Hotter or colder: What changed the climate in 2021?

 

Hotter or colder: What changed the climate in 2021?

 

Key moments in a year of conflicting climate signals.

 

BY KARL MATHIESEN AND ZIA WEISE

December 28, 2021 10:39 am

https://www.politico.eu/article/climate-change-cop26-carbon-energy-2021/

 

2021 was a breakout year for climate change.

 

Huge political, media and public attention was devoted to discussions on halting global warming. But despite all the noise, carbon emissions surged back to near pre-pandemic levels in one of the biggest single-year increases ever recorded.

 

Here's a look at what happened this year that may help cool the planet and steps that could turn up the heat.

 

Colder

EU Climate Law

 

The EU's landmark Climate Law enshrines the commitment to reach climate neutrality by 2050 into law — a landmark for such a large economic bloc. The deal also raised the EU’s 2030 goal for cutting emissions below 1990 levels from 40 percent to 55 percent. That gave the EU a calling card for its diplomacy in the lead-up to the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow. As former German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze said at the time, the key is that the EU’s efforts are now “irreversible.”

 

COP26

 

Like all U.N. climate conferences, the 26th edition was an exercise in expectations management. With the media-obsessed British government in charge, the effort to frame and reframe the conference became an exhausting distraction from the actual achievements — of which there were some.

 

The pressure on countries to raise their climate goals ahead of the Glasgow talks brought major new commitments from most big emitting economies. The final pact will increase pressure on countries with emissions plans that are not in line with the Paris Agreement to review and raise them next year.

 

The U.K. claimed the talks kept the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius in reach. That view requires a fair degree of optimism and a belief in the broad credibility of the pledges made in Scotland. Already there have been examples of backsliding. One of the most vaunted single announcements — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s promise to boost clean energy and reach net-zero by 2070 — still hasn’t been lodged with the U.N. as an official new climate goal, more than six weeks later.

 

The EU’s carbon price

 

For years, the EU’s Emissions Trading System — which puts a price on CO2 emissions in energy-intensive sectors with the aim of making fossil fuels less attractive — was considered a largely toothless tool. But market reforms and signs the EU was stepping up climate action sent the ETS on a steady upward curve. The price doubled from about €30 per ton in January to €60 in the fall and higher coal use helped push it briefly past €90 this month.

 

The speed of its rise and the simultaneous energy crunch mean the carbon price “is not triggering any immediate emission reduction,” said ​​Ingvild Sørhus, an analyst with Refinitiv. “But all emitters in Europe now know that the time when you had low carbon prices is over. It gives a signal that if you are to survive in the future, you need to actually reduce your emissions because you're exposed to an increasing carbon price.”

 

Germany’s coalition agreement

 

Climate change played a major role in Germany’s election campaign. The coalition agreement promises nothing less than a wholesale green transformation this decade, featuring plans for a massive expansion of renewables to 80 percent of the energy mix and moving the country’s coal phaseout from 2038 to 2030. A new climate and economy ministry, under the leadership of the Greens, was put in charge of the transformation. But it’s too early to say whether the new government can fulfill its ambitious promises.

 

Court orders

 

It’s been a big year for climate court cases. Germany’s constitutional court forced the outgoing government to amend its climate law with a higher target for reducing emissions, with judges arguing that it violated the basic rights and freedoms of future generations by placing the burden of reducing emissions on them.

 

A Dutch court then ruled that oil giant Shell had to cut its emissions. And following an October court ruling, France has until the end of 2022 “to repair the damage” of its failure to meet its own climate targets.

 

Attribution science

 

When the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the first part of its latest summary of the state of climate science in August, a prominent part of the report was attribution science, a new development linking climate change to single weather events. In a summer marked by record heat, drought and floods around the world, attribution scientists were able to provide immediate forensics on the wildest extremes.

 

China cancels coal (abroad)

 

In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Chinese President Xi Jinping effectively ended the practice of states financing the construction of coal power stations beyond their own borders. After Japan and South Korea had promised to end international coal financing earlier in the year, Xi said China — by far the largest backer — “will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad.”

 

 

The Chinese pipeline of projects is so large that the potential emissions savings, if they are canceled, could be as consequential as the EU reaching net-zero by 2050, the International Energy Agency (IEA) later said.

 

Hotter

Joe Manchin

 

A question followed U.S. President Joe Biden and his climate envoy John Kerry around the world in 2021: What if you can’t pass laws to implement your new climate goals? That got a lot harder to answer the Sunday before Christmas when West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said "no” to Biden’s $1.7 trillion spending bill. The legislation includes $555 billion in climate provisions and is viewed as the most credible way for the U.S. to deliver on its 2030 emissions goal and also to lock in a future Republican president — Donald Trump or otherwise.

 

Manchin, who holds an effective veto in the 50-50 Senate, reportedly objected to non-climate elements of the bill. That leaves Democrats scrambling to find other ways to pass the measures and salvage their climate ambitions at home and their credibility abroad.

 

Pandemic recovery is a missed opportunity

 

Throughout 2020, the refrain among climate activists and leaders such as U.N. boss António Guterres was that the pandemic and its stimulus provided a one-time get out of climate jail card. They petitioned governments to direct a portion of the trillions spent to keep economies afloat into clean energy.

 

The EU followed through, earmarking 37 percent of its €723.8 billion recovery facility for climate spending. But other parts of the world didn’t. By December, G20 governments had spent about €45 billion more on supporting fossil fuel energy sources than clean ones, according to Energy Policy Tracker. As a result of this and the gas crisis (see below), the IEA said coal power generation will jump by 9 percent in 2021 to a new all-time high.

 

Energy prices

 

Coal power is also having a moment thanks to surging gas prices. Europe, in particular, has seen a perfect energy price storm, fueled by insufficient supply, market design flaws and a bad year for wind power generation. Despite a record-high ETS price, coal became a cheap and attractive option. Those power prices also led to political pressure from some EU capitals for Brussels to tone down its climate measures.

 

Energy Charter Treaty

 

A post-Cold War-era deal that protects energy investments from government intervention has governments across Europe worried. They are concerned about its power to land them with major settlement costs if they pursue aggressive climate policies. The Dutch government was sued this year by coal plant operators Uniper and RWE over its coal phaseout plans.

 

Energy Charter reforms pushed by the EU have so far found little traction with other members of the treaty and some EU capitals — including Madrid, Paris, Warsaw and Athens — want to abandon the treaty. The problem is that countries withdrawing from the deal could still be subject to lawsuits for 20 years.

 

The G20

 

The Italian government was exceedingly proud of the climate outcomes of its G20 presidency in 2021, producing the most forthright backing for action on climate change ever from the group of major economies. The problem is that the bar was so low. The group remains split between advanced economies, pushing hard for greater efforts, and fossil fuel-dependent developing countries.

 

G20 members are responsible for around four-fifths of global emissions. If China, India, Turkey, Russia, Saudi Arabia and others continue to slow walk, climate goals will sli