The remaining challenges after the Climate Summit

Although more was expected from this climate summit, as Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary General for Communication for the United Nations, has said,”Is there still hope”.

El Latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) points out that, unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced immediately, rapidly and on a large scale, limit warming to 1.5ºC above pre-industrial levels as set out in the Paris Agreement six years ago, it will be an unattainable goal. This is what this summit sought to achieve and despite the lukewarmth or total lack of commitment on the part of some States, progress has been made.

Agreements adopted at the Climate Summit

The Glasgow Climate Summit has brought about some agreements that are a reflection of the growing awareness of the urgent need to take a step forward to avoid environmental disaster.

These are some of the commitments that have been reached Climate Summit:

• Bilateral agreement between the United States and China to collaborate in the reduction of CO2 and methane emissions, as well as in the fight against illegal deforestation.
• More than 100 countries, including the United States and those of the European Union, agree Reduce methane emissions by 30% before 2030. China has refused to back him up because it says it has its own plan.
• Agreement between more than 20 countries, including the United States, Canada, Spain and Italy, to end public funding and subsidies for fossil fuels before the end of 2022. China, Japan and South Korea have not signed it.
• Agreement of 110 countries for Stop deforestation by 2030.
• It creates the International Sustainability Standards Board, which will allow companies to adopt harmonized and global information criteria in environmental, social and governance matters.
• Countries that represent 90% of the world's GDP have committed themselves to carbon neutrality in 2050. China postpones the goal to 2060 and India to 2070.
• It creates the Alliance Beyond Oil and Gas (BOGA, for its acronym in English), which proposes the progressive elimination of the production of both fuels, although it currently has only 12 members.

The obstacle to the price of emissions

However, these advances contrast with the lack of specificity on some key issues. This is especially the case with so-called double accounting in the carbon market.

Today they exist in the world around 60 different initiatives to put a price on CO2. The problem is that they only cover around 20% of the planet's total emissions and also their average price is too low (about 3 dollars per ton).

The International Monetary Fund recently estimated that the price should be around 75 dollars per ton, that in the European regulated market it is around 60 euros and that the US government estimated the social cost of carbon at around 50 dollars per ton.

Setting a price on CO2 emissions It is an efficient way to move forward in reducing emissions because it discourages CO2-intensive activities and encourages companies to move towards decarbonization.

Some companies - just over 20% of the largest in the world - have set internal prices for carbon, allowing them to take it into account when evaluating the suitability of their projects and the impact of emissions on their accounts. The problem is that companies generally also set an excessively low price per ton, far behind their foreseeable evolution. This causes the information provided by the internal price to not be clear enough.

Although in the Conference of the Parties 26 (COP) If not much has been said about it, the setting of a global price on carbon will end up being imposed. While doing so, Spanish companies should start to wonder what would happen to their accounts and the profitability of their projects if they had to pay for carbon. Because sooner rather than later they will end up doing it.

Along these lines, the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has announced that, beyond the mechanisms established in the Paris Agreement, he will create a Group of Experts to propose clear standards for the measurement and analysis of net zero commitments for any organization that is not a State.

China takes a step forward

One of the most important events that came out of this climate summit was, without a doubt, the signing of climate peace between China and the United States. The heads of the delegations of both nations presented a joint statement in which they commit to working to accelerate during this decade The fight against climate change.

Among the highlights of the pact reached by both powers is the commitment of the Asian country to present over the next year a comprehensive plan for the reduction of your methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas responsible for about 25% of current warming.

The agreement is relevant because both countries accumulate close to 40% of global emissions: China 27% and the United States 11%. And their commitments for this decade are very different. The United States, with the arrival of Joe Biden to the White House, has committed to reducing its emissions by almost half by 2030. China, however, is currently only committed to reaching its peak of emissions before 2030 and then reducing them.

Iran and Brazil look the other way

In the geopolitical field, the positioning - or the lack of it - of some countries should be highlighted.. This is the case of Brazil, whose president has decided not to stop the deforestation of the Amazon and rejects climate change from a scientific point of view; Iran, which is the sixth emitter in the world and has not even ratified the Paris Agreement yet. Or Australia, Mexico and Turkey are also in a gray area that would not belong to them.

Review of the Climate Summit

In short, the Glasgow climate summit has fallen short of its ambitions to revitalize the fight against climate change. In any case, it is just as important to accelerate and intensify environmental policies as it is to respect the commitments already made by the different countries.

According to the organization's projections Climate Action Tracker, if each and every one of the announced objectives (mandatory and voluntary, long-term and so-called nationally determined contributions, or NDC in English) are met, the temperature rise at the end of the century could be limited to 1.8º centigrade, not far from the 1.5º objective set in the Paris Agreement. But that is, surely, being too optimistic. The road that remains is long and difficult, and it remains to be seen that the objective will finally be fulfilled.

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