From a bottom-up view on this process, there are two other phenomena I witnessed in Copenhagen that I think are worth reflecting on: Business and civil society. Both have in common that they give hope for more ambitious climate policy in the future. At the same time, both are manifestly different in nature.

Business was omnipresent at and around the COP. Whether at side events, the “fair” with stands in the Bella Center, at hotels and other venues in all over the city or in my research interviews with energy industry representatives its message was clear. Time and again, I heard: “Business is ready. The shift towards the low carbon economy depends on the political process that is lagging behind. All we need a political framework, the level playing field.”
To me, climate friendly business represents a significant pull factor for the political process(es) to deliver. Putting the massive lobbying efforts from these sectors into historical perspective, one sees that back in Kyoto for example there was virtually no business presence. Looking into the future one can easily expect even more push coming from this direction as clean technology sectors expand and, and in so doing, will further pressure policy. Concerning renewable energies – whose impact on climate change policy I am researching for my thesis – this is already evident. While all over the city there were large advertisements for renewables (“The time is now”), inside the conference center presentations were held on scientific scenarios for large shares of renewables in the medium term – the ‘only’ thing needed: policy that induces demand for green goods and services. This could lead to enormous profits.

Civil society – in whatever form one chooses to imagine it – had a huge presence as well. The main venue was KlimaForum (“The People’s Summit”) downtown where discussions, presentations and networking took place. What I saw there seemed like a different universe compared to the elegant business events in hotels and the Bella Center. There one could find people dealing with climate change from all imaginable angles, from the global North just as much as from the South. There were indigenous peoples that were concerned about the impacts of REDD, environmental NGO activists, environmental columnists… Also many groups see Copenhagen as a continuation of the meetings of a justice movement that began 1999 in Seattle.
One particularly impressive civil society event was a climate candle vigil that took place shortly before the end of the conference. We, the participants each held a candle in our hands that represented 10,000 signatures of the largest climate petition ever – ca. 14 million had signed. As it was clear that COP outcome of the COP was going to be disappointing, speakers sought to gave inspiration and hope to the attendees. This is “the first truly North-South global justice movement in history”, it is “just the beginning” of a long fight. It seems evident that the civil society that converged in Copenhagen from all over the globe will return to their local bases as part of a stronger and closer-knit global network and will in one way or another influence domestic action and politics.

From a global governance view, business and civil society, albeit very different, are both mounting pressures groups for climate policies. Yet, many civil society organizations can be described as globalization critics, opposing market solutions, which they argue benefit only a few and don’t really solve problems. For a more ambitious climate policy, it would be desirable that both groups cooperate to create synergies for real climate action instead of counteracting it. A positive sum game where one side would not be opposing effective policies only because markets are involved, and where the other one would not be advocating policies that are profitable to them unless they are effective in fighting climate change too. In any case, the two broad groups will definitely play a role in whatever comes after Copenhagen.

Labels: Business, Civil Society, Climate Change, COP 15, green economy, Renewable Energies

The tag word for my experience at COP15 is: unexpected. From the moment our group arrived we were confronted with surprises: no registration for already accredited participants that Monday afternoon (of the second week), day-long waiting in freezing temperatures the next day, virtually no non-governmentals allowed inside for the rest of the week… and beyond this subjective dimension the unexpectedly low-ambition outcome of the COP. Although after the November APEC meeting in Singapore it became clear that a legally binding agreement was out of reach, many had believed in a more significant result. The near-record number of heads of state present had also supported hopes. However, the Copenhagen Accord was to fall abysmally short of what climate science demands.

