The COP26 gathering of world leaders in politics and business played out amid dire warnings of the catastrophic impact of climate change and the urge for countries to do more to stop it.

Nevertheless, COP26 was described by its president Alok Sharma as a “fragile win” that laid building blocks for further progress by mandating that all signatory countries must revisit and strengthen their 2030 targets as necessary by the end of 2022.

Rethinking our energy future

A number of key pledges were made at COP26 for changes in the energy industry that will be crucial to curbing climate change.

They included the Global Methane Pledge signed by more than 100 countries with the aim of reducing methane emissions by at least 30% by 2030 compared with 2020 levels. The Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), a coalition of countries, states and businesses working towards the global phase-out of unabated coal power, added 28 new members during COP26, bringing the global alliance to 165 parties committed to accelerating domestic and global coal-phase-out.

There was also a pledge signed by more than 30 countries to end public financing for unabated fossil fuel projects overseas by the end of 2022 and to shift spending to clean energy. Over 30 countries also endorsed the Glasgow Breakthrough on Power, a global leader-led goal for the energy sector which aims to rapidly develop, scale up and deploy affordable and reliable clean energy solutions globally by 2030.

Meanwhile, the United States and China, the world’s biggest carbon emitters, issued a Joint Glasgow Declaration, pledging to boost cooperation over the next decade in areas including methane emissions and clean energy.

CLP currently plans to switch its natural gas-fired generation units to run on low-carbon hydrogen during the 2030s and 2040s. This relies upon the market developing capacity to provide it with around 550 kilo tonnes per annum of low-carbon hydrogen a year at competitive cost.

The Hydrogen Council, a global CEO-led initiative to foster the clean energy transition with hydrogen, estimates the decarbonisation potential for hydrogen in 2030 equates to the avoidance of around 800 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

Pledges made by the 28 companies who signed up to the H2Zero initiative amount to almost a quarter of this total.

Supporting climate-vulnerable nations

Developed countries and international financial institutions were urged at COP26 to mobilise finance to support global communities in climate mitigation and adaptation.

A promise made in 2009 by the developed world to provide US$100 billion in climate finance a year by 2020 for developing countries to improve climate resilience has not been met, although latest OECD analysis suggests that the target could be reached in 2023.

Under the Glasgow Climate Pact, developed countries should strive to at least double their 2019 levels of climate finance for adaptation by 2025, which would bring the total to an estimated US$40 billion a year.

A Global Forestry Finance Pledge was also signed by more than 100 countries with an undertaking to provide US$12 billion for forest-related climate finance between 2021 and 2025.

Delegates failed to agree on a “loss and damage” fund to support climate-vulnerable countries suffering from emissions that they did not create. However, a technical assistance facility office linked to the UN is being set up to further explore the concept.

Meanwhile, over 450 banks and other financial institutions with collective assets of over US$130 trillion signed up to the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), which is committed to decarbonising the world economy and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

Walking a climate tightrope

Ambitious targets were set and some expansive promises were made at COP26, but the outcomes were not perfect and the willingness and ability of the global community to rise to the challenges of climate change remain in question.

Although the goal of  keeping global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels remains alive, UN Secretary-General António Guterres sounded a bleak warning to government and business leaders, urging that more work needs to be done.

Nations and businesses must walk the talk on their commitments and step up their efforts to achieve meaningful carbon reduction, otherwise as Guterres predicted, the chance of reaching net-zero “will itself be zero”.

Note: Header photograph courtesy of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).