySource

Nov 13, 2022

COP27 readout: Week 1 comes to a close

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center react to the first week of COP27 proceedings.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 3:34 AM WASHINGTON | 10:34 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from virtual reality: How games are informing decision makers on climate adaptation

Our Director of Extreme Heat Initiatives @KurtShickman & @ACMideast’s Lama El Hatow caught up at Arsht-Rock’s virtual reality booth https://t.co/4YjD37Q4iq

Great to see @AtlanticCouncil representation on the ground at #COP27! #ArshtRockAtCOP pic.twitter.com/iPcxCaSFs8
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 12, 2022

NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 2:57 AM WASHINGTON | 9:57 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What to make of USAID’s new adaptation and resilience plan

At #COP27 @SamanthaJPower, citing the devastating $30+ billion flooding of Pakistan of @USAID announces new push to urgently drive private investment in adaptation & resilience. Big opportunity and vision here – @ArshtRock is ready – let’s go! pic.twitter.com/ITz3hKu5Qb
— Kathy Baughman McLeod (@KBMcLeodFLA) November 12, 2022

NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 2:33 AM WASHINGTON | 9:33 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Experts praise the United States for finally stepping up—but there are also other climate leaders to watch

Global Energy Center Deputy Director Reed Blakemore sat down with the World Resources Institute’s Dan Lashof to talk about the countries taking the lead on climate action.

Lashof explained that while this is the twenty-seventh COP, “it’s COP1 for the United States being able to show up with a transformative climate law in place domestically.” He thinks “that gives President Biden much more credibility,” but he added that the world will be watching whether Congress will be able to sustain the momentum on climate action.

Lashof explained that, while people still pay a lot of attention to how politics in the United States impact the country’s climate leadership, the world is “no longer unipolar.”

“People are also looking to the EU and to China,” he said. So I think those three major players are pushing the wall forward, sometimes together, sometimes not so much. But as long as they’re moving and accelerating action, then we’re seeing progress.”

Watch more

Public-private partnerships

COP’s focuses on implementation, emerging economies, and public-private partnerships raise hopes
At the “corporate COP,” a new focus on private-sector solutions
Partnerships to benefit the planet—and the private sector
Gaming and social tech can reorient the world toward a climate-resilient future
Quick take: The attendance at COPs has transformed. Here’s what that means for the energy transition.
Improving clean-energy access for everyone
The energy crisis shows the need to accelerate the energy transition
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 7:12 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 12, 2022 | 2:12 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

COP’s focuses on implementation, emerging economies, and public-private partnerships raise hopes

By Roger Martella

In this pivotal moment for global action on climate change, I’m in the full optimist camp regarding COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh—not only for Egypt, but for the precedent Egypt is setting for the future.

Two main reasons drive this enthusiasm. First, COP27 is focused on implementation—putting climate promises into action. Second, the event is committed to highlighting the needs and challenges of emerging economies. This will place a global spotlight on the unique opportunities for countries where most of the 750 million people without reliable access to electricity live.

Another reason to be optimistic about COP27 is the rapidly growing role of public-private partnerships between policymakers and corporate stakeholders. The growing role of companies to be part of the solution and partner with governments, nongovernmental organizations, and other companies in industrialized and emerging markets is leading to unprecedented collaborations, some already having an impact.

The pursuit of public-private partnerships is perhaps the top undercurrent at COP27, as many collaborators and odd bedfellows alike come together for bold pronouncements of projects and initiatives together. These examples demonstrate how emerging economies, through public-private partnerships and tangible proof points, are addressing the energy transition by blending different approaches, technologies, and perspectives. Additionally, they illustrate how emerging economies are positioning strategically to build climate resilient infrastructure that grows access to energy at the same time. The lessons learned from each will help inform the many ongoing discussions and negotiations in Sharm el Sheikh.

Roger Martella is the chief sustainability officer of GE. GE is a presenting partner of GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All.

EnergySource

Nov 11, 2022

Partner perspectives: In emerging markets, partnerships and proof points are key to driving the energy transition

By Roger Martella

COP27 is an opportunity for emerging economies to lead the energy transition. Public-private partnerships can help drive progress towards their goals.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 12:37 PM WASHINGTON | 7:37 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

At the “corporate COP,” a new focus on private-sector solutions

By Lama El Hatow

The private sector has an immense presence at COP27 in all the various zones within Sharm El Sheikh, earning this conference the label of the “corporate COP.” The business role comes in several forms.

First, there is a growing recognition that the private sector will have to close the gap in the unfulfilled one hundred billion dollar per year climate finance promise made by developed countries. We already know that one hundred billion is insufficient, with reports now claiming that two trillion dollars per year is what’s needed for the Global South. UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for Egypt Mahmoud Mohieldin and US climate envoy John Kerry have argued that various modes of blended finance (using development funds to leverage private capital), as well as regulations on the private sector, are the only way to meet the one hundred billion dollar pledge and move toward the two trillion dollar goal. Kerry even announced that the US Energy Transition Accelerator would be carried out in partnership with Bezos’ Earth Fund and the Rockefeller Fund, solidifying the role of the private sector in implementation.

Second, fossil-fuel and high-polluting companies are frightened and lobbying quite strongly. During decarbonization day today, their viewpoints were expressed in various sessions discussing how they are shifting their practices to renewable energy and phasing out fossil fuels. However, they are concerned, as Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and other island state leaders opened COP27 by stating that fossil fuel companies should pay a global carbon tax on profits to fund loss and damage for the Global South. The massive third quarter profits recently reported by Saudi Aramco ($42.4 billion), Exxon ($20 billion), and Chevron ($11.2 billion) alone show why this could be an attractive option for policymakers seeking loss and damage funds.

Third, businesses along with banks are under new pressure from investors to meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, and they are trying to catch up and understand what needs to be done. The Net Zero Banking Alliance, which is one of the four pillars of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero that emerged at the last COP, has been convening to see how to enable as well as enforce banks to transition to net zero. CEOs of top commercial and investment banks including Blackrock, Citibank, and Standard Chartered are skipping the summit as they focus more on issues such as the fallout from Russia’s war in Ukraine, energy crises, rising inflation, and the threat of recession. It is no secret that many large-scale corporations produce more greenhouse gas emissions than many countries. The argument is that these companies should be liable for compensation, not only to their consumers and board of directors, but also to the Global South and the world’s most vulnerable people.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 11:23 AM WASHINGTON | 6:23 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Partnerships to benefit the planet—and the private sector

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz hosted Dorothy McAuliffe, the US State Department’s special representative for global partnerships, to talk about how governments can work with the private sector to develop climate solutions.

“Governments can’t tackle this challenge alone,” McAuliffe explained. “We have to be in this all together.”

While there are major benefits for the planet to be reaped from this partnership, McAuliffe explained that there are benefits for the private sector too: “There are jobs and opportunities that come along with this clean energy transformation… and finding these solutions.”

Watch more

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 10:43 AM WASHINGTON | 5:43 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

By increasing awareness of climate adaptation measures, gaming and social technologies are creating impact on the ground in many countries.

On Friday, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center hosted an event at the COP27 Resilience Hub that brought together gaming and technology experts to talk about innovative solutions to build resilient communities.

For example, games like Garden Story help users acquire the knowledge and skills they need to take climate action in their communities. Similarly, Meta aims to help users understand the types of climate-adaptation tools that are available to prevent future damage and loss.

See top moments from the event

“Gamers are ahead on the curve on climate & we’re seeing this permeate the industry a little faster than others,” says @ChanceGlasco. Arsht-Rock’s VR pilot & games like @gardenstorygame integrate climate solutions, equipping players w/knowledge & skills for climate action. pic.twitter.com/aF6XSVyNv3
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 11, 2022

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 11:12 AM WASHINGTON | 6:12 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Quick take: The attendance at COPs has transformed. Here’s what that means for the energy transition.

#COP27 quick take: As uniform acceptance of the #EnergyTransition takes hold, an increasing number of energy and finance executives – many for the first time – are gravitating to the conference. A post-denial posture is empowering a groundswell of new solution-oriented actors.
— Landon Derentz (@Landon_Derentz) November 11, 2022

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 7:30 AM WASHINGTON | 2:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Improving clean-energy access for everyone

As the energy transition gets underway, experts are searching for ways to bring clean energies to everyone—and particularly low-income and developing countries.

Doing so will require focuses like improving financing, making the energy supply chain more efficient, and turning toward cooling solutions, said panelists at an Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center event at the Resilience Hub.

“We need to make sure that access to energy is resilient,” said Lavinia Bauerochse, global head of ESG at Deutsche Bank. “Climate change-induced weather extremes like floods and heat must be factored in. Without a resilient infrastructure, our efforts will be short lived.”

See top moments from the event

“One billion people have no access to cooling… & are considered highly vulnerable to heat events,” says @jmcurtin of @RockefellerFdn.

But traditional cooling contributes to emissions. We must bring cooling to vulnerable communities w/o further exacerbating climate-driven heat. pic.twitter.com/rAw06gdiAo
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 11, 2022

NOVEMBER 11, 2022 | 6:46 AM WASHINGTON | 1:46 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The energy crisis shows the need to accelerate the energy transition

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz sat down with HIF Global’s Meg Gentle to talk about decarbonization ambitions at COP27.

“There are so many incredible ideas here in Egypt this year, and we can show that eFuels, this synthetic fuel, this is happening now,” Gentle explained. HIF Global produces eFuels in countries like Chile and Australia.

EFuels, which are fuels created by renewable energies and carbon capturing from the air, have potential now, added Gentle. “These are fuels that can be used immediately; this is a solution for today.”

Watch more

The innovative solutions at play

Gaming and virtual reality set out to change how decision makers tackle climate change
Investments in climate technologies must begin with software
Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress
Energy security and the energy transition are “mutually reinforcing,” says US official
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 2:08 PM WASHINGTON | 9:08 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Gaming and virtual reality set out to change how decisionmakers tackle climate change

By Lama El Hatow

As climate change becomes the world’s reality, groups are using technology to bring it to virtual reality as well.

With the evolution of technologies over the years and the emergence of the gaming industry, there has been an increase in the number of innovative ways through which people can see how climate change impacts the world and, by association, how to deal with it. The COP27 Resilience Hub, run in part by the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, has created a VR experience that allows each user to click on various places around the globe to see what would happen in a +2 degree Celsius or +4 degree Celsius world. Based on the Paris Agreement and the science, we need to remain underneath 1.5 degree Celsius of warming to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. In this VR experience, one can see that the city of Miami, for instance, would be completely submerged underwater from flooding. Experiencing this submersion is quite difficult to process.

Additionally in this experience, the user has the option to select from various adaptation measures that can help the city of Miami avoid these catastrophic changes. For instance, after selecting “reforestation,” a nature-based solution, the user can see how Miami is able to withstand floodwaters. Alternatively, users can choose measures that may not be as effective, such as breakwaters in the case of Miami; from that, users can understand that decisions on adaptation must be designed for the particular contexts of each city. This technology allows policymakers to decide what kind of Miami they’d like to plan for in the future based on climate impacts.

Similarly, the video game “Eco” allows users to explore the “tragedy of the commons”—a situation in which users competing over environmental resources act in their own interest and ultimately deplete the resources entirely. Other games show how people’s physical conditions change in response to increased temperatures and heatwaves in certain settings—for example in poorly serviced areas versus in areas with resilient infrastructure. This game can be useful to help users understand how workers who are exposed to the outdoors for long periods of time are impacted by a world that is continuously heating.

The gaming industry and VR have opened up ways to envision the world in the future and how best to live in it. Ultimately, this technology and innovation is important in that it can help decisionmakers decide which adaptation measures to employ.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 12:15 PM WASHINGTON | 7:15 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Investments in climate technologies must begin with software

By Scott Reese

The annual United Nations Conference of Parties is underway in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, with delegates from around the world gathering to address one of the most urgent of global imperatives: climate change and the energy transition. Central to the conversation is tackling carbon emissions, the leading contributor to planet-wide warming.

During last year’s conference, leaders reinforced the sense of urgency to take action. Since then, important moves have been made to drive progress. Notably, the United States, currently the world’s second-largest carbon emitter, took its biggest step yet in combating climate change with a $369 billion investment via the Inflation Reduction Act that will reduce US carbon emissions to an estimated 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is in addition to steps to fund a modernized grid and breakthrough technologies in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. These two landmark climate change laws not only aim to reduce climate emissions, but they also advance US investments in both energy security and grid resiliency as well as critical breakthrough technologies.

Yet a problem so daunting can leave us all wondering, how does the world move faster?

While it’s critical to invest in long-term, high-impact levers like renewable energy, hydrogen, and carbon capture and sequestration technologies, software is an investment that can pay dividends today and accelerate our ability to embrace electrification and decarbonization tactics.

EnergySource

Nov 10, 2022

Partner perspectives: The next unlock: Why software is key to the energy transition

By Scott Reese

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 9:00 AM WASHINGTON | 4:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress

By Katherine Walla

COP

Nov 10, 2022

Nancy Pelosi and Kathy Castor at COP27: The US won’t abandon its climate leadership, regardless of who controls Congress

By Katherine Walla

The US House speaker and the chair of the climate committee appeared at an Atlantic Council Front Page event in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | 6:52 AM WASHINGTON | 1:52 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Energy security and the energy transition are “mutually reinforcing,” says US official

On Thursday, Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz sat down with US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt to talk about global energy security.

“Energy is at the white hot center of international affairs in a way that it has not been in a long time,” Pyatt said. But despite countries scrambling for cheaper and more destructive energy sources like coal amid global gas shortages, Pyatt argued that energy security and the energy transition “are not in conflict with each other; in fact, they’re mutually reinforcing.”

“We need to continue to work… to build an energy system internationally which helps our allies and partners to advance their economies [and] to deliver results for their citizens,” he said. “But we also need to keep working on the energy transition.”

Watch more

Protecting the planet—and people

For COP outcomes that benefit the groups most vulnerable to climate change, representation must improve
Reasons to be optimistic about the “implementation COP”
The health sector’s role in climate change and ambitions
The newest advocate of heat resilience: The world’s first global ambassador for heat action
Cash for cooling
How cities are taking the lead on heat action
Read our experts’ analysis from earlier in the conference

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 12:30 PM WASHINGTON | 7:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

For COP outcomes that benefit the groups most vulnerable to climate change, representation must improve

By Lama El Hatow

Looking around to see who is present at COP27, there’s a lot of diversity and an array of ethnicities, cultures, and backgrounds across groups that aim to represent their communities and share their stories about how climate change impacts them. But not everyone has the privilege to be able to attend this COP and convene in an effort to inform policymakers of the realities on the ground. In fact, the most vulnerable and impacted communities around the world are often the ones that face the most hurdles in attending these conferences. Hence, these communities’ stories oftentimes never make it to the ears of the decision makers in the negotiating rooms deciding the world’s fate.

It thus becomes the international community’s responsibility to inform those decision makers for the sake of those not present at COP27. Within Egypt, minority groups such as the Nubian communities in Aswan and the Bedouins of Sinai will not be present at this COP. In November 2021, a severe storm hit the city of Aswan, destroying homes, flooding small islands, and decimating the already limited agriculture—and the community there is still healing from this disaster today. They report that such a storm has not hit Aswan in the last forty years. As these communities rely on the Nile River for their daily livelihood, the impacts of climate change, including lower water levels in rivers, are acute and detrimental for them. There are other examples of detrimental impact worldwide, most recently with floods in Pakistan destroying over a million homes and killing over a thousand people.

As leaders discuss the financial mechanisms for loss and damage payments in the negotiating rooms, it is important to know how and where these losses and damages are taking place across the globe. The Global Stocktake launched at COP26 requires countries to report on local- and community-level participation in nationally determined contributions, thus making the participation more feasible but still far from what is needed. That is why representation matters; and having local communities, tribes, indigenous peoples, and minority groups present at such a convening as COP is not only necessary but vital so that any outcomes of negotiations are holistic and take into consideration the needs of those most vulnerable to climate change. To ensure the inclusion of these groups, they must be allowed access to funding as well as partnerships with local and international civil-society organizations.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 10:41 AM WASHINGTON | 5:41 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Reasons to be optimistic about the “implementation COP”

COP27 has, to date, been scarce on tangible results, with the majority of action occurring outside of the negotiating room as a diverse coalition of industry and nongovernmental organizations descends on Sharm el Sheikh.

But there are clear signs emerging that should offer optimism as technical groups dominate the balance of the next two weeks:

Finance remains center stage. Financing both energy transitions and climate adaptation has, at least thus far, remained front-of-mind for policy leaders over the past two days. Commitments from a handful of European countries seeking to accelerate international climate adaptation finance are one such bright spot, despite the relative lack of optimism for progress leading up to the COP this year. Yet this box is still largely unchecked.
Private sector participation. COP’s transition from a largely technocratic convening to an increasingly multifaceted climate convention filled with corporations and civil society continues. Observers should be encouraged that the dialogue is moving past simple greenwashing, in favor of efforts to establish a widespread coalition of parties engaged in the climate conversation.
Implementation is in limbo. Though COP is meant to focus on acting on the pledges laid out in COP26 and the Bonn intersessional, homing in on details that expose the current tension between energy security and climate ambitions is proving to be more difficult than gaining commitments from governments for these pledges in the first place.

Significant work remains to be done in the coming days.

EnergySource

Nov 9, 2022

COP27 readout: Days 1 and 2

By Global Energy Center

Global Energy Center experts are on the ground at COP27. Here’s what they observed over the first two days.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 10:30 AM WASHINGTON | 6:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The health sector’s role in climate change and ambitions

Global Energy Center Deputy Director Reed Blakemore sat down with John Balbus, acting director of the Office of Climate Change and Heath Equity at the US Department of Health and Human Services to talk about health equity and decarbonizing the health sector.

“Health is often mentioned as a reason to be acting on climate change, but the health community isn’t present,” Balbus explained. But over the last year, he added, “the health sector has mobilized in a way that it has not over the last twenty-six COPs.”

“So what we’re hoping is that by mobilizing the health sector,” Balbus said, the sector can provide health information to national leaders that convinces them to increase the urgency to tackle climate change.

According to Balbus, the health sector is responsible for about 5 percent of global carbon emissions, but no countries focus on the decarbonization of the health sector. He said they should include the health sector in both reducing emissions and adapting to climate change.

Watch more

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 7:16 AM WASHINGTON | 3:16 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The newest advocate of heat resilience: The world’s first global ambassador for heat action

On Wednesday, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center unveiled a new leader in climate adaptation. At COP27, Felipe Calderón, former president of Mexico, took the reins as the first-ever global ambassador for heat action with a mandate to raise the issue of extreme heat among the world’s leaders to protect people, jobs, and the economy.

Watch the unveiling

Agradezco enormemente a @ArshtRock Resilience Center la invitación para ser Embajador Global para la Acción frente a las “Olas de Calor”. En el marco de la #COP27 en Egipto. Las “olas de Calor” mata muchos más personas en el mundo que el resto de los eventos climáticos extremos. https://t.co/Vxxps9fJy1
— Felipe Calderón (@FelipeCalderon) November 9, 2022

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 10:05 AM WASHINGTON | 5:05 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Cash for cooling

As the temperature goes up, it’ll be vital to protect people, communities, and local economies from extreme heat and its effects.

The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center and partners including the Rockefeller Foundation, JP Morgan Chase & Co, ClimateWorks, Marsh McLennan, and IFC, gathered together at COP27 to launch the Cool Capital Stack, the first investment portfolio dedicated to supporting cooling solutions for the world’s most vulnerable.

Watch top moments from the launch

Cities are taking the lead in implementation, like Freetown’s market shading project. https://t.co/eplPzcyxkT

But it’s hard to scale. “There just is not enough [money] flowing to the Global South,” says @yakisawyerr. “The difference between the rhetoric & the reality is huge.” pic.twitter.com/I2CnmMZMzi
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 9, 2022

NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 1:15 AM WASHINGTON | 8:15 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How cities are taking the lead on heat action

On Wednesday, Luis Donaldo Colosio Riojas, mayor of Monterrey, Mexico, recounted watching his city’s temperature rise ten degrees over the last thirty years. “We are ill-prepared for this silent killer and people are facing the consequences,” he said.

The mayor gave his thoughts at an Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center event focused on what cities are doing to take the lead on heat action. Earlier this year, the city of Monterrey appointed a chief heat officer committed to reducing the threat of extreme urban heat for vulnerable people.

Global Chief Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili explained that the way cities are built makes them “death traps” of heat for people. It is important to listen to cities, she added, as they know “where the problem is and what they really need to do to respond to it.”

Watch top moments from the event

“The way cities are built are death traps for people, that’s why it’s important to listen to cities.” We know that people don’t have to die from #ExtremeHeat.

Global Chief Heat Officer @leniomyrivili explains why cities need a seat at the policy table to protect people. #CoP27 pic.twitter.com/QB1NtbeA87
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 9, 2022

Takeaways as negotiations get underway

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 6:47 PM WASHINGTON | NOVEMBER 9, 2022 | 1:47 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the World Leaders Summit: The most fundamental plan for adaptation in a decade

LIVE FROM #COP27 Director of Global Policy @Gasteluj gives you an inside look at the newly launched Sharm El Sheikh Adaptation Agenda, with 30 adaptation outcomes to accelerate climate resilience. Watch now #cop27egypt pic.twitter.com/ddo4DP4OkZ
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 8, 2022

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 2:45 PM WASHINGTON | 9:45 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Some MENA countries are under-represented at COP27. Here’s what that means for the negotiations.

By Lama El Hatow

The delegates at COP27 face the challenging and daunting dilemma of tackling the world’s climate crisis in the midst of a series of global political and economic crises.

The world is still feeling the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic with supply chain stalls from China and insufficient resources elsewhere. Add to that Russia’s war in Ukraine has pulled a plug on global gas flows—raising Europe’s worries about staying warm this winter—and has also generated concern about wheat-supply shortages and food insecurity globally.

The compounded effect of all of these issues has led to broadening global inflation. So not only are the least developed countries becoming more vulnerable to the worsening global economic outlook, but even some of the wealthier countries have difficulties staying afloat. In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), several countries face their own economic and political turmoil with Syria still at war, Sudan reeling from political instability after a coup last year, and Lebanon facing the worst economic crisis in its history with power outages and bank closures that put the Lebanese people in unforeseen circumstances.

Without ignoring political and economic turbulences like these, how will the delegations at COP27 deal with global crises while also asking the world to commit to more ambitious pledges and enforce the execution of them? The limited representation of many delegations from MENA countries at COP, including some of the most water-scarce countries in the region, raises concerns about the outcomes of the negotiations. Since the conflict-affected MENA countries are very consumed with their local economic and political challenges, the capabilities of these countries to address the climate crisis at COP27 are certainly going to be limited.

While some countries are being represented by delegations made up of several dozens of negotiators and experts, conflict-afflicted countries from the MENA region only have a few delegates to cover an agenda with so many key topics. They’ll likely, therefore, have less negotiating power to tackle and influence the outcomes of the more controversial topics on the agenda, including climate financing and loss and damage.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 11:17 AM WASHINGTON | 6:17 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Public capital is key to funding solutions to the “energy trilemma”

By Susan Flanagan

It is abundantly clear that achieving net-zero carbon emissions by mid-century is necessary to avoid the worst climate outcomes. However, the path to decarbonizing the energy sector is not “one-size-fits-all” between developed and developing markets. Given the historical tensions between developed economies, which modernized with fossil fuels, and developing economies, now being asked to forgo this route, it is evident that sustainable, long-term global cooperation will require addressing the ”energy trilemma”—the need for the people to have access to sustainable, reliable, and affordable energy.

Sustainability is more urgent for countries hardest hit by climate change and often exposed to greater environmental risks. Reliability remains an elusive goal in many countries still working to bring basic electricity to their citizens in a secure and dependable way. Many of these developing economies also face roadblocks to electricity affordability due to weak government finances and credit, and the corresponding higher cost of capital for infrastructure development.

To drive global decarbonization and increase electrification in developing countries, policymakers and financial institutions must partner with project sponsors to tailor capital solutions that best fit each region and country.

Susan Flanagan is the president and chief executive officer of GE Energy Financial Services. GE is a supporter of the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

EnergySource

Nov 8, 2022

Partner perspectives: With COP27 underway, there’s no time to waste—public capital is a key conduit to a just energy transition

By Susan Flanagan

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

NOVEMBER 8, 2022 | 3:35 AM WASHINGTON | 10:35 AM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Ensuring both a just energy transition and access to affordable energy

Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz sat down with General Electric’s Roger Martella to talk about ensuring a just energy transition and decarbonization while ensuring access to reliable, affordable, and sustainable power for everyone.

“We want to help countries, particularly in emerging economies achieve these goals by focusing on bespoke solutions for each country. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach here,” Martella said. He explained that while solutions may be different in each country, they’ll all need to have the “same tools in the toolbox”: a combination of renewable energy, gas, and grid.

General Electric is a presenting partner for the Global Energy Center’s Ambitions for All project, which you can read about here.

Analysis as leaders assembled

NOVEMBER 7, 2022 | 1:43 PM WASHINGTON | 8:43 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What’s happening beyond official negotiations?

Alongside other @AtlanticCouncil colleagues, Arsht-Rock’s Director of Global Policy @Gasteluj set the scene for COP27 and the work that goes on beyond the official negotiations https://t.co/BKdk4GBGs3 @PoliticoRyan pic.twitter.com/y1CMuml9N2
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 7, 2022

NOVEMBER 7, 2022 | 12:36 PM WASHINGTON | 7:36 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The private sector holds a lot of the cards at COP27

By Lama El Hatow

As COP27 gets underway, various platforms of engagement are taking place.

In the blue zone, countries’ official delegations are coming together to meet and negotiate on the agenda items put forth and agreed upon with the support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Glasgow, the COP26 host. These agenda items include increasing ambition on pledges for greenhouse gas emission reductions by all countries to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, making progress on climate adaptation and ways to propel it forward, boosting climate finance and pushing developed countries to meet their financing commitments of $100 billion per year, and discussing a mechanism for loss and damage payments. The delegations agreed on Saturday to include the loss and damage fund as part of the agenda; it’s considered a huge win for the Global South that is most vulnerable to and at risk from climate change impacts.

Meanwhile, the green zone is designated for civil-society pavilions, where various ministries from Egypt elsewhere can showcase their work; it is also a culture and arts hub for participants to network and have side events outside the negotiation rooms.

Additionally, there is a third zone this year: The Climate Action Innovation Zone, which has been set up as a private-sector hub for companies and corporations from around the world to showcase their work through exhibitions, side events, and networking sessions. Many of the region’s largest players including Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power and Neom, the United Arab Emirates’ IRENA, and Egypt’s TAQA Arabia are all present on the sidelines of COP27 to discuss technology and innovation that sets the stage for a smoother green transition. Adjacent to the climate innovation zone is the Saudi Green Initiative, which also has its own designated area to showcase its work.

While the world focuses on the blue zone with government pledges and commitments, it appears the private sector holds a lot of the cards in this convening. As UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP27, Mahmoud Mohieldin reiterated that nonstate actors need to lead the way with regard to climate finance. It appears the role of the private sector and the deals happening on the outskirts of the COP may help set the stage for advancement in climate technology, innovation, and even financing.

—Lama El Hatow is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s empowerME Initiative.

NOVEMBER 7, 2022 | 11:23 AM WASHINGTON | 6:23 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Dispatch from the Singapore Pavilion: How to build cities resilient to heat

Kurt Shickman, director of Extreme Heat Initiatives at our Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, shared his readout from an event with the Mayor of Monterrey, Mexico, Luis Donaldo Colosio and Athens Chief Heat Officer Eleni Myrivili about the best solutions for managing extreme heat in cities.

Watch more

Live from #COP27 ! @ArshtRock‘s Global #ChiefHeatOfficer @LenioMyrivili & City Champion for Heat Action Mayor @colosioriojas joined @RCitiesNetwork to share climate resilience lessons from cities. Our Director for Extreme Heat @KurtShickman shares his key takeaways. Watch now pic.twitter.com/XPw0lsEtvT
— Arsht-Rock Resilience Center (@ArshtRock) November 7, 2022

Gearing up for COP27

NOVEMBER 5, 2022 | 3:13 PM WASHINGTON | 10:13 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How a lack of energy security will impact the speed and impact of the energy transition

As today’s energy crisis intensifies, Global Energy Center Senior Director Landon Derentz points out that a lack of energy security will slow the energy transition and spell trouble for ensuring affordable energy is accessible for all. “The world is short energy,” he writes, “now and over the next decade.” That calls for investment across the board—in zero-carbon energy sources and also oil and gas, he argues.

Read the thread

Policymakers must accept the path to climate progress starts with inclusivity. Unlike in prior decades, the bulwark of industry now accepts that the energy transition is real. They are engineers, put them to work. 8/x
— Landon Derentz (@Landon_Derentz) November 5, 2022

NOVEMBER 4, 2022 | 3:30 PM WASHINGTON | 10:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The new partnership financing a just energy transition in emerging economies

By Christopher Cassidy, Rainer Quitzow, and Maia Sparkman

As the global community convenes for COP27, Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) are poised to play an expanded role in financing the energy transitions of emerging economies. Conceived as multi-donor agreements to accelerate the phase-out of coal-fired power plants, JETPs first gained attention at COP26 with the announcement of the Just Energy Transition Partnership with South Africa, an $8.5-billion venture between the governments of South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the European Union. Since then, several other countries have expressed interest in their own JETPs, presenting an opportunity to drastically reduce global coal emissions. Nonetheless, while JETPs may represent an avenue for increased climate engagement with high-emitting emerging economies, they also face several key challenges moving forward.

Despite those challenges, JETPs bear the potential to represent a turning point in the climate finance agenda. By combining funding from several major Group of Seven (G7) donor countries, they not only offer substantial financial support to partner countries, but they also send an important political signal. To be sure, the sums under discussion only represent a fraction of the capital needed to reach the needed scale of investment to place these countries on a pathway that is compatible with the 1.5 degree Celsius target. Nevertheless, the hope is that they can lend additional momentum to ongoing reform efforts.

EnergySource

Nov 4, 2022

Just Energy Transition Partnerships: Will COP27 deliver for emerging economies?

By Christopher Cassidy, Rainer Quitzow, and Maia Sparkman

The JETP model is poised to deliver results in South Africa. Now, at COP27 and beyond, the true test will be translating the model to other country contexts.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

NOVEMBER 4, 2022 | 9:30 AM WASHINGTON | 4:30 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

The West must rethink its development strategy to help electrify the African continent

By William Tobin and Maia Sparkman

Electricity access in Africa is in a dire state, and progress is being reversed. Outside of North Africa, around half of the population is electrified, and the electrification rate has decreased by 4 percent since 2019.

This problem is self-perpetuating. When energy infrastructure is weak, there is less signal to invest as individual projects are less viable and are deemed riskier, particularly by the private sector, which has historically provided around 10 percent of infrastructure funding across the continent. Infrastructure, in this sense, should be expanded beyond the state of electricity grids or gas pipelines to include public services such as trained utility workers, water resources, public safety and security forces, and much more.

It is becoming clearer that the paradigm of “aid,” which has underpinned Western countries’ development strategies in the African continent, is increasingly insufficient. Providing aid alone to African nations will not provide the tools and enablers of self-sustaining, endogenous growth. For that, the continent needs investment, not just aid.

EnergySource

Nov 4, 2022

To meet energy security and climate goals, Africa needs investment in infrastructure

By William Tobin, Maia Sparkman

Africa Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 3, 2022 | 9:00 AM WASHINGTON | 4:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What leaders at COP27 should take away from the World Energy Outlook

By Emily Burlinghaus

The International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook (WEO), released last week, is historic in its first-ever presentation of a scenario where fossil fuels peak or plateau based on prevailing policy settings. But despite the cause to celebrate, the global transition to net-zero carbon emissions remains precarious. Developing countries are most vulnerable to the effects of both climate change and capital and resource restrictions. Meanwhile, global conflict and supply chain disruptions threaten national efforts to ensure food security, meet energy demand, and deploy resilience and adaptation measures. The WEO serves as a roadmap for where and how countries can allocate money at COP27 to maximize impact and ensure that no country is left behind.

EnergySource

Nov 3, 2022

The IEA World Energy Outlook 2022 highlights climate finance needs ahead of COP27

By Emily Burlinghaus

The new IEA World Energy Outlook 2022 should be used as a roadmap at COP27 for the allocation of climate-oriented resources. Doing so would better enable developing nations to ride the wave of interest in clean technologies amid the global energy crisis and share in the benefits of the transition.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 1, 2022 | 10:04 AM WASHINGTON | 5:04 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

How Europe can reclaim international climate leadership at COP27

By Michał Kurtyka and Paddy Ryan

COP27 will be uncomfortable for Europe. The continent’s energy crisis following the Russian invasion of Ukraine has upended the lofty objectives set at COP26. In Glasgow, the European Investment Bank and over a dozen European states pledged to cease financing fossil fuel projects abroad. Now, Europe is scouring the globe for new gas supply, pricing out poorer nations while maintaining opposition towards their development of reserves for domestic use. Europeans stand accused of climate hypocrisy, charges likely to be echoed at a COP notable for taking place in Africa.

Europe needs gas, and will for some time. The continent must reconcile short-term efforts to source new imports with long-term climate ambitions. Through more constructive gas diplomacy with the developing world and by accelerating domestic decarbonization, Europe can begin to repair its damaged climate credibility in Sharm el Sheikh. Doing so, Europe can reclaim international climate leadership by advancing low-carbon, energy-secure growth with partners in Africa and the developing world.

EnergySource

Nov 1, 2022

How Europe can salvage its climate credibility at COP27

By Michał Kurtyka and Paddy Ryan

Europe’s recent energy policies have begotten accusations of climate hypocrisy, as the continent blocks access to financing for gas projects in developing countries yet scours those countries for gas supplies for its own use. At COP27, Europe can—and should—responsibly reconcile those contradictions.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

NOVEMBER 1, 2022 | 4:00 PM WASHINGTON | 11:00 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Will the West’s competition with China get in the way of a clean-energy future?

By Joseph Webster and William Tobin

China uneasily straddles both sides of the energy transition. On the one hand, China is indisputably a world leader in numerous clean energy technologies, including electric vehicles, renewable generation, and supply chains. On the other hand, it is also the world’s largest carbon emitter and coal producer, and is constructing over half of the world’s new coal-powered electricity plants. With Western-China tensions rising and Beijing increasingly focused on energy security, there is a shrinking scope for climate cooperation. Perversely, however, US-China political competition could deliver climate benefits, as both sides will face pressure to provide clean energy leadership at COP27 and beyond.

At COP27, Western leaders will need to grapple with the emerging reality that two competing climate camps may be forming, one led by the West and another by China.

Not only will this dynamic unfold as a competition between economies in China and the West, but as a paradigm of global engagement and investment on climate mitigation and adaptation, particularly with respect to engagement with the developing world. For instance, in Africa, China’s trade volumes exceeded the United States’ by a factor of four. Moreover, China has not shied away from financing fossil fuel projects that rank high on the priority list of less developed countries with limited energy access. This has been welcomed by many African nations, as 43 percent of all people on the continent do not have access to modern energy services.

As the developing and developed world seek to resolve key issues on the agenda at COP27 such as loss and damages, closing the climate finance gap, and financing for natural gas projects in Africa, Western leaders will need to keep in mind that competition with China is likely to become a more prominent feature of climate negotiations.

EnergySource

Nov 1, 2022

China’s energy security realities and COP27 ambitions

By Joseph Webster, William Tobin

China Energy & Environment

OCTOBER 13, 2022 | 8:28 AM WASHINGTON | 3:28 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

Cairo’s next steps forward on climate adaptation and human rights at COP27

By Shahira Amin

Skeptics are questioning Egypt’s leadership of COP27, citing human rights concerns and unideal environmental policies. Others are doubtful about the choice of Sharm el Sheikh as the host city. They argue that the holiday resort may not be the most suitable venue for a global conference of this magnitude and scale, given the logistical, organizational, and managerial challenges of hosting such a gathering.

Nevertheless, the opportunity to host COP27 has incentivized Cairo to take steps forward in regard to climate adaptation and human rights, even if a lot more needs to be done to show that authorities are serious about political and environmental reforms. Meanwhile, continued financial and moral support from the United States and other development partners—and further scrutiny of human rights violations committed—would ensure there’s no backtracking on the country’s progress in the past year.

Cairo needs to keep the momentum going and show that it is actually committed to continuing the progress made so far. To do this, it needs to speed up its green transition, taking steady and concrete steps to lower its emissions and shift towards renewables. Moreover, Cairo needs to free all political detainees, many of whom are imprisoned for nothing more than exercising their right to free speech and free expression. By doing so, it can expect to reap the rewards of its serious efforts: greater support from the international community and prosperity and stability for Egypt and all Egyptians.

MENASource

Oct 13, 2022

Egypt has made some progress on human rights and the environment in preparation for COP27. But there’s still more to be done.

By Shahira Amin

Skeptics are questioning Egypt’s leadership of the climate talks, citing human rights concerns and unideal environmental policies.

Economy & Business Energy & Environment

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022 | 8:28 AM WASHINGTON | 3:28 PM SHARM EL SHEIKH

What Egypt’s COP presidency means for how this conference may play out

By Lama El Hatow

Egypt has a huge role to play during its presidency of COP27, as all eyes will be geared towards how the country can lead by example. To put things in perspective, with 1.3 percent of the world’s population, Egypt accounts for only 0.6 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and ranks twenty-eighth on the global list of polluters. This number appears to be relatively small from a global perspective. Regionally, however, Egypt contributes 31 percent of the overall GHG emissions from North Africa and 13 percent of the overall GHG emissions from the entire African continent. Thus, Egypt has a great responsibility to establish a pathway towards a green energy transition.

This year, Egypt’s presidency for COP27 is very important as a middle-income, African, and Middle Eastern country hosting this event. Egypt may, therefore, be able to influence the agenda items and bring more focus to Africa’s increasing needs for adaptation and mitigation financing.

There are four main items at the top of the agenda: climate finance, adaptation, loss and damage, and increased ambition. Egypt has a significant role to play in all of them.

MENASource

Sep 22, 2022

Egypt is hosting COP27. What are the expectations?

By Lama El Hatow

As the host country for the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, Egypt has a huge role to play during its presidency of the event, as all eyes will be geared towards how the country can lead by example.

Energy & Environment Middle East

The post Live updates from COP27 as leaders battle climate change amid global crises appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Power projection: Accelerating the electrification of US military ground vehicles

Reed Blakemore, Tate Nurkin — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 13:45:28 +0000

FORWARD DEFENSE & GLOBAL ENERGY CENTER

ISSUE BRIEF

DOWNLOAD PDF

To date, the US military has been driven by climate imperatives to begin to transition its ground vehicle fleet to electric power (in place of fossil fuels). But just as compelling rationales, if not more so, are the tactical, operational, and strategic advantages offered by electric power for military ground vehicles. This issue brief recommends an aggressive yet phased approach to vehicle electrification that will allow the US ground services to better compete in a future electrified battlefield that will support key elements of the future fight, from artificial intelligence to directed energy.

Want to learn more? Watch the launch event.

Public Event Thu, November 3, 2022 • 3:30 pm ET

Power projection: Accelerating the electrification of US military ground vehicles

Policy and industry experts discuss the way forward for the electrification of US military ground vehicles as part of the Defense Industrial Policy Series, hosted by the Global Energy Center and Forward Defense.

Climate Change & Climate Action Defense Policy Defense Technologies Energy Transitions

Battlefield electrification and the future fight

Today, Ukrainian troops are using quiet electric bicycles to slip past Russian front lines and wreak havoc against Russian units. In the future fight, many of the concepts that planners imagine–from human-machine teaming to edge-computing-powered platforms–will rely on electric power. To support that, future ground vehicles will require significant charging ability.

Military electrical vehicles and climate change

Climate change is neither a necessary nor a sufficient motivator for the US military to adopt electrified ground vehicles, although it has been a primary driver to date. Military electric vehicles can today offer tactical and operational advantages over their internal-combustion-powered peers quite apart from their climate bona fides. Indeed, adoption of electrified military vehicles would not be sustainable if the only benefit was to climate goals.

More than climate: The military value of electrical vehicles

Key advantages of electrified military vehicles lie in performance, power distribution, new and enhanced missions, sustainment, and logistics. Electric and hybrid vehicles have better torque and performance at low speeds, making for improved off-road handling. Moreover, they can move and idle with low sonic and thermal signatures, allowing for stealthier movement and silent reconnaissance watch. Electric tactical vehicles can serve as a power source for a range of onboard capabilities, from sensors, to small uncrewed systems, to directed-energy systems. Electric vehicles generally have fewer moving parts and can collect better data, allowing for less maintenance overall and a greater ability to maintain proactively.

Understanding the challenges of EV adoption

The US military will not adopt military EVs fleet-wide overnight. Years of progress must be made in energy density before heavier vehicles (tanks, for example) can be propelled by electric motors. Still, lighter vehicles can be fully electrified and heavier vehicles equipped with auxiliary power systems in the near term. Generating, storing, and distributing electric power to future formations of many electric vehicles will require advances in technology and in ground force operational concepts to be successful. Achieving electrification will also require the ground services to set forth clearer requirements and work better with the commercial sector–a persistent challenge for the Pentagon–to capture the innovation in electrified mobility that is primarily occurring in civilian contexts. The ground services will also have to manage supply chain risks introduced by existing bottlenecks for battery components.

Generously sponsored by

About the authors

Staff

Reed Blakemore

Director, Research and Programs

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Geopolitics & Energy Security Energy Transitions

Fellow

Tate Nurkin

Forward Defense Indo-Pacific Security Initiative

China Defense Industry

Forward Defense, housed within the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, generates ideas and connects stakeholders in the defense ecosystem to promote an enduring military advantage for the United States, its allies, and partners. Our work identifies the defense strategies, capabilities, and resources the United States needs to deter and, if necessary, prevail in future conflict.

The post Power projection: Accelerating the electrification of US military ground vehicles appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The IEA World Energy Outlook 2022 highlights climate finance needs ahead of COP27

Emily Burlinghaus — Thu, 03 Nov 2022 13:00:00 +0000

The International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO), released last week, is historic in its first-ever presentation of a scenario where fossil fuels peak or plateau based on prevailing policy settings. But despite cause to celebrate, the global transition to net-zero carbon emissions remains precarious. Developing countries are most vulnerable to the effects of both climate change and capital and resource restrictions. Meanwhile, global conflict and supply chain disruptions threaten national efforts to ensure food security, meet energy demand, and deploy resilience and adaptation measures. With COP27 starting next week, the WEO serves as a roadmap for where and how countries can allocate money to maximize impact and ensure that no country is left behind.

Progress amid crisis

The latest WEO paints a balanced picture between developments that could tip the scales toward meeting Paris Agreement goals and those that could undermine its achievement. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine remains a key driver of energy market instability, exacerbating the effects of supply chain disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic and driving global inflation. Prices for natural gas, coal, and oil have skyrocketed as refining faces constraints, Europe pays a premium for gas supplies to fill its storage, and producers reap short-term profits. Clean energy supply chains likewise remain fragile, with the report recommending that the world “avoid new vulnerabilities arising from high and volatile critical mineral prices or highly concentrated clean energy supply chains.” Such warning is particularly prescient given nickel-rich Indonesia’s recent musings on forming an OPEC-like governing structure for critical minerals.

However, even as the global crisis threatens energy and—consequently—food security, it can also “hasten the transition to a more sustainable and secure energy system” by pushing countries away from fossil fuels and toward energy efficiency measures that improve the affordability of heating and cooling. With the exception of some players in the Middle East, no upstream oil and gas producers are investing more in the industry now than they did prior to the pandemic. And “supply chains for some key technologies – including batteries, solar PV and electrolyzers – are expanding at rates that support higher global ambition.”

Addressing the challenges of developing countries

While accelerated adoption of clean energy and efficiency measures may be a silver lining, the WEO warns of the unique challenges of developing countries. Many of these countries are in the difficult position of having to meet rising demand while also phasing out “dispatchable” fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas. The WEO notes that rising energy demand is a trend most strongly observed in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, but emerging and developing countries experience the greatest shortfalls in clean energy investment. With the exception of China, clean energy investment in emerging and developing countries has remained flat since 2015, and solar PV project capital costs are two to three times higher in these markets than in developed economies—a problem that is further exacerbated by rising borrowing costs.

COP27 in Sharm el Sheikh is the perfect opportunity to translate the WEO’s analysis into action. Some of the biggest agenda items for this year revolve around more ambitious, transparent, and effective climate finance for the countries most affected by and—in many cases—least responsible for the effects of climate change. Chief among COP27 action items are:

Implementation of the Paris Rulebook, which provides guidance on countries’ achievement of climate action plans.
Quantification of adaptation-focused planning and financing.
Fulfillment of developed countries’ overdue pledge to allocate $100 billion per year in climate finance to developing countries.
Consensus on finance to avert, minimize, and address loss and damage caused by the effects of climate change.