Judging from my first hand experience, the disastrous organization and the more than disappointing outcome have one thing in common: overload. Waiting outside the Bella Congress Center with thousands of other people of the most diverse climate related backgrounds as well as seeing the Danish capital flooded with climate experts from all over the world gave me a sense of the vast scope. With 45,000 officially accredited persons (plus thousands of non-accredited ones) in Copenhagen and a conference center that could accommodate only 15,000, the conference organization had failed. This huge number of participants is a direct consequence of the overburdened and badly organized agenda: Emission reduction targets, development, financial assistance, R&D & innovation, technology transfer, intellectual property rights, economic transformation, trade, REDD…

What became clear to me at the COP is that the current global climate change governance process is far from sufficiently mature to be capable of producing acceptable outcomes. The question that I took home from the Copenhagen chaos is how to redesign the process to effectively address each one of all these interlinked issues.

Labels: Climate Change, COP 15

Unexpectedly being able to spend only a few hours in the official Bella Conference Center during the whole week, I had to find other venues. One overall interesting one was the KlimaForum – “The People’s Summit”. Here, in the center of town, a very different atmosphere reigned. It was basically another universe. I felt *slightly* overdressed with my suit among the many civil society reps and grassroots activists from all over the world. Here one could hear vivid discussions in the hallways, pick up all sorts of info material of many shades and eat great, cheap organic food. On the program was a multitude of events and workshops on every imaginable issue related to climate change. The reason why this was another universe was already expressed in the slogan of the Forum: “System change, not climate change”. Here market mechanisms (emissions trading) and technology hopes (e.g. CCS) were less seen as the solution; rights-based and reparation (“climate debt” of rich countries) approaches dominated; and concerns for the poor and climate-vulnerable were high (“survival is not negotiable”).

Next to the KlimaForum a NGO convergence space was set up as a Bella-alternative, where the negotiations could be followed live and groups organized events. Last night I witnessed a particularly interesting one, at which various speakers – Bill McKibben of 350.org, an indigenous chief, a 1000 hour climate fasting 25y old girl, an African singer… – convened a candle vigil. (Each of the hundreds of candles represented 10,000 signatories of a climate petition.) As outcome of the negotiations was expected to be quite unsatisfying/a failure, the speakers tried to give inspiration and hope to the attendees (“the first truly North-South global justice movement in history”; “just the beginning”).

The past week was one I will definitely not forget! Moreover, getting into the Bella only once wasn’t so bad.  As the whole city was filled with all sorts of climate people, the conference in effect took place all over Copenhagen. Meeting interesting people, researching for my thesis, and expanding my knowledge on climate negotiations and civil society activity made my week. What a week!

Labels: Climate Change, COP 15

This week did not quite turn out as expected. Why? For one reason, despite taking place in Denmark – a rather well-run country – the organization of the conference was chaotic at best, and catastrophic at worst. On our arrival Monday afternoon, when we sprinted to the Bella Conference Center right after getting off the airplane, we were turned away by security with dozens of other people. No more registrations that day, we were told.

But it was the next day that was far beyond unbelievable. Knowing that we wouldn’t be the only ones wanting to enter the Bella, we left our hotel 5.40am only to find a queue of many hundreds if not thousands of people.

After enduring a very, very long seven hours in freezing temperatures with other researchers, advocacy group members, officials from IOs… I finally made it inside the Center – just to spend another hour in line to pass security and receive the photo-badge. Luckily I had a “secondary pass”, the little card needed in addition in order to gain access – what a system… Had it not been for the Danish soldiers, serving coffee and tea and for the vegan activists handing out sandwiches the wait would have been unbearable. Once through the ordeal I first had to recover my strengths with a late lunch at very pleasant (body-thawing) room temperature.

Being already late in the afternoon at that point, I was excited to at least be able to conduct an interview with a representative from the German renewables industry. He went into detail about how the industry is organized and the channels it uses to influence policy. The basic statement: the industry is ready for a large-scale transformation towards renewables – all it needs is the right policy.

