A lot has been said about how national climate efforts under the Paris Climate Agreement will usher in a new energy future, but few have noticed another important change that COP21 heralds: for the first time non-state actors will start playing a prominent role in climate action, write Rolf de Vos and Kornelis Blok of consultancy Ecofys. The Agreement contains a number of decisions that will give private actors a semi-official status in future … [Read more...]
What Paris is likely to deliver
Prospects look bright for the Paris Climate Summit. The sole fact that this year’s COP (Conference of the Parties) will start with the government leaders meeting instead of finishing with it, as was usual in the past, is promising, writes Rolf de Vos of Ecofys. According to De Vos, if the more than 80 world leaders who will gather in Paris, including Obama, Xi Jinping, Modi and Putin, will get the Summit off to a good start, the work of two … [Read more...]
How companies can determine their fair climate share
If energy-intensive industries were to get together and make joint climate pledges, how could they determine what would be a fair and significant contribution for each company? There are new tools available for this, including so-called Science Based Targets used by organisations like WWF, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and the World Resources Institute (WRI), writes Rolf de Vos in a new post on the Ecofys Paris Climate blog hosted by Energy … [Read more...]
We need INDCs from industry too!
Countries across the world are making climate pledges for 2030 through their INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions). Why can’t industrial sectors do the same? Industries are afraid that climate measures will hurt their international competitiveness, but this problem could be avoided if they agreed on international sectoral pledges. Rolf de Vos of Ecofys proposes a new mechanism: Intended Sectorally Determined Contributions (ISDCs). … [Read more...]
Non-state actors account for growing share of emission reductions
International climate initiatives by non-state actors account for roughly half of the emission reductions pledged by governments, according to conservative calculations made by consultancy Ecofys. Cities and regions provide the larger part of these efforts, companies about a quarter. That is not yet enough to bridge the gap to the reductions that are needed, but there is scope for a further increase, write Rolf de Vos and Kornelis Blok of Ecofys. … [Read more...]
Recent Comments