The WEO’s analysis makes clear that finance is not being allocated at the requisite rate and volume to achieve an equitable and affordable energy transition in developing countries. Parties to the Paris Agreement agree that any commitments to limit the effects of climate change must balance energy security with decarbonization and adaptation strategies. However, the current level of commitment does not reflect this consensus. Only twenty-three of 193 countries have submitted updated Nationally Determined Contributions (an action agreed upon by all countries present at COP26); developed countries are three years behind schedule on their $100 billion pledge; and the lack of clarity and transparency on what constitutes climate finance and how to track it is limiting impact.

While much of the focus at COP27 will be rightfully directed toward adaptation—a reality guided in part by the Egyptian Presidency—mitigation has a large role to play, particularly in alignment with the Paris Agreement’s note on averting loss and damage by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Country representatives should take note of the WEO’s recommendation for “a renewed international effort” to bolster climate finance and mitigate investor risks, as well as its acknowledgement of the “immense value” of partnership-driven efforts to advance a just transition. With questions of climate finance at the helm of the Egyptian Presidency, this year’s COP should move beyond consensus-building to effective deployment of capital. Parties must clarify the definition of climate finance; reform pathways to accessing and allocating money in the Green Climate Fund; and identify novel technological solutions tailored to developing countries. The WEO has made clear the need to fill gaps in access to capital—now is the time for countries to act.

Emily Burlinghaus is a German Chancellor Fellow based at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies and a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All

Meet the author

Fellow

Emily Burlinghaus

Nonresident Fellow

Energy & Environment

EnergySource Nov 1, 2022

China’s energy security realities and COP27 ambitions

By Joseph Webster, William Tobin

China Energy & Environment

EnergySource Nov 1, 2022

How Europe can salvage its climate credibility at COP27

By Michał Kurtyka and Paddy Ryan

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

EnergySource Oct 31, 2022

COP27 and financing for sustainable energy development

By Robert F. Ichord, Jr.

COP27 will place the issue of climate finance front and center. The need to provide adequate support for developing nations beset by climate-related hardship and pursuing transition policies cannot be overstated.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post The IEA World Energy Outlook 2022 highlights climate finance needs ahead of COP27 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How Europe can salvage its climate credibility at COP27

Michał Kurtyka and Paddy Ryan — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 14:04:55 +0000

The current crisis should provide Europe a more realistic view of how long gas will persist within its energy system. In addition to short-term heating and industrial requirements, gas is still needed by many EU member and neighboring states to transition away from coal, fuel oil, and peat.

The EU green taxonomy recognizes this, allowing gas investments to be labelled “sustainable” under certain conditions, including if they displace higher-polluting fuels and adhere to per-unit emission standards. In both cases, responsible gas use can decrease Europe’s overall emissions, and the European Union should seek to progressively raise the standards for which gas projects can be labeled “sustainable.”

Transitioning from Russian gas can also contribute to lowering Europe’s emissions. The Russia-to-Europe pipeline gas supply chain is two to three times as climate-intensive as liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports from Qatar or the United States.

But that is not enough. For Europe to claim tangible climate benefits from its gas import reorientation, it should work with gas suppliers to further decarbonize the sector’s operations and combat methane leakage. The European Union’s memorandum of understanding with Azerbaijan commits to boosting renewables and curtailing methane emissions in Azerbaijan, both of which can lower the climate impact of EU gas imports.

This partnership can be replicated elsewhere. By reconsidering its prohibition on gas investments in the developing world, Europe can promote best practices in the sector, ensuring its own short-term energy security while promoting energy access abroad.

As Africa’s economy continues to grow, energy demand is likely to compel such projects anyway. Gas-based electrification can provide rapid means for the continent to develop its power sector with minimal addition to global carbon emissions. By contributing financing and expertise, European supporters can ensure projects adhere to robust environmental standards, using Europe’s gas taxonomy as a blueprint.

Moreover, gas and renewable investments in developing countries can go hand-in-hand, allowing poor nations to maximize profitable gas exports while boosting domestic energy access. Tying these two investment paths together would also help Europe deliver on its pledges for climate mitigation financing and implementation made at Glasgow.

Gas is a “bridge fuel.” But Europe can only demonstrate climate credibility if that bridge is shown to end somewhere. Leveraging gas and carbon capture for blue hydrogen production can contribute to the low-carbon fuel’s marketability in hard-to-abate sectors like steel and fertilizer production. While green hydrogen is likely to overtake blue as renewables increasingly outcompete gas, the latter can clear the runway for green hydrogen by creating the necessary infrastructure and downstream supply chain.

Correspondingly, the energy crunch has created impetus for large-scale renewable deployment and increased energy efficiency in Europe. The Commission’s REPowerEU plan creates a streamlined permitting regime while leveraging an array of existing EU funding mechanisms to target a 2030 renewable capacity goal 15 percent higher than envisaged by Fit for 55, as well as an increase in the Energy Efficiency Target from 9 to 13 percent.

European states must redouble their clean energy objectives, ensuring that decarbonization as a long-term energy security strategy is not neglected amid a rush for new gas imports. European states would also be wise not to further erode their climate credibility with ill-advised nuclear phase-outs, which place additional and unnecessary stress on power systems and increase demand for fossil-based power.

Decreasing Europe’s gas consumption through decarbonization and energy efficiency measures will be key to repairing relations with the developing world. While Europe needs long-term contracts to incentivize the private sector to provide gas, commercial agreements of twenty years-or-longer are likely to exceed future European demand.

Europe should make clear it intends to redirect future surplus cargos that lack destination clauses—much as Japan has done for Europe this year—to the developing world to support the transition from coal, which has been set back in South and Southeast Asia due to a tight global LNG market. Controlling future LNG flows will also allow Europe to set conditions on gas use, in a manner similar to potential gas investments.

Transatlantic collaboration on how to reconcile the short-term focus on gas with broader climate objectives will be essential. The United States is also a signatory to the pledge to end fossil fuel financing abroad, and needs to reconcile this stance with its conspicuous energy diplomacy to get Europe more gas, notably via US LNG. Resurrecting the G7’s Build Back Better World as a climate-focused global infrastructure initiative, can help coordinate transatlantic efforts to engage the developing world on pragmatic solutions to the energy sustainability trilemma.

Ultimately, a rough welcome should be expected at Sharm el Sheikh. European policymakers should arrive at COP27 with a healthy dose humility, prepared to mend fences with partners from the developing world. Only by engaging more productively on energy development and by doubling down on the European climate agenda with an added sense of realism can Europe expect to be in a better position at COP28.

H.E. Michał Kurtyka is the former Polish Minister of Climate and Environment and President of COP24. He currently advises the Egyptian COP27 Presidency in his role as a member of the Friends of COP27 Group.

Paddy Ryan is the assistant director for European energy security at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All

EnergySource Nov 2, 2022

A new Europe-MENA energy interdependence: The role of hydrogen

By Giampaolo Cantini

A deeper Europe-MENA relationship could aid a secure transition in Europe and create lucrative low-carbon export opportunities and industries in North Africa. Hydrogen could be the cornerstone of these new ties, and COP27 could be the perfect forum to develop them.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

EnergySource Oct 31, 2022

COP27 and financing for sustainable energy development

By Robert F. Ichord, Jr.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

EnergySource Aug 30, 2022

The Just Energy Transition Partnership with South Africa will hinge on domestic reform

By Christopher Cassidy

The JETP’s impact lies not in its financial heft, but in its stipulations for domestic reform. The agreement could prime South Africa to take advantage of future investment in its energy sector and eventually decarbonize at speed.

Africa Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post How Europe can salvage its climate credibility at COP27 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

COP27 and financing for sustainable energy development

Robert F. Ichord, Jr. — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 15:46:52 +0000

As the world convenes in Egypt from November 6-19 for COP27, a key issue of debate will be expanded financing for developing countries. This issue is critical and especially challenging in the context of the slowing global economy, the impacts of inflation and high energy and food prices, the worsening debt situation of the developing world, the strong dollar, and the continuing impacts of COVID. At COP27, leaders will need to develop more concrete strategies and mechanisms to increase financial and investment flows to developing countries to help them address their energy security, sustainable development, and climate change challenges.

Although recent efforts by industrial countries to expand clean energy and climate funding, such as the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act and the European Union’s RePowerEU and Green Deal, are extremely important to global climate action, the reality as documented in the recent United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report 2022 and the World Bank’s Energy Tracking report is that the world is not on track to meet either emissions mitigation or sustainable energy goals in the developing world. Expanded efforts to mobilize public and international development institution financing, de-risk clean energy investments, and facilitate private sector financing are urgently needed.

Broader financing context in developing countries

The current, devastating impacts of climate change are abundantly clear in both developing and industrial countries, and there is a strong push by the Group of 77 and China to include the issue of loss and damage from climate events on the COP27 agenda and create a facility to pay for the costs of climate impacts.

At COP26, developed countries indicated that they would increase financing for climate adaptation from the current level of about $28.6 billion in 2020 to $40 billion by 2025. They have however not yet met the earlier $100 billion climate finance target, although they are working to meet it by 2023. An Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report estimates that developed countries managed to provide about $83 billion in 2020, of which about two-thirds consisted of export credits and private finance.

Most analyses see an urgent need for many times greater funding. The World Economic Forum in its 2022 Global Risks Report presented an estimate of $800 billion per year in developing countries by 2025 for climate mitigation. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) new World Energy Outlook 2022 projects a need for a four-fold increase in clean energy investments (including power, grids, fuels. and energy efficiency) by 2030 in the developing and emerging markets under its Net Zero Scenario with investment rising from about $500 billion currently to over $2 trillion in 2030. Public financing is assumed to represent about 60 percent of these funds.

There is growing pressure on the World Bank to orient more of its funding to climate mitigation and adaptation. World Bank President Malpass responded during the recent IMF/World Bank meetings that the World Bank’s climate funding had increased to a record level of $31.9 billion in the most recent fiscal year. President Biden has pledged to increase United States’ climate funding for developing countries to $11.4 billion per year by 2024, although it is not clear Congress shares the same initiative.

Achieving SDG 7

Despite countries’ NDC pledges to expand clean energy investments and the submission or expected submission of more ambitious NDCs from several countries, the latest assessment from the World Bank tracking report concludes: “At today’s rate of progress, the world is still not on track to achieve the [Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)] 7 goals by 2030.” These goals are:

Universal access to electricity and clean cooking fuels by 2030.
A significant increase in the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption.
A doubling of the rate of improvement in energy efficiency.

On the first subgoal, even as COP27 focuses on emissions mitigation and adaptation, energy access remains a high global priority since global poverty has increased during the COVID crisis. Although electricity access has increased to 91 percent from 83 percent in 2010, an estimated 733 million people were still without electricity in 2020. Given substantial improvements in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa is now the key area for improvement, in both electricity access and clean cooking fuels. Sub-Saharan Africa had 77 percent of the global populations without electricity, or 568 million people. “The largest unserved populations are in Nigeria (92 million people), the Democratic Republic of Congo (72 million), and Ethiopia (56 million).” Meeting the universal access target by 2030 will require about 100 million new connections per year. But at the existing pace, the world will achieve only 92 percent electrification in 2030, with 670 million people still lacking access. However, solar home systems and microgrids, like those rapidly deploying in countries such as Bangladesh, offer the prospect of faster access.

On the second, with declining costs and greater policy priority, renewable energy investments have been growing even during the COVID crisis and reached $366 billion in 2021. But even with the major additions of renewable energy capacity over the past decade, renewable energy accounted for only about 17.7 percent of final energy consumption in 2019 compared to 16.1 percent in 2010. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2022 estimates that global electricity generation from hydro (15 percent) and other renewables (12.8 percent) together constituted 27.8 percent of global electricity generation in 2021 and non-hydro renewables grew worldwide by 16.5 percent over 2020. Renewable energy capacity in developing countries more than doubled from 2010-2020. A record 260 gigawatts (GW) of capacity was added globally in 2020, representing 80 percent of all new capacity. Solar and wind accounted for 91 percent of the renewable additions. Coal-intensive Asia saw roughly half of these investments. The International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) energy transition roadmap calls for a 65 percent share of renewable energy in 2030 and increases in renewable energy capacity investment of 800 GW per year, about three times current levels. Their analysis advocates a combination of guaranteed payments and competitive auctions to obtain low-cost variable renewables and ensure required investor returns.

And on the third, although 2022 is seeing slower growth in energy demand compared with the record levels in 2021 of over 5 percent, improvements in energy intensity are critically important. The SDG 7 primary energy intensity indicator shows some decline since 2010 from 5.6 megajoules per dollar (MJ/USD) in 2010 to 4.7 MJ/USD in 2019. The IEA estimates that energy efficiency improvements from 2 percent to 4 percent per year could reduce CO₂ emissions by 5 gigatons by 2030. Building improvements are especially important and accounted for about two-thirds of the $250 billion in energy efficiency investments in 2020. Higher temperatures as the climate warms and the adoption of inefficient air conditioning equipment are increasing electricity loads. The IEA estimates that air conditioning and fans account for about 20 percent of energy use worldwide. Standards and incentives for purchase of higher efficiency systems are sorely needed.

Strategies for de-risking and fostering investment

COP26 saw a marked increase in commitments and engagement by private sector companies and financial institutions. Numerous industry alliances pledging net-zero emissions by 2050 were established, including the 500+ member Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ). The private sector’s role in financing clean energy systems in developing countries is critical and represented 85 percent of capital investment in renewable energy projects between 2013-2018. But the financing tends to be concentrated, with 24 countries receiving 80 percent of the financial commitments in 2019. The least developed countries only represented a quarter of the flows.

COP27 needs to give greater attention to this inequity and particularly how developing countries and donors working together can improve the investment environments in high-risk markets. Although in many cases the problem is a broader one of poor governance and political instability, a focus on improving the effectiveness and transparency of energy regulation, adopting best-practice procurement and power purchase agreements; establishing sound market rules for non-discriminatory access; setting adequate pricing levels; improving metering, billing, collection, and the commercial performance of utilities; and restructuring and modernizing energy sector companies is essential to attract capital and foreign investment. Setting NDC targets is not enough. It is time to follow the lead of efforts like the $8.5-billion South Africa partnership and the Asian Development Bank’s Energy Transition Mechanism announced at COP26 and double down on planning, reform, and implementation.

Dr. Robert F. Ichord, Jr. is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

GEC at COP27: Ambitions for All

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Meet the author

Fellow

Robert F. Ichord, Jr.

Nuclear Energy Energy Transitions

EnergySource Nov 2, 2022

A new Europe-MENA energy interdependence: The role of hydrogen

By Giampaolo Cantini

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

EnergySource Nov 1, 2022

China’s energy security realities and COP27 ambitions

By Joseph Webster, William Tobin

China Energy & Environment

EnergySource Nov 1, 2022

How Europe can salvage its climate credibility at COP27

By Michał Kurtyka and Paddy Ryan

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

Public Event Wed, September 28, 2022 • 9:00 am ET

The post COP27 and financing for sustainable energy development appeared first on Atlantic Council.

UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment Mariam Al Mheiri: Middle East at the heart of new climate reality

Madeline Hart — Thu, 27 Oct 2022 14:19:11 +0000

Day 1

On September 28, the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative and TRENDS Research and Advisory held a two-day conference on “Sustainable Security of the Middle East: Climate Change, Challenges, and Prospects.” The event was held from Wednesday, September 28, through Thursday, September 29, 2022. The conference reflected on the climate change challenges in the MENA region, examining the drivers behind emerging climate–security risks, including threats to food security, water security, health systems, national security, and resilience to climate-driven migration. Moreover, the conference assessed the opportunities and challenges for a clean energy transition and the role of COP 27 and COP 28 in the Middle East in facilitating a transition to a lower-carbon economy and highlighting the importance of geopolitical factors related to climate diplomacy.

Ahead of COP27, this year’s convening offered unique perspectives on resilience against climate risks, the transition to low-emission economies, and collaboration to solve pressing regional and national challenges. The conference also brought together leading experts from climate-related disciplines and representatives of governments and world institutions—including the United Nations, World Bank, and the World Health Organization—to develop new and cross-sectoral perspectives to drive meaningful policy recommendations for policymakers in the Middle East and West.

Highlights From Opening Remarks — Sheikh Nahayan bin Mabarak Al Nahayan, Cabinet Member and Minister of Tolerance, United Arab Emirates

Sheikh Nahayan mentioned that as a region that has had to deal with water challenges and extreme temperatures for centuries, global warming has the potential to produce very serious consequences relatively quickly in the Middle East. Adding the need to support a growing population makes the urgency to address these challenges even greater.
Sheikh Nahayan also mentioned how [climate] problems are exacerbated in the Middle East by the lack of awareness among the public about the magnitude of the problem and the absence of original scientific research relevant to our region.
Sheikh Nayahan discussed that when it comes to the natural environment, each one of us must individually act responsibly. Likewise, governments must commit to sustainability at every turn.
Sheikh Nayahan also pointed out that large private sector stakeholders must be persuaded to commit to sustainability.
Sheikh Nayahan suggested that a coordinated effort in all countries of the region is required and that goals must be to promote and coordinate regional planning and programs for protecting and restoring the Middle East Ecosystem.

Highlights From the First Keynote Speech – David Livingston, Senior Advisor to US Presidential Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry, US Department of State

Livingston discussed the MENA region’s vulnerability to drought, flood, and food security and his concerns about the earth’s warming in the region twice as fast as the rest of the world.
Livingston added that several countries have established mid-century net zero targets, and Saudi Arabia launched its vision for regional sustainable development strategies.
Livingston recommended using clean energy abundance, not detracting from usage, and focusing on regional integration reforms.
He also recommended focusing on regional integration, referencing the Negev Forum
Livingston recommended aiding Project Prosperity with the UAE, Jordan, and Israel via the Negev forum.

National Security, Climate Change, and the Middle East: Current Challenges and Future Prospects

Aisha Al Sarihi, Research Fellow, National University of Singapore, argued that the Arab Spring is linked to climate change; for example, the protests in Tunisia in 2011 were impacted by drought that affected the increase in food prices and led to conflict. Al Sarihi recommended that governments build on existing regional governance structures to integrate climate change into national security and development strategies and better integrate water management.
Mazen Malkawi, Regional Advisor, World Health Organization, argued that the Middle East is the “land of the emergencies”, observing that countries with preexisting crises are less likely to combat climate change effectively. He also recommended using financial and technical resources to emphasize climate-focused programming and increase advocacy to convince more countries to address climate change.
Carol Chouchani Cherfane, Director, Arab Center for Climate Change Policies, and Cluster Leader, UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, emphasized that there is not enough collaboration between countries in the MENA region, and that vulnerability is a significant point of importance—for example, a flash flood in the UAE has much smaller impacts that a flash flood in Gaza, due to differences in capacity and resilience. Cherfane recommended redirecting funds and attention to adaptation rather than mitigation and increasing resources available to vulnerable countries.
Paul Jerome Sullivan, Lecturer, John Hopkins University, emphasized the need for desalination reliant on nuclear power, as well as the need to generate less overall waste. He also said that existing initiatives to combat climate change are not enough, and we should work on developing circular carbon economies, increasing energy efficiency at all levels, and removing carbon. Sullivan also mentioned that there should be some way to regulate state action by potentially creating penalties for inaction.

Impacts of Resource Scarcity and Population Growth in the Middle East

Eckart Woertz, Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies, German Institute for Global and Area Studies, discussed current issues with food in the MENA region. He mentioned that on the demand side, a significant problem is food waste, whereas, on the supply side, the two main issues are the considerable food import dependence in the MENA region, as well as the fact that most of the money GCC countries spend is on high-quality food (meat, dairy, etc.). Woertz recommended that GCC countries should have an honest conversation about how their import dependence can be managed, and countries should conduct research on diets and micro-nutrition.
Harry Verhoeven, Senior Research Scholar, Columbia University, discussed that water consumption is not sustainable in most countries and predicted that the wars of the 21^st century would be about water rather than oil. He also mentioned that there is little evidence that resource scarcity is driving conflict, and that, in fact, these conflicts are driven by the deep bureaucratically created inequities of how land and resources are shared.
Hanan Bakr Sakr, Finance Resilience Lead, UN Climate Change High-Level Champions Team, discussed how the war in Ukraine disrupted supply chains, leading to economic stress, emphasizing that this will most impact vulnerable groups. Sakr recommended adaption and resilience investments to prepare for these realities and the diversification of the importation of all resources in MENA.
Svetlana Emeades, Lead Agriculture Economist, World Bank Group, explained how food security is of great importance to the World Bank, primarily due to food inflation, as current prices remain around 33 percent higher than in 2019. Svetlana recommended supporting food provisions and building resilience in the food system, which means governments must create annual sustainability programs.

Highlights from the Second Keynote Speech – Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology and Special Envoy for Climate, UAE

Al Jaber explained that the region has been suffering from desertification, risks of extreme heat, and water scarcity.
Al Jaber discussed the UAE’s plans, emphasizing that the UAE is investing in promoting clean energy and was the first country to launch a plan to reach carbon net zero.
Al Jaber also recommended that investments in producing hydrocarbons should be maintained.

Energy Industries, Infrastructure, and Politics in the Middle East: Opportunities and Challenges for a Clean Energy Transition

Zoheir Hamidi, Regional Programme Officer for the Middle East and North Africa, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), discussed the International Renewable Energy Agency’s partnership with European investment banks and the UN to help develop reports on general energy technology manufacturing. Hamidi recommended that the MENA region enhance the role of the private sector and increase investments. He also suggested that MENA countries should streamline regulations to increase their market size in order to compete with larger markets such as China. Moreover, MENA countries should integrate their renewable energy targets within a more comprehensive regional perspective to develop a renewable energy strategy.
Bora Guray, Director, Istanbul International Center for Energy and Climate, Sabanci University, recommended that governments direct the use of renewables by expanding the use of solar energy as a heat source and transferring it to less intensive-energy industrial sectors. Guray also stressed that international cooperation should play a role in transforming the industrial energy-intensive industry into a more sustainable future.
Olga Khakova, Deputy Director, European Energy Security, Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council, highlighted how the energy crisis is a global problem. Khakova recommended expanding hydrogen production through natural gas investments and emphasized that cooperation and partnership are vital to the Middle East region, particularly while climate is reshaping the landscape.
Syed Adeel Abbas, Regional Coordinator, Climate Change, The World Bank, discussed how climate change is a threat multiplier. He stressed the importance of energy security, especially given that the region is far behind in terms of energy transactions and production. Abbas recommended working on a green hydrogen approach. He also recommended a regional development plan for upstream engagement, as well as enhancing private partnerships and creating structural reforms that promote the private sector.
Tareq Emtairah, Director, Dept. of Energy, UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), explained that certain countries have had more transformational change in the energy transition, such as Jordan, Egypt, and several Gulf states, because they tend to have more private sector engagement. Emtairah recommended enhancing public transportation in Jordan and Tunisia, preparing infrastructure for decarbonization, enhancing regional cooperation, and highlighting corruption issues.

Day 2

Highlights from the Third Keynote Speech – Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri, Minister of Climate Change and Environment, UAE

Almheiri discussed the urgency of preparing for a new climate reality and emphasized that climate change is already triggering worsening situations of displacement, resource competition, socioeconomic stress, and food and water insecurity.
She stressed the importance of multilateralism and building regional synergies to align responses to climate change.
Almheiri highlighted the UAE’s commitment to fighting climate change and inveFsting in clean energy ventures.
“At the heart of the new [climate] reality is the Middle East that is amongst the world’s regions most vulnerable to climate change…” “Climate change challenges are intertwined and together are already triggering worsening situations of displacement, resource competition, socio-economic stress and food and water and energy insecurity that cast a shadow on national security in the region and pain a bleak future for us…”
“We believe in multilateralism as a powerful vehicle for creating the sustainable future we want our children to live in…”
“We are keen on building regional synergies to align our response to climate change…”

Between COP27 and COP28: Diplomatic Efforts of Middle Eastern Countries in Addressing Climate Change

Professor Asit K. Biswas, Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Glasgow, discussed how geopolitics has changed dramatically since COP26, and that the war in Ukraine has substantially changed the geopolitical situation, causing an energy crisis and high inflation. Biswas also pointed to the breakdown of climate diplomacy between the world’s greatest two carbon emitters, China and the US. He emphasized that although many Middle Eastern countries have agreed to become carbon neutral by 2050 or 2060, they do not have a clear strategy for doing so and recommended that COP27 and COP28 address how to help the most vulnerable countries finance climate change initiatives.
Nuran Atef, Regional Lead for the Middle East and North Africa, UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative, discussed how the UNEPFI (United Nations Environmental Programme Finance Initiative) is promoting sustainable finance around the world. Atef recommended that governments work to close the gap between public and private finance by supporting the engagement of the private sector.
Osama El Gohary, Assistant to the Prime Minister, Arab Republic of Egypt, said that the main threat of climate change is its impact on food resources. Gohary emphasized that Egypt in particular faces many risks, such as increasing desertification and drought, as well as the threat that the rise of the Mediterranean Sea will drown inhabited areas. As the host country of COP27, Gohary said, “Egypt is determined to do its part” to “find a diplomatic resolution to geopolitical conflicts.”
Sheikha Shamma bint Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, Executive Director, UAE Independent Climate Change Accelerators, discussed the UAE’s independent climate change accelerator, which is convening public and private sectors to provide policy recommendations to the government. She recommended that governments incentivize the private sector and hold them accountable for their commitments.

Multilateral Green Security Initiatives: The Start of a New Green Era Towards Collective Environmental Security in the Middle East

Noura Mansouri, Research Fellow, King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center, Research Affiliate, MIT, emphasized that access to affordable energy is critical for health, education, and livelihoods. Mansouri mentioned that there is a food security and water security crisis in the Arab world. She recommended using a circular carbon economy approach.
Alya Al Awadhi, Economics Researcher, TRENDS Research and Advisory, discussed the importance of long-term, economically sustainable environmental security initiatives. Al Awadhi recommended promoting consumer agency to enhance universal commitment, investing in research and development to encourage innovation, incentivizing private sector investment to make the developing region a more attractive market, and participating in multilateral initiatives that pool risks and resources.
Hamad Al Kaabi, Editor in Chief, Al Ittihad Newspaper, emphasized the importance of the media, stating that “without media, science would not have a voice.” Al Kaabi recommended that the media attract attention to the climate crisis and tailor the message depending on their target audience.

Closing Remarks and Recommendation

William Wechsler, Senior Director, Rafik Hariri Center and Middle East Programs, Atlantic Council, delivered closing remarks. He thanked all the speakers, mentioning that TRENDS and the UAE are some of the Atlantic Council’s most far-sighted partners, and emphasized that few regions in the world will be hit as hard by climate change as the Middle East.
Sumaya Al Hadhrami, Deputy Chief Global Officer, TRENDS Research & Advisory, gave the closing recommendations for the conference. She recommended focusing on implementing negotiated multilateral climate outcomes by aligning national agendas through legislation, regulation, and mobilizing finance.
Al Hadhrami also recommended incentivizing major investments in renewable energy and infrastructure, sustainable food systems, natural carbon sinks, and sustainable business innovations. She recommended using private sector technology and innovation to achieve larger-scale impacts.
She also stressed the importance of enhancing the roles of local banks and investing in capacity building, as well as strengthening individual and societal engagement and awareness of climate-related issues to emphasize behavioral changes, such as reducing water usage per capita.

Madeline Hart is a Young Global Professional with the Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council.

Recap the 2022 event

Sustainable security of the Middle East: Climate change, challenges, and prospects

Internationally respected experts, government leaders, and practitioners take the pulse of climate action in the Middle East, explore environmental challenges and opportunities, and showcase ambitious solutions. This two-day event will run from Wednesday, September 28, to Thursday, September 29.

Climate Change & Climate Action Economy & Business Energy & Environment Middle East

The post UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment Mariam Al Mheiri: Middle East at the heart of new climate reality appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Does the IRA make US offshore wind the “next big thing?”

Joseph Webster and Elina Carpen — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 18:09:56 +0000

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) could transform US energy markets and accelerate clean energy adoption. In it, offshore wind (OSW) received a major boost, and it could emerge as the “next big thing” in US clean energy. In addition to production and investment tax credits, the legislation will open up new US territories to clean energy development. Still, there are considerable uncertainties surrounding the cost and availability of OSW-relevant maritime vessels, including wind turbine installation vehicles, and permitting remains a major challenge. Follow-on legislation to address deficiencies in the US shipbuilding sector and the permitting process may be needed for US OSW to reach its full potential.

What’s in the bill: Tax credits

One of the bill’s most important provisions is the energy investment tax credit (ITC), which provides a credit of up to 30 percent for projects that begin construction before 2026. Projects must meet prevailing wage and apprenticeship labor requirements to receive the full credit.

The production tax credit (PTC) portion of the bill extends credits to OSW projects through at least 2033 and ensures that projects placed in service after 2021 are eligible for full credits. In order to obtain full credits, projects must meet wage and employment requirements.

Domestic content requirements for PTCs are lower for OSW than for comparable onshore projects as policymakers recognize that US OSW supply chains remain in their infancy. For projects that begin construction before 2025, the “adjusted percentage” of all manufactured products that are “mined, produced, or manufactured” in the United States is 20 percent for OSW facilities, versus 40 percent for onshore facilities. Domestic content adjusted percentages, for both onshore and offshore wind, rise to 55 percent by 2028.

As is true for other clean energy projects, offshore wind producers must claim either the PTC, which can be claimed for ten years, or the ITC, which is a one-time benefit. The economics of claiming the PTC or ITC are distinct, as the production and investment credits treat domestic manufacturing very differently.

The bill also grants a 45X credit equal to 10 percent of the sales price of a related offshore wind vessel for domestically produced ships. Given that US wind turbine installation vessels are roughly 50 percent more expensive (and less capable) than ships produced in other countries, however, this measure will likely have only a limited impact on the domestic wind turbine installation vessel industry. Since US national security, economic, and environmental interests require a healthy civilian and military maritime shipbuilding complex, this area may be the focus of follow-on efforts in Congress.

New areas for development

The IRA opens up additional areas for lease in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic—off the coast of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida—that had previously been placed off limits by the Trump administration. The legislation also requires the federal government to issue calls for information and nominations for offshore wind leases by September 30, 2025 within the exclusive economic zones of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the US Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Offshore wind in Guam could present national security benefits, as the island is at the crux of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy but is overwhelmingly dependent on imported petroleum products.

International perspectives

The IRA’s offshore wind provisions have largely been greeted with enthusiasm outside of the US. The EU Commissioner of the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, said that the IRA was aligned with European environmental and economic agendas. Similarly, Frans Timmermans, vice president of the European Commission, remarked at the UN General Assembly that the “IRA is a wonderful thing,” and noted the OSW provisions that have raised investment in projects off the coasts of New York and Maine. Yet Timmermans also warned the US against retreating towards protectionism and expressed unease about the IRA tax provisions that favor domestic content.

European energy corporations expressed enthusiasm about OSW opportunities introduced by the IRA. Norway-based Equinor praised “historic investments for US energy, creating certainty for offshore energy leasing and lowering emissions by encouraging offshore wind.” According to Denmark-based Ørsted’s US CEO, David Hardy, OSW tax credits will likely accelerate development of their US OSW projects.

Outside of Europe, many analysts in developing nations have praised the impact that the IRA, and by extension the OSW provisions, will have on their own clean energy development. The PTCs’ encouragement of the production of new OSW projects in the United States will reduce the cost of clean energy on a global scale, allowing developing countries to decarbonize more affordably. According to Fabby Tumiwa, executive director of the Institute for Essential Services Reform, an Indonesian energy think tank, the PTCs are good for developing countries like Indonesia “due to spillover effects because of lower costs.”

Implications for US offshore wind development

While extending production and investment incentives will provide an important fillip for the US offshore wind industry, significant challenges remain. Onerous permitting, siting, and leasing requirements continue to delay projects, while the US currently lacks a significant civilian offshore wind maritime capacity, especially for wind turbine installation vessels. To address these concerns, Congress might seek to streamline the permitting process and review maritime shipbuilding policies. The Inflation Reduction Act is a major step forward for the US offshore wind industry, but more congressional efforts are needed.

Joseph Webster is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Elina Carpen is a Fall 2022 Young Global Professional at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Global Energy Center experts respond to the Inflation Reduction Act

The IRA of 2022 marks the biggest climate investment in US history, and it will likely send reverberations around the world. Our experts offer their thoughts on its provisions and its consequences.

EnergySource Sep 20, 2022

The Inflation Reduction Act will accelerate clean hydrogen adoption

By Joseph Webster

The IRA makes the production of clean hydrogen far more attractive to investors and generators. Carbon-free hydrogen could fall dramatically in cost by the end of the decade, greatly increasing its competitiveness against dirtier hydrogen sources.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

EnergySource Aug 8, 2022

How to build on the Inflation Reduction Act and incentivize truly clean electricity

By Ameya Hadap

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Jun 27, 2022

30 GW by 2030: Policies for expanding US offshore wind capacity

By Joseph Webster

The US’ goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 is ambitious. Attentive policymaking, from the highest levels of the federal government all the way down to local governments in affected communities, will be key.

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

The post Does the IRA make US offshore wind the “next big thing?” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Younus quoted in Aljazeera: Economic woes, shifting ties complicate Pakistan’s flood recovery

Atlantic Council — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 17:49:00 +0000

Original Source

The post Younus quoted in Aljazeera: Economic woes, shifting ties complicate Pakistan’s flood recovery appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Townsend and Zysk in The Sydney Morning Herald: Russia’s militarization of the Arctic

ktalley — Fri, 21 Oct 2022 15:50:00 +0000

Original Quote

Fellow

James J. Townsend Jr.

Senior Advisor

Defense Policy Europe & Eurasia

Fellow

Katarzyna Zysk

Nonresident Senior Fellow

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Transatlantic Security Initiative

Arms Control English

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Dexter Tiff Roberts: Why China will still struggle to rebalance its economy

The post Townsend and Zysk in The Sydney Morning Herald: Russia’s militarization of the Arctic appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Your expert guide to China’s 20th Party Congress

Atlantic Council experts — Tue, 11 Oct 2022 17:07:19 +0000

Your expert guide to China’s 20th Communist Party Congress

It’s Xi Jinping’s big moment to further cement his rule. At next week’s Twentieth Party Congress, Xi is expected to secure a third term as general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and perhaps be elevated in other ways within the pantheon of the country’s past leaders. But the once-in-five-years event—which brings together more than two thousand party members starting October 16—will have an impact in a number of other policy areas.

From navigating geopolitical tensions to tackling the country’s property crisis, the outcomes of the congress could have significant implications for China’s political and economic landscape. So we reached out to the Atlantic Council’s broad network of China experts to give us a comprehensive view of what this year’s congress might bring.

Click on a link below to jump to an entry:

Logan Wright: Will Xi favor loyalty over technocratic competence?

Thammy Evans: A signature moment in China’s bid for environmental leadership

Jeremy Mark: China’s leadership must respond to the property crisis

Gabriel Alvarado: Beijing takes aim at the Global South

Pepe Zhang: A big moment for engagement with Latin America

Kit Conklin: A new high-tech era for China’s military

Why China will still struggle to rebalance its economy

Investment banks including Nomura and Goldman Sachs are predicting that China will ease up on its zero-COVID policy in the spring, sometime shortly after the season of high politics comes to an end, lasting from the Twentieth Party Congress to next March’s National People’s Congress. That’s because “the effects of China’s strict COVID management are now increasingly at odds with its policy objective of achieving common prosperity,” Morgan Stanley economists wrote. If pandemic lockdowns are finished, will gross domestic product (GDP) growth recover, household consumption finally flourish, and efforts to rebalance the economy to one that is more consumer-driven be back on track?

During the congress Xi Jinping will likely call on the Chinese Communist Party to work to overcome “unbalanced and inadequate development” and better meet the “people’s ever-growing needs for a better life,” China’s “principal contradiction,” as he called it during his speech at the last party confab five years ago. But policymakers have been talking about boosting consumption and reducing reliance on excessive investment for at least fifteen years, what premier Wen Jiabao first referred to in 2007 as meeting the challenge of “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable” growth.

Investment in China has accounted for 40-50 percent of GDP for decades now, far above the roughly 25 percent global average. That has been accompanied by a worrying buildup in debt, now at some 250 percent of GDP (with the struggling real estate sector especially over-leveraged). Plans to replace that indeed unsustainable economic model with one more reliant on spending by Chinese consumers have been unsuccessful; household consumption still makes up just under 40 percent of GDP, well below the 55 percent and higher in other large countries.

That has to do with the demographic challenge of an aging workforce, as well as declining productivity, exacerbated in recent years by Beijing’s crackdown on private entrepreneurs. It is also because of painfully slow progress reforming the household registration or hukou policy as well as ending the dual land system, both of which keep incomes low for rural Chinese and migrant workers—about one-half of China’s population—and block their entry into the middle class. As long as Xi continues to stress the need for more party control over not just politics but economics and society too, don’t expect real progress on rebalancing—no matter how much officials talk about it.

—Dexter Tiff Roberts is a senior fellow with the Council’s Asia Security Initiative in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Will Xi favor loyalty over technocratic competence?

The results of the Twentieth Party Congress will be difficult for even informed observers to interpret. As a result of this ambiguity, the narratives that major media outlets develop around China’s leadership changes will be significant and are likely to influence both the reaction from foreign governments and financial markets.

The most important decision from the congress will be the widely expected announcement of Xi Jinping’s third term as general secretary of the Communist Party. Virtually every other appointment will be viewed through the lens of whether it points to a further consolidation of Xi’s authority within the party or pushback against Xi’s rule.

Financial markets and economic analysts are hoping for some evidence of internal resistance to Xi, given the arbitrary policymaking over the past three years that has created significant market volatility. But there would need to be clear evidence that a new team of economic officials plans a different approach to shoring up a Chinese economy hit by strict COVID-19 containment measures, a property crisis, and, in the longer term, formidable demographic challenges. A further consolidation of Xi’s authority, in contrast, would imply continuity in policy—and more importantly, continuity in the elevation of party priorities above those of China’s economic technocrats. Evidence of centralizing political authority will make it more difficult for Chinese technocrats to send credible counter-cyclical economic policy signals.

For the future of China’s economy, both the next premier (replacing Li Keqiang) and the vice premier for economics and finance (replacing Liu He) will be closely watched. If appointments to these positions produce a narrative that Xi is favoring loyalty over technocratic competence, this would be one of the strongest policy signals out of the congress—and one that would be interpreted negatively for China’s economic outlook over the next five years.

—Logan Wright is a partner at Rhodium Group, where he leads the firm’s China Markets Research work, and is an adjunct fellow of the Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

A signature moment in China’s bid for environmental leadership

China’s Twentieth Party Congress is highly likely to signal a greater focus on climate action and more detailed environmental conservation plans than the last party congress of 2017. This is part of a long-term trend of Beijing moving from a defensive to offensive strategy on climate and environmental action, which the CCP increasingly views less as a zero-sum competition with economic growth than as a key element of demonstrating effective governance at home and responsible leadership abroad. Beijing now seeks a better balance among environmental, societal, and industrial interests, which is all the more important since the war in Ukraine has emphasized the need for greater energy supply sovereignty for all countries, including from renewable energy sources.

Beijing will probably continue to try to promote itself as a global leader on environmental issues and a partner of choice for the Global South on climate change and on adaptation and resilience building. China will expand on its recently released 1+N Framework that offers guidance for how Beijing plans to meet its “double carbon” (双碳) goals of achieving peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. Over the next six months, we can therefore expect the development of these detailed sector plans, with further signals to industry and investors and further announcements during the twin sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Follow through on all these commitments will depend in large measure on Xi’s personal focus on environmental actions amid a raft of other priorities and how that focus is communicated through the system.

—Thammy Evans is a nonresident senior fellow at the Council’s GeoTech Center.

China’s leadership must respond to the property crisis

One of the biggest policy challenges looming over the congress will be China’s rapidly metastasizing property downturn that threatens to engulf heavily indebted developers, homeowners, financial institutions, and local governments. Property represents up to 30 percent of China’s GDP and has provided a crucial engine of growth for China and, by extension, the world economy. However, the build-up of property-related debt now threatens China’s economic and financial stability.

So far, party leaders appear hesitant to respond to the crisis with the necessary financial resources that the central government has at its disposal. Instead, they have adopted what one economist calls a “whack-a-mole” strategy of piecemeal bailouts. It’s unclear whether they’ll even tackle the issue head-on at the party congress, which may focus more on solidifying Xi’s third five-year term. Such an outcome would symbolize the victory of party politics over actual problem-solving. And, as property represents some 70 percent of the assets of China’s urban population, homeowners will not be happy if their middle-class status is undermined by a reassertion of politics over economics.

Local governments have announced some actions to stabilize the property market in recent weeks, and more actions may be announced after the party congress. However, an incremental response that shifts the responsibility to overstretched local governments only puts off the eventual day when Beijing will need to orchestrate expensive bailouts that shift vast amounts of bad debt onto central government balance sheets. Without such drastic measures, the party could end up inflicting severe financial pain on hundreds of millions of Chinese whose dreams of economic security are tied to their homes.

Read the full post here:

New Atlanticist

Oct 3, 2022

Why China’s leadership must respond to the country’s property crisis

By Jeremy Mark

The country’s rapidly metastasizing property downturn threatens to engulf heavily indebted developers, homeowners, financial institutions, and local governments.

China Economy & Business

—Jeremy Mark is a senior fellow with the Council‘s GeoEconomics Center. He previously worked for the International Monetary Fund and the Asian Wall Street Journal.

Beijing takes aim at the Global South

Beijing’s Global Development Initiative (GDI) and Global Security Initiative (GSI) will likely feature prominently as foreign-policy priorities during the Twentieth Party Congress, specifically in the Congress Work Report. These initiatives currently appear to be lacking in detail, but they build on existing efforts underpinning Xi’s strategic vision for China’s global reach, in particular the Belt and Road Initiative and the “community of common destiny” concept. As such, we can view GDI and GSI as the next stage in Beijing’s attempt to shape an international system that is more conducive to China’s expanding global interests.

Despite the “global” in their names, GDI and GSI look to be primarily geared towards rallying developing and emerging countries, including those sometimes grouped as the “Global South,” to address the development and security challenges that Beijing claims Washington and developed democracies have created or ignored. China sees regional groupings in which it takes a leading role—and from which the United States and its allies are excluded—such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and BRICS groupings as key conduits for promoting these initiatives and enhancing China’s influence.

Indeed, Xi’s speech at last month’s SCO summit gave us a good look into Xi’s worldview going into next week’s congress. Xi described a world split into two camps: On one side, a US-led group that has produced a worldwide “peace deficit,” among other issues, and another camp—implicitly led by China—that stands for stability and development and can employ the GDI and GSI to address the problems that the US-led camp has created. As such, we can expect that both initiatives will feature strongly in Xi’s foreign-policy vision and efforts to achieve greater influence (including the endorsement, or at least acceptance, of its non-democratic development model) during the congress and beyond.

—Gabriel “Gabo” Alvarado is a nonresident senior fellow in the Council’s Global China Hub.

A big moment for engagement with Latin America

Public and private-sector stakeholders in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) will be watching whether the region’s relations with China will be influenced by—among other factors—the pace and intensity of China’s diplomatic and economic engagement.

For example, LAC metal exporters should stay alert for any signal of change in Beijing’s attitude toward its domestic real estate and infrastructure sectors, which will impact Chinese demand and global prices of copper, iron ore, and more. While official lending from China to LAC has significantly slowed in recent years, a modest rebound would be in the cards if senior Chinese officials were to visit the region again—for the first time since 2020—bearing gifts in the form of financial commitments.

More importantly, however, LAC should take the opportunity to not only respond to Beijing’s signaling, but also proactively shape the terms of bilateral engagement going forward. The region may have more agency and ability to do so, now more than ever, given its critical role in a volatile global commodities market and in an increasingly fragmented and multi-polar world order. Part of this will require countries to continue navigating the still-contentious US-China dynamics, as many of them have masterfully done so far by actively engaging both sides.

—Pepe Zhang is an associate director and fellow at the Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, where he leads the China-Latin America portfolio.

A new high-tech era for China’s military

President Xi Jinping will use the congress to promote technological innovation and military-civil fusion (MCF) as core national priorities for the next five years. Since coming to power ten years ago, he has repeatedly highlighted the importance of technological innovation as a key enabler for other political, economic, and military objectives. During the last party congress, Xi stated that China must “firmly implement the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science… and the strategy of military-civilian integration.” Since then, China’s civilian research and development budget has grown from $279 billion to more than $405 billion, while the Chinese military budget has grown from at least $151.43 billion to more than $229 billion. This has enabled China to develop some of the world’s most sophisticated emerging technologies and weapons systems, including hypersonic missiles and quantum-based stealth detection capabilities that threaten the ability of US nuclear submarines to securely operate in the Pacific.

