E3G

Europe’s World: An EU-China pact is key to a global climate deal

By Nick Mabey

Europe and China have much more in common on both energy security and the climate change issue than is generally realised, say Bernice Lee and Nick Mabey. They set out the elements of a close new partnership.

The EU’s progress toward a low-carbon economy is being watched in US, China and India, whose genuine commitment to decarbonisation in these three key countries will only materialise if Europe delivers. In other words, the future cannot afford to see Europe – the only credible standard-bearer – fail to meet its own climate objectives and it is clearly vital that Europe should stay in the driving seat to steer global changes in politics and markets for climate change. This will be a risky, expensive and time-consuming task, but that is the price of real global leadership. As negotiations on the “global deal” slowly move forward, a parallel process of building trust, confidence and expectations between the major parties must also accelerate. Formal negotiations can only be one part of the climate process, which in the end requires a belief that countries can decarbonise without threatening domestic well-being or stability, and that all countries are playing their fair part in solving this shared dilemma.

The measure of agreement at Copenhagen will be whether it generates a transformational shift in finance moving over $50 trillion of energy investment by 2050 from high-carbon to low-carbon technologies

Global climate security demands global agreement if mankind is to minimise the probability of a 20C rise over pre-industrial levels. Going beyond this level presents unacceptable risks of passing “climatic tipping points” beyond which catastrophic damage is irreversible, and our ability to control the extent of further temperature rises will be lost. To give a 50:50 chance of staying within the 2°C limit, global CO2 emissions will need to peak in the next two decades and fall by over 50% by 2050. For the European Union and other developed countries this implies moving to an essentially zero-carbon economy by around 2050, with major developing countries following suit well before the end of the century. All major emitting countries will need to begin radical decarbonisation in the next 20 years, whatever their level of development.

Delivering these ambitious goals will require far more realistic and focused efforts to secure an effective global climate change agreement by the end of next year, in Copenhagen. The measure of this agreement will not be just whether it gains acceptance by all major polluting countries, but whether it generates a transformational shift in international energy finance flows – moving the $21 trillion of energy investment being forecast by 2030 from high-carbon to low-carbon technologies.