by

Frederic Hauge and Dan Kammen

World lead­ers gath­er anew in Egypt for COP27 to address the exis­ten­tial threat of the cli­mate cri­sis; while solu­tions exist, the world needs to see action and imple­men­ta­tion. To achieve this, the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty needs both grit and optimism.

COP27 should be about col­lab­o­ra­tion, green accel­er­a­tion, and, most impor­tant­ly, bring­ing to life exist­ing con­cepts and solu­tions to scale and cre­ate much-need­ed green jobs. A metaphor­i­cal cross­ing of the Red Sea is need­ed to halt the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry to 2.8°C or more of glob­al warm­ing. It is time for finance to step up.

In 2012, at COP18 in Doha, a pilot facil­i­ty for pro­duc­tion of food, ener­gy, water, and reveg­e­ta­tion of desert areas was launched. Today, a few kilo­me­ters from where COP is tak­ing place, the Sahara For­est Project pro­duces tons of veg­eta­bles far into the Jor­dan­ian desert, in salt­wa­ter-cooled green­hous­es, with their own renew­able ener­gy, plant­i­ng trees in the desert.

Not every­one believed, back in 2012. But see­ing was believ­ing, and it still is.

At the dawn of the 2000s the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of trans­port seemed a vision more than a pos­si­ble real­i­ty. In 2009, when Bel­lona brought the first four Tes­la Road­sters in Europe to COP15 in Copen­hagen, it all became a bit more real. Today, we can acknowl­edge mas­sive strides tak­en over the last 13 years.

Not every­one believed, even in 2009. But the nee­dle was moved. See­ing is believing.

The adage may be old and slight­ly worn out but has nev­er been truer. Can a few elec­tric cars solve the prob­lem? No. But can it click the right gears into place? Absolutely.

Renew­able ener­gy has been doing this for years, with rapid­ly declin­ing costs for solar, wind, and stor­age tech­nolo­gies all trans­form­ing the ener­gy sec­tor. Replac­ing fos­sil fuels in use has also become a no-brain­er in many more appli­ca­tions, with heavy con­struc­tion machin­ery the lat­est addi­tion. Man­u­fac­tur­ers are increas­ing­ly becom­ing aware of the fact that not only is elec­tri­fi­ca­tion good for the envi­ron­ment, it is also good for work­er health, noise lev­els, and the pock­et­book. In indus­try, car­bon cap­ture and stor­age is becom­ing viable as a large-scale solu­tion for process emis­sions that are dif­fi­cult to get rid of.

“And while dam­ages and loss­es of cli­mate change con­tin­ue to increase with each pass­ing year of inac­tion, the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty is still stuck try­ing to deliv­er on the 2009 pledge to mobi­lize the mere $100 bil­lion annu­al­ly from devel­oped to devel­op­ing countries.”

But tem­po is lack­ing. Imple­men­ta­tion is lack­ing. Scale is lack­ing. And not least, finance is lacking.

Get­ting mon­ey to the right projects is with­out doubt one of the great­est chal­lenges in the fight against cli­mate change. Our cur­rent mea­sures for accel­er­at­ing fund­ing, both for adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion, are fail­ing. And while dam­ages and loss­es of cli­mate change con­tin­ue to increase with each pass­ing year of inac­tion, the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty is still stuck try­ing to deliv­er on the 2009 pledge to mobi­lize the mere $100 bil­lion annu­al­ly from devel­oped to devel­op­ing countries.

We need to have a hard look at chal­lenges fac­ing the cur­rent cli­mate financ­ing. At the same time, we need to take a view beyond this one pledge, toward new mech­a­nisms for financ­ing a just and green transition.

A par­a­digm shift is need­ed in cli­mate finance, a Cli­mate Finance 2.0. This new par­a­digm can focus on cer­tain key issues.

One such issue is infra­struc­ture. Large-scale infra­struc­ture projects are huge­ly impor­tant to roll out much-need­ed renew­ables, as well as decar­boniz­ing hard­er-to-elec­tri­fy indus­tri­al process­es across the world. But project deploy­ment is slow, and projects suf­fer from lack of pub­lic fund­ing, long lead times, chal­lenges fac­ing per­mit­ting process­es, admin­is­tra­tive hur­dles, and issues relat­ed to pub­lic acceptance.

Anoth­er issue is defin­ing projects “of com­mon inter­est” eli­gi­ble for cli­mate financ­ing. An inter­na­tion­al mech­a­nism chan­nelling cap­i­tal to projects of com­mon inter­est could cre­ate a glob­al stamp of approval, send­ing pos­i­tive mar­ket sig­nals and mobi­liz­ing addi­tion­al pri­vate cap­i­tal either into projects direct­ly or to asso­ci­at­ed projects rely­ing on shared infrastructure.

These are not just exam­ples, but a vision, and a pos­si­ble real­i­ty. Now more than ever we need action and lead­er­ship. This is why it is so impor­tant to show­case all the solu­tions that actu­al­ly exist today, high­light­ing their many ben­e­fits, and build­ing bet­ter sto­ries for cli­mate action as a pos­i­tive for the cli­mate but also for coun­tries, cities, com­mu­ni­ties. This is also why we are at COP27.

We are on a tra­jec­to­ry for 2.8 degrees instead of 1.5. The slo­gan for COP26 in Glas­gow was “keep­ing 1.5 alive” — it is cur­rent­ly on life sup­port. Still, every day we see new and inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to the cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal crises that the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty is try­ing to solve.

See­ing is believ­ing. Now let us get them some funding.

Dan Kam­men is a pro­fes­sor of sus­tain­abil­i­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.  He has served at the World Bank as chief tech­ni­cal spe­cial­ist for renew­able ener­gy, and as sci­ence envoy in the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion.  He has been a coor­di­nat­ing lead author of the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change since 1999. 

Twit­ter: @dan_kammen.

 

Fred­er­ic Hauge found­ed Bel­lona in 1986, at the age of 20. Through aca­d­e­m­ic work, legal action, and non-vio­lent activism, Bel­lona has changed the opin­ion and set the agen­da on envi­ron­men­tal issues in Nor­way for almost three decades. Hauge was elect­ed in 2007 as vice chair­man of the Euro­pean Commission’s Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form for CO2 seques­tra­tion (ZEP). The same year TIME Mag­a­zine named him “Hero of The Envi­ron­ment”. In 2009 he became a board mem­ber of the EU Bio­fu­el Plat­form (EBTP), and one of the found­ing part­ners of the Sahara For­est Project.