During this year’s congress, Xi will seek to build on these policy declarations and technology successes through a combination of strategic messaging and personnel shifts on governing bodies like the Central Military-Civil Fusion Development Committee. He will likely elevate senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) technocrats with scientific and technological credentials to national leadership positions and continue to prioritize the party’s and PLA’s roles in developing an “innovation-oriented society.” However, unlike other political drama playing out at this year’s congress, China watchers should not expect any surprises on S&T and MCF policies. Rather, Xi will continue to highlight the importance of innovation and then allow the existing MCF bureaucracy to develop and implement more substantive S&T plans over the next five years.

—Kit Conklin is a nonresident senior fellow at the Council’s GeoTech Center.

The post Your expert guide to China’s 20th Party Congress appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How Niger’s safety net helps its most vulnerable citizens thrive amid crises

Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou and Mamta Murthi — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 13:07:10 +0000

Nearly every country around the world is grappling with more than one crisis: the still-simmering pandemic and continued vulnerability to future health emergencies; historic spikes in food insecurity, exacerbated by supply shortages arising from the war in Ukraine; fragility, conflict, and violence; and the steadily rising tide of climate change’s assaults on the environment.

Neutralizing even one of these crises can be confounding and perilous. Some countries, unfortunately, face them all at once, fighting on multiple fronts. That usually keeps them from attending to the longer-term task of giving people the knowledge, skills, access to health care, and opportunities they need to live out their full productive potential. Investing in resilient, shock-responsive systems is critical to protect human-capital gains and improve resilience to future shocks.

Niger is an example of a country that faces many complex and interconnected challenges. Shocks and crises are increasingly frequent and overlapping in Niger, disrupting efforts to sustain broad-based growth, build human capital, and reduce poverty. Regional instability has led to the displacement of families and the closure of schools, threatening social stability and increasing insecurity; that, in turn, complicated Niger’s efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and worsened the food insecurity that is now affecting more than 4.4 million of the country’s people. Climate shocks have triggered localized flooding, while steady rises in temperatures threaten the more than 80 percent of Niger’s citizens who depend on agriculture for their nourishment and livelihoods.

The government of Niger is determined not to lose any ground in its steady climb to protect and invest in all its citizens by pressing ahead with programs and reforms that are having transformational impact on people’s lives. A great example of this is the Wadata Talaka safety-net program, a partnership between Niger and the World Bank that focuses on poverty reduction, resilience building, and women’s empowerment. The program provides monthly cash transfers to extremely poor households to smooth their consumption expenditures and improve their ability to cope with shocks. It also provides “economic inclusion” support—life and micro-entrepreneurship skills training, coaching, and support to village savings groups—and helps poor children get essential mental stimulation in their early years. Such programs can respond quickly to help poor and vulnerable families prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic: As the virus spread, the program expanded to four hundred thousand households to protect them from the pandemic’s adverse economic consequences. The program is well-placed to assist poor households with rising food insecurity and climate shocks.

A successful response will need to include supporting women and innovation. Because women are the primary beneficiaries of Wadata Talaka, the program is an important vehicle for their empowerment. Evaluations of the economic inclusion program show that in the eighteen months since it began, it improved household consumption and food security. The total income of women beneficiaries has increased (by 60 to 100 percent, much of it from non-farm businesses), and there is strong evidence of gains in their mental health and social wellbeing.

To develop such systems reaching the poorest and most vulnerable, countries will need strong social registries and good enrollment, delivery, and payment systems, often leveraging technology. The government of Niger is fully committed to these efforts. For example, responding to climate change, Wadata Talaka was the first program of its kind in West Africa to use satellite data to quickly anticipate drought hotspots and provide emergency funds more quickly than usual (three months ahead of the traditional response) to help people before they entered the lean season. Research is currently underway to measure the impact of that speed.

At a time when countries are forced to contend with the ebb and flow of shocks like climate change, pandemics, conflict, or food price increases, investments in social protection systems are more critical than ever. Niger’s programs serve as an example of just how impactful such adaptive systems can be.

Ouhoumoudou Mahamadou is the prime minister of Niger.

Mamta Murthi is vice president for human development at the World Bank.

The post How Niger’s safety net helps its most vulnerable citizens thrive amid crises appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Establishing a national green bank with the GHG Reduction Fund will reduce emissions, promote environmental justice

Ken Berlin — Wed, 28 Sep 2022 14:26:59 +0000

The Inflation Reduction Act creates a $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to accelerate the United States’ energy transition—and ensure that the transition is an equitable one. This GHG Reduction Fund is the product of more than thirteen years of legislative efforts to create a single, national, nonprofit green bank in the United States. This legislation is based on the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator Act, which was originally sponsored by Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Edward Markey (D-MA) in the Senate and Representative Debbie Dingell (D-MI) in the House of Representatives.

Of the $27 billion in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, $20 billion will be administered by the Environmental Protection Agency to support eligible nonprofit entities’ emissions-reduction projects. The other $7 billion in the fund will be available to states, municipalities, and tribal governments to implement programs enabling low-income and disadvantaged communities to benefit from zero-emissions technology.

The EPA will make at least two grant awards (the awards may go to the same entity), as the $20 billion fund is split into a $12 billion general fund and a historic $8 billion pot specifically allocated to support low-income and disadvantaged communities.

Senate budget reconciliation rules forced Congress to create a competitive bidding process, but the legislative intent of the GHG Reduction Fund—as made clear by its sponsors—is to allocate $20 billion for a single, nonprofit national green bank that will support a swift and equitable transition to a clean energy economy.

Supporters of green banks and the legislative sponsors of the legislation have pushed for the funds to be distributed through a national green bank for many reasons. The national green bank could ramp up quickly, establish national standards for loans, develop credit enhancement programs, and provide expertise and funding to local communities, state and local green banks, and other financial institutions including community development finance institutions (CDFIs). A national green bank would establish a revolving fund through interest on and repayment of loans, and through the sale of securitized loans.

The legislation requires grant awardees, once capitalized, to make direct investments into qualified, emissions-reducing projects at the national, regional, state, and local levels. Importantly, recipients must also make indirect investments into such projects by providing financial and technical assistance to a wide range of financial institutions.

If capitalized, a national green bank would create an open, inclusive, and ever-expanding network of state and local nonprofit financial institutions. This network would include existing and newly established green banks as well as CDFIs and credit unions that are committed to investing in the clean power platform.

Additionally, the national green bank would be a unique and potent weapon in the fight against climate change, providing low-cost financing, up to 100% upfront loans in low-income communities, credit enhancements, and other forms of financing. Such financing would lower the cost of projects that would otherwise stall due to a lack of upfront capital.

Over time, the national green bank’s investments will lead to a nationwide ecosystem of financing institutions, contractors, developers, and suppliers to drive the carbon-to-clean transition. Several features of the national green bank would allow it to make this transformative impact, including the following:

It delivers environmental and energy justice, and helps enable an equitable transition to a clean energy economy. The national green bank will develop and offer innovative financial products and other initiatives that specifically target the needs of low-income and disadvantaged communities. These products will include community ownership models that allow disadvantaged communities to build wealth; projects that generate substantial energy savings; and investments that replace polluting energy infrastructure, which causes substantial negative health impacts for nearby communities, with clean alternatives.

It is based on the proven green bank model already in place in seventeen states and the District of Columbia. The model for the national green bank has already been tested over the past decade, and it is proven to be financially sustainable and highly effective at bringing private capital into clean energy markets. The twenty-two state and local green banks of the American Green Bank Consortium have collectively used $2.5 billion of public and philanthropic funds to support $9 billion in overall investment in emissions-reducing projects. During that period, green banks have experienced default rates under one half of one percent.

It leverages existing community finance institutions and new green banks to build a national network. The national green bank will seed and provide technical support to state and local climate banks, minority depository institutions, CDFIs, credit unions, and other nonprofits. It will work with cities and states to create new green banks, and provide loan capital, operating grants, and equity support to any community-focused financial institution that is committed to investing in green projects.

It “crowds in” private investment, leveraging public dollars at a rate of up to $10 to $1. According to a study by Vivid Economics, the national green bank will leverage every public dollar to spur up to $10 dollars of total public-private investment over a ten-year period. It will do this by using co-investment and credit enhancements to entice private investors to invest in green projects; aggregating and securitizing loan assets so network members can reinvest their money quickly; and providing equity capital to any network members who are able to immediately borrow against it and increase overall investment.

It makes investment decisions to maximize emissions reductions per public dollar. The same study by Vivid Economics projects that investment decisions based on maximizing emissions reductions per public dollar will allow the national green bank to reduce annual carbon emissions in the United States by 92 million metric tons by its tenth year in operation.

It supports an existing project backlog of more than $21 billion. The national green bank is ready to begin investing immediately. The American Green Bank Consortium has an existing backlog of $21 billion dollars in near-investment-ready projects, including $200 million worth of projects targeting low-and-moderate income communities, nonprofits, public schools, and affordable housing that are shovel-ready today.

Capitalizing a national climate bank would provide a long-term, comparatively low-cost solution to reduce the United States’ reliance on fossil fuels and its greenhouse gas emissions, while lowering families’ energy bills and creating new clean energy jobs. It will play a key role in meeting President Joe Biden’s GHG emissions reduction targets and Justice40 commitments.

Ken Berlin is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.

Global Energy Center experts respond to the Inflation Reduction Act

The IRA of 2022 marks the biggest climate investment in US history, and it will likely send reverberations around the world. Our experts offer their thoughts on its provisions and its consequences.

Meet the author

Fellow

Ken Berlin

Chinese Climate Change & Climate Action

EnergySource Aug 8, 2022

How to build on the Inflation Reduction Act and incentivize truly clean electricity

By Ameya Hadap

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Aug 9, 2022

The balance President Biden needed: How the IRA achieves a durable energy and climate policy

By David L. Goldwyn

The Biden administration and the Democratic Party stand to benefit greatly from the passage of the IRA. The bill’s balanced approach to clean energy deployment and support for the US oil and gas sector makes it a political winner.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

EnergySource Aug 10, 2022

Does the Inflation Reduction Act take the right approach to shoring up clean energy supply chains?

By William Tobin, Daniel Helmeci, and Selin Kumbaraci

Energy & Environment Energy Markets & Governance

Learn more about the Global Energy Center

The post Establishing a national green bank with the GHG Reduction Fund will reduce emissions, promote environmental justice appeared first on Atlantic Council.

A conversation with H.E. Chandrikapersad Santokhi, president of Suriname, chair of the Caribbean Community

ffmendez — Fri, 23 Sep 2022 18:49:27 +0000

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries are on the frontlines of the impacts of climate change, the energy crisis, inflation, and food insecurity. Inflation has reached more than 6 percent, electricity costs for Caribbean citizens are double the average for US citizens, and climate change is expected to cost the region almost $22 billion annually by 2050. Many of these issues were top of the agenda when five Caribbean Presidents and Prime Ministers met with Vice President Harris last week and as Caribbean Heads traveled to New York for the UN General Assembly this week.

How should new initiatives such as PACC2030 address energy, climate, and food security in the Caribbean? What are the priorities for Caribbean leaders even following the UN General Assembly? And what specific opportunities exist for US and Caribbean leaders to expand partnership beyond today and into the next decade?

You are invited by the Caribbean Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center to watch a discussion recorded on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) with H.E. Chandrikapersad Santokhi, president of the Republic of Suriname and chair of CARICOM.

Speakers

H.E. Chandrikapersad Santokhi
President
Republic of Suriname;
Chair
Caribbean Community

Melanie Chen
Board Member and Founder of the Caribbean Initiative
Atlantic Council

Jason Marczak
Senior Director, Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center
Atlantic Council

Ammar Habib Khan: The human, economic, and financial costs necessitate a real conversation about climate reparations

The post A conversation with H.E. Chandrikapersad Santokhi, president of Suriname, chair of the Caribbean Community appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Is US-Caribbean diplomacy finally on the right track?

Katherine Walla — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 20:45:26 +0000

On Thursday, the leaders of five Caribbean countries got together with US Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington to explore ways to improve cooperation between the United States and the region, following up on commitments made at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June. So what did Suriname President Chan Santokhi, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Guyana President Irfaan Ali, Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Keith Rowley, and Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader walk away with? We reached out to our experts from the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center to break down the new commitments from the White House and how this diplomatic relationship can improve in the future.

There were plenty of big promises made regarding the Caribbean at the Summit of the Americas. Is the United States delivering?

One of the important wins of the Summit was the US prioritization of new steps that could be taken to deepen US-Caribbean ties. For too long, US policy toward the Caribbean has ebbed and flowed based on crises rather than forging a long-term strategy for cooperation based on shared interests and priorities. That is now changing, but with much work ahead.

The US-Caribbean Partnership to Address the Climate Crisis 2030 (PACC 2030)—announced at the Summit—is a tangible US response to the immediate and long-term needs of the Caribbean in terms of climate and energy resilience. And the Biden administration is acting on it. US and Caribbean policymakers have met more in the past few months than they have over the past several years—all with a focus on the technical implementation of PACC 2030. While there is a long way to go, new actions announced today by the vice president to help support access to finance, food production, and energy security show that the United States is on the right track.

—Jason Marczak, senior director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

After today’s meeting, there’s room for optimism that the United States is in the process of delivering on its commitments. Initially, PACC2030’s framework was vague, but the action items released from today’s meeting are starting to fill in the blanks. Sending a multi-agency delegation to assess the region’s energy potential is an important first step, as is working closely with the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank to create more finance mechanisms for Caribbean governments. It also shows that the US approach is becoming comprehensive and holistic, bringing together the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Commerce Department, the State Department, the Development Finance Corporation, and others to engage with Caribbean partners.

—Wazim Mowla, assistant director of the Caribbean Initiative at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center

What’s the significance of this meeting, and how has Harris handled her role as point person for the region?

This meeting is an important follow-up to the commitments to the Caribbean made by the Biden-Harris administration at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles in June. The vice president is effectively playing a similar role to that played by then Vice President Joe Biden when the Caribbean Energy Security Initiative was launched in 2009, and her leadership will be critical for meaningful US cooperation in energy security, access to finance, and food security.

—Riyad Insanally, senior fellow at the Caribbean Initiative at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, former ambassador of Guyana to the United States

Today’s meeting is significant when put into a larger context. A longstanding challenge to US policy in the Caribbean is its lack of consistency. The frequent meetings that Harris has had with Caribbean leaders this year seem to remedy this for the moment. Having someone dedicate their time to the region, especially at the vice presidential level, sends a clear message to the Caribbean that these governments and their challenges matter.

—Wazim

How do the White House’s commitments to energy security align with the region’s own energy goals?

The White House’s commitment to strengthening regional energy security by providing greater access to financing, clean energy sources, and infrastructure is well-aligned with the Caribbean’s own goals. The focus on renewable energy should, however, be broadened to take into account the region’s dual-energy reality, with Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago seeking to maximize the potential of their oil and gas reserves in order to help offset global price volatility, finance their own transition to renewables and low-carbon development, and anchor energy security in the Caribbean.

—Riyad

How does the White House commitment to food security build on or complement the region’s own strategy?

Food security is a major issue for the Caribbean and for the larger region as Russia’s war in Ukraine puts pressure on the global food supply. Given the degree to which Caribbean nations rely on food imports, each country is particularly vulnerable to food scarcity as well as price fluctuations. This places an enormous burden on people across the Caribbean. Importantly, earlier this year, the heads of Caribbean countries announced a new plan to decrease the region’s food import bill by 25 percent by 2025. US food-security actions announced today will help in that goal and will also help with the short-term needs of the region. Sending advisors to the region and the quick injection of $28 million in assistance are an important starting point for mitigating the rise in food prices.

—Jason

Is the White House doing enough to address the struggles of the Caribbean finance sector around de-risking?

The White House’s intention to announce a US-Caribbean Public-Private Bank Dialogue is a significant step in trying to address de-risking in the region. The challenge will be ensuring that the most affected Caribbean actors are incorporated into this dialogue. Also, US regulators and US banks need to be brought to the table, as they are often the missing piece in these types of forums. It will also be important that the dialogue is built in coordination with existing US efforts, particularly legislation emanating from the US House Financial Services Committee, which held a hearing on this issue just this week.

—Wazim

The post Is US-Caribbean diplomacy finally on the right track? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Younus in Profit: Millions of homes have been destroyed. Could we rebuild them with solar rooftops?

Atlantic Council — Sun, 11 Sep 2022 20:55:00 +0000

Original Source

The post Younus in Profit: Millions of homes have been destroyed. Could we rebuild them with solar rooftops? appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Experts react: Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan

South Asia Center experts — Fri, 09 Sep 2022 16:34:09 +0000

More than one-third of Pakistan is underwater amid catastrophic climate change-induced flooding. With over 1,300 deaths, millions displaced, extensive damage to infrastructure, and a surge of water-borne diseases—not to mention the country’s existing political and economic crises—Pakistan faces a long road to recovery.

South Asia Center and other experts provide their analyses of the situation:

Erum Khalid Sattar: It’s a crisis of poverty, inequality, and inequity

Mosharraf Zaidi: Super floods will exacerbate and expose the gaps and vacuums that afflict ordinary Pakistanis

The human, economic, and financial costs necessitate a real conversation about climate reparations

The floods in Pakistan have a gigantic human, economic, and financial cost, recovery from which may take years, and has dealt a severe blow to an already precarious economic situation. The floods have largely affected the most underdeveloped parts of the country where poverty and malnourishment are the highest. The floods have affected more than thirty million people, destroyed their livelihoods, destroyed their property, and any sources of income that they had. It is a massive negative shock to the wealth of people in the area, most of whom were already surviving either below or close to the poverty line. The total economic cost of the floods is estimated to be greater than $20 billion, of which roughly half can be attributed to private capital. Effectively, the poorest districts and households in the country have had a negative wealth shock of at least $10 billion, recovery from which may take years. Climate change is real, and it is disproportionately affecting those who have the lowest levels of carbon emissions. It is time for a serious conversation about climate reparations, else any reconstruction which does not account for climate resilience may lead to further more catastrophic disasters in future.

Ammar Habib Khan is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. On Twitter: @rogueonomist.

It’s a crisis of poverty, inequality, and inequity

When a calamity like the present floods in Pakistan strike, the images are awe-inspiring and heart-rending. The power of water is literally made visible, whether in its unstoppable gushing strength washing away bridges and buildings, or standing and flooding vast tracts of land—much of it farmland, crops, and farmers’ houses—as far as the eye can see. The images scream at us to pause, to check, and to change our ways. The climate crisis acts primarily through the water cycle but drawing down emissions quickly enough to avert such disasters is no longer a possibility.

At the same time that we recognize these climatic facts, we also need to recognize that it is the poor and the already marginalized—who may earn their livelihoods through agriculture, forestry and fishing—that are the hardest hit. As such, this is also a crisis of poverty, of inequality, of inequity, of injustice. What do the richer, those both within Pakistan and globally, owe the poor of Pakistan at their moment of crisis? We need to use this disastrous flood to think hard about our approach to development and whom it uplifts and how—NOW—before more are sunk in the way of more waters to come during an era of significant climate disruption.

Erum Khalid Sattar is a program director and lecturer of the Sustainable Water Management program at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and Institute of the Environment at Tufts University. On Twitter: @erumsattar.

Super floods will exacerbate and expose the gaps and vacuums that afflict ordinary Pakistanis

Prior to the 2022 super floods, Pakistani household incomes had been railroaded by record inflation: a product of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s jihad in Ukraine, Pakistani Trumpism under the leadership of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, and China’s increasing fatigue with the rollercoaster ride Pakistan’s military leadership has taken the country on since 2016.

In the coming months, the world economy is not about to catch feelings for Pakistanis. China is not about to magically renew the third-date mood of the early China-Pakistan Economic Corridor days. Imran Khan will not become easier to get along with, and will only escalate his can’t-miss populism. Where does this leave Pakistan?

Sovereign default and war with India tend to be the big picture doomsday scenarios the West contends with. Pakistani elites have been swatting away those scenarios like flies for decades. The 2022 super floods, however, are a more insidious kind of threat. They will exacerbate and expose the numerous gaps and vacuums that afflict ordinary Pakistanis—food security, inflation, disease, and perhaps least measurable but most potent: misery.

Current Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has few friends, even within his own party. How well he does in limiting the misery of Pakistanis after the 2022 super floods may help change that. The odds are long.

Mosharraf Zaidi is a founding partner at Tabadlab and a senior advisor at Albright Stonebridge Group. Twitter: @mosharrafzaidi.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

SouthAsiaSource May 23, 2022

South Asia’s climate crisis: Policymakers need to feel the heat

By Erum Haider

Few things unite South Asia more urgently right now than the climate crisis. We can only hope that policymakers are listening.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Issue Brief Mar 28, 2022

Pakistan: The next great infrastructure connector

By Ali Jehangir Siddiqui

Pakistan sits at the crossroads of the abundant resources of Central Asia and the Middle East, and the lucrative markets of China and India. It therefore has the potential to play a significant connecting role, one that enables broader regional interdependency while boosting domestic economic prospects.

Energy & Environment Energy Transitions

Issue Brief Oct 18, 2021

Recasting Pakistan’s water scarcity challenge

By Fazilda Nabeel

Pakistan’s water situation is at a crossroads. The country has been increasingly cited by international organizations for being on the brink of water scarcity because of its declining per capita water availability. At the same time, the architecture of water resource governance in the country is undergoing a major overhaul.

Civil Society Energy Markets & Governance

Khan in Bloomberg: Deadly floods swamp farms in Pakistan, flushing away crops

Atlantic Council — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 18:51:22 +0000

Original source

The post Khan in Bloomberg: Deadly floods swamp farms in Pakistan, flushing away crops appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Younus in Bloomberg: Deadly floods swamp farms in Pakistan, flushing away crops

Atlantic Council — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 18:50:09 +0000

Original source

The post Younus in Bloomberg: Deadly floods swamp farms in Pakistan, flushing away crops appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Younus in BBC News: Pakistan floods

Atlantic Council — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 18:30:00 +0000

Original Source

The post Younus in BBC News: Pakistan floods appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Younus in CNN: Pakistan calls for global aid as flood impacts millions

Atlantic Council — Mon, 29 Aug 2022 18:16:00 +0000

Original source

The post Younus in CNN: Pakistan calls for global aid as flood impacts millions appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The Inflation Reduction Act sends a foreign-policy message to US friends and foes alike

Andrea Clabough — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 20:36:09 +0000

The expected passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by congressional Democrats has been justifiably lauded as one of the major US domestic policy achievements of the past decade. The bill, which includes $370 billion in major tax and investment incentives for clean energy, has potentially transformative implications for the US energy system and the world’s largest economy.

But what happens in Washington never stays in Washington; it reverberates around the world. This is particularly true when it comes to energy diplomacy and climate change leadership. This bill’s strategic implications for US allies overseas can hardly be overstated.

The European Union (EU), for one, will breathe a sigh of relief with US President Joe Biden’s signature on the IRA for a variety of reasons. Foremost, Brussels (and London) will be delighted to see the United States making good on longstanding assurances that it would lead from the front and take tangible, durable steps to decarbonize its economy at home. The EU has committed to its own Fit for 55 decarbonization strategy and net-zero ambitions; now, having the United States aligned (in word and deed) with its vision opens up potential for greater collaboration on core issues. These could include comparable standards on climate-related financial disclosures, metrics and measurement in areas such as clean hydrogen and carbon capture technology suites, and opportunities for transatlantic private-sector engagement and investment in emerging clean technologies.

But equally important for US allies in both Europe and East Asia is the apparent recognition of the immediate role oil and natural gas will play while the long-term energy transition is underway.

In some aspects the IRA represents a realistic, compromise approach on managing the future of fossil fuels. For example, within the IRA there are requirements for new offshore oil and gas leasing to precede future offshore wind leasing. This provision suggests that US federal development of key areas for offshore oil and gas, such as the Gulf of Mexico, will persist for the foreseeable future even as clean energy rapidly accelerates.

Likewise, the prospect of a major permitting reform bill to quickly follow the IRA raises the prospect of faster, less costly environmental reviews for a range of conventional- and emerging-energy infrastructure, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) pipelines and export facilities. As the European Union looks to reduce its dependence on Russian piped gas volumes by two-thirds this year alone, and eventually wean itself completely off of supplies from Moscow, diversified and widely available US LNG exports are more crucial to European economic security than ever before. Meanwhile, US allies in Asia, particularly Japan and South Korea, are dependent on diversified and affordable supplies of LNG on the global markets. For these major East Asian economies, LNG is not only critical for economic stability, but also to support their transition strategies away from dirtier fuels like coal by acting as a backup for renewables and even blending with hydrogen.

But the implications of the IRA do not stop with Washington’s allies; its adversaries may well receive an equally clear message. Consider China, one of the fastest-growing consumers of oil and gas in the world and the center of many of the world’s clean-energy technology supply chains. The IRA’s heavy emphasis on domestic supply chains as well as new content requirements (for example, in electric vehicle components) in some respects mirrors the recently enacted CHIPS Act, which boosts US semiconductor chip manufacturing. Between both, the Biden administration has adopted a fully economic nationalist posture that will not be well-received in Beijing.

Already, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s controversial visit to Taiwan earlier this month has caused Chinese leadership to halt all dialogue with the United States over military and transnational issues, including climate change. Regardless, the IRA plots a clear path ahead for building and revitalizing US and North American supply chains for the energy technologies of the future, and if complemented with successful permitting reform, the era of Chinese supply-chain dominance of key technologies may begin to recede.

The IRA sends a similarly clear message to Russia—whose weaponization of energy throughout its war of aggression against Ukraine was the final proof that it cannot be trusted either as a reliable supplier of hydrocarbons or a stable actor in a rules-based international system. Combined with other US agency actions, the IRA envisions a US oil and gas industry that will demonstrate world-class efficiency and reliability as it facilitates the scaling of tomorrow’s technologies (notably, hydrogen economies of scale and carbon sequestration/utilization). Part of that is instituting an immediate fee on methane emissions (a long-standing problem for many producers, the United States and Russia included), providing financial support for the US industry to clean up its act, and bolstering regulatory efforts at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior, and other agencies to rapidly reduce emissions of this harmful greenhouse gas. If the United States is able to use the optimal mix of regulation and incentives to prove itself as a leader in high-efficiency, low-emissions fossil fuel production, it can outcompete Russia and others in the years ahead in a smaller, tightening global fossil fuels market—while also reliably providing critical fuel supplies to its allies now.

All that said, the IRA does not represent a total assertion of US international leadership on climate and energy security. A crucial missing piece is that of overseas climate finance: A long-discussed $8.6 billion for the United Nations Green Climate Fund has not materialized here (or in CHIPS). This missing money continues to represent a serious abrogation of US international climate mitigation and adaptation support in the lead-up to this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Indeed, numerous developing economies, particularly India, have hinged their Nationally Determined Contributions toward the Paris Agreement goals on overseas financial support. But without clear US leadership on this front, it is difficult to imagine how many of these rapidly growing economies have any prospect of achieving the far less carbon-intensive development pathways needed to put the world on track to a scenario of only 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming—let alone manage adaptation costs and risks. This is a serious challenge, and one that Democrats may not have time to resolve if they lose control of Congress this autumn.

Yet despite these lingering problems, the IRA represents a significant foreign-policy achievement in addition to its obvious and expansive domestic implications. When it comes to climate, the Biden administration can now confidently say for the first time that America, truly, is back.

Andrea Clabough is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center and an associate at Goldwyn Global Strategies, LLC.

Global Energy Center experts respond to the Inflation Reduction Act

The IRA of 2022 marks the biggest climate investment in US history, and it will likely send reverberations around the world. Our experts offer their thoughts on its provisions and its consequences.

The post The Inflation Reduction Act sends a foreign-policy message to US friends and foes alike appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Engelke and Miller in NBC News

Peter Engelke, Danielle Miller — Thu, 04 Aug 2022 17:23:31 +0000

Deputy Director of Foresight, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

On August 3, Peter Engelke, Deputy Director of Foresight, Scowcroft Strategy Initiative, and Scowcroft Center program assistant Danielle Miller wrote an op-ed for NBC News on the need to reduce US waste exports and work toward a circular economy.

“For too long, the United States has been dependent on other nations, predominantly China and emerging economies across Southeast Asia, to admit, process, and manage American waste streams – particularly plastics….It is in the United States’ long-term diplomatic and economic interest to pursue greater ‘waste independence.’ Doing so would build a more efficient, innovative, and resilient American economy.”

Peter Engelke and Danielle Miller

Staff

Peter Engelke

Global Energy Center Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Technology & Innovation Europe & Eurasia

Staff

Danielle Miller

Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security Scowcroft Strategy Initiative

Climate Change & Climate Action National Security

The post Engelke and Miller in NBC News appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Shahid featured in 9DASHLINE: Bangladesh’s manoeuvring of climate change geopolitics

Atlantic Council — Thu, 28 Jul 2022 15:31:58 +0000

The post Shahid featured in 9DASHLINE: Bangladesh’s manoeuvring of climate change geopolitics appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Reality Check #13: Great-power competition threatens climate disaster response

Evan Cooper and Alec Evans — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 14:17:12 +0000

Key points

The US military, particularly the National Guard, is instrumental in responding to natural disasters in the United States. As climate change increases the severity and frequency of major disasters, the unique capabilities of the military to conduct disaster response will be in even higher demand.
The Biden administration’s shifting focus to great-power competition could draw resources and attention away from improving domestic disaster response capabilities, even as these requirements become increasingly urgent. A significant amount of materiel and units need to be available to ensure that effective disaster response can be carried out domestically. Large-scale deployments abroad could endanger national disaster response and ultimately reduce the ability of the United States to successfully engage in future conflicts.
The administration should link the planned National Climate Strategy to the National Security Strategy, avoid double-counting units in force planning, develop clear guidelines for when military support is needed for domestic disaster assistance and when it can be withdrawn, and ensure that the National Guard is empowered to train for disaster response.

What’s the issue?

Climate change poses a fundamental threat to US national security, according to the Department of Defense (DoD), the Department of Homeland Security, and others. A recent National Intelligence Estimate cautioned that climate change will “exacerbate geopolitical tensions, social instability, and the need for humanitarian aid” around the globe. In addition to heat waves, droughts, flooding, and ocean acidification, the United States will face larger, more frequent, and more severe wildfires and hurricanes.

Although policy makers’ awareness of the impacts of climate change has grown, US leaders pay less attention to the more immediate burdens imposed on the US military by climate-driven disasters. In 2019, the National Guard logged more than 2.1 million days supporting state and federal homeland missions, responding to sixty-three natural disasters—including seven hurricanes or tropical storms, nineteen floods, twenty winter storms, and twelve fires. In 2020 (the most recent year for which data are available), the Guard spent 10.9 million days responding to various emergencies, which included running a large portion of the country’s COVID-19 response. Battling summer blazes has become a yearly routine for thousands of National Guard servicemembers: in the last five years, the Guard’s personnel requirements for fire suppression have increased more than tenfold. In 2021, fires in the western United States required 170,000 person hours of firefighting by the National Guard, up from 14,000 person hours just five years earlier. Military aircraft, which play a substantial role in aerial firefighting, are being called upon more and more often as US wildfires become more frequent and intense. Hurricanes, which are increasing in strength due to climate change, have also required major mobilizations. In response to Hurricane Sandy in the fall of 2012, 24,000 DoD personnel were mobilized, a larger force than the active-duty military of Norway. Even optimistic forecasts predict that hundreds of thousands of refugees will seek asylum in the United States in the face of climate disasters in Latin America; active-duty units have already been diverted to support border control efforts and help process refugees.

Today’s military planners must contend with two potentially conflicting demands: growing requirements for the US military to respond to disasters and the effort to restructure the force for great-power competition.

Amidst the expanding need for military capabilities at home, the military’s responsibilities are expected to expand even further abroad because of climate change. According to a recent DoD climate report, civil authorities will require increased military support from Northern Command and Indo-Pacific Command in response to climate threats in the near future.

Today’s military planners must contend with two potentially conflicting demands: growing requirements for the US military to respond to disasters and the effort to restructure the force for great-power competition. In the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, President Joe Biden made clear that he would continue shifting the focus of US forces to potential conflict with China and Russia, writing “In the face of strategic challenges from an increasingly assertive China and destabilizing Russia, we will assess the appropriate structure, capabilities, and sizing of the force. . . ” The military challenges posed by China and Russia are immense in their own right, but they cannot be accurately evaluated without considering the omnipresent and growing needs at home for US military capabilities.

Why does it matter?

The readiness of US forces and the ability to maintain the security and productivity of the homeland are critical factors for any and all future conflicts. Policy makers plan for both wars and disasters under the assumption that military resources will be available for such efforts. However, these plans fail when expected resources are otherwise deployed. For example, firefighters in Oregon usually rely on air support from military Chinook helicopters, but during the massive summer wildfires of 2021, these aircraft were 7,000 miles away, participating in the evacuation of Afghanistan, leaving the firefighting response dangerously under-resourced. Conversely, hundreds of active-duty soldiers, including mechanized infantry, have been called upon to fight wildfires in California. If the United States was engaged in a major war, military officials would have to make a choice: reduce warfighting capacity by tasking military resources to disaster response or face major domestic disruption by deploying disaster-response resources overseas.

Compounding the challenge of both responding to disasters and overall readiness is the burden posed by the immediate effects of climate change. The US Navy has for years been raising the alarm that their operations are threatened by rising sea levels, with one report identifying 128 US naval bases under threat and eighteen likely to be fully submerged by 2100, including the Navy’s largest base, Naval Station Norfolk. In 2019, 30 percent of the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor fleet had to be relocated, with four of the planes severely damaged, after a category five hurricane hit Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. Almost every building on the base was damaged, and 70 percent had to be bulldozed. A 2019 after action “fire season” review by the Readiness Division at Fort Wainwright in Alaska found that wildfires had prevented critical training from taking place at the base, with two Pacific Air Forces fighter squadrons unable to conduct important exercises in July 2019. And In April of this year, a massive fire consumed 15 percent of the Army’s Fort Hood, requiring thousands of hours of firefighting by military personnel. Less than a month later, Joint Base San Antonio had to be evacuated due to a large fire. Rising sea levels, stronger storms, and increased risk of fires all negatively affect readiness for the military’s primary missions and can harm the military’s ability to provide effective disaster assistance.

What is the solution?

Considering the growing burden from climate change and the challenge of reorienting the military to a focus on great-power competition, policy makers should consider the importance of having units and platforms available for disaster response, as well as ensuring that the US military is prepared to handle a wide range of disaster contingencies. Four specific recommendations are outlined below.

1. Do not discount disaster response in force planning. Policy makers value DoD’s planning and estimates, and these may inform decisions on whether and how to engage in a great-power war. Policy makers should consider that deploying US military units and assets overseas can degrade the ability of the United States to respond to domestic disasters, which can in turn undermine warfighting capabilities. Last year, for example, eight C-130s were deployed for weeks at a time fighting wildfires, flying 945 sorties, with an additional four conventional C-130s required to assist those outfitted to drop fire retardant. Units and assets that could be deployed to fight a major war and are also needed at home to manage the increasing burden of disaster response should not be double counted. Planners should consider changing the primary mission of certain Guard units to disaster response and develop contingencies for replacing those units with civilian volunteers in extreme situations when those Guard units are needed elsewhere. Large-scale deployments abroad, without trained civilian replacements, could endanger national disaster-response and ultimately reduce the ability of the United States to successfully engage in future conflicts.

2. Reemphasize disaster response training for the National Guard. As a central component in US disaster relief, the National Guard should be prepared and empowered to take on the increasing burden of climate-driven disasters. However, changes to the Guard have instead oriented them towards federal missions instead of state-focused disaster relief, with one former J3 Functional Advisory Council Chairman saying in an interview, “The Guard without the State nexus has transformed into the Army Reserve.” Recently, the Chief of the National Guard Bureau affirmed this transformation is purposefully occurring, stating, “We’re here to fight and win our nation’s wars. At the end of the day, that’s why the National Guard exists.” The training priorities for Guard units have commensurately shifted, with emphasis placed on federally required training (behavioral and policy-driven training), requisite readiness periods (such as the Army Combat Fitness Test and Basic Marksmanship), and individual and collective training, leaving little time and money for domestic mission training. This leaves Guard units far less able to conduct important trainings, such as with state’s search and rescue teams, and less prepared for the types of missions they will be increasingly called upon to accomplish.

3. Consider force posture in the National Climate Strategy. The Biden administration had planned to release a national climate strategy this year, but congressional politics appear to have upended those plans. Although policy makers’ focus on the NCS has understandably centered on how the United States can meet the administration’s emissions reduction goals, the document should also include a clear explanation of how the administration plans to structure disaster response and increase capabilities and how those plans align with the National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. In linking the documents, policy makers should review the NATO Climate Change and Security Action Plan, which deftly connects climate change with increased security threats and challenges to operation readiness. The NCS should consider how the US government can best leverage the US military for both climate mitigation and disaster response. Clear expectation-setting at the strategic level will help with planning in both DoD and in disaster-response agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the United States Forest Service (USFS), enabling them to effectively work together to leverage their capabilities. The Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System (MAFFS) program is an example of the importance of interagency coordination: DoD provides the C-130s at the request of the USFS, which manages the MAFFS that the planes are outfitted with to fight fires.

4. Develop guidelines for when military assets can be withdrawn from disaster relief. FEMA, as the lead agency coordinating major disaster response, should develop indicators as part of the National Incident Management System’s National Response Framework for when military assets can be withdrawn from disaster-relief activities and responsibilities handed over to civilian actors. These indicators should be informed by those used in international disaster response and would improve planning and budgeting for disaster-response operations. A streamlined process for rotating units and assets out of disaster zones will help ensure maximum availability for units’ primary missions and reduce costs. The use of 32 USC § 502(f) authorities for National Guard disaster responses, which keep units under state command but are fully funded by the DoD (and can operate under a mission assignment from FEMA, such as during the COVID-19 response), should be limited to avoid the Guard further becoming seen as a standing force that can fully replace the civilian role in disaster management.

Explore NAEI

Assumptions Testing Series

The New American Engagement Initiative’s Assumptions Testing series explores some of the foundational beliefs that guide US foreign policy. By questioning the conventional wisdom, and exposing these assumptions to close scrutiny, the series aims to open a new seam in the policy debate and generate a more lively, fruitful, and effective strategic dialogue – one that is capable of producing a sustainable, nonpartisan strategy for US global engagement.

Reality Check Series

The New American Engagement Initiative’s Reality Checks are short briefs dedicated to exploring a particular policy or set of policies, assessing their efficacy, and, where appropriate, proposing alternatives. Reality Checks are published regularly and tied to the news of the day or derive from NAEI’s Assumptions Testing series. All are succinct and straight-to-the-point. The briefs are designed for busy professionals anxious for pragmatic and timely policy options.

Engagement Reframed Series

The New American Engagement Initiative’s Engagement Reframed policy briefs reimagine and reframe the US approach to the world beyond traditional, narrow notions of US military dominance to fashion an achievable and sustainable form of US leadership in a world of many capable actors.

The post Reality Check #13: Great-power competition threatens climate disaster response appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How to beat the extreme heat

Atlantic Council — Thu, 21 Jul 2022 19:19:30 +0000

HOT OFF THE PRESSES

It’s the new, broiling normal. Europe’s brutal heat wave this week—which notched the highest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom at 104 degrees Fahrenheit—has buckled airport runways and fueled scorching wildfires. It’s also racking up a death toll in the thousands. This is the reality of the changing climate—and it will only get worse from here. Even as they work to reduce carbon emissions, how can societies and individuals adapt to this extreme heat? Our climate-resilience experts bring the light rather than the heat.

TODAY’S EXPERT REACTION COURTESY OF

Kathy Baughman McLeod (@KBMcLeodFLA): Director of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock)

Eleni Myrivili (@leniomyrivili): Global chief heat officer for UN-Habitat and heat advisor for Athens, Greece

Larry Kalkstein: President of Applied Climatologists, Inc. and chief heat science advisor for Arsht-Rock

More than a hot day

The biggest hurdle for civic leaders trying to keep people safe is hammering home the dangers of these heat waves, Kathy says. “We have this nostalgia of summer that is long gone. It is not a hot day: It’s a health crisis, it’s an infrastructure crisis, it’s an economic crisis, it’s an equity crisis. And there are solutions, but we have to acknowledge it for what it is: deadly.”

Research by Arsht-Rock published last year found that heat kills more Americans than any other natural disaster and costs the economy $100 billion per year. And Europe is experiencing many of those same impacts, even though Eleni sees evidence of complacency in Greece. “In the south of Europe we have people who have been used to being in a hot climate so they don’t take heat very seriously,” she says.“It’s hard for them to recognize that right now we are talking about a different type of heat.”

But measuring the hazards of these heat waves, Larry notes, is about more than just numbers on a thermometer. He has been working on categorizing heat waves—as is commonly done now for hurricanes. Factors such as humidity come into play, but also the relative change in temperature. “Heat waves that follow cool periods are more dangerous than those that follow hot periods where we’re acclimatized,” he says. That means you are likely to see more deaths in heat waves that arise in May or June than those that occur in August or September.

Subscribe to Fast Thinking email alerts

How to stay (relatively) cool now

Athens is part of the pilot program for heat-wave categorization. Eleni is anticipating highs around 100 degrees tomorrow, which is borderline but just short of a Category 1 heat wave because it is mitigated by wind and low humidity. “We are going to open the cool [air-conditioned] spaces but not do much more than that,” she says.

Larry was quick to note that Category 1 heat waves are still “dangerous” while the highest level, Category 3, is “catastrophic.” And the best advice is to avoid prolonged exposure. “Most people consider themselves too healthy to be affected by heat,” he says, but that’s a faulty and perilous assumption.

For Athens and Seville, Spain, which are participating in the pilot program, more severe heat waves result in stronger warnings from the government about the need to avoid working outdoors or other kinds of prolonged exposure, along with additional actions to check on the most vulnerable communities. In Athens, Eleni says she works closely with the Red Cross to serve those most at risk.

How to build for a hotter future

“Gray” infrastructure such as roads and buildings currently dominates cities. But city planners should more fully integrate “green” infrastructure, such as parks and forests, and “blue” infrastructure, such as canals and ponds, into urban design. “There’s so much infrastructure being built right now, especially in the Global South,” Eleni says. It needs to be “the right type of infrastructure for our new temperatures.”

The solutions can be surprisingly low-tech and low-cost. Consider Freetown, Sierra Leone, where Chief Heat Officer Eugenia Kargbo is installing reflective shade covers over three open-air markets to protect vulnerable women selling fruits and vegetables in the heat.

In the United States, President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced $2.3 billion in funding for local communities to prepare for heat waves and other natural disasters. And there’s bipartisan support for a heat-wave categorization system in California. “There’s some small evidence that this is transcending the politics” around climate change, Kathy says. “It’s hot. You can’t deny that the pavement is buckling and that airplanes can’t fly starting at 120 degrees… People are living it.”

Watch the full briefing

Heat is killing us—and the economy too

Most people know the knock-on effects of global warming by now, but heat itself is too often overlooked as a destructive force in its own right.

How can Europe prepare for its next heatwave?

Europe’s first Chief Heat Officer and the the first-ever Global Chief Heat Officer, Eleni Myrivili, shares her three approaches in a TED Talk

Cities worldwide begin to name heatwaves

Arsht-Rock is working with international partners to pilot a heat-health warning system that categorizes and names heatwaves.

The post How to beat the extreme heat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Chhibber in Business World: Measuring Vulnerability Through Index And Indian Budget

Atlantic Council — Tue, 19 Jul 2022 16:00:20 +0000

The post Chhibber in Business World: Measuring Vulnerability Through Index And Indian Budget appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Dr. Riaz in Gulf Times: Ravaged by unsparing floods, Bangladesh pitches plan to adapt to climate impacts

Atlantic Council — Wed, 13 Jul 2022 15:57:00 +0000

The post Dr. Riaz in Gulf Times: Ravaged by unsparing floods, Bangladesh pitches plan to adapt to climate impacts appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Europe’s Green Deal plan is Africa’s green finance opportunity

Emilie Bel — Fri, 08 Jul 2022 14:42:59 +0000

Can natural gas and nuclear power be green? “Sometimes, and for a limited period of time,” said the European Parliament on July 6, as part of an ongoing negotiation over the EU taxonomy, a key component of the European Green Deal (EGD). The EGD is the European Union’s ambitious plan to create the first emissions-neutral continent that is simultaneously competitive economically and ready to face the climate change challenge. Europe has committed to reducing its net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. By 2050, Europe hopes to become a net-zero emitter.