Inside, the enormous Center was organized in a series of areas. The exhibit area, where organizations of all sorts had set up information stands, was mostly abandoned at this time of the day, frustrating my objective of interviewing experts there. In the corridor towards the next area some activists dressed in black suits with black glasses were throwing fake $-bills with Sen. Inhofe’s face on them and speaking in a deep, sarcastic voice, denouncing coal industry lobbying. Past a café and the official documents desk emerged another area. In this huge nicely decorated hall, a flurry of delegates, journalists, NGO reps… were sitting and rushing around. One interesting sight was a politician being interviewed by a polar bear. Beyond that layed the main plenary, the enormous press center and the many, many work group, meeting and side event rooms. Although people were still only being let in very slowly, inside it didn’t feel crowded at all, although not empty either.

Also unexpected was the severe restriction of non-governmental badge carriers for the rest of the week. This category comprised not just all sorts of NGOs but also business reps, journalists (that didn’t get journalist accreditation) and researchers like us. The following day (Wed), I didn’t even head to the Bella, having heard that access was virtually impossible. For Thursday and Friday the number was reduced to a staggeringly tiny 300 – out of 25,000 accredited! This is unprecedented in UN conference history and was vehemently criticized by the NGOs. They saw it as a disrespect of the fundamental right of civil-society participation. (A side effect: influential non-govs, e.g. some businesses, being moved onto country-delegation lists to get in.) At least one positive thing can be seen in the overcrowdedness: The world has come to a point where climate change policy is an issue that does not fit in one conference center!

Labels: Climate Change, COP 15

With a week to go for the beginning of the UN’s Copenhagen climate conference everything indicates that the summit will not produce the breakthrough deal that has been hoped for – despite the fact that getting serious on climate change is the only way for us to get out of the world’s twin economic and environmental crises. We desperately need a deal that puts humanity on a low carbon development path towards green development that would also let us steer away from major climate catastrophes. The basic obstacle: The perceived economic cost of a large-scale shift towards a low carbon world economy. It may be true that the required shift would represent a cost for some economic sectors that are inherently non-green, such as the fossil fuel power sectors. However, on a broader level, this is an ill-perceived view: It overlooks that apart from avoiding costly climate change, enormous economic opportunities lie in a transformation towards a green world economy.

More than a year has passed since the near collapse of the world’s financial system and the eruption of the global economic crisis. Governments of many countries swiftly responded by spending large sums of money to stimulate their economies, but the impacts of the crisis are still being felt. High unemployment is expected to continue in the US many other countries, private investment has not yet recovered and growth is low in many economies. However, if left unchecked, the economic impacts of climate change will dwarf the current economic problems, as the influential Stern Review and other reports have shown. Ambitious action on climate change is an opportunity that allows addressing both the current crisis and the future impacts of climate change. As a recent study by The Climate Group, a think tank, has shown, an ambitious global agreement in Copenhagen would not only reduce climate change but also lead to more economic development.

The logic behind this is simple: The stronger the agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, the more demand for green products will it create. From China to the US, from the EU to Brazil, economies worldwide have rapidly growing business sectors that develop and produce green goods and services. The stronger the agreement, the more will the companies involved have the incentive to expand and improve renewable energy technologies, more efficient use of energy in homes and offices, cleaner transport and many other clean technologies and services. While unfortunately, emissions of greenhouse gases are global – they contribute to climate change no matter where they are emitted – fortunately, the products and services to combat these emissions can be global as well. In our globalized world, these green products can be traded among countries. This fact greatly expands the benefit potential for firms in the green sector. Moreover, employment numbers would benefit as well: the UN’s International Labor Organization has found out that renewable energies are more labor intensive than traditional energy sources.  It estimates that employment in renewable energies could increase from 2.3 million jobs globally in 2007 to 20 million jobs by 2030; Greening buildings in the EU and the US alone would create 2 million jobs; And the list goes on and on.

As mentioned, some companies and thereby employees stand to lose from ambitious climate policy. But the cited study by The Climate Group, also shows that the more countries participate in a global agreement, the lower can the price of carbon be that would allow us to protect the climate (pricing emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is a strategy to induce less emissions of it). This in turn implies that if we have a truly global agreement, a more gradual but nevertheless massive economic transformation is feasible. This would allow more time for companies and employees to adapt while we still effectively combat climate change.

