The climate-finance deal, unveiled at the Group of 20 leaders summit in Bali, marks a significant step toward slashing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, even as prospects fade for any ambitious agreement at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt, known as COP27.
Still, some environmentalists have criticized a similar $8.5 billion package that seeks to wean South Africa off coal, saying civil society has not been adequately consulted and that the financing pales in comparison to what is needed.
The details: The pact, formally known as a Just Energy Transition Partnership, seeks to mobilize $20 billion in financing from the public and private sector over the next three to five years.
- The United States and Japan are co-leading the initiative on behalf of the Group of Seven major industrial nations. Also supporting the initiative are Canada, Denmark, the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Norway and the United Kingdom.
- The deal calls for climate pollution from Indonesia’s power sector to peak by 2030, seven years earlier than projected, and to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, a decade ahead of the country’s current target, according to State Department and Treasury Department officials.
- In addition, the agreement seeks to roughly double the deployment of renewable energy in Indonesia by 2030, so that clean energy generation comprises at least 34 percent of the country’s power generation by the end of the decade.
- At least half of the finance will come from the private sector, officials said, with seven banks participating under the auspices of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, including Bank of America and Citigroup.
Tuesday’s announcement follows roughly a year of talks between U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry and Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, as well as several conversations between President Biden and Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
“Together, we hope to mobilize more than $20 billion to support Indonesia’s efforts to reduce emissions and expand renewable energy and support workers most affected by the transition away from coal,” Biden said at an event Tuesday with Widodo and European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen.
Kerry said in a statement that the deal “can truly transform Indonesia’s power sector from coal to renewables and support significant economic growth. At every step, Indonesia has communicated the importance of building a clean economy that works for the people of Indonesia and attracts investment.”
(Our colleague Rebecca Tan reports on how difficult it has been for Indonesia to quit coal.)
A truly ‘just’ transition in South Africa?
The agreement is modeled after an $8.5 billion Just Energy Transition Partnership, announced at last year’s COP26 climate talks in Scotland, that seeks to help South Africa move away from coal. That deal is backed by the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
However, civil society groups and environmental justice communities in South Africa have not been sufficiently briefed on the inaugural Just Energy Transition Partnership, raising questions about whether it is truly “just,” said Luísa Abbott Galvão, a senior international policy campaigner at the green group Friends of the Earth.
“In South Africa, our partners were being consulted on plans that they didn’t have the actual documents for, so they didn’t have a lot to base their actual input on,” she said. “So JETPs still have a lot to prove, frankly, to live up to their name.”
Meanwhile, the scale of financing that South Africa needs for its clean-energy transition is orders of magnitude larger than the $8.5 billion offered by wealthy nations, environmentalists say.
To realize the Just Energy Transition Partnership over the next five years, South Africa will need at least $86.7 billion, according to the Life After Coal campaign, a coalition of South Africa-based environmental groups including groundWork, Friends of the Earth South Africa, Earthlife Africa and the Centre for Environmental Rights.
“South Africa’s plan is ambitious, and we need new, additional funding at scale in order to realize such ambition,” Leanne Govindsamy, head of the corporate accountability program at the Centre for Environmental Rights, said in a statement.
Similarly, the $20 billion offered Tuesday will make a small dent in the estimated $600 billion that Indonesia needs to pivot away from coal power, which currently produces more than 60 percent of electricity in Southeast Asia’s largest economy.
In addition to Indonesia and South Africa, leaders of the G-7 countries have said they plan to explore potential Just Energy Transition Partnerships with India, Senegal and Vietnam. However, observers do not expect an announcement about those three countries at the G-20 summit this week.
U.S. and China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, resume climate talks
Climate envoys from the United States and China have resumed formal negotiations after President Biden and China’s Xi Jinping struck an agreement at the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, the White House said Monday, our colleague Timothy Puko and Maxine report.
The agreement, which comes after China suspended climate talks with the United States in August over the visit of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Taiwan, opens up a possible path for greater greenhouse gas cuts from the world’s two largest emitters.
“The two leaders agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts on these and other issues,” an official White House readout of the one-on-one talks said.
Observers and delegates at this week’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt have said there isn’t clear momentum toward any ambitious deal at COP27. By resuming their talks, the United States and China could use their clout to urge other countries to ramp up their climate ambition, said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute.
“I think it’s very significant, very positive,” he said. “From our perspective, not only are they the biggest emitters, but … it matters to what happens in the rest of the negotiations.”
COP26 president warns against backsliding on 1.5-degree goal at COP27
Alok Sharma, who presided over last year’s COP26 climate talks in Scotland, warned Monday that COP27 could result in “backsliding” on a global goal of limiting Earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels, Bibi van der Zee and Helena Horton report for the Guardian.
“We’ll either leave Egypt having kept 1.5C alive or this will be the COP where we lose 1.5C,” Sharma said, adding that the more ambitious target of the 2015 Paris agreement must be a “red line.”
Here’s what else to know as the tense COP27 negotiations continue:
- Mexico announced Monday that it plans to significantly increase the amount of power it generates from renewable energy, adding more than 30 gigawatts of annual electricity generation from wind, solar, geothermal and hydropower by 2030, Ben Adler reports for Yahoo News.
- Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will arrive at COP27 on Tuesday, after other world leaders have left for the G-20 summit in Bali. He is expected to outline his vision for protecting the Amazon rainforest, which faced record deforestation under predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. The country’s former environmental minister and close ally to Lula, Marina Silva, also said Monday that Brazil wants to host the annual climate talks in 2025.
- Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will also attend the summit on Tuesday. She will participate in an event on the Energy Department’s Energy Earthshots Initiative.
On America Recycles Day, a pair of bipartisan recycling bills stall in the House
As the nation recognizes America Recycles Day on Tuesday, two bipartisan bills aimed at improving the nation’s recycling and composting systems remain stalled in the House after easily clearing the Senate.
In July, the Senate passed the Recycling and Composting Accountability Act and the Recycling Infrastructure and Accessibility Act by unanimous consent. The first bill would require the Environmental Protection Agency to collect and publish data on recycling and composting rates across the country, while the second would establish a pilot recycling grant program at the EPA.
Both measures are backed by Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) as well as Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) and John Boozman (R-Ark.). But the bills have faced resistance from some House Republicans who don’t want to empower the EPA to collect additional data, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Meanwhile, during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing in June, Rep. David B. McKinley (R-W.Va.) accused Democrats of pushing recycling legislation to “ban the manufacture of critical plastics.”
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