Yet, the positive effects of the EGD need not stay limited to Europe. Africa possesses an abundance of opportunities to tap into renewable energy, a dynamic demography, and vibrant economic prospects. What it needs are significant private-sector investments. The EGD’s innovative work on a green bond standard and a taxonomy for sustainable activities is shaking the Western financial world. If seized correctly, it represents an opportunity to foster green finance on the continent.

A new green bonds standard to build on

Since the first issuance by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the World Bank in 2007, the green bond market has enjoyed a remarkable growth rate. In December 2021, cumulative green bonds issuance reached a total of $1.5 trillion, with more than $500 billion issued in 2021.

By leveraging private-sector investment, green bonds have a significant potential to finance climate change adaptation and mitigation projects in Africa. International private investors have an increasing appetite for this finance mechanism, as shown by the successful initiatives taken by the African Development Bank over the past decade since its launch of such bonds in 2013. The West African Development Bank (BOAD) issued its first sustainability bond in January 2021. Yet, much more can be done. Africa represented only 0.26 percent of global green bonds issued last year.

Until now, the Climate Bonds Standard (CBS) developed by the Climate Bonds Initiative has been the reference against which green bonds at the global level are certified. However, a proposed new European Green Bond Standard will go beyond the CBS by refining and expanding the scope of eligible green projects while proving their legitimacy. The EU standard will improve the quality of the external review and increase transparency, making it easier for investors to compare and assess green bonds.

This ambitious framework, currently under negotiation, will be open to European and non-European issuers. The EU’s work on climate finance is innovative and ahead of the rest of the world. If the “Brussels Effect” holds, as it has in other policy areas, such as digital privacy regulation, this framework could become the new gold standard for the green bonds market.

African markets see in green bonds a huge potential to drive green investment to finance climate projects on the continent. Relying on the EU standard, which will be familiar to investors and deemed trustworthy, is an opportunity to channel investment into African Green Bonds.

This will require African countries to acquire a good grasp of the EU standard. The Africa Green Finance Coalition (AGFC) could help. Launched during last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) and inclusive of all African countries, its mission is to ease learning and technical assistance to support financial-sector reforms. AGFC should seize the opportunity to help African countries benefit from this standard.

Leaning on EU taxonomy

The EU taxonomy is a standardized classification system based on clear qualitative and quantitative criteria. It identifies economic activities that are eligible to be defined as “green” by contributing substantially to the transition to net-zero emissions. The objective is to build a reference framework of green activities to drive the private sector’s investment in the green transition.

Until now, only a few countries in the world have developed taxonomies. In Africa, South Africa is alone in having launched one, with its April announcement coming after almost two years of work. By pledging to reach net-zero by 2050, South Africa is setting an example and is demonstrating the continent’s ambition. Other African nations must follow suit.

The EGD will be an important steppingstone in setting up a shared global regulatory framework for green finance. Both innovative and sophisticated, the European taxonomy is influencing jurisdictions that plan to develop their own classification systems for green projects. The EU framework is opening a new path that African countries can adapt to their own markets, creating a taxonomy that investors would already be familiar with, thereby lowering market-entry costs and facilitating green investments.

Crucially, this process must treat African nations as partners, not just recipients of rules handed down to them. Different African countries have a range of abilities when it comes to implementing complex regulations. It’s important that additional regulations do not hinder growth by adding complexity. Leveraging both the EU Green Bonds Standard and taxonomy to foster investment in Africa does not mean importing them directly. They must be adapted and tailored to the African markets with the possible help of the AGFC. This also requires a partnership approach.

Beyond a renewed EU-Africa partnership

European leaders must also address the grievances raised by African nations concerning the impact and potential blind spots of Europe’s climate policy. The EU is Africa’s largest trade partner, and the European Commission’s plan to end fossil-fuel consumption will have serious implications for oil- and gas-dependent exporters, although these will be mitigated by a transitory period when specific gas activities that, for example, replace coal energy generation will be considered as green. New agricultural regulations and carbon taxes proposed in the EGD may have severe impacts on African producers and will likely create new barriers between African and European markets.

Instituting a green agenda without accounting for Africa’s unique climate needs and capabilities can further exacerbate the social and economic disparity between European and African nations. If the EGD’s climate finance opportunities are to work in, and for, Africa, EU ministers must develop a more equitable and accountable approach to partnering with the continent.

This approach is at the heart of the renewed relationship between the African Union and the EU. At their February summit, they agreed on a partnership including an Africa-Europe Investment Package of 150 billion euros to foster private and public investment. A large part of this investment is dedicated to supporting African countries in implementing their climate transition strategies under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

This renewed partnership emphasized that the strategic alliance has to be based on a “clear understanding of our respective and mutual interests and responsibilities,” including in “developing a green growth model.” Africa and Europe could build on the example of the International Platform on Sustainable Finance (IPSF) launched by the EU in October 2019. The IPSF aims to foster private green investments by making international green finance systems more comparable. Kenya, Morocco, and Senegal have joined the platform. Such initiatives will enable the development of a more inclusive dialogue toward common standards on green bonds and classification systems for climate-friendly projects.

African nations must not miss the opportunity to better integrate their perspectives in the formulation of international regulations—which would allow them to drive a larger share of global green finance just as the sector is taking off.

Emilie Bel is a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center, the head of international affairs at the French Insurance Federation, and a consultant for the World Bank.

The post Europe’s Green Deal plan is Africa’s green finance opportunity appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Riaz in Business Day: Bangladesh floods expose weak preparations against climate threat

Atlantic Council — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 17:41:00 +0000

The post Riaz in Business Day: Bangladesh floods expose weak preparations against climate threat appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Riaz in Reuters: Ravaged by floods, Bangladesh pitches plan to adapt to climate impacts

Atlantic Council — Wed, 06 Jul 2022 17:40:00 +0000

The post Riaz in Reuters: Ravaged by floods, Bangladesh pitches plan to adapt to climate impacts appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Renewing transatlantic partnerships with Africa

nfelix — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:00:59 +0000

EVENT RECAP

As the world grapples with pressures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and the war in Ukraine, there is an urgent need for Africa, Europe, and the United States to work more closely than ever before on their common challenges in order to build a more secure and equitable future for all. That was the central message that emerged from a timely forum on a trilateral partnership between the US, African Union (AU), and the European Union (EU), hosted on June 16, 2022 by the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center and Europe Center.

“I hope Africans choose the United States and the EU as their partners of choice,” said US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Molly Phee. The conversation, held in collaboration with the Delegation of the EU to the United States, featured an array of distinguished leaders from Europe, Africa, and North America. It served as a follow-up to the AU-EU Summit held in Brussels on February 17, 2022.

Here are some highlights, ranging from insights on economic investment and development collaboration to lesser-discussed ways in which the United States, EU, and AU can build a new transatlantic partnership.

Watch full event

Security cooperation

The impact of the war in Ukraine was a major area of concern for European, African, and US officials alike. “We are facing, indeed, the greatest global food security crisis of our time,” said Stavros Lambrinidis, EU ambassador to the United States, during his opening remarks. He noted the severe repercussions of Moscow’s aggression and military tactics in preventing the flow of grain exports from Ukraine, especially on African food access. Lambrinidis stressed the need for Europe, Africa, and the United States to “stand with and by each other.”
As Africa continues to deal with its own regional conflicts, French Ambassador to the United States Philippe Étienne pointed to the ongoing transatlantic cooperation in the field of security “where the EU and the United States are very much aligned, especially fighting terrorist groups in the Sahel and unfortunately in other parts of Africa.” He went on affirm the need for the EU and United States to assist African security forces states in counterterrorism training. Étienne highlighted France and Ivory Coast’s new international counterterrorism academy near Abidjan as an example.
Phee discussed the United States’ role in the Horn of Africa, where American troops were recently deployed to Somalia. “The choice of a new prime minister, the recent revision of the AU mission in Somalia, support from outside actors like the United States to reinforce the security architecture, as well as support by US and EU to help Somalia and the Horn deal with the devastating drought that is affecting those countries—all those factors I think create an opportunity that we have not seen in a while for the Somalis to finally begin to move forward.” Phee also made note of developments in Sudan where “inspiring and amazing” leaders in civil society, the professional world, and among the youth are “saying they want their country to be a democracy.”

Hafou Toure Samb, Millenium Fellow at the Atlantic Council, speaking with H.E. Philippe Étienne, Ambassador of France to the United States

Social and youth empowerment

AU Ambassador to the United States Hilda Suka-Mafudze called for greater “recognition of Africa as a global player,” and encouraged further action by AU partners to help strengthen the continent’s health and education capacities.
Themis Christophidou, director-general for education, youth, sport, and culture for the European Commission, outlined EU initiatives to “nurture people-to-people contact” between Europe and Africa including research and university partnerships, cultural and artistic exchange programs, and developing pathways for legal migration. She acknowledged the importance of investing in Africa’s youth calling them “the continent’s greatest asset.”
In a similar vein, Scott Taylor, vice dean and professor for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, addressed the idea of ‘brain drain’ and explained why there should be greater focus on creating mechanisms for African talent, on the continent and abroad, to return to and stay in Africa so that they can contribute their global skills and expertise to local economies.

Revitalizing investment

Senegal’s ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Cheikh Niang described the EU’s 150 billion-euro Global Gateway Investment Package as “an opportunity for Africa and Europe to strengthen development cooperation.” The initiative aims to help Africa accelerate its green transition, digital revolution, health and education systems, and job creation.
Arianna Vannini, principal adviser on international partnerships for the European Commission, explained the importance of this new investment commitment. “It does not aim at simply establishing a trade relationship; it doesn’t focus only on infrastructure,” she said. “It expands to human development, and it involves further dialogue with our partner countries, the local communities, the voice of partners on the ground and in particular the young generations which are such a key resource for a young continent like Africa.”
Abdoul Salam Bello, alternative executive director for the World Bank Africa Group, stressed the need for collaboration on how to implement large investment programs at the continental, national, and local level. He stated that the Global Gateway “will be a very good opportunity” as long as the national development plans of African states are fully considered, and increased attention is given to supporting the continent’s private sector because “that’s where the prospect of growth will be.”
Acting Assistant Administrator for Africa at the US Agency for International Development Diana Putman said that the US government was updating its Africa policy to enhance partnerships with African states and the African Union on issues of economic growth, health security, and climate change. “There is a clear commitment on the part of the different agencies to reset our relationship and make sure that Africans realize we see them as full partners.”

Narayan Felix is a young global professional at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center

The Africa Center works to promote dynamic geopolitical partnerships with African states and to redirect US and European policy priorities toward strengthening security and bolstering economic growth and prosperity on the continent.

Flagship Event Tue, June 28, 2022 • 9:00 am ET

The post Renewing transatlantic partnerships with Africa appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Stoltenberg takes on climate change and Turkey’s blockade of Sweden and Finland as NATO summit opens

Daniel Malloy — Tue, 28 Jun 2022 15:10:24 +0000

Watch the NATO Public Forum

The NATO Public Forum

On the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Madrid, the Alliance’s leaders as well as international security experts will gather for the NATO Public Forum.

Climate Change & Climate Action Crisis Management Defense Policy Defense Technologies

As world leaders arrive in Madrid for a high-stakes NATO summit, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that in addition to the crisis in Ukraine, the Alliance must focus on a more pervasive and no less urgent threat: climate change.

Opening the NATO Public Forum, which is co-hosted by the Atlantic Council, Stoltenberg pledged that the organization will slash emissions 45 percent by 2030, with a net-zero emissions target of 2050. NATO calls climate change “a defining challenge of our time” in its new Strategic Concept, Stoltenberg said, and the Alliance will also release its first assessment of the climate’s impact on security.

“From the High North to the Sahel, climate change is a crisis multiplier,” Stoltenberg said. “More extreme weather devastates communities and fuels tensions and conflicts.” That’s why, he said, “NATO is determined to set the gold standard on addressing the security implications of climate change.”

Addressing Turkey’s hold on Sweden and Finland

Stoltenberg said he will join today’s meeting of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson as they attempt to resolve their impasse. In recent weeks, Turkey has held up the bids of Sweden and Finland to join the Alliance. “I will not promise anything,” Stoltenberg said. “I hope we can make some progress, but let’s meet first, and I can update you afterwards.”

NEW | At the @NATO Public Forum in Madrid, @jensstoltenberg talks about meeting with #Turkey to discuss its concerns connected to #Finland and #Sweden joining NATO.

https://t.co/xhaoEoiY1R #StrongerWithAllies pic.twitter.com/16idv0l70r
— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) June 28, 2022

More broadly, Stoltenberg said he was sympathetic to Turkey’s concerns about the domestic security threat posed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), members of which Ankara has accused Helsinki and Stockholm of harboring.

“We all know that no NATO ally has suffered more terrorist attacks than Turkey,” Stoltenberg said. “Thousands of people have been killed. And PKK and other groups, they are responsible for these terrorist attacks, and PKK is a terrorist organization… To sit down, then, and discuss with Turkey how can we step up, do more together in fighting terrorism, which is a threat to our security, is an issue that is absolutely legitimate and important as part of the accession process and dialogue we’re now having with Finland and Sweden.”

Daniel Malloy is the deputy managing editor at the Atlantic Council.

Watch the full event

The post Stoltenberg takes on climate change and Turkey’s blockade of Sweden and Finland as NATO summit opens appeared first on Atlantic Council.

COVID-19 and tourism in the Himalayan & Indian Ocean countries of South Asia

South Asia Center — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 18:43:27 +0000

The global tourism industry has been devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In South Asia, this impact runs deeply, with the pandemic affecting approximately 47.7 million travel and tourism jobs across the region. Many of these jobs were held by women and vulnerable communities employed in the informal sector.

While in 2019 tourism was among the fastest growing sectors in South Asia, the pandemic resulted in losses of over fifty billion dollars to regional gross domestic product. In particular, the Maldives, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal saw between a 70 and 80 percent reduction in tourist arrivals in 2020. Furthermore, the United Nations World Tourism Organization projects a return to pre-COVID arrival levels in 2023 at the earliest, indicating a long recovery for this critical economic sector.

To explore these issues, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center brought together a panel of experts to discuss COVID-19 and the future of tourism in the Himalayan and Indian Ocean Countries of South Asia.

This program was recorded on June 21, 2022.

Featuring

Dr. Aishath Shakeela
Senior Lecturer
Griffith Business School, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia

Dr. Manoj Samarathunga
Senior Lecturer
Faculty of Management Studies, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

Saurav Raj Pant
CEO
National Study Center, Kathmandu, Nepal

Damcho Rinzin
Chief Tourism Officer
Tourism Promotion Division, Tourism Council of Bhutan

Moderated by

Dr. Rudabeh Shahid
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

Interview May 25, 2022

An interview with the Honorable Prime Minister of Bhutan, Dr. Lotay Tshering

By South Asia Center

The South Asia Center hosts the Honorable Prime Minister of Bhutan Dr. Lotay Tshering to discuss his government’s strategy for economic growth, environmental preservation, and engagement with the international community.

Energy & Environment Indo-Pacific

SouthAsiaSource May 12, 2022

Rising sea levels and the climate crisis in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka

By South Asia Center

The South Asia Center brings together a panel of experts to discuss the effects of climate change on the economy, food and energy security, and migration in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh Climate Change & Climate Action

SouthAsiaSource Mar 22, 2022

How Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are seeing their relationships with India and China

By South Asia Center

Join the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center for a discussion on how Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are understanding the geopolitical nature of their relations with India and China as well as how these relationships may evolve in the coming years.

China Economy & Business

SouthASIASource BLOG

The post COVID-19 and tourism in the Himalayan & Indian Ocean countries of South Asia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Amb Rahmani in The Ecologist: Women’s rights can mitigate climate impacts

Atlantic Council — Mon, 27 Jun 2022 14:49:00 +0000

The post Amb Rahmani in The Ecologist: Women’s rights can mitigate climate impacts appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Amb. Rahmani in Extinction Rebellion: Ensuring women have equal rights to inheritance and property ownership is key to tackling climate change

Atlantic Council — Wed, 22 Jun 2022 19:55:46 +0000

The post Amb. Rahmani in Extinction Rebellion: Ensuring women have equal rights to inheritance and property ownership is key to tackling climate change appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Visualizing the NATO Strategic Concept: Five ways to look at the Alliance’s future

Atlantic Council experts — Thu, 16 Jun 2022 21:08:26 +0000

This section is part of the Transatlantic Security Initiative’s Stronger with Allies series, which charts the course forward for the Alliance in conjunction with the 2022 NATO Summit.

At the upcoming NATO Summit in Madrid, the Alliance’s attention will be on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked and illegal war is transforming how the Euro-Atlantic—not to mention global—community views its security environment. The war is having a profound effect on NATO’s strategy, which is due for a refresh at the summit with Alliance members set to agree on their new Strategic Concept—a critical document that will guide NATO’s political and military development for the foreseeable future

Yet even before the invasion, NATO faced a dramatically changing security landscape. The systemic challenge from China, the existential threat of climate change, the emergence of disruptive technologies, the use of cyberattacks as a core instrument of power, supply-chain problems, democratic backsliding among allies and partners, questions about adequate defense investment, and more all combine to present a complex and unsettling future for the Alliance.

NATO’s forthcoming Strategic Concept will need to grapple with all of these issues while finding commonality among the diverse perspectives and priorities of its thirty members (with two more likely on the way).

So we asked our experts: With so much happening in the global arena, what critical but underappreciated topics will be featured in the Strategic Concept—and how should NATO think about addressing them?

Dual-use technologies

Natasha Lander Finch is a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and former advisor on countering weapons of mass destruction to the US Department of Defense.

The Future of NATO’s Partnerships

As NATO reconceptualizes its role to focus on defense and deterrence while also addressing non-traditional challenges such as emerging technologies and climate change, the Alliance should look for opportunities to strengthen climate and technology cooperation with partners, especially with its closest partner states and like-minded international organizations.

NATO’s network of partners extends to forty states around the world, and it includes some of the most innovative economies and global leaders in addressing climate change. According to the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization Global Innovation Index, eight of the top twenty most innovative global economies are NATO partners. And according to the MIT Green Future Index, which evaluates countries’ ability to transition to a low-carbon future, six of the top twenty states are also NATO partners.

New Partnership Priorities

NATO should identify a set of priorities for cooperation that leverages not only its allies but the strengths of its partners. As evidenced in the data, partner states are international leaders on climate policy, sustainability, and clean technology. They also manage sophisticated markets and innovation ecosystems. They invest heavily in research and development. And they possess world-class human capital. They have as much to offer the Alliance as NATO can offer them in conversations about emerging and disruptive technologies, building climate resilience, science and technology standards, and responding to natural disasters and crises, among others.

The Madrid Strategic Concept will redefine the Alliance’s core tasks. The focus will be on defense and deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic, but cooperative security and relations with partners are still relevant given the myriad non-traditional challenges posed by climate, technology, and authoritarianism. Cooperative security is a means of strengthening the Alliance’s relationships with these global innovation and climate leaders, and leveraging their strengths and experiences to help shape and sustain the rules-based international order.

Lisa Aronsson is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and a research fellow at National Defense University.

Brett Swaney is an associate research fellow at National Defense University focused on NATO, Europe, and the Baltic Sea region. The views expressed are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the US Government.

Threat perceptions across the alliance

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has helped to sharpen the focus on the threat posed by the Kremlin, but it is not the only security challenge confronting NATO. To discern the diversity of allied threat perceptions and how the next Strategic Concept should address them, we studied the security strategies (produced before Russia’s war in Ukraine) from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the United States, and the United Kingdom to see what the word count in each strategy might say about each country’s perceived greatest threats (e.g. words like China and cyber) as well its priorities (e.g. words like Europe/European and NATO).

Geographical concerns abound with Poland rather focused on Russia, Germany very Europe-centric, Italy biased towards the Mediterranean, and France particularly invested in Africa. France and the United Kingdom made the only mentions of the Arctic among the group. China was of some concern to all these allies, with the United States and France most invested in Indo-Pacific security–which reinforces why France was so bruised following the AUKUS agreement, as the region is a definite priority for Paris. Germany made the most mentions of NATO, alliances, and Europe, and its strategy very much reflects the long-held standard of a Federal Republic nestled at the heart of Europe and multilateral institutions. The challenge with the NATO Strategic Concept will be for drafters to reconcile US interest in the Asia-Pacific region against the more local interests of other allies. What role, if any, does NATO have regarding great-power competition in Asia? How exactly does the Alliance square the circle of requirements from the Artic to the Mediterranean?

The regional divergence was somewhat offset by similar perceptions of the primary challenges with cyber issues featuring across the board. Terrorism and societal resilience to terrorist attacks remains a prominent issue. The rise of authoritarianism and concerns about the strength of democratic societies are shared by many, but such concerns are not mentioned by Poland— not a surprise considering its own democratic backsliding. Nearly all the documents, especially the more recent ones, assert the challenge to the “liberal international order” and call for reinforcement and support for global norms and international law. Nuclear weapons proliferation is a worry for some but not all, and migration featured in the documents of countries that expressed more concern with instability in NATO’s near abroad.

Michael John Williams is a nonresident senior fellow with the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and director of the international relations program at the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

Natalie Petit is a graduate student in international relations at the Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

NATO’s Military Capacity Post-Ukraine

Moscow’s war against Ukraine has altered the European security environment. As allies reorient NATO’s focus back toward collective defense in the Strategic Concept, it is time for the Alliance to get serious about defense spending and move the discussion beyond rhetoric and toward measurable contributions to defense and deterrence. As this graphic indicates, though a number of allies already spend above 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, if all allies were to meet or exceed the pledge (agreed to in 2014), they would have nearly one hundred billion dollars more to invest where it’s needed most: readiness, capabilities, and capacity. Not to mention what Finland and Sweden can bring to the Alliance.

Readiness

Unit and individual readiness should be dramatically increased. Expanded NATO training and exercise programs should integrate advanced command and control, logistics support, and military mobility initiatives.

Capabilities

Technology applications should be accelerated, particularly cyber defense, artificial intelligence, autonomy, precision engagement, power, energy, and logistics.

Capacity

NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence in Poland and the Baltics should be expanded beyond battalion strength, leveraging $1-2 billion of US European Deterrence Initiative funding. Naval operations in the High North, Mediterranean, and Black Sea should be expanded, providing NATO with opportunities to increase maritime presence and awareness.

Numerous current and future allies have renewed the 2 percent pledge and already committed substantial new resources to defense. Yet allies have far more capacity to act, and the Strategic Concept must both reassert this pledge and clearly prioritize for a public audience where these new resources should be spent. With a substantial and focused increase in defense investment, NATO could enhance European defense and deterrence by responding to the increased Russian threat with essential readiness, capability, and capacity upgrades. NATO allies must summon the will to respond to the new security environment Putin has created. Spending at the 2 percent level should be considered a floor, and not a ceiling, as we move toward the new NATO Strategic Concept. At this moment, NATO must lay out a clear level of ambition to realign national defense programs to the actual needs of transatlantic security.

Wayne Schroeder is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and a former US deputy undersecretary of defense for resource planning and management.

Attributing Russian cyber activity

It is a common saying among cyber practitioners that there are two types of victims: “those who know that they have been hacked and those who have, but don’t know it yet.” Attribution of an attack through cyberspace requires technical information and the willingness to name names. Attribution can be tricky, though it happens with increasing frequency in hints and outright statements from governments as well as a sea of claims from private sector firms. To establish attribution, analysts might try to determine if the cyberattack looks like—or originated from similar places in cyberspace—as attacks on other targets, if the software program used in the attack shares similarities with others, or even the language and time zone of the program (as simple as that may sound).

While government attribution against other states is more common now than even five years ago, it is still seen as a significant action in part because of the political will necessary to publicly decry offending states. This map identifies the NATO governments that have attributed an incident of cyber espionage and reconnaissance to Russia. As can be seen, the majority of NATO governments have publicly attributed cyber operations targeting sensitive official files and government personnel to Russia in recent years. In particular, the United States, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Poland have all reported breaches, and in some cases a multitude of them. Russia’s continued efforts to spy on the computer networks and classified systems of NATO governments, even when revealed in public, would suggest that the Kremlin is impervious to “naming and shaming” for these activities in cyberspace.

While cyberspace has taken its place firmly with air, land, sea, and space as one of the domains of modern warfare, the ease of connecting digitally across borders, significant role of the private sector, and a host of other factors can make cyberspace a challenging domain to manage. This is especially so when attacks are so common and, seemingly, useful to attackers. Until the United States and its NATO allies either increase the risks or lower the rewards for such attacks, Russia has no incentive to change course.

Paul Gebhard is a nonresident senior fellow in the Scowcroft Center’s Transatlantic Security Initiative and a vice president at the Cohen Group in Washington, DC.

Vortex vector created by liuzishan – www.freepik.com

The post Visualizing the NATO Strategic Concept: Five ways to look at the Alliance’s future appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Zais in Middle East Institute: Realistic regional policy goals for reaching net-zero by 2050

Atlantic Council — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 21:30:00 +0000

The post Zais in Middle East Institute: Realistic regional policy goals for reaching net-zero by 2050 appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Preble on Net Assessment: Competition in the Pacific

Atlantic Council — Thu, 09 Jun 2022 17:45:00 +0000

Former Co-Director, New American Engagement Initiative

On June 9, Christopher Preble and his co-hosts discussed the Pacific Islands on the Net Assessment podcast. Beijing has sought, but thus far failed, to strike a deal with 10 of the islands. Meanwhile, US leaders are promising to devote more time and attention to the region. What is at stake? Can US leaders deliver on their promises to the region?

More about our expert

Former staff

Christopher Preble

New American Engagement Initiative Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security

Defense Policy Defense Technologies

The post Preble on Net Assessment: Competition in the Pacific appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Burrows in New Security Beat: Youth disillusionment as a danger to democracy

Atlantic Council — Tue, 07 Jun 2022 17:59:00 +0000

On June 7, an article co-authored by Mathew Burrows was published by the Wilson Center’s New Security Beat, which discussed the dangers of a growing cohort of youth who feel disillusioned by political failures.

“Failing to examine youth engagement trends may be a serious blind spot— and thus a threat to democracy. It is a question that merits closer examination. When youth disengage, they are often saying they don’t have a high level of confidence or trust in existing economic, political, or social entities,” said Burrows and his co-author, Steven Gale of the US Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Policy, Planning and Learning.

“They may also want to “opt out” because they perceive that their generation is not being heard or treated fairly. Whatever their reasons, youth disengagement will ultimately have negative impacts beyond democratic engagement with potential shockwaves on social stability, the well-being and mental health of individuals (youth and their families), and individual and country-level economic productivity and quality of life.”

The post Burrows in New Security Beat: Youth disillusionment as a danger to democracy appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Sullivan in Arab News: Water security starts with taking care of our oceans

dhelmeci — Mon, 06 Jun 2022 20:23:00 +0000

The post Sullivan in Arab News: Water security starts with taking care of our oceans appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Partner for sustainable pathways

Paula Caballero and Sarah Gammage — Tue, 31 May 2022 22:42:05 +0000

download pdf

Allies

THE CONVERGENCE OF CRISES ON A PLANETARY SCALE collides in ways that translate into exceptional opportunities and responsibilities for Latin America. The vast natural riches of the continent host more than 50 percent of the world’s biodiversity, one-third of its freshwater, and underpin its vital and increasing role as a global breadbasket. The immense landscapes of its forests, watersheds, and coasts also harbor a significant percentage of the nature-based climate solutions needed to shift emission trajectories.¹ Latin America and the Caribbean hold the largest reforestation potential to mitigate climate change.² But there is a narrow window to effect the transformation needed in a region with spiraling, unabated deforestation, where agriculture and ranching drive 70 percent of land-use change, and one of the world’s most important carbon sinks—the Amazon basin— veers toward an irreversible tipping point.³

The United States and Colombia have a unique opportunity to intervene at this decisive juncture through diplomacy, assistance programs, and commitments to trade agreements sanctioning products that cause deforestation. The two countries have long-standing bilateral relations; in the last few years, high-level dialogues have embraced shared agendas across social, economic, and environmental dimensions. Both have sought to increase the collective ambition in climate change negotiations as part of the High Ambition Coalition.⁴ A drive for bolder action has been prominent in their engagement around climate and biodiversity at the recent United Nations (UN) Conference of Parties, the Paris Agreement in Glasgow (COP26), and in the working groups in 2022 supporting the global Convention on Biological Diversity.

Beyond pledges, diplomacy, trade, and official development assistance, investments and efforts must focus on advancing nature-based solutions that shift the greenhouse gas emissions curve while increasing ecosystem resilience, ensuring that the poor, smallholders, and landless benefit. A significant proportion of these emissions (between 35 percent and 60 percent) in Latin America come from the agricultural, forestry, and land-use sectors; these stand at 62 percent in Colombia. Fulfilling commitments under the Paris Agreement will require that Colombia take action across these sectors.

Moreover, as Colombia and other Latin American economies emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic and respond to the challenges it has left in its wake, prioritizing investments in nature-based solutions is crucial to stem the planetary emergency and protect the critical underpinnings of the region’s economies.⁵ According to Fastmarkets, “GDP levels at the start of 2021 fell back to levels not seen since 2011. Latin America lost an entire decade of economic progress.”⁶ In Colombia, gross domestic product fell to levels not seen since 2015.

Yet, as countries seek to stimulate growth and promote recovery, analysis from the UN Environmental Programme underscores that Latin American countries risk missing a unique opportunity to reorient their economies toward just and sustainable growth.⁷ Given the vast natural endowment of the continent and that, on average, 23 percent of the land is under the stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities—28 percent in Colombia—nature-positive, carbon-neutral, and more equitable development trajectories that uphold Indigenous rights must be supported and advanced.

Countries like Colombia that have made significant investments and commitments to meet their climate goals are vital partners for the United States, despite the challenges inherent in achieving economy-wide shifts to lower carbon trajectories. In approving a national carbon tax on fossil fuels in late 2016, Colombia was a frontrunner in climate finance. In 2017, Colombia approved a measure allowing carbon credits to be used against the new carbon tax, permitting entities to offset 100 percent of their tax liability. From 2017 to 2021, $507 million was levied through the carbon tax and disbursed to cover operating costs for the protection, preservation, restoration, and sustainable use of strategic areas and ecosystems through reforestation programs and payment for environmental services.⁸

The Leticia Pact

The Leticia Pact, spearheaded by President Iván Duque and signed by seven South American Amazon countries, also signaled Colombia’s pledge to tackle deforestation and the illegal activities that threaten the integrity of this unique biome. It spoke to the recognition that strong, aligned political will is needed to bring about the necessary structural shifts. Leaders signed a 52-point action plan. However, implementation has been weak, and traditional communities and Indigenous peoples are demanding a greater voice and agency in this pact.

There is a huge opportunity and need for continued leadership to effectively reshape extractive modes of production and align incentives toward regenerative practices, sustainable land management, and biodiversity protection that will deliver multiple benefits across this biome. For example, greening development pathways and eliminating deforestation and environmental degradation through trade regulations that enforce more transparency in supply chains offer historic opportunities to address existing inequalities, promote green growth, and tackle the root causes of entrenched poverty and economic insecurity. These same initiatives can also uphold Indigenous land rights, enable more secure titling, and resource oversight mechanisms that increase transparency and traceability in supply chains, reducing the threats against existing protected areas and Indigenous communities.

Deforestation and decarbonization

However, as the Climate Action Tracker analysis underscores, “Reducing emissions from deforestation is a vital part of Colombia’s climate action, but to fully decarbonize its economy, Colombia would need to focus on other sectors, especially energy and transport.”⁹ Colombia updated its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) target in December 2020, but the NDC demonstrates that it intends to rely primarily on land-based mitigation measures to meet 70 percent of the reductions needed for its updated target. Moreover, despite bold commitments to extend new protected areas through initiatives like Manacacías National Park, deforestation levels continue to rise, and current forest protection policies are not adequately resourced or enforced.

Methane

In addition to ensuring that sufficient resources are forthcoming for forest protection and enforcement, it is essential to strengthen collaboration on other fronts. There is ample room for targeted collaboration around methane. At COP26, the United States, with partners, led a pledge signed by more than one hundred countries to reduce methane emissions by 30 percent. According to the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, there was a record increase in methane emissions in 2021.¹⁰ Colombia is also actively supporting the Global Methane Pledge and has developed a standard for methane emissions introduced in early 2022 that focuses primarily on emissions from mining and extractives.

The Colombian Ministry of Energy and Mines aims to contribute to the pledges made at COP26 to reduce methane leaks by 2.7 million gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. However, in both the United States and Colombia, the leading source of methane emissions is livestock. In Colombia, 32 percent of emissions are from enteric fermentation, so there is a valuable opportunity to collaborate further on this front.

30×30

Similarly, the Americas need to live up to ambitious commitments on restoration and achieve its obligations to protect 30 percent of land and sea by 2030, an initiative known as 30 by 30.¹¹ Colombia is taking courageous steps to develop a new National Biodiversity Law, consulting broadly across different sectors and reviewing other countries’ laws and policies. This will enable it to meet its 30 by 30 promises eight years ahead of schedule, as announced at COP26.

Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Panama announced the creation of the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor initiative at COP26,¹² which would increase the size of their protected territorial waters, creating a fish- ing-free corridor covering more than 500,000 square kilometers (200,000 square miles) in one of the world’s most significant migratory routes for sea turtles, whales, sharks, and rays. The United States has played an important role in spearheading increased protection for the world’s oceans; this is another critical front for enhanced and continued hemispheric collaboration along the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Prior to COP26, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry announced US support for regional initiatives such as Renewable Energy for Latin America and the Caribbean (RELAC), through which countries will endeavor to achieve a regional goal of at least 70 percent renewable energy capacity by 2030. As an active member of RELAC, Colombia has committed to reaching at least 70 percent of renewable energy participation in the region’s electricity matrix by 2030. Both countries should continue to pursue these commitments actively, leading to more ambitious and rapid decarbonization.

Colombia is well-positioned to act as an effective mediator at the September 2022 Conference of the Parties of the Convention on Biodiversity in Kunming, China and the next UN Climate Change Conference, COP27, in Egypt. Colombia has an established global presence as a country that helps bridge positions, and it should leverage its domestic efforts to call for increased action on climate, biodiversity, and finance across these critical agendas.

Looking ahead

The United States and Colombia can play a key role in engaging on the global and regional stage supporting green recovery and nature-positive futures. They can use the commitments and frameworks they have pledged to uphold to shift the balance of fossil fuels and renewables in their energy sourcing. The two countries can potentially follow the route of the European Union¹³ and the United Kingdom¹⁴ in legislating that trade involve only deforestation- and conversion-free commodities such as soy, beef, coffee, cacao, and palm oil. They can support Indigenous guardians of the forests and uphold their human and environmental rights. They can pledge to protect oceans and restore reefs. They can lead with funding that resources their commitments to sustainability at home and in Latin America.

As Colombia and the United States celebrate two hundred years of diplomatic history, the time is ripe to leverage this partnership to boldly address the environmental challenges of our time.

May 26, 2022

Allies: Twenty-seven bold ideas to reimagine the US-Colombia relationship

As the United States and Colombia celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations, it is time to think boldly and creatively about the future of this strategic partnership.

1 “Nature-based Solutions” are defined by the InternationalUnionforConservationofNatureas “actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits,” https://www.iucn.org/commissions/commission-ecosystem-management/ our-work/nature-based-solutions.

2 Bronson W. Griscom et al., “National mitigation potential from natural climate solutions in the tropics,” PhilosophicalTransactionsB(January 7, 2020): 375: 20190126, http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/ rstb.2019.0126.

3 Science Panel for the Amazon, Amazon Assessment Report 2021, United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, November 12, 2021, https://www.theamazonwewant.org/ amazon-assessment-report-2021/; and Thomas E. Lovejoy and Carlos A. Nobre, “Winds of will: Tipping change in the Amazon,” Science Advances 5, no. 12 eaba2949 (2019): doi:10.1126/sciadv. aba2949.

4 “The Republic of the Marshall Islands formed the High Ambition Coalition in run-up negotiations to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to the Paris Agreement in 2015, helping to secure key elements of the deal, including the 1.5C temperature goal, the net zero global emissions pathway by the second half of the century, and a five-year cycle for updating mitigation contributions.” High Ambition Coalition website, accessed February 26, 2022, https://www.highambitioncoalition.org/work.

5 A. Bárcena et al, The climate emergency in Latin America and the Caribbean: the path ahead–resignation or action?(Santiago: ECLAC Books, 2020).

6 “How Latin America lost a decade of economic progress,” Fastmarkets, August 12, 2021, https:// www.fastmarkets.com/insights/how-latin-america-lost-a-decade-of-economic-progress?msclkid=0b6bacb2a96511ecad81cde3d01fb213.

7 Is the COVID-19 economic recovery building a sustainable future? A snapshot from Latin America andtheCaribbean, United Nations Environment Programme, 2021, https://recuperacionverde.com/en/state-of-play-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-may-september-2021/.

8 B. Kelsey Jack, Carolyn Kousky, and Katharine R.E. Sims, “Designing payments for ecosystem services: Lessons from previous experience with incentive-based mechanisms,” ProceedingsoftheNational Academy of Sciences, July 15, 2008, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0705503104 .

9 “Colombia,” Climate Action Tracker, accessed February 25, 2022, https://climateactiontracker.org/ countries/colombia/.

10 “Increase in atmospheric methane set another record during 2021,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, April 7, 2022, https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/increase-in- atmospheric-methane-set-another-record-during-2021.

11 This is a worldwide initiative for governments to designate 30 percent of Earth’s land and ocean area as protected areas by 2030. E. Dinerstein et al., “A Global Deal for Nature: Guiding principles, milestones, and targets,” ScienceAdvancesVolume 5 Issue 4 (April 19, 2019), https://www.science. org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw2869.

12 “COP26: Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama Announce New Protections for ‘Ocean Highway’,” National Geographic Society press release, November 2, 2021, https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2021/11/02/cop26-colombia-costa-rica-ecuador-and-panama-announce-new-protections-for-ocean-highway/.

13 European Commission, “Questions and Answers on new rules for deforestation-free products,” November 17, 2021, https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_21_5919.

14 Government of the United Kingdom press release, “Major shifts in private finance, trade and land rights to protect world’s forests,” Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs et al., November 2, 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-shifts-in-private-finance-trade-and-land-rights-to-protect-worlds-forests.

The post Partner for sustainable pathways appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Deepen conservation partnerships

John B. Gantt — Tue, 31 May 2022 22:41:46 +0000

download pdf

Allies

COLOMBIA IS THE MOST IMPORTANT US ALLY in South America. Our relations include close and strategic cooperation on security, countering narcotics, human rights, and rule-of-law matters. But it is not always perceived how long and valuable our collaboration has been in con- serving nature, biodiversity, and sustainable natural resources, due mainly to active support by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Audubon, Conservation International, the International Conservation Caucus Foundation (ICCF), Rainforest Alliance, Rainforest Trust, The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, and World Wildlife Fund.

Colombia is the second most biodiverse country on Earth. More than 10 percent of all species on our planet are found in this one medium-sized nation. The diversity of birds is especially notable; there are at least 1,900 bird species (the most in the world), from a global total of 10,800. This abundance now attracts growing numbers of birders: The National Audubon Society has helped support the creation of hundreds of miles of bird-watching trails that have attracted considerable numbers of US tourists.

Fundamental to conservation in the country is the extensive natural parks and reserves network: fifty-nine sites totaling 65,000 square miles or 14 percent of the national territory. In the early days of the parks movement in the 1960s and 1970s, the US National Park Service provided vital train- ing and field help to Colombia, including preparing some of the first park management plans. The Peace Corps also assisted with long-term help. The parks included the gems of the system, Tayrona and Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The International Conservation Corps, an affiliate of ICCF, regularly provides teams of volunteer park experts from the United States and Canada to assist with the preparation of park and protected area management, the visitor center, and interpretation plans.

The parks network is still growing. Colombia recently expanded the park at Tatama with help from the private Rainforest Trust, and further expansions are under study at Sierra Nevada and Malpelo, among other sites. The Colombian government of President Iván Duque endorsed the global goal of “30 by 30” (30 percent of all land and water territory under some degree of protection by the year 2030).

Tourism, much of it nature-based, is playing an increasing role in economic development. Foreign visitors grew 300 percent from 2006 to 2019, including large numbers of US nationals. Tourism grew especially fast (8.5 percent per year) after the peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia was signed in 2016. This opened up many rural areas that had been closed due to insecurity. By the end of 2019, the tourism industry employed 1.4 million people and contributed $19 billion to the economy, equal to 3.8 percent of the gross domestic product.¹ Then came COVID-19 and a sharp decline in tourism, but Colombians are already rebounding by focusing on services, security, new infrastructure, and unique landscapes. As Colombians say with pride, Colombia is the only place on Earth where a visitor can sit on a tropical beach (at Santa Marta) and look up to see snow-capped mountains.

US-Colombia park partnerships

The most significant factor in US-Colombian cooperation for conservation has been through USAID programs. As part of its global mis- sion, USAID initially concentrated on issues of industrial growth, infrastructure, and housing. But since the early 1990s, nature conservation, especially in the sense of biodiversity, has been a priority. Colombia benefited from Parks in Peril (PiP), which for seventeen years after 1990, was the most extensive conservation program in Latin America. In partnership with the Nature Conservancy, it aimed to raise “paper parks” to a minimum level of long-term protection and active visitation by the public.

As elsewhere in the region, many parks in Colombia had been proclaimed by the government but not actually protected from inappropriate or illegal development by agricultural land invaders, loggers, illegal miners, and the drug trade. Parks in Peril worked in Colombia over several years to raise park sites to what was called “consolidation,” typically meaning that park boundaries had been marked, a visitor center had been built and staffed, park guards were trained and on duty, and local communities benefited from jobs and tourism income. La Playa, Chingaza, and Cahulnazi were among the parks that PiP helped.

Although PiP has ended, the conservation mission remains critical to USAID and Colombia. The largest such program has been USAID’s Natural Wealth, a multi-million-dollar 2017-2022 program. Working principally in the dry forests of the Caribbean region and the seasonally-flooded freshwater regions of the eastern plains, Natural Wealth has improved the management of parks while strengthening their governance by local communities and Indigenous tribes managing and legally defending their lands.

Colombia has massive potential for nature tourism in public parks and private reserves. Such projects can deliver jobs and prosperity while pre- serving landscapes (especially forests) vital to mitigating climate change. Moving forward, US government agencies, particularly USAID, should continue to find new ways to partner with Colombia on nature tourism projects. US development assistance, NGO support, and public-private partnerships to leverage Colombian investment are crucial to the success of these efforts. The ICCF’s work to strengthen political will for conservation will help facilitate these partnerships and raise awareness among Colombia’s political elite about emerging opportunities in nature tourism and other preservation efforts.

Conservation caucuses

The ability of USAID to support conservation via Natural Wealth and other efforts worldwide is made possible by the biodiversity line item passed each year by the US Congress within the State and Foreign Operations appropriation. This item grew from about $100 million annu ally in the early 1990s to more than $400 million, due mainly to the House and Senate members’ consistent support of the US Congressional International Conservation Caucus (ICC), founded in 2003.

The advantage of a congressional caucus is it allows any member interested in a topic an opportunity to become more engaged and informed, regardless of committee assignments. Of the dozens of caucuses in the US Congress, the ICC is the second biggest, with almost one-third of the total membership of the House and Senate. Its mission is “helping the United States lead public and private international partnerships that provide stewardship of natural resources for habitat and biodiversity protection, poverty reduction, economic development, and regional security.”²

The larger caucuses typically have a 501(c)3 organization affiliated, which arranges events of interest to the members, such as expert briefings, panel discussions, and field visits. The ICCF plays that role for the ICC. Beginning in 2015 with Colombia, the ICCF Group has extended the caucus “model” to more than fifteen foreign countries throughout the global trop- ics. Members attend expert meetings in the capital city, visit parks, and are invited to international events. The ICCF itself does not have any set agenda for conservation: the issues engaged are those raised by the legislative members. In addition to Colombia, in Latin America, the ICCF Group has staff and active caucuses in Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and several islands of the Eastern Caribbean, with further expansion anticipated to Paraguay and Ecuador.

Of these international caucuses, Colombia’s remains the most active and successful. More than forty members belong to the core conservation caucus and a parallel caucus that concentrates on ocean issues. Membership has included the speaker of the lower house and vice president of the Senate. The Colombian conservation caucus has also encouraged regional activism by Colombian members of the Andean Parliament, Amazon Parliament, Leticia Pact, and observer status at gatherings such as the Biodiversity Convention Conference of the Parties. Chiefly through the interest and engagement of these caucus members, the Colombian Congress has adopted the following new conservation laws in recent years:

Approval of 2013 Minamata Convention on Mercury. Led to Colombia’s formal accession to the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
Law for the Protection of Andean Highlands (Páramos). Regulates activities in and around the Andean highlands for the restoration and sustainable use of these integral ecosystems.
Police Code to Fight Use of Mercury in Illegal Gold Mining. Prohibits the use of chemical substances in the irregular removal of minerals.
Plastic Bags Ban, Isle of San Andrés. Phases out single-use plastics in the Colombian archipelago.
Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. Adds the fifth modification to the Montreal Protocol for the ozone layer.
Approval of the Global Green Growth Initiative Project. The Global Institute for Green Growth is established in Colombia as an international organization.

