EDITORIAL: Outside the US federal government it is business-as-usual on climate action

Quantum Commodity Intelligence - With all the attention that has been on the new US presidential regime and its ongoing anti-climate policies, it is perhaps easy to forget that in most of the rest of the world it is still business-as-usual.

For instance, as I write this, the first Article 6.4 Supervisory Body of the year is underway in Bhutan, which will hopefully start the process of providing the details needed to really get the Paris Agreement Carbon Mechanism off the ground after the successes in Baku late last year.

Elsewhere, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) has opened applications for experts for a number of working groups, including carbon removals and beyond value chain mitigation, that will help refine its draft Corporate Net-Zero Standard - which is expected by March.

And the UN's International Civil Aviation Organization has invited entries from offset programmes already eligible under the first phase of its Corsia aviation decarbonisation scheme to apply for the next compliance period covering 2027-2029.

Impacts

Undoubtedly there are going to be impacts on the carbon market from the many moves being made in Washington DC, despite the legal moves to block or stall some of them. This issue of Carbon Insights looks into some of these impacts, but has found that some big initiatives, such as the Energy Transition Accelerator and the Just Energy Transition Partnerships, are not unduly damaged by Trump.

The full impact of the fall-out from the suspension of funding under the US development agency, USAID, and other federal initiatives, still remains to be seen, however.

The last two weeks has also seen the deadline pass for the submission of updated climate plans for the 2031-2035 period from countries that are parties to the Paris Agreement, with only a handful of them submitting the plans on time - ironically one being the US before Trump took office.

There has been much media attention on the missed deadline and it's extension now until September, but this is probably hardly surprising given the nature of how governments work and policy processes.

Of the 13 plans that have been submitted, only the UK's plan is aligned with meeting Paris Agreement goals of keeping the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to non-profit Climate Action Tracker (CAT), which analyses each country's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) that are submitted to the UN's climate arm.

"The UAE, Brazil, the US, Switzerland and New Zealand have all come up with 2035 targets that fall way short of what is needed to keep global warming to 1.5 degree C, underscoring an urgent need to revitalise global climate action," CAT said in an update last week.

The update also noted that the submitted NDCs only covered 17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and even less of the global population, just 8.1%. "All eyes are now on the large emitters such as EU, China and India who have not yet submitted a 2035 NDC," it added.

Strengthened

However, CAT has already noted that existing plans, which outline climate goals to 2030, need to be strengthened if the new ones are to make any difference in meeting the 1.5 degree C goal.

"Central to the ambition component is the strengthening of 2030 targets, something none of the submitted NDCs have included. Failure to increase the 2030 targets renders the 2035 targets less credible and therefore makes limiting peak global warming to 1.5 degree C ever more difficult," it said last week.

"The level of emissions expected if countries meet their existing NDCs will lead to almost twice the 2030 global greenhouse gas emissions as necessary for the 1.5 degree C Paris Agreement temperature goal (70-85% above what would be necessary), highlighting a significant shortfall in climate action," it added.

If the analysis by CAT  is correct, then countries currently critical of the US for its Paris Agreement pull out need to take a good look at themselves and their own climate goals. Maybe they are quite happy for the US to take the flak for its overt anti-climate stance so that it papers over their own current lack of ambition to cut greenhouse gas emissions.