What some experts have called new diplomacy, for example negotiating such a global climate agreement, faces the challenge that not just governments but also other actors, particularly business and consumers, have to be involved if agreements are to be successful. Shifting the perspective from costs to profits makes this challenge surmountable. A basic insight from the so-called mutual gains approach, which is applied to advance complex negotiations, is that it is easier to reach an agreement if one increases the size of the pie to be shared by the participants of the agreement. The focus has to be on the large opportunities that come with fighting climate change.

The higher the number of countries and the more ambitious the climate agreement reached in Copenhagen, the more is there to be gained by companies and employees all around the world. This means high profits and millions of jobs. And the earlier individual countries start, the faster will they reap benefits and strengthen competitiveness compared to other countries, while laying the foundation for long-term economic growth. As the saying goes: In every threat there is opportunity – Copenhagen is a chance we should not miss if we want to resolve the multiple crises afflicting our planet.

I wrote this op-ed for the course Sustainable Development Policy, which I am taking with Professor William Moomaw at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.

Labels: Climate Change, COP 15, Economic Crisis, green economy

Germany held its federal election last Sunday. The result was not much of a surprise: The historical demise of the Social Democratic Party and a considerable rise of the libertarian Free  Democratic Party have led us to a new government. Chancellor Angela Merkel  (Christian Democrats) will stay on but now with the latter instead of the former as coalition partner.

Naturally, a  new government brings shifts in policy. Now, shortly before the Copenhagen  climate summit, nothing less than Germany’s leadership position in the shift towards green energy could be at stake. One of the big differences between the new governing parties and the new opposition lies in their views on the future role of nuclear energy. The background: In 2000, after long negotiations with the nuclear energy industry, the Social Democrat-Green Party government reached a nuclear phase out consensus accroding to which the last nuclear plant will go offline in 2023.[1]

The new, explicitly pro nuclear government is now challenging this consensus. It would be one thing to give in to the nuclear lobby a bit by granting them a few more years operating time, but quite another to throw the whole consensus out the window by allowing the construction of new nuclear plants. Just this is what a recently leaked report commissioned by – surprise, surprise – the Christian Democrat Science Minister recommends.[2] The report was completed in June but kept secret due to concerns it might influence election results.[3] Also worrying is that the Economics Ministry is investing more than one billion Euros to conduct research on the newest nuclear technology abroad.[4] That the future does not bode well for renewables with the new government became clear the day after the elections: The markets responded with rising “nuclear” stocks and falling “solar” stocks.[5]

With the upcoming Copenhagen negotiations and the threat that climate change represents for humanity, it is imperative that Germany expands, not reduces, its leadership role in the shift towards a renewable energy future. Building new nuclear plants would go in the exact opposite direction. Energy expert Gregory Unruh wrote how carbon investments “lock us into” a carbon-intensive development path.[6] In the same fashion, nuclear investments lock us into a nuclear path. Besides security and safety issues, the main problem here is that nuclear sucks up investments that would otherwise flow into renewables. Once a plant of any energy type has been built, it will supply energy for several decades, during which one is locked into that energy type. With limited government – and for that matter private – resources for energy investments, policy influencing where these investments flow should be wisely chosen.

There is no single solution that will lead us to the desperately needed green energy shift, but there is one technology that should receive much more attention (and investment): Concentrating Solar Power, or CSP. In short, this technology works by reflecting (concentrating) sun beams onto a certain spot where the extremely high temperature is used to activate a turbine to produce electricity.

CSP is considered one of the renewable energy sources with the highest potential. The major reason is that CSP is a “proven technology with an industrial base”,[7] with the world’s first plant dating back to the 1980s in California, where installations have been expanded over time, as well as large-scale commercial plants in southern Spain.[8] Moreover, plants can reach a scale that most other renewables cannot compete with.[9] Another major competitive advantage over other renewables, especially photovoltaic and wind power, is the fact that CSP plants can store energy for use during the night or cloudy periods. They thus provide a reliable electricity supply. Needless to say, there are no radioactive waste or major safety issues with CSP.