By adding an element of “political will,” the caucus movement engages political elites with conservation issues, encouraging them to take owner- ship of them, potentially reducing dependence on outside assistance.

Colombia is increasingly taking responsibility for and making notable strides toward conserving its natural resources. Still, larger domestic appropriations for national parks and protected areas will be crucial to future progress. The creation of sizeable new protected areas, particularly in the forested zones, is a possibility and should be a priority—as recently demonstrated by Rainforest Trust’s commitment to subsidize the creation of a new national park. There is substantial potential for partnering with US-based NGOs and public-private partnerships for nature tourism infrastructure. In partnership with the US Government and with US-based nonprofits, foundations, and other private-sector actors, Colombia can preserve and lever- age its vast biodiversity and natural wealth for the benefit of the Colombian people and for our shared future.

May 26, 2022

Allies: Twenty-seven bold ideas to reimagine the US-Colombia relationship

As the United States and Colombia celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations, it is time to think boldly and creatively about the future of this strategic partnership.

1 Leonie Rauls, “How Tourism Can Jumpstart Colombia’s Economy,” AmericasQuarterly, June 2020, https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/how-tourism-can-jumpstart-colombias-economy /.

2 ”About the ICCF Group,” ICCF website, accessed March 18, 2022, https://www. internationalconservation.org/about.

The post Deepen conservation partnerships appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Innovate to protect our ecosystems

Sandra Valenzuela — Tue, 31 May 2022 22:41:27 +0000

download pdf

Allies

US-COLOMBIA COOPERATION is often viewed through the prisms of security or economic interests. Yet, bilateral conservation and bio- diversity protection efforts are ongoing and have the potential to become an increasingly important component of our shared agenda. In the 2021 National Intelligence Estimate, President Joseph R. Biden’s administration said Colombia is among eleven countries globally that would be “especially helpful in mitigating future risks to US interests” in terms of cli- mate change.¹ Our two countries are well positioned to work side-by-side to address environmental concerns, protect biodiversity, and safeguard natural resources for the entire region.

Colombia’s protected and conserved areas

As the second most biodiverse country globally, Colombia plays a key role in preserving our planet’s natural resources. The country’s commitment to conservation efforts is reflected in the establishment of its Sistema Nacional de Áreas Protegidas (National Protected Areas System or SINAP), which covers 31 million hectares (ha), equivalent to 15 percent of the country’s territory. The SINAP includes all of Colombia’s protected areas, providing essential ecosystem services to local populations, including water provisioning and regulation.

Protected areas produce the necessary water to generate 50 percent of Colombia’s hydro-energy (estimated at $502 million) and provide drink- ing water for more than twenty-five million people (an annual value of $491 million). In an average year, water provision and regulation services from national parks are expected to add at least $2.3 billion to the gross domes- tic product.²

Troublingly, around 24 percent of Colombia’s freshwater ecosystems show transformations caused by urbanization, agriculture expansion, cattle ranching, and infrastructure development.³ Future water yield will be largely determined by land usage and the impacts of climate change. Data indicates that Colombia will be unable to sustain the hydrological functionality of its watersheds without safeguarding forest, water, and coastal ecosystems via the designation and effective management of key protected areas. This would not only protect biodiversity, but also support ecosystem services such as water provision and climate regulation, enhancing community well-being.

Recognizing this, the Colombian government approved the National Policy for the Consolidation of the SINAP (CONPES No. 4050) in November 2021, aimed at “reducing the drivers of degradation of the natural and cul tural values conserved in the National System of Protected Areas.” However, Colombia’s SINAP faces a significant structural financial gap to achieve its climate and biodiversity policy goals by 2030. Barriers to addressing this gap can be grouped into two interconnected categories—both of which would benefit from a stronger partnership with the United States. The first is the inadequate capacity of environmental authorities to access and sequence funding instruments that the government has or plans to put in place. The second is management inefficiencies due to a limited capacity to develop and implement sustainable land practices and climate change adaptation mea- sures in protected areas and adjacent private lands.

As a staunch supporter of the climate change agenda, the United States could support Colombia’s efforts to preserve natural resources, biodiversity, and cultural heritage through the SINAP. It should also build on, replicate, and expand existing initiatives to support water regulation and provision in Colombia—the two most important ecosystem services. For example, the Nature Conservancy’s Water Funds Partnership help ensure that upstream communities are compensated for protecting the lands and freshwater eco- systems that supply water to cities.⁴ To date, Water Funds has helped safe- guard water sources for sixteen million people in Bogotá, Valle del Cauca, Medellín, Cali, Cúcuta, Cartagena, Santa Marta, and Ciénaga.⁵ It has also contributed to improved water governance among the various Colombian agencies that oversee water security.

Implementing Heritage Colombia

The strategic vision of Colombia’s SINAP 2030 policy was informed by a baseline assessment of finance for protected area management,⁶ recognizing that the system was already facing a $15 million annual shortfall prior to COVID-19. The assessment identified the need for a new financial model to address existing financial challenges.

In 2015, Heritage Colombia (HECO)⁷ was established as a possible solution—an innovative strategy to expand coverage and support the effective management and governance of Colombia’s SINAP and its surrounding landscapes. Led by the Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Development, in partnership with Parques Nacionales Naturales, Patrimonio Natural, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Conservation International, Wildlife Conservation Society, and the World Wildlife Fund, HECO contributes to the long-term conservation of more than 20 million hectares. Following the results-based payments approach of the Project Finance for Permanence (PFP), an initiative from the world of finance, HECO addresses funding gaps by leveraging diverse funding sources and significantly increasing baseline government investments in the initial implementation period. It also builds a portfolio of long-term sustainable financing mechanisms with public and private capital, allowing for the development and financing of conservation policies and programs far into the future.⁸

Given HECO PFP’s vast scope and estimated $1.2 billion cost, implementation will occur in phases. Phase one seeks to secure permanent protection for 8.7 million hectares of terrestrial protected areas and at least 10 million hectares of marine protected areas and their surrounding landscapes.⁹ In its first ten years, HECO PFP aims to attract $100 million in new investment from government, private sector, foundations, and individual donors for four selected landscapes that include more than 500 protected areas. In the next ten years, the PFP would secure new resources from the Colombian government (way above baseline investments), generating the projected $7.2 million needed annually to address the structural financial gap.

The United States can play a critical role in supporting HECO. With over two decades of partnership, the United States has facilitated more than $60 million in investments to promote activities to preserve, protect, or effectively manage Colombia’s natural and biological resources.¹⁰ In addition to providing HECO-specific investments in Colombia, the United States can also leverage its National Park Service experience and partner with Colombia’s SINAP to develop policies and programs for protected area management. These policies and programs could entail planning for the management of conservation areas in relation to ecotourism, capacity building in the “Leave No Trace” methodology,¹¹ workshops on the design and maintenance of paths for visitors and sustainable infrastructure, technical assistance to improve public-private interaction in ecotourism, and climate change assessments for vulnerability management and as a criterion to declare new protected areas.

HECO’s initial interventions to protect and maintain at least ten million terrestrial ecosystems—including its expansion of terrestrial and marine protected areas—indirectly benefit approximately 34 percent of Colombia’s population. The estimated avoided emissions are 8.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) by HECO’s first ten years and 45.9 million tCO2e cumulatively over its thirty-year lifespan. This means that HECO will contribute between 14 and 18 percent of Colombia’s targeted reduction in emissions from deforestation by 2030.¹²

Expanding HECO’s impact

The US and Colombian governments have a strong track record of collaboration to protect biodiversity. They have worked together to mobilize investments and develop financial mechanisms to support protection and conservation programs. For example, the 2004 debt-for-nature swap agreement (based on the US Tropical Forest Conservation Act [TFA] of 1998) helped secure increased resources to combat deforestation, pre- serve biodiversity, promote social inclusion, and enhance governance in protected areas.¹³ The agreement remains active and contributes to the conservation and sustainable management of Colombia’s tropical forests, recognizing that tropical deforestation and forest degradation are growing challenges worldwide.

US-Colombia cooperation also led to negotiating a financial endowment scheme of $10 million, managed by Colombian Trust Fund Fondo Acción(Action Fund), to directly invest $5 million in grants and $5 million in an endowment.¹⁴ Lessons from this experience and other TFA financial mechanisms could be applied to HECO financial management.

Moving forward, the US and Colombian governments could work together to identify and structure financial mechanisms to fund HECO, including green bonds and impact investment funds. Collaboration on this front would contribute to the sustainable financial management of Colombia’s protected areas, supporting environmental services and preserving our planet’s biodiversity. The United States could also aid Colombia’s efforts to establish public-private alliances at the national and international levels to advance sustainability and income diversification for protected areas. Implementing financial mechanisms such as short-term donor support, government budget allocation, taxes, and park revenues could also help achieve a broader, more comprehensive financial strategy.

Increasing investment in productive landscapes surrounding protected areas will require coordination, efficiency, and leveraging private finance and investments from different partners. HECO is well-positioned to be a fundamental strategy in Colombia’s fight against climate change and the conservation of protected areas. And it’s a strategy that aligns with our shared bilateral interests.

May 26, 2022

Allies: Twenty-seven bold ideas to reimagine the US-Colombia relationship

As the United States and Colombia celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations, it is time to think boldly and creatively about the future of this strategic partnership.

1 NationalIntelligenceEstimate:ClimateChangeandInternationalResponsesIncreasingChallengestoUSNationalSecurityThrough2040, National Intelligence Council, December 2021, https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/NIE_Climate_Change_and_National_Security.pdf.

2 Ibid.

3 Luis Germán Naranjo, “Colombia Viva: un país megadiverso de cara al futuro. Informe 2017,” World Wildlife Fund-Colombia, December 2017, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321625989_Colombia_Viva_un_pais_megadiverso_de_cara_al_futuro_Informe_2017.

4 “The Latin American Water Funds,” Latin American Water Funds Partnership, accessed March 20, 2022, https://www.fondosdeagua.org/en/.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 “Maximizing the contributions of Sustainably Managed Landscapes in Colombia for achievement of Climate Goals” (proposal submitted to the Green Climate Fund [GCF] 2021 under final approval), Heritage Colombia (HECO).

8 The latest and most detailed description of the PFP approach and lessons learned can be found in SecuringSustainableFinancingforConservationAreas, World Wildlife Fund, December 7, 2021, https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/securing-sustainable-financing-for-conservation-areas.

9 “Maximizing the contributions of Sustainably Managed Landscapes in Colombia for achievement of Climate Goals” (proposal submitted to GCF 2021 under final approval), Heritage Colombia (HECO).

10 US Embassy Bogotá, “A One-Hundred-Year Commitment to Conservation and Childhood in Colombia,” US Department of State, May 25, 2021, https://co.usembassy.gov/a-one-hundred-year-commitment-to-conservation-and-childhood-in-colombia/.

11 “The 7 Principles,” Leave No Trace, accessed March 25, 2022, https://lnt.org/why/7-principles/.

12 “Maximizing the contributions of Sustainably Managed Landscapes in Colombia for achievement of Climate Goals” (proposal submitted to GCF 2022 under final approval) Heritage Colombia (HECO).

13 “Colombia (04-0429) – Agreement Regarding a Debt-for-Nature Swap to Prepay and Cancel Certain Debt Owed by the Government of Colombia to the Government of the United States,” US Department of State, April 29, 2004, https://www.state.gov/04-0429 .

14 Ibid.

The post Innovate to protect our ecosystems appeared first on Atlantic Council.

South Asia’s climate crisis: Policymakers need to feel the heat

Erum Haider — Mon, 23 May 2022 20:00:30 +0000

In the last days of April 2022, global satellite data warned of an unprecedented heat wave in South Asia. The direct cause of this is human activity–namely fossil fuel emissions in the last century–that have led to dangerous and irreversible global warming and climate change.

Since May, outlets in Pakistan and India–as well as internationally–reported record temperatures, peaking at over fifty degrees celsius (120 degrees fahrenheit) in places as well as dozens of heat-related casualties.

Heatwaves impact the poorest of the poor, and areas prone to drought and intense heat tend to have the lowest development rates. They impact the very old and the very young, too. Pregnant women will go into preterm labor and risk multiple birth complications. All of these are well documented symptoms of intense heat. Whether they will be reported as such remains to be seen. And, although many good policy proposals exist–activists, urban planners, and experts have been warning of this impending crisis for decades–there is a divide between who makes climate policies in the region, and who most suffers the impacts of climate change.

This is yet more true in countries with very high levels of economic inequality and poverty, such as Pakistan and India, where elites have the resources to escape the effects of extreme heat and climate related issues. Politicians and policymakers are unlikely to be waiting for hours without electricity during an outage. They are unlikely to be walking back from school in 120 degree weather. They are certainly not standing at a street corner directing traffic, waiting under a broken bus shelter for a bus that never shows up on time, or making their way to their third job for the day to make ends meet. A comprehensive climate policy is impossible unless people who make decisions listen to those who suffer these conditions.

This summer in Pakistan, one can presume that the government will do what it does every summer, especially in politically important constituencies such as Lahore, Karachi, and rural Punjab: it will try to keep the lights (and the fans and air-conditioners) on using taxpayer money to subsidize oil and gas. It will also direct utility companies such as Lahore Electric Supply Company, Faisalabad Electric Supply Company, and K-Electric (KE) to minimize outages. As Pakistani Finance Minister Dr. Miftah Ismail pointed out himself last month, pumping more money into the system is a temporary fix.

Removing subsidies when summer temperatures are peaking might seem anti-poor. However, subsidies are far more likely to go to the elite: consider K-Electric, the energy company of Karachi, which relies almost entirely on fossil-fuel based power plants. KE prioritizes “paying” consumers over “non-paying” consumers. While this has resulted in better recovery for the utility, the collective punishment of “non-paying” areas amounts to collective punishment of large sectors of poor and middle-income consumers. Some “very high loss” areas are subject to over eight hours of outage in the summer. Any policy that seeks to protect vulnerable groups from energy and cooling costs must therefore ensure that these protections are not captured by high income consumers.

Authorities should consider the following suggestions in order to approach these issues effectively:

In the short-term: Ensuring equitable access to energy and water will be critical. Ideally, this should include capping domestic energy and water use for higher income consumers. This is regular practice in many drought-prone countries such as South Africa and Australia. Outdoor water hydrants and shelters that are accessible and safe to women and children could target low income and water scarce areas in cities. Non-essential use of water and energy should be curbed, especially during peak times.

In the medium-term: Pakistan urgently needs to rationalize fuel and energy consumption while ensuring vulnerable groups are not targeted by outages and fuel costs. This will require creative and difficult solutions: ensuring the lowest-consuming tier of the population is protected while increasing costs for higher income consumers. Fortunately, several policy tools exist–time of day metering, accurate counting of units consumed, and capping fuel surcharges on food and essential goods. Successful implementation of these policies depends entirely on political will to protect the poorest citizens–and avoid elite capture.

Pakistan needs to immediately halt all current and future deforestation. The Ten Billion Tree Tsunami Project, although commendable, is not going to replace old growth forests in the northern areas and the Indus Delta that are critical to mitigating inevitable climate change-related flooding. In recent weeks, several news outlets have reported glacier lake outbursts causing floods in Gilgit-Baltistan that have swept away bridges, roads, and submerged parts of villages. This landscape is changing at an unprecedented rate. Several countries, including the United States, have already committed to domestic and global halts to deforestation at COP26. This means that there are international funds available to support this measure. Equally important is curbing urban deforestation, where trees and parks provide important urban heat sinks, as well as shelter during the daytime.

Pakistan should signal its commitment to implementing climate change policies, including curbing deforestation and investing in renewables. India’s decision to water down decarbonizing commitments at COP26 last year were disappointing to many observers. Both countries stand to benefit from a suite of international aid and trade agreements if they align their priorities. Perhaps most importantly, Pakistan, India, and other South Asian countries impacted by the current heatwave have an important international platform to call for urgent and sweeping reforms for curbing global emissions. They stand to gain tremendous economic benefits if they hold industrialized countries’ feet to the fire–no pun intended–and demand a tangible agenda for climate change reparations discussed at the international forum last year. Committed and forceful leadership is required from the Climate Change and Foreign Affairs ministries.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2021 report came to the sobering conclusion that a century of industrialization-related emissions, driven by the developed world and its impact on climate change, is irreversible. Like much of the developing world, South Asia’s two billion people are at the frontline of communities impacted by the climate crisis. There’s no going back, but it is imperative to protect vulnerable groups.

There are few things that unite the subcontinent more urgently right now. We can only hope that policymakers are listening.

Dr Erum A. Haider is a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center as well as an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies and Political Science at the College of Wooster.

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

SouthAsiaSource May 12, 2022

Rising sea levels and the climate crisis in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka

By South Asia Center

The South Asia Center brings together a panel of experts to discuss the effects of climate change on the economy, food and energy security, and migration in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh Climate Change & Climate Action

SouthAsiaSource May 4, 2022

Pakistan must proactively fight corruption

By Ali Hasanain

As deposed prime minister Imran Khan’s toshakhana scandal continues, one can do worse than to think about a young United States’ concerns about public gifts and corruption.

Corruption Pakistan

New Atlanticist Apr 27, 2022

As the EU courts India on trade, here’s what to watch

By Mark Linscott

Brussels wants to bring New Delhi closer into its economic orbit—but that won’t be so easy.

Economy & Business European Union

Event Recap: “Cooperation in the Arctic: Ways forward in a Changed Security Environment”

Eric Adamson — Thu, 19 May 2022 08:05:33 +0000

On April 28th, 2022, the Atlantic Council’s Northern Europe office, in cooperation with the US Embassy Stockholm, held the conference “Cooperation in the Arctic: Ways forward in a Changed Security Environment.”

Convening as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine entered its third month, the future of Arctic governance was in question. Joint research projects on climate change had been put on hold, diplomatic ties in the Arctic Council temporarily paused, local cross-border trade stopped under economic sanctions, and NATO’s northern most borders were about to be reshaped by the expected Swedish and Finnish application to the Alliance.

Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde stated in her keynote address that “it is still too early to fully comprehend the wider consequences of Russia’s aggression, but there is a before the 24^th of February and an after the 24^th of February—including for the Arctic.” She underlined that “Sweden remain[ed] committed to the Arctic Council as the preeminent forum for Arctic Cooperation” and its partners had an interest in contributing to “sustainable, stable, and a prosperous Arctic.” However, the Arctic’s history of low tension and international cooperation could not be taken for granted. “The global geostrategic situation affects the region,” Foreign Minister Linde said. “The Arctic has resumed its military strategic importance.”

However, even before the war in Ukraine, Arctic governance had been put to the test as the region continued to undergo an unprecedented transformation.

Rising temperatures and melting ice caps had created potential opportunities but also put local societies at risk. Greater access to hard-to-reach resources, such as oil and gas, could grow local economies but increased the risk of environmental disaster. Warmer weather had the potential for year-round shipping but put stress on indigenous livelihoods. Infrastructure development could improve the quality of life for local communities but also be used for military purposes. For every upside of a changing Arctic there was a serious downside.

Given all these challenges, how could Arctic states navigate the changed security environment? The tension between the need for international cooperation and governance, while protecting national interests as great power competition increased, was of central concern. Panelists were split on whether Arctic governance could and should continue as it had before February 24^th or if an Ice Curtain would divide the region into a US-European Arctic and a Sino-Russian Arctic.

The Changing Setting in the Arctic

Arctic Ambassador of Sweden Louise Calais described the Arctic as a “donut,” with the eight Arctic states surrounding the Arctic Sea. Each Arctic state had a sovereign right to their portion of the donut. It was the “donut-hole,” the empty space with growing navigational access, where non-Arctic states had an interest in gaining a foothold in the region and challenging the exclusivity and norms of Arctic governance.

The Ambassador made clear that none of the Nordic states have taken Arctic cooperation for granted—it was a conscious choice. Despite the “Arctic Seven” (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Iceland and, the United States) “temporarily pausing participation in all meetings of the Council and its subsidiary bodies” in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Ambassador believed it was too early to draw any long-term conclusions about the war’s implications for the Arctic.

How Arctic Council projects would continue without Russia’s involvement was a difficult balancing act. Yet, the Ambassador was confident that, with a mindful approach, many projects could be implemented without Russia and that the Arctic Council would reconvene at a future date.

The Arctic Security Officer at the US Department of State, Kathleen Larkin, argued that Arctic “exceptionalism,” the notion that the Arctic is a unique region of peace and cooperation unaffected by global security developments, did not exist and never had. Geopolitical threats simply did not disappear north of the Arctic Circle. Low tensions had been a direct result of a strong, rules-based international order. Now, as Moscow and Beijing sought to reshape the international order, Arctic governance was also being challenged. These changing geopolitical dynamics had recalibrated US policy from cooperation and collaboration towards a greater focus on security and great power competition.

Timo Koivurova, Professor of Arctic Governance at the University of Lapland, argued that the thesis of Arctic “exceptionalism” had been tested since 2014. Important to remember, however, was that there were no real dangers arising from the Arctic itself; there were no clear Russian military objectives for the Arctic in and of itself.

Rasmus Bertelsen, Professor of Northern Studies & Barents Chair in Politics at the Arctic University of Norway argued that the Arctic reflect the rest of the world order. During the Cold War, there was an “Ice Curtain” with very little cooperation between Soviet Arctic and the European and North American Arctic. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Arctic governance reflected American global hegemony. Now, the unipolar moment was coming to an end.

Professor Bertelsen expected the coming global Sino-American polarity to be reflected in the Arctic with an American and European order vs a Russian and Chinese order. The re-establishment of the Ice Curtain was occurring much faster than expected due to a breakdown of the European security order over events in Ukraine. The Arctic Council, the professor argued, “was dead and gone.”

Military Dimensions of the Arctic

From a military-strategic perspective, described Niklas Granholm, Deputy Director of Studies at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI), the Euro-Atlantic Arctic did not stop at 66.33 degrees north but stretched down through the British Isles. For Russia, the nuclear forces on the Kola Peninsula were an existential capability and Moscow had committed significant resources to protect these assets and create a sea-denial zone. Russian naval and military buildup inside the Arctic therefore had affects far beyond the polar circle.

Conversely, Russia’s war in Ukraine had impacted security in the Arctic, said Commander Stefan Lundqvist, Director of Studies & Military Lecturer at the Swedish Defense University. The war had pushed Sweden and Finland towards NATO, with the potential to reshape the alliance’s northernmost border. Moreover, the lack of dialogue on the military and political levels had increased the risk of misinterpretation, unintended escalation, and accidents.

One potential source of conflict was the Northern Sea Route, a heavily fortified and key national interest of Russia. Due to conflicting claims to the route, there was a need to reestablish dialogue from a position of strength, with increased deterrence capabilities and situational awareness. The commander noted, however, that Russia had interfered less in the March 2022 Cold Response exercise than in previous years. There was disagreement on whether this was signaling the intention to maintain low tensions in the Arctic or simply due to a lack of capacity with forces tied down in Ukraine.

In response to increased great power competition in the Arctic, the US, UK, and France had all adapted their Arctic strategies to improve force capabilities and presence in the region, said Anna Wieslander, Director for Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council. The UK, while not an Arctic state, had been playing a more active role as a security provider in the North Atlantic with the West having major interests in safeguarding the GIUK gap, a strategic access point for the Russian Northern Fleet. France, a major European actor but non-Arctic state, had emphasized that any threat to stability and security in the Arctic would affect French interests, such as energy security and access to minerals critical to the high-tech defense sector.

The United States, as an Arctic state and governing member of the Arctic Council, had become increasingly vocal on Russian and Chinese activities and military presence in the region. The US had therefore updated its Arctic strategy, first adopted in 2013, to enhance national and economic security while the Air Force, Navy, and Army had all begun implementing Arctic strategies to improve multidomain operations and deterrence capabilities.

A new security order without Russia was being built, concluded Niklas Granholm.

Adapting Multilateral Formats to the Changing Arctic

It had become clear that the Arctic’s future risked becoming both more complicated and uncertain. Just a few short months prior, Petteri Vuorimäki, Finnish Ambassador for the Arctic and Antarctic Affairs, was a staunch defender of constructive cooperation with Russia in the Arctic Council. As late as December, he had taken part in a productive Arctic Council meeting in Russia. Under current circumstances, however, partaking in such meetings was impossible.

The statement made by the Arctic Seven pausing work was carefully constructed and balanced, with the ambassador remaining a believer in the importance of the Arctic Council and the good it has produced since its establishment in 1996: From groundbreaking reports on the impact of climate change to providing the only format for indigenous peoples to be represented in equal partnership with the other nations involved.

If Arctic nations lost sight of the issues of climate change, environmental protection, sustainable development, and indigenous rights, the region would be completely dominated by security concerns, making life in the Arctic very difficult.

For Marie-Anne Coninsx, Senior Associate Fellow at the Egmont Institute and former EU Ambassador at Large for Arctic Affairs, a dual-track approach towards Russia (i.e. cooperating on issues of shared interest while isolating in others) was no longer an option. Moscow could not be relied on for anything, including cooperation on non-sensitive issues such as climate change.

Moving forward, Ambassador Coninsx saw two solutions for the future of Arctic governance. First was to strengthen cooperation between “the willing” (i.e. Western nations). Second was to adapt multilateral forums and international organizations. With the Arctic Council on pause, there was an opportunity to adapt governance structures to include friendly partners. Additionally, NATO and the EU could no longer ignore security on their Northern frontiers.

In the short- to medium-term, the chance of spill-over from Ukraine to the Arctic was very low, argued Chris Skaluba, Director of the Transatlantic Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council. Russia had little capacity to escalate with forces tied down in Ukraine.

More long-term, the situation had changed completely. Recent statements by the US indicated that “there is no way back until Putin is off the stage.” The longer the current standoff went on, the more fundamental the changes would be for the Arctic. If the conflict lasted another 10 years, for example, the Arctic Council would be “done.”

Ambassador Vuromäki did not agree that everything had changed. Finland still had a 1300 kilometer border with Russia, the Arctic remained existentially important for Russia, and climate change had not disappeared.

Concluding Remarks

The Arctic Council had contributed to the region’s peace, stability, and predictability, said US Deputy Chief of Mission Pamela Tremont. The pausing of the Council’s work had “shaken us to our core,” as the West considered what Russia’s war in Ukraine meant for security structures. Putin could not be allowed use mechanisms such as the Arctic Council to demonstrate that he was a respected leader with status in the world. A clear message needed to be sent to the Russian people over the unacceptability of events in Ukraine and it was simply impossible to go on with business as usual.

“Temporarily paused” was a very deliberate choice of words. It was neither a withdrawal nor an attempt to reconstitute the Arctic Council, but a pause in light of events in Ukraine. The US remained committed to the Arctic Council and would work with like-minded partners to ensure the promotion of indigenous rights and representation, climate research, economic development, and international security cooperation would continue.

This publication was made possible through support provided by the United States Department of State, under the terms of Award No. SSW80021GR3001. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United States Department of State.

The post Event Recap: “Cooperation in the Arctic: Ways forward in a Changed Security Environment” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Rising sea levels and the climate crisis in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka

South Asia Center — Thu, 12 May 2022 21:04:51 +0000

South Asia is abundantly vulnerable to the direct and indirect effects of an impending climate crisis arising from increasing global temperatures. Global warming and climate change disproportionately affect countries in this region, especially given the high population density and dependence on agriculture.

According to the World Bank, during the past decade almost 700 million people–half of South Asia’s population–were affected by climate related disasters such as droughts and floods. These compound the preexisting issues relating to poverty. It is thus imperative that climate adaptation policies take utmost priority in governmental legislation.

In particular, Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka have many low-lying areas which are among the foremost regions bearing the brunt of climate change due to rising sea levels. To explore these issues, the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center brought together a panel of experts to discuss the effects of climate change on the economy, food and energy security, and migration in these three South Asian countries.

This panel was recorded on May 12, 2022.

Featuring

Dr. Athaulla Rasheed
Doctoral Researcher
Australian National University, Canberra

Dr. Asanka Wijesinghe
Research Fellow
Institute of Policy Studies, Colombo

Sirazoom Munira Silvy
Program Officer
Climate Vulnerable Forum
Support to CVF Presidency of GoB

Dr. Kumar Biswajit Debnath
Research Associate
Hub for Biotechnology in Built Environment, Newcastle University, UK

Moderated by

Dr. Rudabeh Shahid
Non-Resident Senior Fellow
Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center

The South Asia Center serves as the Atlantic Council’s focal point for work on the region as well as relations between these countries, neighboring regions, Europe, and the United States.

SouthAsiaSource Mar 22, 2022

How Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka are seeing their relationships with India and China

By South Asia Center

China Economy & Business

SouthAsiaSource Feb 15, 2022

Revitalizing Pakistan-Bangladesh trade cooperation in pursuit of a free trade agreement

By Nida Gulzar

The expansion of cooperation and economic exchanges between Pakistan and Bangladesh is attainable if stakeholders from both sides work together.

Bangladesh Economy & Business

SouthAsiaSource Dec 16, 2021

The world must pay attention to Pakistan’s air pollution crisis

By Dawar Butt

In 2021, Lahore was dubbed “the second megacity with the worst air quality” – only second to New Delhi. But air quality is a country-wide, perennial problem in Pakistan, which as a whole has also been ranked as the second worst country in the world in terms of air quality.

Climate Change & Climate Action Energy & Environment

Southasiasource Blog

The post Rising sea levels and the climate crisis in Bangladesh, the Maldives, and Sri Lanka appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Engagement Reframed #6: US Arctic policy should prioritize environmental protection

Alec Evans — Thu, 12 May 2022 18:50:23 +0000

What is the opportunity?

The effects of climate change are increasing in magnitude worldwide, but nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the Arctic. The region is warming two to four times more rapidly than the global average, upending the stable geopolitical dynamics US policymakers once relied on. Although global warming will bring new opportunities to the area, for example, by opening new shipping routes that could expedite international trade, it also poses a grave threat to the vulnerable Arctic environment. Warming conditions have already put 21,000 species at risk and will impose enormous costs on regional governments in the years ahead. Thawing permafrost could cause radiological disasters and oil spills, and might greatly exacerbate and accelerate global climate change. Therefore, it is imperative that Washington’s Arctic strategy prioritize climate change mitigation and that the United States cooperate pragmatically with other Arctic states toward this end.

Historically, international relations above the Arctic Circle have been surprisingly collaborative, even during periods of global turmoil and interstate competition. In 1952, in the midst of the Korean War and under Joseph Stalin’s direction, the Soviet Union sought to join the third International Geophysical Year, a multinational Arctic scientific initiative. Twenty years later, during the peak of the US bombing campaign in Vietnam, the US-Soviet Agreement on Cooperation in the Field of Environmental Protection of 1972 was enacted. Moreover, during the closing days of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev made significant steps toward establishing an international framework in the Arctic. Not only were these actions vital first steps for regional environmental protection, they also proved that two countries mired in high-intensity competition can still collaborate on environmental and scientific issues.

Why now?

In the last decade, US Arctic policy has increasingly emphasized confrontation with strategic rivals in lieu of cooperation. The most visible aspect of this shift has been the significant expansion of US military deployments in the region, which is itself predicated on the false assumption that the primary reason the Russian armed forces have expanded their northern footprint is to claim newly accessible northern territory, not to protect the vast resource wealth that lies within Russian territory and keeps Vladimir Putin’s regime in power. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine precipitated a sharp regression of international environmental collaboration and scientific exchange that is vital to the health and stability of the Arctic and the rest of the world. The decision to cut off such dialogue was understandable, given the cruelty of the Russian war, but it was short-sighted in that it impedes a candid assessment of how to best safeguard US and allied interests.

In response to Russia’s assault on Ukraine, the United States and its regional partners have boycotted the Arctic Council, an organization at the forefront of Arctic climate protection and research. Moreover, with limited exceptions, international scientific collaboration with Russian researchers has ground to a halt, with hundreds of projects paused or canceled outright. Experts undertaking pressing international initiatives, such as studies on permafrost thawing, cannot obtain irreplaceable data from Russian sources, and Western scientists derive no benefit from Russia’s cadre of climate experts and Arctic resources.

This shift comes at a critical moment for US Arctic territory. Alaska is warming more than twice as quickly as the rest of the United States and is experiencing the fastest glacier loss on the planet. Models predict that the size of Alaskan wildfires will double by 2050 and triple by 2100. Rising sea levels and receding ice floes are threatening traditional food supplies for Inuit communities, and corresponding coastal erosion has forced entire towns to relocate. Furthermore, permafrost thaw is expected to “add as much as $6 billion to the costs of buildings, pipelines, roads, and other infrastructure over the next 20 years.”

US policymakers should not allow Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abhorrent as it is, to impede climate cooperation at such a critical moment.

The costs of climate change will be even steeper for Russia. The country is projected to warm 2.5 times faster than the global average. In 2021, wildfires burned 45 million acres in Russia, an area slightly smaller than the country of Syria. Contrary to statements by Putin, the warming climate will also reduce Russia’s agricultural potential. Moreover, melting permafrost will wreak havoc on Russia’s northerly settlements and infrastructure. According to the Arctic Institute, “By 2050, it is estimated that 20 percent of commercial and industrial structures and 19 percent of critical infrastructure representing $84.4 billion, and 54 percent of residential buildings with a total cost of $20.7 billion in Russia will be negatively impacted by permafrost degradation.” Russian government auditors predict that, by the end of the decade, mitigating the effects of climate change will cost 2-3 percent of the country’s GDP. The auditors argue that “without solving its myriad environmental and ecological problems, Russia will fall short of its ambitious targets to increase life expectancy, improve demographics and boost the economy.”

Warming temperatures in the Arctic could also kickstart a phenomenon that will exponentially increase the rate of climate change. Not only will the thawing permafrost damage buildings and infrastructure, but it will release vast quantities of carbon dioxide and methane as the Arctic warms. Even with low levels of warming, permafrost thaw could release emissions equivalent to those of a medium-sized country. The Arctic permafrost contains 1.5 trillion tons of organic carbon, but researchers are unsure at what rate these gasses will be released, or how different levels of thawing will affect different regions. Russian data and expertise are needed to accurately judge permafrost thaw and evaluate differences between regions. According to one US permafrost scientist, “If you cut off your view of changing permafrost in Russia, you’re really cutting off our understanding of global changes to permafrost.”

Another profound concern is the potential for hydrocarbon and radiological disasters. Each year, western Siberia’s oil and gas pipelines experience 35,000 disruptive incidents, of which about 20 percent are linked to permafrost degradation. In 2020, thawing permafrost in Norilsk caused a fuel leak, which led to a major environmental crisis. Furthermore, the structural stability of several nuclear power plants and radioactive-waste-storage facilities in the Russian Arctic is also threatened by permafrost loss. The Kara Sea is home to more nuclear waste than any other ocean on earth because the Soviet Union dumped nuclear reactors and spent uranium fuel in the area. Although the Kremlin plans to recover some nuclear materials from the Arctic, the Russians will be unable to do so alone. An incident like Norilsk at one of these radiological sites could have catastrophic consequences for countries worldwide.

Policymakers in Washington and Moscow have placed increased emphasis on the dangers of climate change and are beginning to act accordingly. The Biden administration has rejoined the Paris Agreement and set ambitious targets for emissions reduction and climate change mitigation. Moreover, Russia has announced limited emissions reductions and has expressed its willingness to work with the United States on climate issues. It had planned to host an Arctic Council conference on nuclear waste disposal in June 2022, which has since been canceled, and its Arctic diplomats have lamented the lapse in Arctic cooperation. Nevertheless, further cooperation on the Arctic will be necessary if some of the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided—a breakdown in the relationship could badly damage US and Russian interests while further imperiling the rest of the world. US policymakers should not allow Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, abhorrent as it is, to impede climate cooperation at such a critical moment.

How to make it happen

1. Compartmentalize climate concerns. The United States should practice compartmentalization when negotiating with rivals on climate change. Humanity no longer has the luxury of forsaking climate concerns, especially in one of the world’s most environmentally consequential and fragile regions. Fostering a sustainable working relationship with Russia on climate change will be impossible if extraneous factors can undermine indispensable shared interests.

As noted, US and Soviet policymakers made significant strides on environmental and scientific collaboration in the Arctic, even during the most tense days of the Cold War. Since then, the climatic stakes in the region have only grown. The Biden administration was able to bring China to the table and declare sweeping environmental goals last year, despite the growing animosity between Beijing and Washington. A similar model should be applied to US-Russia Arctic relations.

Although it is tempting to tie pre-existing sanctions on the Russian economy to Moscow’s Arctic environmental policies, doing so would undermine the compartmentalization that has facilitated Arctic collaboration to date. US-Soviet Arctic cooperation was only possible during the most antagonistic days of the Cold War because policymakers set their differences aside in recognition of a shared security threat. Therefore, measures to influence Russia’s regional behavior should remain issue-specific.

2. Rejoin the Arctic Council, or ensure continued support for its most pressing initiatives. The Arctic Council has proven to be the foremost player in international climate policy in the region, and it was specifically designed to function in spite of the security differences of its member states. The United States and its allies have far more to lose by boycotting the organization than they stand to gain. Washington should resume participation in the Arctic Council as soon as possible; if this is infeasible during Russia’s chairmanship of the council, the United States should continue its support for the organization’s six expert working groups, or seek to duplicate their activities with regional partners or through other forums. Norway will take over as chair of the council in 2023.

The Arctic Council was responsible for several activities of key import to US Arctic interests. First, the organization was a principal organizer of scientific collaboration that included Russia, most of which has ground to a halt. Second, the Arctic Council created a working group to study radiological sites in the Arctic, create procedures to recover hazardous materials, and craft contingency plans in case of nuclear contamination. The council was set to convene this summer to discuss nuclear waste disposal, but the meeting has been canceled. Third, the organization was largely responsible for monitoring environmental conditions and pollution in the Arctic, and experts fear that without adequate oversight, Russia will be free to conduct harmful activities such as gas-flaring.

Analysts have proposed that the Arctic Council member states other than Russia duplicate the most important organizational projects among themselves, without Russian involvement. In fact, the United States has successfully engaged allies to pursue environmental goals outside of the forum in the past. Moreover, other organizations, such as the International Arctic Science Committee, have continued their operations without Russia since the invasion of Ukraine and could provide an alternative for regional engagement.

However, although this approach would yield more progress than suspending Arctic cooperation entirely, Russian involvement in Arctic climate collaboration is critical. The nation owns more than half of the Arctic coastline, contains the vast majority of the area’s radiological contamination, and samples and data from Russia are indispensable for climate change research. Therefore, the United States should seek to resume its participation in the Arctic Council in 2023 at the latest; Washington should also address the environmental concerns that are normally managed by the council’s working groups with other Arctic states until that point. US policymakers could also work through the Northern Forum, a Russia-based international organization that coordinates efforts among subnational Arctic governments; however, there is no full substitute for national-level collaboration on larger environmental priorities.

In the future, the United States cannot allow its relationship with the Arctic Council to become a victim of security competition. One of the principal strengths of the Arctic Council is its explicit commitment to avoid security issues. Then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo upended this norm by raising security concerns in the forum in 2019, and the United States and its Western partners boycotted the organization in response to another security situation, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If the United States continues to link its security concerns with its Arctic Council activities, the organization’s ability to safeguard the Arctic environment could be critically eroded.

3. Collaborate on radiological and hydrocarbon disaster prevention. The unstable nuclear plants, waste-storage facilities, and underwater disposal sites in the Arctic are a disaster waiting to happen. What’s worse, although the Russian government has proposals to dispose of some radioactive materials, Moscow is unable to do so for every nuclear site without external support. Washington cannot stand idly by as thawing permafrost and increased activity put these structures at risk, nor can it expect to remain unaffected by any ensuing catastrophes.

US policymakers have two options. Ideally, the United States could work through the Arctic Council’s established framework and working groups on nuclear waste disposal. If this is not possible, US policymakers could negotiate directly with Russia, with or without other regional partners, and provide whatever support is needed to prevent a radiological incident. Washington could also partner with a specialized organization like the International Atomic Energy Agency to construct an international strategy for the storage of nuclear waste in the Arctic.

4. Compel and incentivize Russia to reduce emissions. Although Moscow has committed to modest emissions reductions, the country’s plans are insufficient to meet the United Nation’s 1.5-degree warming threshold. Russia is the world’s fourth largest producer of carbon dioxide, and these emissions greatly influence future temperatures in the Arctic. The United States has few levers to influence Russian climate policy, but two options are available for US policymakers.

Encourage allies and partners to implement ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance)-based import restrictions on Russian goods. The European Union has leveraged these against Russia before, and many of Russia’s largest firms increased their sustainability metrics in response. The United States should impose similar restrictions, but it cannot hope to exert as much pressure as the EU, considering the diminutive size of its trade with Russia.

Washington could negotiate a bilateral climate agreement with Russia in a similar format to its recent negotiations with China. The Russian government has expressed its willingness to cooperate with the United States on climate concerns, and, given the gravity of the situation and the level of Russian pollution, the Biden administration should be willing to do the same. Strong enforcement mechanisms, based in part on the Montreal Protocol, should underpin any agreement. If this is not politically feasible at this moment, the United States should work to lay the groundwork for such an agreement in the future.

Explore NAEI

Assumptions Testing Series

Reality Check Series

Engagement Reframed Series

The post Engagement Reframed #6: US Arctic policy should prioritize environmental protection appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Sullivan in Arab News: Nations must prepare for the shocks that war and climate change always bring

lbowen — Sat, 07 May 2022 16:16:34 +0000

Online Event Wed, April 20, 2022 • 11:30 am ET

The post Sullivan in Arab News: Nations must prepare for the shocks that war and climate change always bring appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Africa Center’s 2022 Spring Meeting Dialogues

nscott — Fri, 06 May 2022 17:06:54 +0000

With the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings taking place from April 18th to the 22nd, the Africa Center convened the timely “2022 Spring Meeting Dialogues”, highlighting African views during the strategic gatherings around development matters. The events spotlighted valuable perspectives with key speakers, including Mr. Scott Nathan, CEO of the US International Development Finance Corporation, H.E. Mr. Anatole Collinet Makosso, Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank, H.E. Dr. Situmbeko Musokotwane Finance Minister to the Republic of Zambia, H.E. Mr. Saulos Klaus Chilima Vice President of the Republic of Malawi, Mr. Alphonse Kouagou Executive Director of the World Bank Africa Group II, and Dr. Albert Zeufack Chief Economist with the World Bank Group Africa Group II.

“67% of all of AfDB climate finance goes toward adaptation frameworks, specifically in supporting the development of climate resilient infrastructures.”

“In Congo the people finance all infrastructure projects, of which the same resources will be used to finance development and construction of infrastructure obliging Congolese to face indebtment.”

“We need more private actors, commercial and bankable projects, in order to create sustainable long term solutions through interagency partnerships.”

“Zambia is working very hard on creating conditions that are conducive within the country for the production of electrical motors to be produced internally.”

“The pandemic created an opportunity, presenting the potential to improve our health systems throughout Africa which has shifted the World Bank’s focus on investing in facilities to produce vaccine from the continent.”

“The Ukraine crisis has presented an opportunity to produce wheat and soya products for consumption, and possibilities for export, while there is a downsize in terms of other commodities to replace what revenue is grossly affected.”

“What is clear from the Ukraine crisis is the direct exposure of African economies to the situation is not as deep as it seems, however the global inflation caused by the war is impacting the continent’s economies regardless where urban areas are affected most.”

Find the Spring 2022 Meeting Dialogues recap below!

Watch the full events below.

A conversation with Scott A. Nathan, CEO of the US Development Finance Corporation

A discussion on the 2022 IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings and the economic situation of the African continent in a post-COVID-19 context.

Africa Coronavirus Economy & Business International Financial Institutions

Online Event Fri, April 22, 2022 • 8:30 am ET

A conversation with Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank

A timely discussion on the 2022 IMF and World Bank Group Spring meeting key learnings and the economic situation of the African continent in a post-COVID-19 context and of the war in Ukraine.

Africa Coronavirus Economy & Business International Financial Institutions

Online Event Tue, April 19, 2022 • 9:30 am ET

A conversation with H.E. Anatole Collinet Makosso, Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo

A discussion on the economic situation of the Republic of the Congo on the occasion of the 2022 Spring Meetings of Washington DC.

Africa Coronavirus East Africa Economy & Business

Online Event Thu, April 21, 2022 • 10:00 am ET

A conversation with H.E. Situmbeko Musokotwane, Zambia Finance Minister

A discussion on the 2022 IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings and the economic situation of the Republic of Zambia and the African continent after the historic election of President Hakainde Hichilema.

Online Event Wed, April 27, 2022 • 12:30 pm ET

A conversation with Vice President Saulos Klaus Chilima of the Republic of Malawi

A discussion on H.E. Saulos Klaus Chilima’s vision for Songwe Hill rare earth mine project and global implications, addressing climate change leading up to Cop27, and the digital transformation of Africa.

Africa Climate Change & Climate Action Democratic Transitions Economy & Business

Events

May 6, 2022

A conversation with Alphonse Kouagou Executive Director of the World Bank Africa Group II, and Albert Zeufack Chief Economist with the World Bank Group

Discussion on “2022 Spring Meeting Dialogues”, highlighting African views during the strategic gatherings around development matters.

Africa Civil Society

The post Africa Center’s 2022 Spring Meeting Dialogues appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Video message from Michael R. Bloomberg

elardizabal — Tue, 03 May 2022 15:07:47 +0000

Michael R. Blomberg, Founder of Bloomberg LP & Bloomberg Philanthropies and Chair of the Climate Finance Leadership Initiative (CFLI), discusses environment and climate mitigation cooperation between Colombia and the United States.

On June 1st, the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center published its first book Allies: Twenty-Seven Bold Ideas to Reimagine the US-Colombia Relationship. To view book contents and watch more visual essays, click here.

May 26, 2022

Allies: Twenty-seven bold ideas to reimagine the US-Colombia relationship

As the United States and Colombia celebrate 200 years of diplomatic relations, it is time to think boldly and creatively about the future of this strategic partnership.

The post Video message from Michael R. Bloomberg appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Sullivan for Arab News: Climate change may change the face of trade routes across GCC

lbowen — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 18:33:00 +0000

Read the full article here.

The post Sullivan for Arab News: Climate change may change the face of trade routes across GCC appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How the G7 can fund its clean green plan

Hugo Dixon — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 18:20:02 +0000

This is the second of two pieces on the G7’s vision for a clean green plan. Read the first installment here.

While the West’s vision to decarbonize the Global South and fight Chinese influence is promising, it’s nothing like a green version of the Marshall Plan yet. It needs to be.

First outlined at least year’s Group of Seven (G7) summit, it will only reach its full potential if the West’s leaders make it a priority. Covering geopolitics, climate, trade, investment, and aid, it cuts across multiple government departments—and only the leaders have the capacity to break down the bureaucratic silos inside their governments.

For now, it’s unclear whether the West will show unity of purpose in driving forward its vision, which is comprised of American, European, and British plans. This is partly because the leaders are distracted by Ukraine, and because various actors—especially the United States and the European Union (EU)—have very different approaches to climate policy.

This, among other reasons, is why the G7 must be clearer about what it is trying to do. For example, at the moment, US President Joe Biden sometimes sees Build Back Better World (B3W), the American component of the strategy, as a catch-all infrastructure initiative. But it will achieve more if it is sharply focused on helping the Global South with fast and fair transitions to net-zero carbon emissions. These G7 powers also have vastly different approaches to their own climate policies, with the EU and United Kingdom being the most aggressive, which will make it harder to approach the rest of the world with a unified plan.

Having different names—B3W, the EU’s Global Gateway, and the United Kingdom’s Clean Green Initiative (an idea I helped shape in a pitch to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in March 2021)—doesn’t help either. But the exact name is less important than picking a single one and coordinating more closely under it: The G7 will then be able to sing from the same hymn sheet and motivate all the relevant stakeholders, from politicians and policy makers to financiers and international financial institutions.

The G7 should also think big. The United Kingdom, which has been leading on a deal to decarbonize South Africa and is still president of the 26^th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) until November, is aiming to push decarbonization plans for a few more countries this year. France has proposed that the EU add five more African countries, including Egypt and Morocco, to the list. And Germany, as this year’s president of the G7, has produced a master list with each G7 country being given responsibility for one or more countries in the Global South. Meanwhile, several large emerging countries, including Indonesia and Vietnam, are interested in partnership deals.

This is a useful start; but to be transformational, the plan needs to cover the bulk of the 130 or so countries that make up the Global South over the next few years.

The G7 also needs to be clear what it is looking for: ambitious 2030 carbon-reduction targets and net-zero dates of around 2050. Some developing countries will argue that this is too much of a stretch, rightly pointing out that because they haven’t caused most of the emissions responsible for climate change, it’s not fair to keep them trapped in poverty.

Yet they all signed up to the COP26 Glasgow Climate Pact, which called for net zero targets of “by or around mid-century” and committed them to revisit and strengthen as necessary their medium-term decarbonization plans.

Developing and emerging countries have much to gain from rapid transitions to net zero. Not only will they avoid the worst ravages of climate change, but hundreds of millions of people will gain access to electricity for the first time; millions of lives will be saved each year from lower levels of air pollution; and their industries will be at the forefront of the next industrial revolution. Finally, switching to clean energy will save them money as oil and gas prices soar.

But funding for this grand collective plan remains an issue.

Turning billions into trillions

The Glasgow Climate Pact emphasized the need to take “different national circumstances” into account—and clearly one of the most relevant circumstances for developing countries is that they lack the resources to hit mid-century net-zero targets. Many were suffering from debt loads even before the COVID-19 pandemic; now, they must cope with the higher food and fuel prices unleashed by the Ukraine crisis.

The G7 leaders say they will scale up climate finance from “billions to trillions” to fund their plan. Experts estimate the Global South will likely need one trillion dollars a year for the rest of this decade to make the switch.

But how can the West mobilize such a large amount of money? This is ten times the one hundred billion dollars per year in climate finance the rich countries promised to mobilize for developing countries by 2020—and still have not delivered. They, too, are loaded up with debt from fighting the pandemic, and their finances will take a further hit as a result of the Ukraine war thanks to increases in defense spending and subsidies to cushion their own consumers from energy price hikes.

Still, if G7 countries think outside the box, they can make relatively small amounts of taxpayer money go a long way. They can tap capital from various sources that don’t hit their budgets—private capital, guarantees, and international financial institutions—and thus turn billions into trillions.

But the lion’s share of the investment must come from the private sector and go to private-sector projects. The plan is a huge opportunity for Western investors, companies, and technologists to drive forward green industrial revolutions around the world by leveraging their entrepreneurial skills.

What’s more, Western banks, insurance companies, and pension funds are under increasing pressure to align their activities with the 2015 Paris Agreement. Large numbers of them have joined the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which accounted for $130 trillion in assets as of last year’s COP26. But little of this money is flowing to emerging and developing economies because the risks (such as bureaucracy, corruption, or political conflicts) are too high.

Developing countries can make themselves more attractive to private investment by cutting bureaucracy and corruption, ending fossil-fuel subsidies, introducing carbon pricing, restructuring bankrupt power utilities, and so forth. Meanwhile, Western governments can absorb some of the remaining risks themselves.

Rich countries have traditionally helped developing countries through grants or cheap loans. But guaranteeing private investments—something the EU and United Kingdom have promised to do—would be a better bet.

Multilateral multipliers

The West can also mobilize the multilateral development banks (MDBs), led by the World Bank, which have huge expertise in dealing with developing countries but haven’t yet been adequately focused on climate change. Nor have they worked sufficiently with the private sector.

Routing funds through them can be extremely cost-effective. They operate on the principle of “callable capital,” meaning their shareholders (the biggest of which are Western governments) put in a small fraction of their capital with the rest supplied only if there are losses. The MDBs can also leverage their capital by borrowing and they, too, can crowd in the private investors to work with them on common projects.

Now, G7 countries need to use their controlling shareholdings in most of the MDBs to give them a new climate-focused mission by devoting more of their resources to green projects. They should also top up the capital of those institutions, showing enthusiasm for the task.

Further sources of funding which don’t hit rich countries’ budgets are the International Monetary Fund’s “special drawing rights” (SDRs). These are something akin to global money-printing: While SDRs aren’t cash, they can be converted into hard currency. Last year, the IMF issued $650 billion in SDRs to its members in response to the pandemic. This followed the issue of $250 billion during the global financial crisis.

The snag here is that most SDRs have gone to rich countries that don’t need them, because the amounts are based on a country’s contribution to the IMF. That’s why the organization is working on a plan to channel $45 billion of the rich countries’ excess SDRs into a trust to help countries build resilience to climate change, among other shocks. But this is not nearly ambitious enough: The West should think ten times that number. After all, rich countries already have about $500 billion in SDRs that they don’t need.

Critics might say there is no magic money tree. Even though guarantees, callable capital, and SDRs don’t hit government budgets immediately, they could do so in the future; these are so-called “off-balance-sheet liabilities.” While that’s true, they pale in comparison to the off-balance-sheet liabilities that the West is running by not tackling climate change decisively—and by reacting too late to the threat from China.

The West has the basis of a clean green plan which not only helps save the planet but also has huge geostrategic benefits. But it will only achieve its potential if it shows ambition and unity of purpose while nailing down exactly where the money will come from.

Hugo Dixon is a journalist, campaigner and entrepreneur. A version of this article was published by RUSI.

The post How the G7 can fund its clean green plan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How Putin made the case for the G7’s clean green plan

Hugo Dixon — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 18:18:25 +0000

This is the first of two pieces on the G7’s vision for a clean green plan. Read the second installment here.

Imagine a policy that simultaneously turns the screws on Russia, sends a powerful message to China not to flex its muscles, and helps save the planet. It sounds like snake oil—but the West already has the bare bones of such a policy.

Think of it as a green “Marshall Plan,” or a green alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the massive infrastructure project launched in 2013. The Group of Seven (G7) large industrial nations communicated their vision for this loosely coordinated strategy at their summit last June with an alphabet soup of acronyms.

Its components include the United States’ Build Back Better World (B3W), the United Kingdom’s Clean Green Initiative (CGI)—which I helped shape with a proposal to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in March 2021—and the European Union’s Global Gateway. Collectively, it is designed to help the Global South (in Asia, Africa, and Latin America) decarbonize their economies rapidly, fighting climate change while preventing them from falling into China’s orbit.

Now, the G7 needs to turn its vision into reality to respond to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which has highlighted European dependence on Russian energy. While it’s unclear whether the West will show unity of purpose in driving this plan forward, or if it can mobilize the trillions of dollars in private capital needed to fund it, its geostrategic and planetary rationale is undeniable.

First, it broadens the anti-Russia coalition to include more of the Global South. While rich liberal democracies have united to oppose Putin’s invasion, many poorer countries have been reluctant to condemn it. The war and ensuing sanctions have already jacked up global energy and grain prices, threatening massive hardship for any poor country that is a net importer of these basic commodities.

The embryonic green Marshall Plan speaks directly to two of the Global South’s main needs: to develop its economies and avoid the worst ravages of climate change.

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine makes this plan doubly relevant. Developing and emerging countries desperately need cheaper alternatives to hydrocarbons, but their already rickety finances have taken a further clobbering, so they have little money to invest in renewable energy. The West needs to encourage private capital to flow by targeted financial engineering.

What’s more, it will be hard to cut off Putin’s source of income so long as he sells hydrocarbons to the Global South. While the West could try to bully poor countries into ditching Russia, it would be more effective to help them meet their energy needs in an alternative, cleaner way.

Finally, some emerging countries may be able to produce renewable energy not just for themselves, but also for the West. For example, North African countries are particularly well placed to send clean energy across the Mediterranean and help the EU wean itself off Russian gas.

Countering China

With Washington concerned about Beijing helping Moscow evade sanctions, or supplying it with military equipment, it’s looking to send a powerful message.

But the effectiveness of any economic threats to Beijing will depend on how big a coalition the United States can muster. Chinese President Xi Jinping will calculate that the rest of the West will be reluctant to hit China with sanctions, given how much Western economies depend on trade with his country (China’s economy is ten times the size of Russia’s—and the gap is growing). Xi will also be comforted by the fact that China has developed deep economic and diplomatic ties with large chunks of the developing world through the BRI.

But if the West builds up alternative suppliers of goods and raw materials such a rare earths in the Global South, it will cut its dependence on Chinese imports. Then, Xi won’t be able to blackmail it the way Putin has blackmailed the EU through the bloc’s dependence on Russian gas.

Although China got a head start, the BRI has been losing momentum. Chinese investments into BRI nations, which peaked at $125 billion in 2015, fell to $47 billion in 2020. Recipient countries are finding it hard to service their debts to Beijing. Meanwhile, 35 percent of BRI projects are struggling with corruption, labor violations, environmental pollution, and public protests, according to a recent survey.

This means the West can still catch up. The G7 set out various principles to guide its plan, many of which stand in stark contrast to the BRI: It’s a values-driven vision providing for transparency and sustainability, and a market-led approach instead of China’s reliance on loans from state-owned banks.

The emphasis on harnessing private-sector finance and business is the G7 plan’s competitive edge over the BRI. Meanwhile, the focus on transparency could bring big governance benefits to developing and emerging countries (although some governments in the Global South may balk at adopting this principle).

A clean, green planet

A healthier planet, of course, would be the plan’s other chief benefit. The core idea is to help the Global South make fast and fair transitions to net-zero carbon emissions through partnerships with individual countries, often known as “country-led platforms.” Carbon-intensive industries would be rapidly shuttered and clean ones created, while workers in old industries would be retrained so they could benefit from the transition.

South Africa, a coal-dominated economy, signed the first deal along these lines last year. The United Kingdom, France, Germany, the United States, and the EU agreed to provide it with an initial $8.5 billion in concessional finance—with the idea that much more private capital would flow in. South Africa also announced a net-zero target of 2050, making it one of the few large emerging markets with such an early target (China and India, for example, have set targets of 2060 and 2070, respectively).

Rich countries, especially the United States, will also need to do much more to cut their own emissions. But a rapid transformation of the Global South will make a big contribution to the overall goal as Africa, India, and other parts of the developing world will not need to follow the West and China down the dirty path to growth.

An ambitious G7 plan could even set off a virtuous circle that prods China to decarbonize. If Beijing wishes to stay in the game of providing infrastructure to developing countries, it may respond by further “greening” the coal-, steel-, and concrete-intensive BRI. The result would be a competition between the West and China to green the Global South.

At the very least, the plan can help the West pressure Beijing into to decarbonizing its own export industries. After all, it cannot credibly threaten to switch away from carbon-intensive Chinese exports unless it helps build up alternative green suppliers in other emerging economies.

The EU already plans to apply “carbon tariffs” on some carbon-intensive imports from China and elsewhere. The German government will likely use its G7 presidency to bring other countries with ambitious net-zero plans into a “carbon club,” which would then collectively impose tariffs on non-members.

The snag? It is easy to portray tariffs as a protectionist measure that will keep countries poor, so the EU’s plans could backfire in the Global South. India, Brazil, and South Africa have already expressed their “grave concern” (jointly with China) over carbon tariffs.

But things would look entirely different if the West first helped developing and emerging-market countries build up green industries. Countries that signed partnership deals could then be exempt from the carbon tariffs. They might even start clamoring for tariffs to be imposed on countries such as China that continued to use dirty technology.

The time is now

The Ukraine crisis underlines the importance of the G7’s green Marshall Plan. Currently, the West is paying the price for failing to react to Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014. It should not make the same mistake with China—which is likely a longer-term threat.

And while it will take many years to foster green industrial revolutions in the Global South, Beijing will get the message now if the West drives its plan forward with ambition.

Hugo Dixon is a journalist, campaigner, and entrepreneur. A version of this article was also published by RUSI.

The post How Putin made the case for the G7’s clean green plan appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Episode 2: “Russia and the Arctic”

rcasberg — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 15:15:16 +0000

Mathieu Boulègue, Senior Research Fellow for the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, takes a closer look at Russia’s deep ties to the Arctic and its posturing in the region.

“We need to rethink our relationship with Russia and how we keep stability and security in the Arctic,” Mr. Boulègue argued. As relations with Russia deteriorate, “we can’t just repeat that we need low tensions in the Arctic, we also need to act upon it and give it substance.”

Mathieu specializes in Russian security and defence issues and leads Arctic work at Chatham House.

More episodes

europe center

The post Episode 2: “Russia and the Arctic” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Episode 1: “Living in the Arctic”

rcasberg — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 15:09:43 +0000

Anu Fredriksson, Executive Director for Arctic Frontiers, gives a local perspective on living in the Arctic. “There is a danger of our stories being sidetracked,” Ms. Fredriksson said. As climate change and global powers reshape the Arctic, “people of the Arctic will need to have a say in the development of our region. And what we are experiencing at times, is that we struggle to get our own stories across.”

Anu is originally from Oulu in Northern Finland and has worked with Arctic issues for over a decade. She has previously served as Director at the Arctic Economic Council and as an Arctic Policy Advisory at the Finnish Embassy in Norway.

more episodes

europe center

The post Episode 1: “Living in the Arctic” appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Event with India’s Finance Minister featured in The Hindu

sbusch — Tue, 19 Apr 2022 11:30:00 +0000

The post Event with India’s Finance Minister featured in The Hindu appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Janet Yellen’s message to the world: There can be no ‘sitting on the fence’ on Russia

Nick Fouriezos — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 17:56:53 +0000

As the West imposes punishing sanctions on Russia, nations who flout the values of the international economy will face consequences. And those who continue to stand on the sidelines, such as China, may well be harmed if they don’t “respect these principles now when it counts.”

That was the forceful message sent by US Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen during a special address at the Atlantic Council on Wednesday ahead of next week’s spring meetings for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Reiterating the Biden administration’s willingness to push Russia toward “economic, financial, and strategic isolation,” Yellen said international leaders would also push to mitigate the economic impacts of the war on those nations most dependent on its energy, food, fertilizer, and commodities.

Yellen emphasized that world leaders cannot wait for Russia’s attack on Ukraine to end before preparing for a new future of international cooperation, invoking as precedent the Bretton Woods Conference—in which economic leaders met to discuss a post-World War II future even as the Allied invasion of Normandy was ongoing.

Read on to learn more about that future from Yellen’s speech and conversation with Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times, including the treasury secretary’s propositions for economic integration which could define American policy for years to come.

Read the full transcript

New Atlanticist

Apr 13, 2022

Transcript: US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the next steps for Russia sanctions and ‘friend-shoring’ supply chains

By Atlantic Council

Yellen appeared at an Atlantic Council Front Page event ahead of the IMF and World Bank meetings to discuss the global response to Russia’s war, inflation, and more.

China Economic Sanctions

A stark warning

Yellen said that Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine “predestined an exit from the global financial system” and that the Kremlin “will be forced to choose between propping up its economy and funding the continuation of Putin’s brutal war.” She did leave room for reconciliation, if peace comes soon: “Russia could end this unnecessary war and the near-term impact could be contained.”
And her criticism of China was aggressive, particularly by the careful standards of the Treasury Department: “China cannot expect the global community to respect its appeals to the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity in the future if it does not respect those principles now when it counts.”
Yellen also implied that China could face significant economic blowback itself, if it does not use its recently affirmed special relationship with Russia to “make something positive” and “help to end this war.” “The world’s attitude towards China and its willingness to embrace further economic integration may well be affected by China’s reaction to our call for resolute action on Russia,” she said.

The message wasn’t just meant for China, but also for those other countries “who are currently sitting on the fence, perhaps seeing an opportunity to gain by preserving their relationship with Russia and backfilling the void left by others.” While she didn’t name any countries specifically, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with US President Joe Biden on Monday to discuss India’s use of Russian energy among other topics.

The ‘redrawn’ contours of the world economy

Yellen started her address by saying it was “evident” that the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine had changed the course of the global economy. One of her key takeaways: The US should move to favoring the “friend-shoring” of supply chains to “a large number of trusted countries,” around shared values of international cooperation and perhaps environmental standards or digital currency—a strategy that includes a “deepening partnership” with Europe on trade and more. “Rather than being highly reliant on countries where we have geopolitical tensions and can’t count on ongoing, reliable supplies, we need to really diversify our group of suppliers,” she told Foroohar.
Yellen wants to empower the IMF as a “financial firefighter,” saying the world was less successful in protecting poorer countries from the economic effects of the pandemic and Russia’s war with Ukraine, leading to a “divergence in global prospects.” Yellen said it is ironic that the world has been “awash in savings,” yet hasn’t fully funded education, health care, and infrastructure investments in developing countries: “Experts put the funding needs in the trillions, and we have so far been working in billions.”
Spiking commodity prices are creating more immediate needs in the developing world, which Yellen said should be a focus of the IMF and World Bank meetings: “This will be an urgent concern for us next week to try to think about how we can stave off starvation around the world.”

A healthier, greener, global architecture

Citing recent United Nations reports, Yellen said that world powers “must redouble our efforts to decarbonize our economies,” using tools such as carbon pricing, regulation, and subsidies to achieve emissions reductions. She acknowledged that these efforts will have varying effects on production costs and trade competitiveness, which means countries will have to “work together” to avoid trade tensions during the transition.
She also called for strengthening the global health architecture, pointing to the pandemic as proof that the costs of inadequate preparation are much higher than the upfront cost to solidify pandemic prevention, detection, information sharing, and crisis response. Among those efforts are the proposed Financial Intermediary Funds, a vehicle to “help fill in the gaps in health system investments at the country, regional, and global level.”

Reordering the global economy amid a once-in-a-century pandemic and major European war is a daunting notion. “Some may say that now is not the right time to think big,” Yellen said. “Yet, I see this as the right time to work to address the gaps in our international financial system that we are witnessing in real time.”

Nick Fouriezos is a writer with more than a decade of journalism experience around the globe.

Watch the full event

The post Janet Yellen’s message to the world: There can be no ‘sitting on the fence’ on Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The rising national security threats from climate change in the Mediterranean region

Katerina Sokou — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 22:00:00 +0000

Download PDF

Climate change hazards, from rising sea levels to forest fires, are set to asymmetrically impact the Mediterranean’s coastal ecosystems. In addition to increased natural disasters, climate change also will exacerbate the region’s economic vulnerabilities stemming from resource scarcity, heat stress, and impacts on tourism. With increased stress on populations in the region, climate pressures have the potential to indirectly exacerbate violent conflict.

The potential for future threats from climate change necessitates that nations consider not only national climate plans, but strategies to mitigate global pressures on supply chains, food systems, and economic interdependencies to manage cross-border risks. The United Nations Environment Programme’s Mediterranean Action Plan serves as a starting point by assessing these risks. Building on it, the European Union can direct development assistance towards strengthening countries’ abilities to adapt, further strengthened by transatlantic cooperation. In anticipation of the security ramifications of climate change, NATO should set climate adaptation as a priority.

The transition to renewable energy will result in both economic and geopolitical benefits through the creation of jobs and development of advanced technologies. Tourism, which makes up a fifth of Greece’s GDP, is likely to be adversely impacted by higher temperatures and natural disasters. This could generate additional risk for Greece’s financial credibility. The EU should consider this as a threat to the institution as a whole, with Greece and Cyprus the member states most vulnerable to climate change. Fortunately, Greece has a solid foundation from which to build up its climate resiliency, as strategies to this end are part of the Greece 2.0 plan and the country is already one of the top producers of wind and solar energy globally.

The Mediterranean should not be making these efforts alone as economic and geopolitical stressors cause cross-border instability, a strong motivator for the region and partners to deliberately address climate adaptation in tandem.

View the full issue brief below

At the intersection of economics, finance, and foreign policy, the GeoEconomics Center is a translation hub with the goal of helping shape a better global economic future.

The post The rising national security threats from climate change in the Mediterranean region appeared first on Atlantic Council.

How a circular carbon economy can help achieve Paris Agreement climate goals

Atlantic Council — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 20:19:00 +0000

Watch the full event

2022 Global Energy Forum

The Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum is the premier international gathering of government, industry, and thought leaders to set the energy agenda for the year. This year’s event took place on March 28-29, 2022 in Dubai.

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

Speakers

Thamir Alshehri
Senior Research Associate, King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center

Lee Beck
International Director for Carbon Capture, Clean Air Task Force; Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council Global Energy Center

Sama Bilbao y León
Director General, World Nuclear Association

Moderator

Reed Blakemore
Deputy Director, Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council

REED BLAKEMORE: So what we’ll do is I think I’d like to start things off by turning to you, Thamir. And, you know, as I mentioned, I think KAPSARC deserves a lot of credit for its exploration of the circular carbon economy. You know, you recently launched a circular carbon economy index—which for the sake of brevity I’m just going to call the CCE index from here on out—which tracks this progress circular carbon economies are having around the world. But before we dive into that specifically, I think I’d like to open our session by asking you, you know, where do you see the role of the circular carbon economy in the pursuit of our necessary net zero pathways? And in particular, how this effort both at KAPSARC and the development of these economies around the world has evolved over the past several years.

THAMIR ALSHEHRI: Hello? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah, we have been working the circular carbon economy, CCE, since it’s been endorsed by the G-20 in 2020 during the Saudi Arabia presidency. And we think that achieving the Paris agreement goals will need to go through reducing emission through non-fossil fuels technology and net-zero technology. But also technology like CCUS need to be considered. And here we can actually find where the CCE can be a great framework, a great concept to look at it from that lens and also engage all players in the region using a holistic approach to—and make these players to choose their own pathways. That’s the strength of the CCE.

Talking about the CCE index, it’s a tool to frame—a policy-oriented framework to measures countries’ potential and performance—and current performance. We developed that in KAPSARC in house, fully in house developed, including all the materials from web portal to all the modeling tools that we also launched recently, two weeks ago, and here in actually expo. It was a regional launch for our CCE lab to actually perform some sort of scenarios on countries where they adopt certain technology or improve in certain areas. So this is an overview of the KAPSARC work on the CCE and the CCE index.

REED BLAKEMORE: And I’d like to dive a little bit more into the index. And I realize I have mistakenly called it a CCE tracker, and that’s partly because we have a CCE index and a CCUS tracker on stage. So forgive me there. But I’d love to—you know, you launched this report about the index in December of last year. And you mentioned how it serves as an opportunity to monitor the potential and the progress in CCE in specific countries. You know, I’m wondering—you know, following your December report—are there any lessons learned? Any major takeaways from that work thus far that you think are worth sharing, and I think can advance our thinking on where we need to go next?

THAMIR ALSHEHRI: Yeah, definitely. If we are looking at the 2021 CCE index result, we can pull out very interesting findings that countries adopted different technology based on their circumstances, but also there’s huge gaps, and huge gaps between top countries and bottom countries. Gaps in policy and regulation, and technology, and finance specifically are huge there. So this area where we can focus from now on, and the index is a great tool, actually, to look at this from different perspective.

Also, we can—we observe that there is lack of data, especially to the CCE and CCUS related policies, technologies. So we are working with our partners to enhance that. And I think we will be improving year by year on the data availability and data accessibility. So this—as in general, that’s the—I think the take outs from the CCE index work now.

REED BLAKEMORE: I think policy gaps and data availability, those are two issues I want to dive into later on in our session. But, you know, briefly, Lee, I want to turn to you next. Thamir mentioned, you know, this is all ultimately about carbon management. He mentioned some of the technologies, particularly CCUS is a major component of this circular carbon economy. I’d be remiss if I didn’t, you know, briefly plug the work that CATF has done with the Global Energy Center for CCUS scalability. And we had a workshop actually just a few days ago on this subject. I think it would be—could you, generally speaking, paint us a picture of, you know, the role that carbon management technologies specifically are going to play in this circular carbon economy.

LEE BECK: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much, Reed. I want to start off with saying thanks to everyone who joined us today. Thank you, the Atlantic Council, of course also our partners, KAPSARC, with whom we’re working in the region.

Maybe I will start with just giving a quick overview of Clean Air Task Force. We’re an environmental and climate NGO. We were started 25 years ago in the US to reduce emissions from power plants. But with 75 percent of emissions reductions expected to come from technologies not yet mature, and that’s an IA stat, we’re really focusing on those overlooked technologies. So carbon capture is one of them. We have a really big team focused on methane. Reining in methane pollution is the most important thing we can do between now and 2030 to shave off global warming, advanced nuclear, hydrogen.

And we’re really looking at this from an optionality perspective. We need as many options as possible to prevent technology locking and to create pathways that are just—just, as in each country needs to have the technology pathway that fits its individual resource, social and political, economic framework. And I think carbon capture is a great example. Here at this conference you touched on it already. We need t a realistic energy transition. We need a realistic energy transition that takes into account that energy demand is still growing, we’re facing an energy crisis, there’s a billion people that still don’t have energy access. Seventy percent of fossil fuel resources are owned by national oil companies out of traditional advocacy and divestment pressure.

So we need to create realistic pathways to get to net zero. And carbon capture can help us by future-proofing oil and gas, turning it into hydrogen. So we’re really interested in the region becoming a blue hydrogen supplier for Europe, for example. Cement and steel decarbonization, the UAE has the first steel carbon capture plan. Steel and cement account for 12 percent of emissions reductions, pathways for carbon removal. So as you can see, it’s actually a really, really big wedge for decarbonization. But not enough is being done, as you said, to commercialize these technologies. So we’re working on this. And I think I want to touch on the workshops going forward. I’ll hand it back to you, and then maybe we can dive more into the workshops a little bit.

REED BLAKEMORE: Yeah, I think, two items, again. Pathways, right, and optionality, and leveraging the resources within these different countries, as everybody pursues their net zero ambitions, recognizing that everybody’s going to have their own journey as they reach their climate goals. And, you know, making sure that no resources or technologies are off the table so long as anything can be made low carbon, effectively.

I want to—you know, I want to turn to our virtual speaker, Director General Sama. You know, the World Nuclear Association, clearly we’re talking about nuclear here. At a high level, what is the role that nuclear energy specifically has to play in the circular carbon economy? And we’ll move on from there.

SAMA BILBAO Y LEON: Yeah. Thank you very much, Reed. It’s a pleasure to join you all today, even though virtually. I would have loved to be there in beautiful Dubai. But so, yes, nuclear energy is, of course, one of the pillars of the reduce principle of the carbon circular economy. So, again, it’s going to be essential. So, in fact, if we are serious about truly meeting the climate change challenge with the urgency and with the scale that is needed, and also if we are very serious at actually doing that in a just and equitable manner, which we just—we just heard Lee talking about, we really are going to need to use all the proven low-carbon technologies that are at our disposal.

So I think that you know that all the International Energy Agency and also the IPCC scenarios confirm that the use of nuclear energy is going to be an essential component in order to actually achieve the carbonization in a cost-effective and realistic and pragmatic, as Lee was just mentioning. So and actually I would say that, you know, as we are seeing unfortunately right now as a consequence of the war in Ukraine, the role of nuclear is even more important right now if we take into account the additional element of energy security and energy independence in the equation.

And then maybe just the last thing that I will say before we turn it back to you is I will say something that is often forgotten is that nuclear energy, beyond being obviously essential for the production of low-carbon electricity, could also be a game-changer to produce low-carbon heat, which is going to be essential to decarbonize other hard to abate sectors, such as—such as industrial applications, such as heating and cooling for buildings, such as hydrogen production, fresh water production, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So again, enormous opportunities for nuclear energy to contribute to the circular carbon economy.

REED BLAKEMORE: So, yeah, you actually jumped into my next question of you, which is, you know, the role that nuclear energy can play, particularly in our hard to abate sectors. And it strikes me that here are a number of—while nuclear can play a significant role in those hard to abate sectors, you know, that’s what we’re looking for to really seize that opportunity is a combination of, you know, enabling policies, right, and also, I think, you know, expanding and building upon the technological horizon there. Director General, when you, you know, look at what needs to happen in order to really effectively leverage nuclear energy as a resource in hard to abate sectors, you know, what are the key regulatory policy frameworks? What are the key technologies and innovation pieces that you think need to fall into place in order to seize that opportunity?

SAMA BILBAO Y LEON: Mmm hmm. Yes, well, I think that we have, of course, the traditional large nuclear reactors that most everybody’s familiar with. They can play a role there. But I think that more importantly we are seeing that the small modular reactors, which is the next generation of nuclear technologies, could also be a game-changer in this—in this aspect, right? So these reactors, as you know, they are smaller. They potentially can be customized to be more fitted to a specific application, whether it is specifically for industrial heat—process heat, for hydrogen production, or for district heating, et cetera, et cetera. So those are basically two different approaches that we have to use nuclear technology.

So now from the point of view of policies, I really think that—I mean, the technology is close to be there. I mean, obviously, as you know, nuclear is currently 10 percent of world electricity and the largest source of low-carbon electricity in the OECD countries. So nuclear is already contributing enormously. But if we really want to bring this role even further, I actually think that this is a very important time for thought leadership and pragmatism from governments. So this is going to be essential to develop well thought out and diversified long-term energy strategies. And I really think that that is very key for all infrastructure. I mean, as you know, we really need to completely redo our clean energy infrastructure at a global level.

So in this sense it is very, very important to put in place policies and also market frameworks that are going to recognize and appropriately value the different attributes of the various low-carbon energy sources. So I think that this is going to be very important because it’s going to create confidence both in the industry but also in the financing and investment community. And this is going to incentivize investment beyond public investment, also private investment in this clean energy infrastructure.

REED BLAKEMORE: Thank you. So, you know, I want to turn to Thamir. But first, because we said the magic word of, you know, private investment and, you know, the financial community’s role in this, I actually want to briefly, you know, turn back to you, Lee. You know, we—commercial scale is something we—it’s a consistent term in each one of these CCUS conversations we have. And, you know, the need to get capital into the market, as well as to establish the policy frameworks needed to move beyond the really, really successful demonstration projects we’ve seen in numerous different country contexts.

You know, where do you see the key next steps, either in a US-EU-MENA regional context or, you know, elsewhere in the global south? What are the key things that you see needing to happen to bring CCUS to a better commercial scale, and certainly quicker than I think the timeline currently is projected to be?

LEE BECK: Yeah, thank you so much, Reed. I appreciate this question because there’s about 150 carbon management projects under development across the US, Europe, and the Middle East. And if we can build these projects over the next, say—it takes four to six years to develop these projects, so maybe over the next decade—then we’re pretty much pretty close to commercialization. But what we need to do at the same time is, of course, also shortening the deployment timeline in the next generation of countries by understanding infrastructure needs, emissions sources, CO2 storage.

But going back to the financial community, I think there has been this unprecedented realization that we need these technologies. So governments, especially in Europe and the EU, have put unprecedented policy mechanisms on the table. There was $12 billion for CO2 storage alone in the infrastructure package in the US, an additional 8 billion [dollars] for hydrogen production, which can be used for blue hydrogen. The EU has selected four out of six projects—CCUS projects for its first round of innovation fund. There’s CCFDs, carbon contracts for differences, on the table in the ETS reform.

So there’s really this unprecedented policy framework in the US and Europe. And we think that this really can help us attract financing to these projects and make it attractive investments. I think there is—it’s clear climate regulation is going to come in the US and Europe. In Europe, of course, it’s already there. And so we need to decarbonize. And I think the market is responding to this. In 2021, I think there were 51 projects alone announced in the United States as a result of this unprecedented policy momentum. There’s more tax credits—$85 a ton for industry and power, $180 a ton for direct air capture—on the table in the United States. So I think with—by really signaling to the market that this is a technology we need, we need to commercialize, the private investment will come.

And it’s really, really important that we can reduce costs, learning by doing, provide funding for infrastructure, shorten deployment timelines, and really make sure that we reduce the risk of these projects. Because, you know, everyone always says CCUS is expensive. But what’s really expensive is high risk premium on a multi-hundred million dollar loan. So, yeah, definitely agree with you. And thanks so much for pointing to this.

REED BLAKEMORE: Yeah, and I think it’s also equally as important—you’re seeing all of that momentum happening, you know, almost prior to this current energy crisis. And I think one of the implications of this current crisis will be, as part of our reexamination of what energy security is, we’re going to be thinking, you know, certainly more long term about the role of gas and hydrocarbons in that future. So if anything, the urgency of, you know, thinking about CCUS as a carbon management tool as we increasingly, you know, adopt those hydrocarbon sources as an energy security measure, whether that just be for baseload storage or something like that, that momentum is something that can’t be left—can’t be left on the table.

And so, Thamir, I now want to turn back to you. We’ve addressed the CCUS piece, the nuclear piece. I do want to give you an opportunity to weigh in on this idea of the various pathways, because I think that’s something that comes out strongly in the CCE index. When you look at the pathways, when you look at, you know, optionality and providing countries, particularly in the global south, to carve their own pathways to net zero, what are the—what are the major trends you’re noticing? And what can—you mentioned policy gaps. What are the policy gaps that need to be filled, whether international coordination or otherwise, that we should be thinking about moving forward?

THAMIR ALSHEHRI: Yeah. I would like actually to begin on the point that you actually finished at, on the finance. Because this is one of the biggest, actually, gaps on—that what we capture in the CCE index now. I think we are in the stage now to rethink or reshape the perception of the—especially in the oil and gas sectors. You know, how to get players in the industry. If we are saying that oil and gas will end up in 20 years, 25 years, nobody will invest. Nobody will put money in that. So I think with this crisis, you know, already—we already get a momentum there. But I think with this crisis we need also to reshape the perception, and the financial community could actually capture that, to rethink on this technology again with the right policies framework.

So based on that, going back to your question, yeah. Again, policy and technologies and also finance is the biggest gaps, as I mentioned before. I think the internal organization, especially at the—like, for example, we have in Saudi Arabia the CCE national program. They are looking at the CCE at the national level. And I think now they are a great example on a lot of domestic policies to achieve a carbon circularity between different government entities and the private sectors. So I think this is a good example where we can find coordination between government and private sector and investors. I think these frameworks can be put in a place to—at the domestic level—to come up with great policy framework in general.

REED BLAKEMORE: And actually, I think your mention of Saudi Arabia’s CCE strategy I think is an interesting example, in that I think it illustrates how decarbonization should be a consistent—decarbonization and circular carbon economy should be a consistent thread through both energy strategy, industrial strategy, et cetera, in order to success. And almost economic strategy as a whole. And I think there are other countries who might look to that example.

And I think it’s an opportunity for the international community in particular, as a lot of—you look to a lot of these centers of future demand. And of course, we’ll have a session later today on South and Southeast Asia’s energy development story. How do you offer the opportunity—how do you, you know, facilitate and encourage those emerging markets to, you know, think through their energy demand growth in a cohesive, low-carbon manner across the economic industrial and energy delivery sectors I think is really important.

I want to turn back to DG Sama. You know, you mentioned briefly SMRs. And I think, you know, the innovation potential that we’re seeing for SMRs is hugely interesting, particularly as we look to, you know, where SMRs can be deployed in new country contexts. Again, it’s a resource that allows countries to choose their net zero pathway, because it is so flexible in some ways. What are the opportunities, you know, internationally, that you’re seeing on the SMR front?

SAMA BILBAO Y LEON: Mmm hmm. Well, certainly a thing that small modular reactors have brought a lot of excitement and a lot of opportunities to countries that perhaps weren’t really considering nuclear energy in the past, because perhaps they didn’t realize that these opportunities existed. So, yeah. So we have seen a lot of—just obviously you’ve seen that in Europe there is a number of countries, in Central and Eastern Europe, that are very interested in the small modular reactors as well as large reactors. They are doing a huge effort to decarbonize their entire economies. So they are looking at maybe large reactors for traditional applications and the small modular reactors for more smaller applications—more customized applications.

But also, we have seen countries in Africa that are also looking at these small modular reactors as a—as a way to perhaps leapfrog form the current energy systems that they have to a more decarbonized and reliable energy systems for the future. So we are seeing a lot, a lot of interest in these small modular reactors.

REED BLAKEMORE: I think we’ve spent a fair amount of time talking about, you know, the real opportunities that we’re seeing in the CCUS space. So I think—and, by the way, you know, to the audience, if you have a question, we do have a mic that we can pass around. So just flag your desire to ask a question and I’ll be sure to call on you. Otherwise, I’m just going to keep asking questions because I’m interested. But I would like to turn to kind of, you know, the challenges that we’re seeing currently in this space. I think we mentioned policy gaps as one challenge, but I think we’re seeing a little bit of momentum there as we, you know, begin to think more intentionally about the role of decarbonizing sectors rather than eliminating the carbon production outright, right? What are—I think I’ll start with you, Samir. What are the key challenges that you’re seeing, both within the CCE index, that need to be resolved in the short to medium term, let’s say?

THAMIR ALSHEHRI: Well, I will talk about the CCE index. And this is a great time to actually look at this data again, especially with this energy crisis, to rethink about what other dimension that we are measuring now could be considered. Let’s—for example, like, if we are taking the energy security, which is the hot topic of the—of the space, is that currently we are measuring the energy security on the share of imports, energy imports. But there is a lot of dimension that can consider. That’s the number of resources and where the sector can actually be—the critical sectors that feed in.

So we need to look at the more deeper structure of the consumption of each country to have a better insight on that. Again, go back to the energy security thing, is there is—as you can see, there’s a different perception, if you can see here, on the region and GCC, than Europe where it’s more a market-driven. Where here, it’s more like national security driven. We can capture that, and the interconnectivity create. Like, what we see here in the GCC and how it’s different than EU. So, yeah. I think we need to look at—I’m talking, again, about the CCE index and how we actually look at the potential improvement areas. I think we need to look at data from different dimensions.

REED BLAKEMORE: No, I think you speak to, you know, one of the pieces that I hope to get to eventually is this international coordination piece. And, you know, what we noticed, or at least what I’ve noticed consistently and throughout these different regional contexts when we talk about these issues, is the need for shared learning, right? Part of that’s data, obviously. But part of that also is, you know, shared learning about the policy frameworks that are working, right? And so I want to turn to that in a little bit.

But, Lee, you know, turning to you next, the key challenges you’re seeing in your space? And I think it would be interesting in particular if you touched on—you know, given that CATF is, you know, based in Boston, done a lot of work in the United States, a huge amount of work, you know, in a European context. And of course, you just now launched your MENA CCUS tracker so beginning to do a lot more here. So you can touch on any number of these regions, but what are the key challenges that you’re seeing in the deployment of additional CCUS contexts? And, of course, commercial scale and financing is one of those, so I’m going to make sure that you go beyond just that piece.

LEE BECK: Yeah, absolutely. And I want to touch now definitely on the workshops that we hosted on Sunday together on hydrogen and carbon capture and storage deployment. I think one big theme in the workshop was the political problem that carbon capture has. I mean, this also accounts for nuclear, which is really unfortunate because the science is very clear. We need all the technologies on the table. And I think there’s multiple dimensions to this. There is a political problem, the lack of recognition and the lack of willingness to accept that we need to commercialize these technologies for multiple countries, though more and more countries are including carbon management technologies in their NDC.

But there’s also the policy flipflopping and policy inconsistency that we actually heard about in the last panel. It’s unclear, and there’s this perceived conflict between energy security and climate. And I really want to touch on this, because if we’re looking to Europe, 50 bcm of LNG in REPowerEU, 15 bcm coming this year from the US And we really need to make sure that we’re building this infrastructure in a climate compliant manner. So CCUS must be on the table, and then governments must be openly saying we need additional natural resources, and we need to future-proof them with methane controls and carbon capture and storage. So I think there this policy clarity would really help markets to drive investment and make long-term decisions.

The other things are there are, again, as you said, in the region context we need to develop more recommendations on how to realize industrial hubs. I think that was a big theme at the workshop on Sunday, and another piece is CO2 transport and storage infrastructure, and lack of funding for developing countries. We discussed this. The World Bank Trust Fund, which has invested most recently in Nigeria, but also South Africa, Mexico, helped to map emission sources, CO2 storage sites, pilot projects. It’s running out by 2023 and it’s unclear whether governments will earmark, replenish this funding. So we really need to make sure that we build on this momentum and work with those governments that are supportive in the region to continue having funds available, to continue shortening this deployment timeline.

So I think there’s key barriers here that we want to work on. So we definitely want to hear from all of you experts in particular about the region. What do you think is necessary to overcome these challenges, to mobilize investment, deploy these technologies? What are business model challenges? So this is an ongoing dialogue. And, yeah, I think we’re looking forward to the shared paper we’re publishing about this topic. But definitely a lot more work to be done to overcome these challenges.

REED BLAKEMORE: The key message there really is there’s going to be a refocusing on, you know, the hydrocarbons and the role of hydrocarbons in energy security, right? Thamir, you mentioned, you know, the role of oil and gas companies in that story. I think making sure that we’re coupling appropriate policies for things like CCUS as we pursue those roles—yeah, you’re right, 50 bcm, you know, is a significant amount, but should also be coupled with correspondent commitments, you know, to support CCUS, to make sure that energy security doesn’t cannibalize climate action.

Oh, go ahead.

LEE BECK: Yeah, just one addition. I think, you know, oil and gas, definitely part of the transition. That’s what we’re working towards. But we also shouldn’t let them off the hook, right? So I think we need standardization if we’re looking at blue hydrogen imports for Europe, international certification, LCA analysis, standardization of CO2 storage credits. So we can develop a regulatory framework that will enable us to make oil and gas part of the transition. And that’s what we need to develop in—over the next few years, really urgently.