Just as nuclear power does, CSP requires substantial government support. However, a major difference between non-renewables, such as nuclear, and renewables, particularly CSP, is that for the latter costs fall as time passes due to economies of scale and maturing technology. Rather than a subsidy, support for CSP should be seen as an investment into Germany’s future. The respected German DLR writes that CSP “will be competitive with mid-load fossil fuel plants within the next 15 years.”[10] For a graph showing (projections) of cost (in euro-cents) and capacity for CSP, see Figure 1. These projections are based on the status quo; the right government incentives would accelerate progress.



Figure 1 - Solar electricity cost of concentrating solar power plants and installed capacity.[11]


The best example of how seriously the private sector takes CSP is the simply staggering Desertec project initiated by the Club of Rome and run by a consortium of mainly German companies. The plan is to construct CSP plants of unprecedented scale in North Africa, which would supply 15% of Europe’s energy need by 2050.[12]

Besides providing a climate friendly source, a positive side effect would be the creation of stabilizing mutual interdependence not based on fossil fuels between the Middle East-North Africa region and the EU, as well as employment in the southern countries. Additionally a clean power source would be provided for the desert countries to desalinate water to counter the looming water crisis there.[13] See the map on the top of this page for the desert areas required to power different regions.

As Desertec appropriately puts it in its Red Paper:[14] “The technology is ready to go, and investors are interested. What are we waiting for?” The right answer is provided as well: “changes are needed in government policies [,] laws and regulations to create a favourable commercial environment for Desertec developments.” It is in Germany’s utmost economic interest to support – not cripple – its promising renewables industry by powering up CSP.

In face of the upcoming Copenhagen climate negotiations, a clear signal of support for clean technologies is crucial if mitigation efforts by developed countries are to be taken seriously. If Germany does not push innovation and deployment of clean energies, who will? Investing into nuclear energy instead of high potential renewables such as CSP would mean nothing less than going backwards to the very outdated energy policies we thought we had gotten rid of for good.


I wrote this annotated op-ed for the course Climate Change Policy, which I am taking with Professor Kelly Sims Gallagher at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.

_________________________
[1] Loreck, Charlotte. “Atomausstieg und Versorgungssicherheit.” Umweltbundesamt [German Federal Environment Agency]. March 2008. P. 2-3.
[2] “Schavan soll brisante Atom-Studie verschweigen.” Die Welt. September 16, 2009. (See also here.)
[3] Ibid.
[4] “Guttenberg lässt neue Super-Reaktoren erforschen.” Spiegel Online. September 18, 2009. Retrieved September 28, 2009 from: http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,649786,00.html.
[5] Schulz, Stefan. “Energiebranche erwartet gewaltige Umbrüche.” September 28, 2009. Retrieved September 28, 2009 from: http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/0,1518,651847,00.html.
[6] Unruh, Gregory C. 2000, “Understanding carbon lock-in,” Energy Policy, Vol. 28(12): 817-830 (BB).
[7] Pitz-Paal, Robert (of DRL, Germany’s aerospace research center and space agency). “Power from the Deserts for Sustainable Electricity and Water Supply”. Public lecture held at the ISU energy summer university, Falera, Switzerland, August 27, 2009. Slide 14.
[8] Taggart, Stewart. 2008, "Hot stuff: CSP and the Power Tower," Renewable Energy Focus, Vol. 9(3): 52.
[9] Ibid.
[10] See footnote 7, slide 34.
[11] See footnote 7, slide 21.
[12] DLR. “DESERTEC: Solar power from the desert.” July 30, 2009. Retrieved September 28, 2009 from: http://www.dlr.de/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-5885/9548_read-18787.
[13] Desertec Foundation. “Red Paper - An Overview of the Desertec Concept.” 2nd ed., 2009. Pp. 4-13.
[14] Idem. P. 9.

Labels: clean tech, COP 15, CSP, Germany, green energy, Nuclear