REED BLAKEMORE: So, Sama, I want to turn to you now, give you the opportunity. I mean, from a perspective of challenges, you know, Lee mentioned nuclear suffers from some of—some similar narrative challenges, I think, sometimes in the policy space. Beyond that, what are the key challenges you see that need to be addressed either from a policy or finance perspective in order to really realize nuclear’s potential?

SAMA BILBAO Y LEON: Mmm hmm. Well, I mean, I think that nuclear has been very successful. I mean, we have had very successful nuclear projects recently. For example, of course, in the United Arab Emirates, we were just—we just saw the commercial operation of unit two for the Barakah nuclear unit, so that’s very successful efforts in the UAE. And the same thing we have seen in many projects in China. But unfortunately, I think that everybody is familiar with maybe not-so-successful projects in Western Europe and North America.

So I think that one of the key challenges that the nuclear industry is working towards addressing right now is rebuilding these capabilities, this know-how in North America and Western Europe to actually scale up to the—to the urgency and the speed that is needed for nuclear energy, to actually lead up to the expectations, right, to the needs that we have for nuclear penetration in order to achieve decarbonization.

So, you know, I think that one of the things that could help enormously to incentivize this rebuild of the know-how and the capabilities of the nuclear industry, and also the rebuild of the global supply chain, is going to be more or less what we said, to have clarity and long-term visibility on government policies. So, you know, the best way to be good and cost effective at building nuclear power plants is, you guessed it, building nuclear power plants. So what we really need is to have this continuity, these series of projects that allow the industry to learn from continuous doing, and also to incentivize the growth of the supply chain.

And in that sense, I would also agree with Lee that improving the standardization and the harmonization of the gold-standard standards for nuclear, but also the regulatory and licensing requirements on a global level would really help enormously to accelerate the deployment of these new nuclear power plants, large and, of course, the small modular reactors.

REED BLAKEMORE: I want to go—I think we have a question right here in the third row. And we’re a small group so please identify yourself as well.

Q: Thank you very much. My name is Dionysia Avgerinopoulou and I am the chair of the Environment Committee of the Hellenic Parliament.

Regarding the access to information about CCUS and conversion in other materials, especially fuels, I think that we miss access to this type of information with parliamentarians. And in general, the public does not know about these technologies. And this holds true for the majority of the countries. For example, I was at the IPU meeting, the Inter-Parliamentary Union, a few months ago. And it was only the Greek delegation that requested that in the text of our conclusions we add the CCUS directly as one of the means of solving the climate crisis.

So what would you suggest that we, parliamentarians, do in order to get access to more information and also educate the public? And also what we could do on behalf of our, you know, regulatory aspect to help you promote your work? That’s the first question. And the second question, I was wondering if actually there’s not such political will on behalf of the countries that are up to now producing oil and gas, Greece included, so that we don’t actually get the new licenses to create fuel out of the CO2 because this might be competing technologies for the future. So it’s an open-ended question. I think that there is no contradiction, but I would like to hear your advice. Thank you.

REED BLAKEMORE: I think on the data I might—I might turn to you, Thamir. I mean, obviously you pointed out that do we have data gaps, right, but in some ways the CCE index is trying to fill those gaps. So how do we get those insights and get—how do we get those insights in the hands of policymakers? And how do we build additional insights?

THAMIR ALSHEHRI: So on the data, data gaps here, I will touch on the CCUS technologies and CCUS in general. Access to these data was a really difficult task for us. And also the green hydrogen. So in our index, we are using a Bloomberg data, the CCUS project database tool and hydrogen database. And we worked with PNF, the team in the PNF to actually share this data. So you are welcome to visit our website and download the data for thirty countries, actually. So these data actually is looking at the project capacity. So announced projects, commenced, and under constructions.

Again, we need better data. We need more data to measure the potential and the performance—the current performance of this country. We can see that Germany is actually scoring very well on the—especially on the hydrogen, and Saudi Arabia. But, again, even if this project that is happening, but it’s not reported, well, here we look at the—at the reporting and data pipeline at the domestic level, and how this actually could be improved with the coordination with the international data providers, to actually improve this—the data availability and the accessibility for public and for policymaker, and also academia and education. So that’s on the data gaps.

Sorry, if you can remind me again of the question, the other one?

Q: If the development of such policies is actually contradictory with the interests of the oil and gas producer countries maybe at the end of the day? Is it like developing—the new technologies regarding CCUS and conversation to fuel, would it be against the interests of the oil and gas producing countries? Or you don’t see it as –

THAMIR ALSHEHRI: Oh, actually we don’t see that. We—I can touch on the GCC countries here, since they are here. They did their NDCs recently. And they are also adopting the CCE approach to achieve the carbon neutrality. So we can see that they look at this technology as a—yes, that’s how we can see it. And we can see the huge investment and support from the—from the policy to investors on this technology. Again, it’s—if you—it’s different, of course. And different regions and the events on the economic structure of that region and these countries’ financial performance. But again, we are talking about the big players here. So, yeah, thank you.

REED BLAKEMORE: Yeah, and I don’t know if you want to jump in on the data piece as well, in particular, because I think that’s an area where CATF is also doing work. But, of course, the policy question as well. Feel free to jump in.

LEE BECK: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for coming to this session and your question and your interests. I know Greece is looking to use some of the green recovery funds to actually build a blue hydrogen project offshore, which is really, really exciting. I think there’s a few things that can be done. First of all, the International Energy Agency has amazing resources, the Global CCUS Institute. We’re always looking for dialogues with policymakers. I think one concrete step that can be done is to elevate with European Union, with European Commission Greece’s interest in these technologies, because often at the delegations or the representation in Brussels CCUS is an afterthought and we’re having problems passing policy because there’s just so much on the agenda.

And the EU has funds available through the innovation fund, through ETS reform, through the TEN-E and connecting your facilities. So I think that’s really important. And then, of course, taking look at best practices. Which countries have really good policies? In Europe there’s Sweden, Denmark, Belgium that are looking at developing policy frameworks. The US is the most advanced. So I think there’s a lot of shared learning—the Clean Energy Ministerial is another resource that has a CCUS working group that you could join. And I think it’s absolutely not against the interests of oil and gas producing countries to develop these technologies because you are future-proofing your economy, you are future-proofing jobs, creating new jobs, investing in innovation, enabling globally decarbonization. Because in the end, we only have to do innovation once, right? So I’ll stop here.

REED BLAKEMORE: No, I think you’re completely correct. And I saw a question.

Q: I’m Ana Palacio. I’m a member of the board on the Atlantic Council.

And I’m going to insist on something that I think summarizes even this conference. Is we need to take back from the cold oil and gas, but we cannot let them out of the hook. You used that. Now, I’m speaking as a European. It’s easy to say, but you haven’t addressed what really is, in my opinion, the crux, which is this ideology of the green deal. It’s irrational. We haven’t dropped it, even now in the middle of the crisis. And again, I mean, my question is: Do you really have in mind that you are not fighting rational, index, data-proven, but a kind of secular religion? And what are the tools? The tools are to convince the people that—I mean, this is a job for the Atlantic Council.

REED BLAKEMORE: No, I think, so, I mean, I’d love for Lee and Thamir to weigh in on that because we’re talking about, you know, again, breaking a narrative that seems to be out there. But I think it also applies to the nuclear space as well, so I’d like to bring DG Sama back in. So, Lee, over to you for that question.

LEE BECK: Yeah. OK, really quickly. So, as a European, I have to respectfully disagree. I think the EU green deal is amazing because it’s the first time that somebody’s actually trying to create a blueprint for a net zero. It’s the stress test of the Paris agreement, right? And so now it’s up to NGOs, the public, the member states to help European Union and create credible strategies and pathways. So I think the goal is right, but we still—the ambition is right, and we need to ratchet up ambition. But we really need to deliver through action. And you’re right, all of the technologies have to be on the table. And we can’t—we have to stop looking at it through the lens that climate goals and energy security are in conflict.

REED BLAKEMORE: Sama, I might bring you in on this idea of—you know, particularly in Europe, you know, I think it was rather disappointing that Germany made the decision not to, you know, put on its hold its plans to close its own nuclear reactors, partially as a result of this crisis. So it appears there is still some sort of narrative building that needs to happen on behalf of, you know, nuclear in particular. So what are your thoughts on this idea of pushing back against the narrative that we need to be all green only—you know, only green?

SAMA BILBAO Y LEON: Well, I think that—I mean, I would agree with Ana that it is very important for leaders, for policymakers, to be pragmatic, to be realistic and, in many cases, to be courageous and, you know, to have this thought leadership in order to come forward with realistic and pragmatic plans for energy policy. And I would like to highlight something. I mean, I think that most countries currently have climate policies. And climate policies are wish lists, but they are not actual action plans. But what countries need is to develop realistic, step-by-step blueprints of how exactly they are planning to achieve these climate goals.

So in essence, I would agree that a little bit more realism, more pragmatism is necessary. And for that, you know, as Ana mentioned and the person that asked the question before also mentioned, it is very important to make sure that policymakers have all the factual information, the science-based information at their fingertips so they are able to make these technology neutral decisions to put in place, whatever mix of energies is more suitable for their particular country, their particular region.

REED BLAKEMORE: We keep returning to this idea. I think, Lee, you correctly mentioned that the green deal is a first step. The next step is going to be, you know, what are those strategies and actionable pathways? And, Sama, you mentioned that the EU isn’t the only one going to be developing these pathways. And again, we need to be thinking about all of the technologies that are on the table. So long as they can be made low carbon and assist in the construction of a net zero world, they shouldn’t be discluded from the conversation of creating those pathways.

I’m being waved at that we’re running out of time, so I want to give each of our panelists the opportunity to say one closing word. And I might turn back to you, Sama. You know, you already touched on kind of the pathways that are emerging. You know, what are the—what’s got—so I’ll ask, what has you excited about the next several years in terms of nuclear’s possible contributions to a net zero world and a circular carbon economy?

SAMA BILBAO Y LEON: Yes. No, I mean, I think that there’s been a lot of action, a lot of energy, a lot of visibility being given to the essential role that nuclear energy needs to play if we are serious about decarbonizing and actually, these 1.5-degree goals that we have set for ourselves. And just as importantly, to actually achieve the sustainable development goals that we have for the world as a whole. So it’s not only that we need to make sure that we achieve these decarbonization goals, but we also need to do it in a just and equitable manner so everybody in the world has access to abundant, affordable, clean energy. And in that sense, I mean, I think that nuclear energy is absolutely super well-positioned to be an essential component of that, in my opinion, bright future.

So, yeah. I’ll stop there. Thank you, Reed.

REED BLAKEMORE: All right. Lee, you’re next, I think. What has you most excited about the next several years? In the CCUS and the hydrogen space. And hydrogen is one space we didn’t have time to really dive into here, so if you want to touch on that as well I think that would be useful.

LEE BECK: Yeah, absolutely. I think this is an incredible conversation. So thank you so much, everyone. I think I’m most excited about the projects that are on the horizon, the potential proof points for blue hydrogen imports to Europe that have been agreed on in the region. But I think, you know, I just want to leave this panel with an ask that we really need to break down and overcome these false dichotomies of the energy transition. So governments need to put in place scientifically oriented policies to commercialized all technologies, technology neutrality, optionality, however we want to call it. Companies need to take these policies and future-proof and transform their businesses in the near term. They cannot play for time. Again, we need to do it as soon as possible.

And if we can over—then focus really and zero-in on emissions rather than technologies or fuels or resources, then I think we have a good shot at achieving this goal, the green deal, the goal of net zero. So I’m also very much looking forward towards COP-27 and COP-28 in the region, because I think they will be refreshing, they will give a stage to this conversation that we’ve been hearing here at the Global Energy Forum.

REED BLAKEMORE: And you touched on the piece I was going to ask Thamir’s last question. So, I mean, in addition to any final words you’d like to leave us with, Thamir, you know, how do we make sure that—as Lee mentioned, COP-27 and COP-28, being in the region, are going to be huge opportunity to really talk about the—when we talk about the optionality for various countries to pursue their own pathways, to pursue their own resources and build their own net zero ambitions. You know, how can we make sure that the concepts around a circular carbon economy are part of that conversation so that, you know, by the time, I guess, if you’re doing a report every year by the time your December 2023 report on the CCE index comes out that we can say, hey, you know, these are the new pathways that are evolving as a huge reason to be excited?

THAMIR ALSHEHRI: Definitely will have new pathways, and actually a lot of countries will be added to the index by that time. And COP-27 is a great platform for the region. They need the stage to actually show that perception and their views. But more important than that is taking advantage of this time of this crisis, if you can call it a crisis, and different views—take this advantage and make that transition right and consider all options. And make, for example, access to finance, access to technology, sharing the technology—as has been already touched—to available. And we can make a try at this time. I think if we all work together and coordinate our efforts, we can achieve that. And, for example, this platform is great. We can meet great people, get great feedback, and also feed into policymakers to push them to the—to hopefully what is the right direction.

And just a few words, that I welcome everyone to check our CCE index portal, download the data. It’s free. Even if you are not interested in the CCE, there is a lot of—there is more than 50 indicators with open data. You can download. You can look at it. You can share this knowledge. And also we would welcome your feedback. Again, this is a living thing. We are updating this composite indicator yearly. And with these platforms we can get valuable feedback to improve our work and outcomes.

REED BLAKEMORE: Well, that’s a great way to end it. So I’d like to thank our panelists, Sama, Lee, Thamir. This was a hugely great and to our audience, wonderful as well. And so we’ll close it up there. Thank you all very much.

SAMA BILBAO Y LEON: Thank you.

Watch the full event

The post How a circular carbon economy can help achieve Paris Agreement climate goals appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Why South and Southeast Asia are pivotal to global climate and energy ambitions

Atlantic Council — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 20:03:00 +0000

Watch the full event

2022 Global Energy Forum

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

Speakers

Robert Fee
Vice President of International Affairs and Commercial Development, Cheniere Energy

Kavita Gandhi
Executive Director, Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore

Binu Parthan
Head of Regions, International Renewable Energy Agency

Desiree Tung
Deputy Director of External Relations, Energy Market Authority of Singapore

Derek Wong
Senior Director, Government and Public Affairs, Excelerate Energy

Moderator

Reed Blakemore
Deputy Director, Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council

REED BLAKEMORE: All right, so, I guess, welcome, everyone, to our third set of breakout sessions of the day: Climate and Energy Opportunities in South and Southeast Asia.

I think this is a particularly relevant panel because, obviously, coming out of COP-26, and headed into COP-27 and COP-28, where I think the global South is going to have a voice to say, the—it’s—it’s clear that nowhere is the challenge greater, or perhaps the opportunities richer, than in Southeast Asia.

I think you’re going to see—we all know we’re going to see the majority of energy demand growth come from the region until 2050. You know, major economies in the region continue to show significant economic growth potential, growing populations. I think this is a really dynamic region, and particularly one where, as you look to climate action, you know, an urgent priority continues to be the displacement of coal from the energy mix. And I think we have a number of different pathways we can use to pursue that transition, and that’s all still happening in a period now that we’re finding ourselves in, where the conversation around energy security is also incredibly important.

And so, this is a region now that is really at the starting block of pursuing both energy transition, climate goals, and solidifying its energy security at the same time. And that makes the pathways that it can take extraordinarily diverse.

And to that end, we have a fantastic panel with us today. We have Robert Fee, vice president of international affairs and commercial development at Cheniere Energy. We have Kavita Gandhi, executive director at Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore. We have Binu Parthan, head of regions at the—at IRENA. We have Desiree Tung, deputy director of external relations at the Energy Market Authority of Singapore. And it’s particularly good to see Desiree, because I haven’t—I haven’t seen her since, like, two years ago, before the pandemic started. And I’m going to use this opportunity to head—make sure I get back to Singapore International Energy Week. So I’m looking forward to that. And then lastly, we have Derek Wong, senior director of government and public affairs at Excelerate Energy.

How I want to start this panel—I think I’d like to turn to each of you for some opening thoughts, and then open it up to the audience, of course, for Q&A at some point.

But Binu, I’d like to—I’d like to start with you. Head of regions is an awesome title, to say the least. But it means I’m going to pin you with a bit of a tough ask, which is, you know, can you paint a picture of the region for us? You have a lot of diversity across the various, you know, country contexts, each pursuing their own pathway—again, as I mentioned. Where do you see the development of the region’s energy and—energy security and climate story evolving? And what are the particular opportunities and challenges you see arising?

BINU PARTHAN: Yeah, thanks very much. And again, thanks for having IRENA on this panel.

We just launched earlier today the World Energy Transitions Outlook, which provides a clear pathway for the world to decarbonize, including in this region. And one of the key highlights there is that it is possible to have an energy transition aligned with the temperature goals of the Paris agreement in a manner which there are positive economic, environmental, and social benefits. So it’s not something which adds cost, but there are benefits. For example, things like jobs—we see that there could be significant job growth in the region. So the overall picture is positive.

And I just came here from the MENA Climate Week, where we had one of our members, Egypt, confirm to us today that energy transition will be on top of their COP-27 agenda. So I think there is a clear direction in which the energy transition is happening, and it’s not happening simply because of the environmental challenges are so—the climate change rationale. It’s happening because of the economics and the socioeconomics of it.

Now, for the region as such, I mean, we do work closely with ASEAN. And we are developing an energy transition roadmap for ASEAN-10, which we will publish later this year, which will show a clear pathway for countries in the region to move forward. And taking advantage of the fact that Indonesia is the G-20 presidency, and you will see that energy transition is in their global agenda, and we are working with the G-20 presidency to ensure that this is underlined.

Now, one of the big issues, or one of the main opportunities in the region, has been around coal powering energy. And our cost analysis showed that coal is longer viable as a power option. And for the last seven to eight years or so, renewable energy investments have outpaced coal and other power options consistently. And we are also increasingly seeing in the region and beyond, is that it costs more to keep operating coal-powered plants, compared to renewable energy investments. So until then, things are clear.

Now, when you try to increase the share of renewables in the region and beyond, there are concerns and there are challenges. And obviously, a lot of utilities in the region are worried about the instability of the grid when you go beyond 30, 40 percent or so. So where we see a significant opportunity in the region is the flexibility of technologies. So one is energy storage, and there are opportunities to make the grid a lot smarter and intelligent to address some of this variability. But also, what we see as an interesting option is the regional interconnections, connecting grids across the ASEAN region. There have been a lot of efforts there; it needs to be supported by the political will, to ensure that the countries are connected. So every 1 degree longitude that you go, you do have a saving of about one hour of energy storage or so. And that is something you can achieve by—by interconnections.

And something which we are seeing there’s a lot of interest from the region and beyond, is the role of green hydrogen, and how that compares to other options like gas, et cetera. And here, again, the WETO, which we launched today, we believe that green hydrogen will be an important… technology to storage, et cetera. But again, it may not be the answer for all the challenges that you may have. There are sectors like aviation, navigation, could also be some industries like chemicals or iron and metals, et cetera. So it’ll have an important role for the green hydrogen, as well.

So going forward, I think we are very clear that there is a roadmap with renewable energy at the center of it, with electrification of the end users, particularly transport, driving a lot of demand for electricity, and an important role for green hydrogen and also flexibility technologies. And here, as an example, we are working with the Indonesian government on an Indonesian energy transition outlook, which we hope we will launch in Bali around September. And being the largest economy in the region, we believe that what Indonesia will do could actually be a model for other countries in the region. So we remain very optimistic.

There are certain challenges currently around energy security, which we believe are short-term, and probably driven by more emotional and other considerations. But again, if you take the long—medium- to long-term, the options are very clear, which is electrification, and with that, electricity coming from renewable energy, supported by flexibility technologies and green hydrogen.

So this is where we see the region going, and we will continue to work with all our member countries in the region, to support them on this pathway.

Thank you.

REED BLAKEMORE: Thank you, Binu. I—you know, I—it’s a great macro-level overview of the region. And I think it’s a—it sets us up well to dive into, you know, what I hope is a bit of a country-level case study, in a way.

And I’d like to turn to Desiree. Singapore is a—is a major hub in the region, across any number of areas—you know, economics, innovation, what have you. It’s also one that set several very aggressive, and very ambitious, sustainability targets for itself. Can you walk us through those targets? And I think in particular, what’s of interest is, what is the underlying strategy that helps you reach those targets? And again, I think pulling off of, you know, what Binu just mentioned, you know, how do those issues around climate ambition and energy security—how are those interwoven with those various efforts?

DESIREE TUNG: Thank you very much, Reed. And a big thank you to the Atlantic Council for inviting us back. I think it’s lovely to be back in the UAE. I was just saying, it’s been two years since we’ve been back. So it’s lovely to see old friends. It’s great to be here with Kavita and IRENA, and of course, new friends. I think we’ve just met our friends from Chiniere and Excelerate.

So I think Singapore—like every other nation, we are committed to our climate change goals and cutting our emissions… We are committed to halving our emissions by 2030, peak to 33 million tons of CO2. So, to that end, we’ve recently released the Singapore Green Plan. And this sets out, basically, Singapore’s plans over the next 10 years to really drive the low carbon energy transition. One of the key pieces of that is the energy reset. So the energy reset really looks at our four key supply switches for Singapore.

So the first switch is natural gas. Currently, we’re about 95 percent powered by natural gas. It is the cleanest fossil fuel, and it will remain the mainstay of our generation’s system. But of course, we are looking at—you know, we have CCGT, so we have highly efficient power plants. We are also looking at, you know, how we can drive efficiencies through maintenance, reliability of our plants, and all of that.

The second big switch is solar. Singapore—I mean, those of you—I don’t know how many of you have been to Singapore. We’re a small island. We’re blessed with great food, beautiful gardens, but unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of natural renewable resources. So the most viable option for us is solar. But I think, also, as you know, as a small country, we can’t cover the whole island with solar panels. But nevertheless, we do press on. We have actually increased our install capacity by four times over the last 10 years. So it’s been a huge achievement for us, and we continue to increase the deployment. In fact, we have committed to 2-gigawatt peak by 2030.

So that doesn’t sound like a lot. But the other third piece is, obviously, we’re looking at imports from within the region. So we’re actually looking at low carbon renewable imports. So we’re hoping by 2035, that will make up about 35 percent of our energy mix.

And the final piece that we look at is low-carbon alternatives. So we’ve recently invested over 55 million Singapore dollars into low-carbon research—into hydrogen CCUS. I think that’s one of the key pillars of Singapore, is we’re really looking at, you know, how we can look at research and development, and new technologies. I think at the end of the day, that’s why I think we—we come to events like this, and—and look to build connections. It’s because it’s about the creativity of the human mind, and technologies that’s going to get us there, and really push the needle.

So, yeah. Thank you very much.

REED BLAKEMORE: Thanks, Desiree.

And, I guess I might ask a quick follow-up question, which is, you know, Binu—both you and Binu mentioned, you know, the ability of the interconnectedness of the region in so many ways, right? And does Singapore’s, you know, relatively advanced, you know, economic development—and energy story, in some ways—position it to be a leader in the facilitations, in terms of facilitating those transitions of its neighbors? And what does—what do—what does that inter—international cooperation piece play within your clean energy strategy?

DESIREE TUNG: Absolutely.

Hello?

REED BLAKEMORE: Yep.

DESIREE TUNG: Thank you very much for that.

Actually, international cooperation is a very important part. I think building not only regional but international connectivity is a really important part of the whole energy transition. One of the big pieces that the energy market authority does, is we organize the annual event, the Singapore International Energy Week, which we’ve had the privilege of Atlantic Council, IRENA, as well as SEAS join us. In fact, I know Chiniere also speaks, and hopefully Excelerate, too, will be able to join us. It’s held at the end of October, so it’s been running for the last 15 years. And really, what SIEW is about is really pulling together different players, different stakeholders, to come together, to really look at what are some of the energy issues that impact Asia? And how can we come together, to really kind of push the needle, to bring us to that, you know, next level of the transition? You know, what are the pathways? How are we going to get there? And how can we work together to do it?

REED BLAKEMORE: I’m taking that as an invitation, and I’m going to run with it.

DESIREE TUNG: Absolutely.

REED BLAKEMORE: Here we go.

DESIREE TUNG: Open invitation, anytime.

REED BLAKEMORE: Exactly.

I think, you know, I might now turn to Bob and Derek. There is—what Desiree just mentioned, is a part of this process. You know—I mean, to quote you, Desiree, gas, still going to be a part of the picture. And I think when you look in the other parts of the region, you know, again, where you’re trying to quickly displace coal—and that appears to be in a lot of ways, you know, a significant short-term goal, what does the role—what does gas—what role does gas have to play, both in terms of, you know, A, displacing coal; but, B, positioning gas as a way to facilitate additional clean energy transformations throughout the region?

I might start with you, Bob, and then we’ll go to Derek.

ROBERT FEE: Yeah, sure. Thank you.

So one thing I think it’s always important to remember when you talk about, you know, south or Southeast Asia—because we’re focusing on Southeast Asia today—is how diverse the region is. And so we’re able to hear kind of the experience of Singapore. But within the region, we have a vast difference in kind of, where those countries are, in terms of their energy mix, as well as their climate ambitions.

And so, I think that’s a good baseline to remember, that we need to think about what those countries are going to pursue, and they might have different strategies. And so I think part of those strategies, of course, has to be a heavy component of renewable deployment. But because of the infrastructure and the near-term demand for energy, natural gas has to play a role. And you know, I think in Southeast Asia, a lot of the demand drivers are even going to be more pronounced in the next few years, with the current kind of geopolitical situation and demand in the LNG market. And that’s economic growth, and population growth, industrialization, as well as—I think one of the key components on the natural gas side is, you’re going to have a lot of declining indigenous production in the region.

And so in order to meet those economic growth targets and kind of fit in the infrastructure, as well as meet environmental targets such as improving air quality, and climate targets through coal-to-gas switching, you know, natural gas can play that—natural gas and LNG can play that critical role, supplying the region. And you know, I think going forward, one of the, you know—we know how to do this in the United States, in terms of building infrastructure and getting LNG on the water. In the region, we’ve had some difficulties of late in terms of building regasification infrastructure, and kind of having regulatory reforms. And so, I think in order to kind of ensure that we have the coal-to-gas switching benefits in the near term, from a climate perspective, we really need to make sure that we focus on building that infrastructure on the gas side. And then that helps compliment the growth on the renewables side.

REED BLAKEMORE: Derek, I might actually pitch you the same question, which—and I think—you know, Excelerate is an interesting case study here, because as Desiree mentioned, you know, not a lot of geography, you know, to put an import terminal on. And that makes a floating storage option like Excelerate particularly interesting. How are you—what’s your outlook on the region? And I think, again, similarly, you know, how do you see your presence in the region, you know, being a value-add to these clean energy transitions, that are still a significant priority over the long term, especially?

DEREK WONG: Yeah, thanks for that. And I’ll just first echo what Robert just said. South and Southeast Asia is a diverse region. You have a lot of different economies. You have a lot of different types of geography, of island nations, you have nations that suffer from flooding. And so the idea that you have an energy mix and a transition that is specific to—so the country is really important.

For Excelerate, we’ve got almost two decades of experience building, developing, and operating floating LNG terminals. And so we have a fleet of floating storage and regasification units. It’s a bit of a mouthful, so we say FSRUs. But one of the biggest benefits of FSRUs are the flexibility, the fact that they are scalable; the fact that they can be deployed more quickly, and they don’t need the land requirements of land-based terminals. So if you have—if you’re—if you’re constrained, like a Singapore, or other countries in the region that have, you know, chains of islands, you can think about different deployment options, different docking and mooring options, in order to be able to deliver that natural gas in the form of LNG.

And earlier this month—I’m based in Houston, and so CERAWeek came to Houston; it was back in person. And John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for climate change, said very clearly, natural gas is a key component of the energy transition.

Now, obviously, there are—there are ways to make it more efficient, to abate the emissions. But a lot of the countries that we’re talking about are trying to have an offramp from coal. And so, LNG is a great way to bring down emissions, but be able to fuel economic growth. In South Asia, Excelerate has been operating in Pakistan since 2015, and in Bangladesh since 2018. And we’ve seen a difference in the deliveries and the diversity of supply options. When domestically produced gas is on the decline, you need to be able to have that security of supply to accompany the pathways to decarbonization. And so being able to quickly and responsibly build out that infrastructure, I think that’s a really key part of the equation.

REED BLAKEMORE: Kavita, I want to turn to you. And I apologize for making you wait. You know, I’d like you to kind of bring us back out to this perspective on, you know, how do we make this all sustainable, right? How do we make sure that we keep our climate targets at the center of our, you know, of our ambitions, as, you know, as the region continues to grow, and becomes more energy-hungry, natural gas and LNG providing a strong, you know, base of production there. But also, you still need to pursue those renewable energy opportunities, you know, even if it’s limited solar, if—you know, it’s electrification. Hydrogen, as Binu mentioned, is a huge—is a huge piece of that. You know, how do all of these pieces fit together, into a sustainable energy ecosystem?

KAVITA GANDHI: So I think if I take the Singapore example to start with, there’s a need for clear messaging. So in Singapore, like what Desiree mentioned, you know, there’s very clear messaging from the government, via the Singapore Green Plan, which sets the goals. And it’s—like we say, it’s a live document, where it can change, but it always changes for the better. So that’s one thing that I think we need in the region, is very clear policies.

If you ask me, there’s one thing that’s really—could accelerate, would be policies. The minute that you see that there’s a will from the government—if you look at Indonesia, we can see that shift in the last couple of years, and you can see things moving already. And we see it very clearly, because our members—while Singapore is a great market, but it’s not a big enough market. So we look at Southeast Asia as a market for our members. And you can see which are the countries that they are able to deploy projects in.

So I think diversity—and there’s no one-size-fits-all, so it’s going to be different. And even in terms of mix between the type of renewables, or it’s gas, it’s going to be different for each country. That’s what I feel. And we should not try to box it up, or have a formula that applies everywhere.

The other thing I think, which I have seen, working in this space for a long time, is that there’s a lot of need for capacity-building in the countries around us. And as SEAS, we have a program together with the Singapore government, Asian Development Bank, and—and we execute those sort of capacity-building programs, where we work specifically with policymakers. And—and you talked about grid intermittency. I think that is a nightmare for a lot of policymakers in the region. What is going to happen to my grid when you start pumping in all those renewables?

But then we have solutions, like you mentioned. I mean, in Singapore, we’ve—we have a lot of emphasis on demand response. There’s storage technologies, there’s various softwares that are available now to even out that intermittency. So, yeah. So I think we need to talk more about it, and talk a lot more to—I think the private sector is ready, but what is stopping them is very stable, clear policies. That will make it work.

REED BLAKEMORE: I want to draw on an item that’s been mentioned a couple times thus far. And that’s the—that’s the international partnerships and cooperation piece. And I’ll turn—Binu, I’ll toss this to you. You mentioned, you know, cooperation within the region on, you know, interconnections, et cetera. But yet, you know, we’ve just heard from Kavita that, you know, looking outside the region for assistance, for shared learning. And of course, you know, both Bob and Derek, you know, are bringing their resources to the region. How does the international partnership piece work?

And I think, you know, how does the international partnership piece work, which—in which non-regional countries, you know, operate in the region on good faith, right, as good partners? And what are those principles that should be adopted, as folks continue to engage with the region’s energy development story?

BINU PARTHAN: Yeah, at the regional level, just to take an example of Africa—although out of context—we are working with the African Union to develop a continental master plan for electrifying all the countries, and creating a single electricity market. So at the regional level, it’s important to have institutions with the right mandate to create common markets for electricity and energy. And that’s a major important factor. And again, having institutions like, you know, ASEAN, hopefully with the roadmap could do more. And then, it’ll be followed by national policies.

But at the international level—and you made this important point—that we’ve now created, for example, the collaborative frameworks at IRENA, where our 184 members, which account for, like 98 percent of the global energy consumption, where we have this space, where, as you mentioned, Kavita, there are countries in Southeast Asia which are worried about if the renewable energy share goes up beyond a certain point, what do we do? Do we bring in natural gas, or do we bring in some spinning reserve from coal to support that? And they have an opportunity to talk to Colombia as to how they integrate grid-level storage on their supply side, et cetera. So we are creating that framework.

But again, that just two policymakers or regulators talking to each other, that needed to be followed up by action on the ground. And here again, as Kavita mentioned, like, Indonesia has now put in place a carbon tax. And it’s coming right from the top, from the finance ministry. And that’ll give the right signals as to which are the energy options that the country would like to promote. And that actually translates to actual revenues, or incentives for the private sector, and it sends a very clear signal to the private sector, and then they can make these investments.

And so, I think in a sense, there needs to be more cross-fertilization of ideas, like the collaborative frameworks. And just as an example, something which we launched last week is an issue on critical minerals, which we believe that, whether it’s going to be natural gas or electrical storage, will be determined by critical minerals—where they come from, at what price point they are. And I think there is an opportunity to collaborate on that.

So in a similar way, IRENA will create more platforms for exchange of ideas, but again, that needs to be driven in the regions by very strong regional institutions, with the mandate and the drive to implement that, and then to the national level. And then we will have successful cases. And I think in West Africa, we have seen institutions like ECOWAS do that to some extent, and we have this in Central America, also. And we do hope that Southeast Asia can—it has the potential and the leadership in several countries. And if we can do that at the region level and move that to the national level, then we have a very good model in the region, I think.

REED BLAKEMORE: I’m going to resist the urge to jump into the critical minerals bag, because that’s one of my favorite issues. And we’ll just—it’ll ruin the topic of the session. I’ll spend all the time talking about that.

But I think it does bring up an issue that I might—I might respectfully disagree with you, slightly, in reference to your comments about energy security, and whether or not those are, you know, short-term considerations, and just considerations of the moment. Because I think when you—when we start thinking about the, you know, the balancing, you know—balancing which supply chains we are or are not dependent on, whether that be a—you know, a natural gas supply chain, or a—or in minerals and materials supply chain—those are considerations that I think have to meet.

And to be, you know, to be fair to Bob and Derek, I think there is a little—I think there is a justifiable concern, in some ways, that, you know, as the rest of the world begins to think about, you know, LNG as an energy security solution, you begin to—you know, the region can also run into supply—you know, a tightened supply chain of its own.

And how—you know, from your perspective—and I’d also be interested to hear Desiree’s thoughts on this, given, you know, that natural gas is, I think, number-one—switch number one, if I remember correctly. You know, you’re looking—if gas is that solution, you’re looking at a tightened market. You’re looking at a market that, you know, might not offer as much energy security as other options. Or will it? I think it’s an interesting debate.

So I’ll turn to Bob, and then Desiree. And then of course Derek and Kavita, I’d love for you to weigh in.

ROBERT FEE: Yeah, so I think a panelist on the last panel talking about European energy security used a quote that diversity is the only form of security. And I think that’s true in Europe, and that’s true in Southeast Asia, and that’s true whether you’re talking about energy sources, or you’re talking about critical materials. You know, diversity is the only form of security, and you need to pursue all of these different—all of these different policies, and all of these different sources. And I don’t think that they have to be, you know—natural gas infrastructure is going to support renewable development, and so they can kind of—they can work in tandem, especially when the demand is so great.

And I also think it’s important to—I really liked kind of thinking about this from, you know, adding the climate perspective comment that Kavita mentioned about policy and messaging—is we need to be, I think, consistent about how we think about these issues. You know, in the last few years, particularly in the West, we’ve had this pretty aggressive shift on natural gas. And I think that that, you know, at least in the West, kind of misses the role of natural gas in Southeast Asia and the rest of Asia.

You know, in COP-26 in Glasgow, we just talked about, and reached an agreement, to phase down coal. We didn’t reach an agreement to end coal. And so thinking about, kind of, are we ending coal and gas at the same time, I think, is going to leave nations not only insecure from an energy perspective, but also, you know, not able to meet their economic demand.

And so I think, you know, again, thinking about the diversity of these countries, many of these countries have natural gas as a key part of their climate commitments. Now, some of them have different climate commitments than Singapore, which is more advanced, or European countries—India talking about, kind of, net-zero by 2070. But that has to be aligned with their development. And so I think that the climate aspect actually goes hand in hand with the energy security aspect, if you take a, you know, realistic view of the market.

And I don’t think that doesn’t mean that we have to be ambitious. I think that that—we just have to think about where that comes from. So you talk about critical materials and where those come from, they have supply chain issues. You know, I think the onus is on the producers, on the suppliers—for us, Chiniere and the United States—to think about how we improve our supply chain, and reducing methane emissions, increasing the transparency around the quantification of greenhouse gas emissions, that then benefit our consumers of our product in Southeast Asia.

You know, upstream methane emissions are 30 percent of the emissions chain—or, sorry, upstream of kind of the combustion of natural gas is 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Methane is a huge component of that. If we’re able to reduce methane emissions upstream in the US, that does have tangible benefits for Southeast Asia in their—in their consumption of LNG, and globally.

So I think the—I don’t think that those have to be, you know, exclusive of one another. But I do think that we need to be both ambitious and realistic about who should bear what burden, as we think about achieving climate goals, while also meeting energy demand.

REED BLAKEMORE: Desiree, I’m going to—I’m going to pick on you again, because you’re our—you’re our country-level representative here.

You know, energy security playing a role, we’ve talked about, you know, the various security considerations within, you know, both supply chains. And I think, Bob, you correctly outlined how, you know, cleaning the supply chain is equally as important a responsibility on the supply side, as it is on the demand side.

So how does—how is Singapore thinking about these issues? And I—you know, I think, you know, how is it thinking about these issues in the context of the region, as well?

DESIREE TUNG: Absolutely.

I mean, I think one of the things that we’ve all become acutely aware, is how sensitive the energy market is to geopolitical. I think the one big theme that I take away from here is not only is everyone driving toward the path of sustainability, but I think energy security has certainly come to the forefront.

I mean, in Singapore, when we look at energy security, I agree with your comments on diversity. I mean, even though we are, you know, going to be powered by gas, we are looking at imports. We are looking at solar. We even have geothermal, if you’re not aware. We are also tapping into geothermal. Those of you who have been to Singapore, we actually have a hot spring. If you come and visit us, you can boil an egg. It’s a nice tourist thing to do.

But I mean, from a policy standpoint, we do look at what we call the energy trilemma. I think you can’t look at energy security in isolation. I mean, when you look at policy, you also have to look at sustainability, and at the end of the day, we’re also looking at cost. So I think the three things need to be looked at in balance. I mean, I think when you look at the region, I think international cooperation is a key part of it, as well. You know, Singapore, we are very open in working with our, you know, international and regional partners, both in sort of ASEAN, APEC, G-20. I think this is where international organizations such as IRENA also have a big part to play, and SEAS within our ecosystem. So, yeah. So that’s kind of our take.

But I think one of the other areas—I think Kavita and I were also talking about—related to energy security, actually—is not as, maybe, as a sexier topic, but also energy efficiency is something that we’re pushing a lot in Singapore. It also underpins, because in Singapore we price electricity right, so we don’t subsidize. So it’s about sending the right price signal of our consumption. But I think maybe, Kavita, you can add to that.

KAVITA GANDHI: Yeah. So, exactly. I think you said it. Diversity is the best security. I think that’s the mantra for the day.

So I think in Singapore, we are looking at every option that’s available, starting with energy efficiency. So electricity has never, ever been subsidized, even though being the association, there was a time when the whole world was offering feed-in tariffs, and Singapore was not. And we were literally telling the government, you know, our members are going to die if there’s no feed-in tariff. But you know, there was no—no going, there was no distortion of the electricity market.

And eventually, you know, the prices became very competitive, and now, we’ve looked at every option, you know. So there’s 35 square kilometers of roof space in Singapore. We’re going to make that’s scoured with solar panels, and not just any solar panels. We are pushing at efficiencies. We have a lot of dollars going into research and development. We are looking at floating solar. We are looking at BIPV. We are looking at every surface that we can cover with some renewable.

And I think the other thing that works very well in Singapore is the cooperation, the way the government and the private sector works together. So I think before people invest in a specific technology, they are very, very sure that they can go in and make the big investments there, and that there will be more flipping and flopping in terms of the message that’s coming.

I mean, carbon tax is one such example, where it was declared that we will have carbon tax, and we’ll increase it at a certain pace. The pace got picked up this year, which was very happy news for all our members, and it’ll continue to grow. And I think that’s what is providing the space for renewables to play in Singapore.

So I completely understand that every country in the region is not like Singapore. But I think what is interesting is that all the countries are at different stages of development. And we have so much to learn from each other. I mean, Singapore doesn’t have everything. We don’t have the market. We don’t have the big market. We need to depend on Indonesia, maybe Thailand, Vietnam for the markets. We may have certain advanced technologies or certain solutions that have been tested in the Singapore market—maybe can be applied in these countries. And we are constantly looking to work with organizations, like the ASEAN Center for Energy, or Asian Development Bank, World Bank, to see how we can take some of these solutions to the region.

And that’s an effort that goes at every level, at G2G level, you know, where the energy market authority is working with the different electricity authorities in the region. And we as an association are trying to do a lot of that work at the private sector level, as well.

REED BLAKEMORE: Thank you, Kavita.

I think, you know, first off, totally agree, energy efficiency, vastly under-talked about, particularly when you’re talking about, you know, limiting demand growth or the severity of demand growth, at least, it’s a—it’s a critical solution.

I think, Derek, I said I would come to you on this supply chain issue, so I don’t want you to, you know, be left out of this. And I think—and particularly, you know, when you talk about Excelerate’s business model, I think you’re talking about a flexibility of solution, right, with that floating storage option. How does that flexibility play into this discussion around energy security and supply chains?

DEREK WONG: Absolutely.

So, you know, getting back to this diversity brings security argument, I heard yesterday from the Albanian minister for infrastructure and energy. Albania is a country that is largely dependent on renewables, almost 100 percent hydro. And she was talking about the need to diversify, because if you have a particular dry season, you’re worried about blackouts and brownouts. So as countries think about the targets for renewables and the continued intermittency and storage issues, how can other sources, like natural gas or LNG, be an onramp, or even a stabilizer, to meet seasonality of demand?

And our experience in Brazil—which, again, has a lot of hydro—has been that they’ve relied on LNG to be able to meet those times of the year. Last year, there was severe droughts, the worst droughts in 90 years in Brazil. And so there were a lot—there was a lot of LNG coming in, and the sort of security of supply that our FSRUs were providing, really helped Brazil navigate through that period.

And if I—come back to the region, in Bangladesh, LNG has only been a part of the energy mix since 2018. And today, LNG accounts for about 25 percent of natural gas supply. But because of the experience of having that security of supply and the reliability, the Bangladesh government is able to make certain decisions around canceling planned coal-fired power plants, increasing the distribution of gas, and allowing that to accompany their renewables targets. So, really being able to plan, based on that idea that you have—you can secure the energy transition, that’s a term I’ve heard a bit this week, that’s important.

And the way we think about it at Excelerate, because we operate our FSRUs as a fleet, we could, you know, start with a smaller vessel that has, you know, less storage, less regas capacity, and then scale up, and maybe do a swap, or expand the capacity as the needs change for the countries where we operate.

REED BLAKEMORE: You mentioned, you know, gas as a ramp-up. And as we kind of talk about this, you know, the intersection of energy security and climate action, you know, I continue to actually return to a comment, Binu, you made. And hydrogen seems to sit at the nexus of that.

You mentioned green hydrogen in your, you know, in your initial remarks. You know, and I don’t want to have a conversation about, the, you know, all the colors of the wind, when it comes to, you know, hydrogen. But I think, you know, can you—tell us more about the hydrogen potential in the region? You know, especially given that, you know, at least in the short term, we see a lot of gas potential in the region. And you know, that opens up blue hydrogen. That opens up additional storage opportunities through hydrogen. Could you speak a little bit to that, please?

BINU PARTHAN: Yeah, no, absolutely.

I mean, first of all, we did publish a report on the geopolitics of hydrogen. But an important point is, we don’t really see green gasses and green hydrogen traded in the current way it is being done now, with somebody producing gas and then it’s being supplied elsewhere. So hydrogen is primarily going to be something which will be produced—hopefully from renewable energy, the green hydrogen—locally, and as a means to balance the grid, plus decarbonize some of these hard-to-abate sectors. And I think the share of green hydrogen which will be supplied around the world will be a very small amount, so I think that’s important to make that distinction.

And within the region, I think the potential or the opportunities are literally small compared to what is happening globally, where we see that Africa to Europe or Middle East to Europe are the major green hydrogen supply points that we see, particularly in the short term or so.

But also, I just wanted to make a point regarding energy security. In an interconnected grid, where you connect across countries in the region, those—when you look at a particular country, small or big, and you only look at your electric grid, which is constrained by your national boundaries, that actually accentuates your energy security. In an interconnected grid, these are not an issue, or non-major issues.

Today, France, for example, is having major issues with its nuclear power plant, and the electricity for that country comes from renewable energy from up north. And that’s happening because Europe has an interconnected grid. So I think interconnections is going to be important. And that will give you a lot more flexibility and energy security.

And again, it’s important to take a longer-term perspective, to 2040, 2050, where some of these options are much clearer. When you look at a short-term energy planning, some of these energy security issues of supply of your fuel actually comes up much stronger. But again, when you talk about supply of a particular equipment or a generating option—which has got some security issues, though—but again, once it’s installed, then it can… use local resources to generate electricity for the next 20, 25 years. So there is a distinction between security of fuel supplies, and the security of the initial renewable energy conversion equipment. And they are, by orders of magnitude, very different.

But I think the important thing to understand is that if you look at the longer term, 2050, we are moving from a mechanical world, which is powered by direct fuel combustion, to an electricity-powered world. And this is really where the energy security paradigm will change. And there, the interconnection across countries is very important. Having a common electricity market, like in Europe, is going to be very important. And there will, of course, be importance of diversity there. But again, if you look at the longer term, but of course, make sure that the short-term actions are consistent with that, then we may have a clearer view on that.

ROBERT FEE: If I can make a quick comment, I think, you know, I generally agree with what you’re saying. But I think we do need to be considerate of the fact that interconnectivity can also bring its own challenges.

And just thinking about the gas market this past year, and what’s going on in Europe, so one, obviously, the interconnectivity of the gas market in Europe is leading to this. But prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the LNG and global gas market was already experiencing a significant tightness, because of global interconnectivity, and then weather events that then affected electricity markets. So kind of low hydrogen in Brazil—sorry, low hydro in Brazil, a cold winter in Europe, less wind in the North Sea, all of that can contribute then to a shortage.

And so, I think going forward, both in the short and long term, there’s going to be no silver bullet. And I think certainly, interconnectivity brings a lot of benefits, but we also have to think about what are the challenges that those could do, particularly in a, you know, really, you know, interconnected electrified market. And so I think having, again, kind of that diversity aspect, whether it’s fuels or electricity, having that diversity and multiple redundancies is going to be important.

I’d also say that, I think, you know, you never know you need energy security until you already have needed it, right? And so, you know, to use the example of Germany, on LNG terminals—where I think Excelerate would be very helpful—you know, Germany could have—is talking about bringing those LNG terminals online now, and they could—they had been talking about it for a number of years. And so, you know, making sure that you have that infrastructure today to meet those needs, and I think we’re going to be into a really acute challenge in the next few years, given the situation in Europe, and how that will cascade to the rest of the world.

And then, you know, in the future, you know, if hydrogen is able to be commercialized at scale, then we can think about we repurpose natural gas infrastructure for, kind of, other gasses, whether they are any color of the rainbow.

REED BLAKEMORE: We have about five minutes left, and I don’t see any questions in the audience, so—which is disappointing, guys.

Oh, right there, yes.

Q: You’ve got to ask first.

REED BLAKEMORE: You got to—I thought I asked for questions earlier on. I thought we had a shy crowd.

Q: I guess, just going off of what you just said, talking about LNG as sort of this energy security solution that you’re thinking about moving forward, is there, like, an understanding, or a thought given to how you design LNG infrastructure in the present, so that it’s functional as that solution in the future? Like, I’m just talking about CCGT turbines, the utilization rate on those, and, like, the flexibility of those turbines, even though they’re more efficient in, like, a baseload capacity, they’re less efficient than OCGT as flexible capacity. And you’re building infrastructure that’s going to be there for 30 years, so you build CCGT that’s effective as a baseload today, becomes a flexible—a flexible fuel in the future, and that has the potential to basically be a stranded asset, or an asset that becomes less and less effective, because of—just the usage profile of this infrastructure is different.

ROBERT FEE: Okay, that’s a great question.

I think—so, I’d break the two questions up. In terms of how you ensure whether or not natural gas and LNG infrastructure can be used for hydrogen in the future, I don’t—definitely do not have an answer for you on that. I think it’s something that we and others are looking at.

I heard recently at CERAWeek, that hydrogen being the smallest atom, leaks as much as methane, and it could—although it’s not directly warming, it could have kind of indirect warming effects. I don’t know anything about that. That’s the extent of my knowledge. So I think, something that we need to look into.

You know, in terms of, you know, stranded assets, I think if you—if you build the asset and think about, from a company perspective, right, you know, we are going to build infrastructure in a way that makes sense, and we can get a return—and get a return on that investment, so it’s paid for. And then in the future, if you’re able to then switch the—the profile of how you use it, then that’s going to be a different commercial case. And so I think that businesses can handle those risks with clear and consistent government policy.

REED BLAKEMORE: We have Phil Cornell in the back.

Q: Thanks, very much.

I was very interested to hear about some of Singapore’s sort of diversification options. And one of the most interesting, I think, that’s out there is the sun cable project and the proliferating kind of energy interconnections that are going on. And in fact, they’re happening sort of across the region. That’s a major change of policy in a place like Singapore, and obviously it raises questions in Bangladesh and others, where we’re seeing a lot of political implications, really, of grid interconnection.

I just wanted to—you know, maybe you could speak a little bit about that. What do you think is the future of a regional grid, and what are some of the challenges?

DESIREE TUNG: Thank you very much for that question.

Actually, a regional grid has been something we’ve been talking about in ASEAN for many years. We’ve been talking about regional interconnectivity on a power basis, as well as the trans-ASEAN gas pipeline.

So one of the projects that Singapore is working on is a pathfinder project, which involves importing electricity from Laos, through to Thailand, to Malaysia, to Singapore. So we actually do have an interconnect with Malaysia for security reasons. But as I mentioned earlier, we are actually now looking at actively importing this renewable or low-carbon energy from within the region.

So of course, you know, we are open to all options. I mean, I think sun cable was also mentioned, the opportunities within, you know, moving from Australia to Singapore. I think in addition to that, we’re also looking at—I mean, you brought up hydrogen, for example. I mean, in Singapore, we can’t produce the hydrogen. So we’re also looking at what are the opportunities to import hydrogen. I won’t get into the colors of the rainbow, I know that’s a big debate. But I mean, all of these, you know, underpin, I think, what we’ve been talking about, which is diversification, energy security.

And I think for Singapore, we are open to all options. And we are a price taker, we import all of our energy. So I think whatever to us is reliable, secure, competitive, and is also sustainable, is going to be an option that we’re going to want to address.

KAVITA GANDHI: Maybe I could just add something.

So, yeah, there has been a lot of discussion in Singapore about importing clean energy. And I think some of our members have been involved in that. And there are RFPs out for that.

So one of the things we’ve done before that can happen is talk a little bit about standards and renewable energy certificate standards, and all our measurements and verifications, so that what we get into Singapore is truly clean energy, because that’s another area that can be a little bit controversial. So we want to ensure—and we’ve just—I think we are the first country in Asia to launch the REC standard. And when we import clean electricity, we are looking at how that complies with that standard. That means that electrons that are flowing in are truly clean.

REED BLAKEMORE: Okay, I asked for questions, and I got enough questions to take us over time. But I do want to wrap up the panel with one lightning round. We’re going to start at one end; end down here. And so I want each panelist to say—you know, this is, I think, regardless of how you land on the debate between, you know, which supply chain offers more security, which part of the energy mix needs more examination, you know, what the innovation horizon actually looks like—it’s a dynamic region, right?

So I might, you know, start by saying to each one of you, like, what about the region most excites you, right? And what do you think is the—is the next big thing to happen in the region?

DESIREE TUNG: Well, I think what excites me about the region, you know, is that it is a very dynamic and exciting region. I mean, I think we know, you know, as Asia is where there is a lot of growth, I think energy demand continues to grow.

I think one of the key takeaways that I want to leave everyone with is that, you know, the end goal of moving towards the energy transition is not something we can do single handedly. It is a collective goal that we have to work towards together. Which is why I would like to invite all of you to join us in Singapore at the end of October, where we run the Singapore International Energy Week. It really is that platform to bring everyone together, to really kind of bring the brightest, most creative minds, to really find the solutions to some of the energy challenges that we have out there, not only in Asia, but as well as globally.

KAVITA GANDHI: Okay, so she has had the first stab, so.

So, I think what excites me most is that a big part of the clean energy is going to be produced in our part of the world. And there’s so much opportunity, and I think it’s just something that’s waiting to take off. And that’s very exciting.

And also, the number of technologies and new solutions: Actually, it’s not only technologies; it’s also business models that are coming out, which are very interesting, like solar leasing, where you don’t need to own the system; you just buy the clean electricity.

I think there are going to be many such innovations, both on the technology side and on the market side, which will really drive this forward.

DEREK WONG: Yeah, I would say innovating to manage growth. You’ve got a really dynamic region, population growth, economic growth, and some constraints. And so it’s going to take a lot of innovation and technology and out-of-the-box thinking to really be able to manage that growth.

BINU PARTHAN: Thank you.

We’ve been very impressed with the just energy transition mechanism, which the region is showing how you can create a financing mechanism, now with the ADB and the Indonesian leadership as to make sure that the energy transition is orderly, that there is financing for some of the assets which are likely to be stranded.

And again, this is very different to the South African just energy transition partnerships. So the region is probably showing a more market-oriented way to transition, and we find that quite exciting. And we will hope that the lessons from the region in this just transition can be applied to other regions as well. So we are very excited about seeing that just energy transition efforts. Thank you.

ROBERT FEE: So, personally, I’m going to go to something that Desiree said, and that was the food. Incredible diversity. Very delicious.

But professionally, the demand, I think, from the region—obviously, from my corporate hat—incredible demand for natural gas and LNG, demand for energy. There’s a demand for solutions. It’s going to require—no one supply chain is secure. You need everything to get even close to meeting the demand in the next coming years and decades. And so there’s going to be a number of opportunities or solutions that are going to be required.

REED BLAKEMORE: All right, well, there you have it.

And it looks like everybody showed up for the last, like, three minutes of the panel. So to our panelists—Desiree, Kavita, Derek, Binu, Rob—this was wonderful. Just as a logistical announcement, we’re going to be convening at 4:30 in the hall next door for our next round of plenary sessions, so why don’t we head all over there?

But for now, I’d like everybody to thank our panelists for a wonderful session, and thank you.

Watch the full event

The post Why South and Southeast Asia are pivotal to global climate and energy ambitions appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Practical steps for Europe as it turns away from Russian gas

Atlantic Council — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 15:05:00 +0000

Watch the full event

2022 Global Energy Forum

Event transcript

Uncorrected transcript: Check against delivery

Speakers

Ana Birchall
Special Envoy for Strategic and International Affairs, Nuclearelectrica

The Rt Hon. Charles Hendry
CBE PC Professor, University of Edinburgh; Former Minister of State for Energy, United Kingdom

H.E. Michał Kurtyka
President, COP24

Amb. Richard Morningstar
Founding Chairman, Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council

Moderator

Phillip Cornell, Senior Fellow, Global Energy Center, Atlantic Council

PHILLIP CORNELL: So thank you very much, everyone, for joining this panel today. We will be talking about options for getting off Russian gas, practical steps for Europe. Obviously, these are issues that we’re dealing with both in a very short term, short term, medium term, and a longer term.

And so I’m really excited to have our guest panelists here today. On my left is Ana Birchall, the special envoy for strategic and international affairs from Nuclearelectrica. Beyond her is Mr. Charles Hendry, former minister of energy for the UK and currently a CBE professor at the University of Edinburgh.

Further down the line, His Excellency Michal Kurtyka, the COP24 president of Poland, and at the end our esteemed ambassador, Richard Morningstar, the chairman of the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council. So thank you, everyone, for joining me here today.

I’d like to start off with a first question for all of you. How do we think about European gas and the structure in, let’s say, just the coming year? So how do we respond in the coming year to some of the challenges that we’re going to see, given all of the uncertainties that we know about the current situation in Ukraine?

Please, Ana, first.

ANA BIRCHALL: Thank you so much. Firstly, please allow to say thank you and congratulaions to Atlantic Council for having us here. I think it couldn’t be more timely. And if we are talking about getting off Russian gas, what we are seeing today is that the current Ukrainian war demonstrated the importance of a balanced energy mix in the EU and for a resilient energy system.

And I have to say that I’m quite proud and it’s quite encouraging to see over the last two days the discussions, including in the Atlantic Council debates, that more and more people are saying to get the energy weapon out of Putin’s hands. It’s something that countries such as Romania—my country—we’ve been advocating for many, many years and it’s encouraging to see that, finally, this is coming to more the public domain because the overreliance of Russian imports was a vulnerability of the EU even before the war started.

So to answer to your question, I think what we need to do is to have that balanced mix and the resilience, and there are important steps that are being taken at the EU level. I don’t know if you would like me to touch it now or later on. But, you know, just a few days ago on March 25th there’s been an announcement of an important agreement, practically a new groundbreaking initiative between the EU and the United States, and allow me to look at my notes to make sure that I get the numbers right.

So, practically, it is a plan that foresees the supply of 15 billion cubic meters of LNG for 2022—that’s in the short term—and additional 50 billion cubic meters per year until 2030 from the US. Alongside with this, obviously, the challenges will remain and those need to be addressed both on a short-term but long-term, you know, perspective as well.

You have the security of the supply, the decarbonization, and maintaining an affordable energy price for the consumers. So what are the solutions short term to find the solution in order to allow the countries that are still very dependent on the Russian gas?

But building the long-term EU resilience plan to aim at reducing the reliance on Russian import, and that needs to be focused on maximizing the indigenous, really, you know, realities on each country. And here I would like to speak probably, if you give me a chance, about what Romania is doing on the nuclear front because that’s something that is very, very important and I think we are positioning ourselves as leaders in our region, and not just leaders in terms of being courageous in investing in nuclear energy when it wasn’t necessarily quite fashionable, but it was a wise investment and I’m very proud to say that the presidency, the—you know, the office of the prime minister, the prime minister, the parliament, everybody in Romania, is supporting this because we saw it as an energy security issue.

But, likewise, Romania is that exporter of energy security in our region, including to Republic of Moldova, and maybe a little bit later we can elaborate on that. So those are a few ideas in terms of solutions, and I guess the final solution, if I can speak like this, is to really have that energy as a reliable energy, as a secured energy, and an affordable energy, and from that point of view, I think technological neutrality is quite key.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thanks very much. So, clearly, one of them is thinking about different fuel options. Nuclear is back on the table in a lot of places, given the energy concerns right now. But you also mentioned, for example, bringing in additional gas. Part of it is bringing it into Europe. Part of it is actually distributing it within Europe, which is the next step.

Maybe, Charles, you can speak a little bit to some of those things.

CHARLES HENDRY: Philip, thank you very much. And first of all, can I say I’m delighted to be with my distinguished colleagues, but as they’ll allow me, a particular privilege to be with Ambassador Morningstar, one of America’s most renowned and successful ambassadors. Did an extraordinary job in Azerbaijan and the Caspian, and somebody who for whom I have the most profound admiration.

The issues which we’re talking about, and you raised a very direct and proper question as what can we do in the next 12 months, and that means there are certain things we can’t do. We can’t build new nuclear plants. We can’t develop a hydrogen economy. We can’t build new pipelines. We can’t build new LNG facilities.

So we have to work with—within the construction and constraints that we currently have and how we try to move that forward. We, certainly, can look at how we bring on new sources of supply. There are projects which are ready to go but which just need the pipeline joined up, potentially, in some small areas—projects in Kurdistan which could be brought into the TANAP pipeline network; can we do more to get Türkmengaz across the Caspian, to Baku, and then into the TAP pipeline across Europe.

So there are areas which we can look at like that. Is the time now right to look at whether we can bring Syria back into the global economy and to open up some of those facilities, perhaps, with the money not going to the Syrian government but to humanitarian projects in Syria instead.

So there are areas like that which we can look at and see how we can move those forward with some degree of urgency. There is, certainly, capacity in some of the LNG facilities. So whilst we can’t build new ones we can use the existing ones better, and I think some of this goes back to the whole issue of diversity.

Diversity isn’t just about a diverse range of places from which we can get the gas. It’s about a diverse range of options for how we bring that gas to market, and so using the LNG capability better with the interconnectivity that already exists is an important part, I think, of that solution.

I think the—we have to think as a continent on this. Europe—the European Commission—already has a list of projects of common interest, which are interconnection projects which would strengthen European resilience, and we have to ensure as part of this process that countries like Poland can never be isolated from the gas supplies which they’re going to need, which has been the case, I think, too much in the past. And I think one of the concerns about Nord Stream was that it bypassed Poland and, therefore, made Poland’s situation more difficult. Providing that resilience to Poland and countries like that, I think, is an absolutely critical part of it.

There are other things we can do. We can work immediately on energy efficiency so we will need less gas when we come to next winter. We can roll out renewables and so we can actually get some of those installed and operating within a period of a few months. And so we have a few months before we start hitting the colder period of next winter. But we haven’t got a few months to start doing the work. We need a very cold analysis of which projects can deliver quickly and we need to start building them.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thanks very much, Charles.

Michal, as Charles was mentioning, I mean, Poland has been in the sights of many of these energy security questions around gas for decades now. At the same time, it’s also been one of the most vocal countries about potential next steps on sanctions and also moving very quickly in terms of diversification. How do things look in the next year from the Polish position?

MICHAŁ KURTYKA: Well, thank you very much, and I join in welcoming Ambassador Morningstar, with whom we spent a lot of time and who did an excellent job in Washington when the Polish voice was somehow isolated in this regard, and we were very vocal and very radical saying that energy security and especially gas supply is not about price. It’s about diversity of supply, and that if we want to be independent per se we need to be independent in terms of energy supply.

And it’s sad to say this, we were right. For already quite a lot of time Poland was very determined and very stubborn in convincing our European partners about the necessity to diversify and especially not to increase the dependence on Russian gas.

Of course, we spent and why so? Because we were the most exposed, as you said, Minister. We had also experienced blackmails from the gas promise—the gas supplier, and we experienced also cuts of energy. I remind 2008.

But Poland engaged in diversification strategy for already 20 years and this strategy is paying, and by the end of this year, it happens. It’s not—it’s a coincidence, lucky coincidence or unlucky coincidence, depending from which side you look at it, that our system will be completely isolated and able to work without supplies from Russia.

Why? Because we built LNG terminal—I just recall to you that our neighbor of Germany didn’t—and that we brought gas from Norwegian shelf via Baltic pipe. Baltic pipe is going to be finalized this year in October.

So Poland is one of the few countries in the region which is not anymore, as was the case when Nord Stream started, asking for solidarity—gas solidarity—but which is providing, actually, gas solidarity to the region.

We are prepared for cutting Russian gas. Yes, it will be costly. Yes, it will be extremely unpleasant. Yes, we will need to introduce rationalization in Europe, and I think it’s better to do it like that. Otherwise, we will be having a very chaotic process, country by country.

So we need European Commission to get engaged in it. But as things are going right now, I think that the call from my country, which is, again, one of the first within European Union to cut from Russian supplies, will be heard and I’m sad to say Polish infrastructure was right, in a way, and our pessimistic view on the situation was completely justified, but being also optimist, saying, OK, we must handle it. We must make sure that this happens because on the other side of the balance you have life of Ukrainians and peace on the continent.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thank you very much, Michal.

Ambassador Morningstar, you spent much of a long and illustrious career focusing on European energy security and, indeed, preparing for situations very much like this one. How do you see today’s crisis, given decades of preparing, including in some of the measures that Michal was talking about?

RICHARD MORNINGSTAR: Well, thank you. Thank you, Phillip, and I wish I could be with you in person. It’s good to see my friends on the panel and thank you for your—you know, for your kind—overly kind comments that you’ve made.

Let me say a few things, and I agree with everything that’s been said. Let me—and maybe three or four major points.

Yeah, a lot of progress has been made and somewhat surprising what’s—how Europe, the United States, countries in Europe, have been unified on this issue since the Ukraine crisis and war has begun.

Couple of things that I think are going to be really important over the next coming year or two and going forward. First of all, the message, and on the US side and US administration side, has to continue to be clear and that message has to be that gas is going to continue to be important and that message has to go to the financial community, the investment community, the companies, that gas is going to be important and that gas in the energy transition, that it’s not an either/or proposition and that gas can be decarbonized and needs to be decarbonized and that we have to double down with respect to the various technologies that have been talked about that are going to be important to the energy transition. It’s all going to be important.

Second thing that I’m somewhat concerned about the political will has to continue with respect to this. Yeah, it seems to be there right now and that’s all positive. Hopefully, in some way, one way or another, things will settle down in Ukraine and, hopefully—and God willing, it will and the horrific damage will begin to be limited. It may not be an absolute settlement but, hopefully, things will get better.

If it does—if that does happen, the political will has to continue with respect to the dependency on Russian energy and Russian gas. There can’t be backtracking from where things are now. We can’t get back into a situation, oh, well, things are getting a little better. Yeah, we can, you know, go back to our old ways. That can’t happen.

Third thing that I would mention—and I think it’s great that we have Ministers Birchall and Kurtyka on the panel—the countries in the region have to work both regionally and on their own to make sure that that dependence doesn’t continue and that’s happening in both Romania and Poland, and I think the job that is being done in those countries has been terrific and that needs to continue.

So, yeah, it’s—I think things are going well right now. Things are going about as well as can be expected, although we also have to recognize that even today there’s more gas—at least as of a few days ago, more gas was going to Europe from Russia than just before the war started.

So, you know, that’s still—we have to recognize that, and the steps that we’re talking about have to be taken, the political will on both sides of the ocean has to continue, and countries in the region have to, on their own, do their own thing to help to mitigate and minimize the situation, which Romania and Poland are both doing.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thanks very much, Dick.

Let me go then to our two ministers. Clearly, there’s a lot of—if we’re going to be facing a situation of such serious reduction in gas over such a short period of time we’re going to take—we have to take some very clear steps. The Commission put out its Repower EU plan just a couple of weeks ago with some very ambitious statements about how we can not just get more bcm but also achieve savings in other parts of the economy.

Maybe you could talk a little bit about those plans—the realistic nature—within the next year and also maybe a little bit about how do we think about the internal market, particularly from your role as the deputy prime minister.

ANA BIRCHALL: Well, firstly, thank you, Ambassador, for mentioning the efforts of Romania and please allow me to answer to your question by talking a little bit about Romania. There’s a best practice in the region because we had a national strategy many years back to diversify and we are among the very lucky ones in the region that we don’t depend on Russian gas. I mean, we have less than 15 percent from Russia.

So, for us, like, for example, nuclear and Nuclearelectrica, to be honest with you, I’m very proud to say that it’s one of the leaders not just in the region but, you know, through the Cernavodă plants they are among the, you know, safety example type of plants, and I encourage everybody who is keen to come and, you know, get in touch with us and all the time they are welcome to come to visit Cernavodă and see it with their own eyes.

But, for example, nuclear energy in Romania covers 20 percent of Romanians’ energy consumption and those figures will increase to around 40 percent with the commissioning the two additional nuclear units that we are—you know, we are well underway of taking care of them to have them in place in the years to come.

Further than that or complementary with that we—Romania has been courageous to commission along with—it’s public knowledge so I can say—with NuScale to have the first SMR in Romania and in the region to—and it is a national policy and national plan supported to be not just, you know, first of a kind in Romania but to be—Romania to be a hub in the region and, as I said, to try to, you know, achieve this ambition plan of ours but which is quite realistic to be the exporter—to continue to be the exporter of the energy security in our region.

And we’ve been working very closely with Poland. I think, you know, is one of those stories that two plus two makes five. We complemented each other, you know, in the region and having our voices in the EU, but, likewise, through our own efforts, as the ambassador was mentioning, to really make sure that countries—two large countries in the region are not dependent so much about, you know, the Russian gas.

So in terms of the EU, I think, what we see now it is a strong unity, a strong determination, to have this plan on a medium to long-term basis, not to be just one off now. And as you mentioned, you know, the concrete plans, and I can—the ones on the short term, if you allow me to just—for our colleagues here, so is refilling the gas stocks for the upcoming winter, which is—that’s very short term, diversification of the EU supply sources and routes, as you were saying, maximizing the LNG uptake capacity, increase use of the low carbon and renewable technologies, and, obviously, accelerate the European Green Deal.

And with your permission, I just want to touch on the legislation, because at the EU level now we have—we passed the Commission the taxonomy, the so-called Complementary Delegate Act and it’s an important provision there about the gas and nuclear in the so-called taxonomy, which is giving a huge incentive for the investment in nuclear and in gas, and we all know that those are not—you know, not cheap investments. They are incredibly awarding reinvestments and wise investments if you look on the term—medium—you know, medium and long-term basis.

So now the battle is in the European parliament and I’m hoping that this Complementary Delegate Act is going to go, you know, forward, being voted in the European parliament as it is now in the language of the Commission. And with that in mind, you will have the taxonomy who will further incentive—you know, will be a strong incentive for investing in technologies, in renewable, you know, in gas, in nuclear where, you know, nuclear it is a green energy.

It’s a clean energy, if you think about it, and those are incredible weapons where you will tackle exactly what we were talking at the very beginning, to take the energy gas weapon from the Russians’ hands, who misused it so many times, not just at the EU level but at the bilateral level with certain countries from the EU.

That’s the reality, if we want to talk very honestly and very frank about it, and knowing that you can address the policies—sound policies—not just for tomorrow, for the next winter, but for the years to come. Thank you.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thanks so much. And I think the point about investing into, particularly, gas production and trying to turn around some of the momentum that’s been sort of anti-gas over the last several years is going to be critical here.

Maybe—Minister Kurtyka, maybe you could speak a little bit to how do we actually incentivize those within the context of the European Green Deal and looking at alternatives?

MICHAŁ KURTYKA: Well, arithmetics are merciless here, and we will be lacking gas for the next winter as European Union. No doubt about it. The question is how we handle it. And we were calling, as Poland, since already 2014 for a common strategy for buying gas. We were calling for storage strategy and Poland has introduced obligatory storage.

We have been calling for LNG terminals. We put—and our terminal is one of the best field within European Union, first with Qatari—two Qatari contracts—but then there is a number of contracts signed with American companies. So Polish LNG terminal is extremely well prepared.

We were calling for stopping Nord Stream 2, and not because of Poland but because of Ukraine. And right now, I think, is the right moment to ask ourselves how do we handle the looming shortage of gas for European Union for the next winter, and in this regard repower is not enough. It needs to clearly state what will be the rules for rationalization of gas for Europe.

I estimate 50 bcm, maybe 30 bcm if we really are lucky, the gap. So it’s one-tenth, one-fifth—one-tenth, one-eighth of European supply. It’s a lot. But we can do many things in order to control supply in order to make sure that also demand strategies, reduction strategies, energy efficiency strategies, are put in place.

But then, again, we cannot do it alone. I mean, no country, Romania nor Poland, working together for years already on energy security and facing the same kind of challenges, cannot substitute themselves to the European Commission because imagine what chaos it will be if each industry, each country, was trying to grab neighbors’ resources, stocks, for the next winter.

So we need a common strategy. We need to say clearly priority goes to families, then normal usage of—and then industry will have to be accommodated. That’s the only way I can see. But we need a key role of the European Commission and I bet that having a clear situation on the market will also bring more clarity for prices.

There will be probably less volatility, because today gas prices are volatile like crazy because, in fact, markets do not know whether yes or not are we going to continue importing, not continue. This is what Ambassador Morningstar said.

Paradoxically, after the Russian aggression on Ukraine, Europe continues to buy more gas than previously, and so there is a problem of cohesion here and we need to make sure this is what Europe can have in terms of alternative supply, this is how we are going to manage the shortage and this, in my opinion, will calm down also price volatility of gas prices.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Yeah. Indeed, we’re looking at some of the most extreme market intervention options, I think, out there and, you know, in terms of how we deal with supply crises the options are usually tapping storage, emergency fuel switching, and then, you know, thinking about how we can affect demand.

Maybe—Ambassador Morningstar, what are some of the ways that we can think about incentivizing more investment, particularly in some of the infrastructure that we’re going to need above and beyond what’s there already when it comes to sort of future gas crises?

RICHARD MORNINGSTAR: I go back to some of the points that I made earlier. Part of that, again, is political will and I’ll keep emphasizing the importance of maintaining political will.

The points that Minister Kurtyka made about unity within Europe and the European Commission being a unifying factor is critically important. I think the Commission has been doing a pretty good job. There can be no backpedaling, for example, on the part of Germany if things, again, settle down a little bit.

We have to look at ourselves, all of us, on the US side and on the European side, at least for now that we’re on a wartime footing and that we need to encourage—the US government has to take whatever regulatory steps to encourage investment. If we say we can supply 15 bcm additionally this year of LNG, we have to—you know, we have to work to supply more than that.

If Azeri gas—if more Azeri gas is available we have to look to see if that—even if that goes to Turkey and frees up more gas going through TANAP into Europe. The interconnections from Greece to Bulgaria to Romania are absolutely critical.

So, you know, there are some specific steps that can be taken in the short term to help and it will be more if we have the political will. If we look at ourselves in World War II—I mean, and I’m not saying this is World War II, but in World War II what the United States did to increase production and wartime production, we have to look at it a little more that way as to what’s necessary to be done in the energy field and just do everything we can to increase gas availability as well, again, doubling down on all the other technologies that have come up, whether it be renewables—I think what Minister Birchall said about nuclear is critically important, other—you know, other technologies as well. Energy efficiency has been mentioned, also critical. So all of these things we have to do in the short term and just stick to it. Follow through with what’s critical.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Absolutely. Part of the problem here, when we ask companies to invest much more in some of this infrastructure that can have, you know, 15-year time spans is the uncertainty about what the post-war situation will look like, what the long-term relationship with Russia and Russian gas is going to be.

Charles, how do we think about the next step after the war and what—and how do we actually convince companies that over the long term there’s a justification there for investment?

CHARLES HENDRY: This is a really difficult issue because even before the war we were seeing real pressure on some of those investments because people who were supporting new oil and gas developments were saying, look, if it is the stated intention of governments to move, fundamentally, away from those, if we’re investing billions in developing new fields which won’t be open for a decade, then they’re not going to be wanted in 20 years’ time.

So we were already seeing a lot of projects being shelved on financial grounds alongside some which were being shelved on environmental grounds so that we were starting at this sort of fairly low base, and so that we have to find ways of encouraging the industry, which could be sort of modeled on some of the measures in the UK where it’s a government guarantee that if they undertake certain investments then they won’t lose out on that.

This is a time for government intervention in energy. Some people say—somebody said in one of the panels yesterday just get government out of the way. Let industry and business get on with it.

Energy is too critical to national security for governments just to leave this to the market. There has to be a much more interventionist approach to make it clear where government wants investment to go and for government support to be abundantly available.

Just picking up on a couple of the other points which have been made, I think President Putin made a number of judgments. Most have been shown to be fundamentally flawed. He assumed that China would come in actively to back China. It hasn’t. It hasn’t been entirely—it hasn’t been quite neutral, but it hasn’t been where he expected it to be.

He assumed that Europe wouldn’t stand together but it has. He assumed that President Biden wouldn’t come, to get involved, but he has. And so there are a number of areas he’s got these fundamentally wrong and, most of all, he underestimated the resilience and determination of the Ukrainian people.

The one which we haven’t seen tested yet is that he took a view that the European consumer would not take pain—would not take economic pain, and if they find in a few weeks’ time they can’t fill up their diesel vehicles because that diesel exports from Russia are down dramatically—half of European diesel comes from Russia—if we then start having shortages and people can’t travel where they expected to, they can’t see an ill parent or go and see a child, then in those circumstances then we’re going to start to test that. And that’s where we come back to Richard Morningstar’s key point about we have to double down on the pressure because we have to have a wartime spirit.

This is not a time when we can afford for the sake of Ukraine to say, well, look, it’s a bit inconvenient for us now. Some of us have got elections coming up and therefore we need to try and soften the blow. We’ve got to condition people to expect that we’re in for a very long haul. It’s going to be a difficult year, but—it is going to be a difficult few years, probably. And therefore the need to focus on those technologies which can ensure that in the future we can never be held hostage as a continent again economically, then we have to—really, to move those forward.

I think the public will buy into that and the public understand the critical importance of doing it. But I don’t think that aspect of the case has been made properly yet.

RICHARD MORNINGSTAR: Phillip, can I just—

PHILLIP CORNELL: Yes. Please.

RICHARD MORNINGSTAR: Phillip, can I just very briefly follow up on what Charles was saying? Because I agree totally that government intervention is going to be critical. And I just don’t buy into the stranded assets argument. I mean, if we believe that gas and gas investment is critical and, hopefully, decarbonized gas investment in the short to midterm, then there should be and we’re concerned that, well, and it may be a good thing 20 years from now that those assets are no longer needed, that’s a cost of the energy transition.

We’re spending—we’re already talking about spending billions and billions and billions of dollars with respect to the energy transition. If that’s an added cost, I think that would be—you know, that’s going to be worth it if it’s absolutely critical that these investments be made. So I agree fully with Charlie.

ANA BIRCHALL: And if I can jump in.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Please.

ANA BIRCHALL:—that’s why I was talking about the importance of this Complementary Delegate Act, because there is the taxonomy, as I said. So is the—you know, is the incentive for the investment bonds in gas and nuclear. And those are two very crucial, you know, areas where you could diversify and you could actually continue to advance the policy of getting strongly resilience for the EU from the Russians’ gas.

So this piece of legislation and, obviously, will be others to follow. The EU leaders called on the Commission to come, I think, if I’m not mistaken, by the end of May, again, with a serious plan, with serious steps, not just policy talking but the concrete steps that needs to be taken.

So this taxonomy, it’s absolutely critical in order to have that investment going forward for medium to long-term basis, exactly what Charles and the ambassador were saying earlier.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Getting the taxonomy right and, perhaps, also with those kind of gas investments making sure that they’re transition proof—what can they be used for next, for example, building out a European hydrogen economy. What are ways that, for example, in thinking about sort of the hydrogen future that we can think about gas investments in that way?

CHARLES HENDRY: Well, the hydrogen debate is going to change dramatically. The Kremlin produced a hydrogen strategy just a few months ago and it wanted Russia to become, I think, after Saudi Arabia the second biggest hydrogen exporter in the world with international partners co-investing alongside Russian companies, be that Rosatom or Rosneft and others.

That strategy is in tatters. The world will never allow itself to depend on Russia for hydrogen just as the world will never allow itself to depend on Russia for gas again. The reputation over 50, 60 years of not interrupting gas supplies to Germany, even through the Cold War, is now fundamentally broken.

So the hydrogen debate, I think we’re a few years off being able to develop a hydrogen economy. The obvious place to start is blue hydrogen with gas. Green hydrogen from renewables or hydrogen from nuclear will become an important player. But at the moment, we haven’t got the infrastructure and at the moment we haven’t got the investment going in.

So we will have hydrogen economies, and looking at the German strategy for that, I think, that’s a really encouraging approach how the industry will be able to move from using gas to using hydrogen. But not in this decade, I don’t think. So we need to be focusing on what can be done and the time scale for doing it. But we need to be realistic that it doesn’t solve this crisis now.

MICHAŁ KURTYKA: Yeah. Let me also add on what the minister and the ambassador said. I think we have different time scale. So, yes, going for hydrogen makes sense but it will bring us solutions in—not quicker than eight or 10 years.

Yes, nuclear is part of the answer and we want also to develop nuclear in Poland. But, again, this is 12, 15 years, if we are realistic in terms of scale. And the problem is here and now, and so we must make sure that we also are able to liberate the potential which is at our hands.

And so, for example, we have very unbalanced LNG terminals within—repartition within European Union. We have a lot of them in Spain and none in Germany, yeah. But we do not—we lack pipes. So but there are possibilities, for example, with gas from Algeria, to send more of gas—Algerian gas to Italy, for example, less to Spain so that Spain can fill at LNG terminals, et cetera, et cetera.

So there are different strategies which can be put in place in order to face the next winter because that’s the challenge.

Second, what is the shortest available response time to prepare us for the winter? So the problem for the winter will be for heating purposes, and the heat pump industry is growing like hell in Europe. In my country, 2017, the heat pump industry was tenth in terms of European Union ranking. Now it’s the third.

Within two years, we nearly tripled the provision of heat pumps in Poland. This is because we introduced a very ambitious policy of eliminating pollution from houses, so equipping them with photovoltaics, heat pumps, and then charging infrastructure. Eight hundred thousand homes were equipped with rooftop PV since two and a half years. That’s a record.

And so we need—it’s the wartime and we need to have wartime answers, and wartime answers needs to gather exceptional resources and be able to do it at exceptional speed. So this is something that we need.

Then what about rationalization for industry of gas? I think we should eliminate industries which are using gas not for technological purpose but, for example, for heating purposes—there are lots of them still—while, for example, fertilizer industry is absolutely crucial because otherwise we will have both energy and food crisis. It’s looming already. Twenty-five percent of exports of wheat—global exports of wheat have been controlled by Russia and Ukraine. It’s not anymore on the market.

So we need to make sure that there is a very intelligent strategy which is being put in place within weeks in the European Commission, and within weeks, whatever we do, we will not be able to build new facilities. This is not that I’m saying that we shouldn’t build them. On the contrary, we should accelerate them and we should make sure that Europe, as the minister eloquently also underlined, is not any more considering Russia as credible supplier.

So Europe must take all the consequences of this in terms of its own energy supply. But we have to attack questions one by one. The first question is, what do we do now? What do we do for the next winter? And then if we have answers for these questions we have to deploy the right strategy for the future.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thanks. We’re going to open for questions in just a moment. But—please.

ANA BIRCHALL: I have a quick, well, complementary approach to what our friend from Poland was saying. Yes, we need to act quickly now for next winter. But I will argue that we need to act quickly now for making sure that we learn the lessons from the past in order to avoid being in the corner some of the countries are today, and that’s why you need to act today to invest in the SMRs, to invest in the new nuclear plants, to invest in the hydrogen from nuclear because it’s proven to be very efficient.

So, you know, that was the success story of my own country, Romania, because we acted 10, 15, 25 years ago. Cernavodă, through Nuclearelectrica, has been operating the two power plants for 25 years and we took the necessary steps at that time. That’s why we are in a strong position relatively to other countries in the region where we are not depending on the Russians’ gas.

So that—you know, acting wisely today is going to secure you for the future and, you know, we all learned that it’s important to take the necessary lessons from the past to build your present and especially to build your future.

So what I will say, yes, let’s act wisely for next winter. But let’s act wisely and courageous for the next years to come. And in order to have the SMRs, which, you know, it is—you know, is going to be proven as being a very reliable source of energy. But in order to have the SMR in 2030 you need to start acting as of today.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thanks very much.

Let’s go to the audience for some questions. Please.

Q: Thank you much. A very interesting panel. I have lots, lots of questions. I’ll be very short. Just three quick points. Gas is going to stay very expensive even for the full year. The expectation a few months ago was that in April the price will drop with—this will be the—it’s not going to happen this time.

So three quick—three quick points.

Should we include Moldova and Ukraine in our planning in EU? Could we—is it realistic to let them depend on Russia? On electricity, already they are decoupled from Russia and are connected to the—to the European system now. Should we do—somehow introduce them in our also planning in gas?

Rationalizing. At least—OK, what do you think? Should we move this also to EU level here? Should we interrupt consumers—yeah, consumers that you pay when there is not enough—there’s too much consumption, you pay some companies not to consume, yeah? Should we move this to the EU level?

And third point, if gas is going to stay so expensive, it’s—OK. It’s expensive. It’s important itself, but it’s messing up the electricity market. I know that’s a very controversial issue, but somehow I see the logic to try to decouple the price. There’s a French proposal, more or less, yeah, to decouple the price of gas from the electricity market, to find a way so it’s not pushing actually so high because it’s creating additional economic and social problems, yeah? Thank you.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Maybe on including Moldova and Ukraine in planning?

ANA BIRCHALL: Well, obviously, and as I was hinting earlier in my intervention, Romania is helping Republic of Moldova. We are—you know, we are—not just now but for years we’ve been helping Republic of Moldova with the gas.

Obviously, at this time—and I know it’s a debate and I think it’s a decision as well to help Moldova from the supply that will be at the EU level, and the easiest pipeline that will go through Moldova will be coming through Romania. So definitely yes, from my point of view.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Someone want to speak on, perhaps, decoupling prices or some of the European proposals that we’ve seen from a few countries about things like price caps, potentially, having volatility limits and guardrails?

CHARLES HENDRY: From the UK perspective, one of the reasons why they are still connected is that we have renewables, which are now running much more cheaply than electricity from gas. But when we have to back it up, then the price—the market is set by the gas price. And so whilst that still remains a big issue, then it’s much more difficult for us to decouple them.

But there’s a very lively debate now in the UK of people saying, well, if renewables are providing electricity much more cheaply than electricity from gas, then shouldn’t that be reflected in the price people pay, and we’ve now got a debate about whether people who live near renewable installations should be getting cheaper electricity for hosting them in their communities. So I think that’s absolutely the right one to be looking at.

On your second point, if I may briefly just address that as well, clearly, we’re not in the EU anymore, but I would have been nervous, as a minister, if the EU could offer—could, essentially, agree that industries in my country where I had electoral risks could be taken off the gas supply by an act of the EU.

So I think you’ll find that people are very willing to cooperate on sustainability, on decarbonization, like the implementation of the renewable energy directive. But on energy security, they still want to maintain that as a national decision because it’s too fundamental to their economic well-being as a country. But they will accept European enhancement of the measures which they’re taking. I bow to my two European colleagues and if they would feel the same thing, or they may feel differently.

MICHAŁ KURTYKA: Thank you. Thank you for great questions. Well, Ukraine, Moldova, yes. It’s part of the same system. We must provide them with security of supply. Then on the rationalization I would have a different view. Why? I already went for negotiations.

There is a regulation within EU related with priority of supply of gas in terms of shortage, and at some point European Commission proposed that it is being governed by economic efficiency. And so I was joking at that time saying that Poland is a neighbor of Germany. That’s not a mystery in terms of geography.

So we—Zielona Góra, a city 150 kilometers from Berlin, is having some schools—it’s a big city—and in Berlin you have some casinos. So I’d say in terms of energy—economic efficiency, you would certainly be able to pay more for providing gas to a casino in Berlin than for a school in Zielona Góra, and it’s the same gas system.

So this is why if we are not having clear rules at the EU level we will be fighting and that will be a chaos. And, yes, indeed, it is a challenge in terms of some industries. But, again, if this discussion is not happening in a civilized manner at the level of European Commission, it will happen in a barbarian manner for the one who has more money to eliminate others. And I think that for some part of the market maybe, yes, we should be able to do it for some industry niches. But otherwise, you—we will get in trouble. So I think we should prepare such a plan at the level of European Commission.

And then your last question is a very good question. It’s not directly related with the war because the question was already raised last year by Spanish and French government, in particular. The problem is that, yes, indeed, we have very cheap renewables but sun is shining for, in my country, 10 percent of the year. Wind is blowing for 30 percent of the year.

So whatever you do, however cheap wind and solar would be, you inevitably end up closing the market with some existing conventional power, and what we’ve been understanding—and, again, here, I’m sorry to say, we were right saying it is not workable, and Poland introduced—and we’ve—we had a lot of discussions with European Commission—but we introduced capacity market.

So we have producers of electricity, which are obliged to sell electricity. When we call, we paid them for that availability but the result is right now since at least six months, maybe eight months—you can check—Poland is the cheapest wholesale market in European Union.

RICHARD MORNINGSTAR: Maybe, Phillip, one brief point.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Yes. Yes, Ambassador. We’re just at the end of time. So let me give you the last word, Ambassador. European solutions for both on a war footing and in terms of the market.

RICHARD MORNINGSTAR: Oh, OK. I’ll make then a couple of quick points in closing. One, I think the question—the questioner—those were excellent questions, but what it also makes absolutely clear, and we don’t talk enough about in these debates and panels and discussions, is the importance of the electricity grid, and, as I understand it, Ukraine actually connected to the European grid just before the war started and Moldova is now connected as well. Absolutely critical. Likewise, in the Baltics. To finish the synchronization project to get the Baltic countries off the European grid—I mean, the Russian grid—is absolutely critical. It gives Russia incredible leverage.

I don’t really have anything more to add from what I said. Just one follow up, and I think it’s from Minister Kurtyka. There are alternatives for gas that do need to be explored. The issue of interconnections from Spain to France and on into Europe has been going on forever. That has to be solved. Algeria also a potential source as well as any number of other sources.

So I guess I’m done with my closing comments and, again, emphasize the need to just stick to it and follow through on all the things that we’re talking about.

PHILLIP CORNELL: Thank you very much. And with that, I think we’re at the end of time.

Watch the full event

The post Practical steps for Europe as it turns away from Russian gas appeared first on Atlantic Council.

The future of environmental, social, and corporate governance: ‘It’s not about ticking a box.’

Atlantic Council — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 15:00:00 +0000

Watch the full event