COP26 News Brief, 02 Nov. 2021 : $19bn pledged to back up commitments
The governments of South Africa, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, along with the European Union, have today announced a new ambitious, long-term Just Energy Transition Partnership to support South Africa’s decarbonisation efforts.
The Partnership aims to accelerate the decarbonisation of South Africa’s economy, with a focus on the electricity system, to help it achieve the ambitious goals set out in its updated Nationally Determined Contribution emissions goals. It will mobilise an initial commitment of $8.5 billion for the first phase of financing, through various mechanisms including grants, concessional loans and investments and risk sharing instruments, including to mobilise the private sector. The Partnership is expected to prevent up to 1-1.5 gigatonnes of emissions over the next 20 years and support South Africa to move away from coal and to accelerate its transition to a low emission, climate resilient economy. Read More
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi jointly launched a new flagship international initiative today (2 November 2021), at the COP26 World Leaders Summit, backed by over 80 countries, to dramatically accelerate the global transition to a clean powered world.
Jointly led by the UK and India, the new initiative, called “Green Grids Initiative – One Sun One World One Grid” (GGI-OSOWOG), will accelerate the development and deployment of interconnected electricity grids across continents, countries and communities, and improve energy access of the poorest through mini-grids and off-grid solutions. Read More
Minister for the Middle East and North Africa James Cleverly today announced £50m UK funding for the High Impact Partnership on Climate Action (HIPCA). The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) launched HIPCA on 2 November at an event during COP26 in Glasgow.
The EBRD-managed Partnership aims to unleash investments and solutions that reduce or prevent greenhouse gas emissions, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change, and protect the environment. The UK’s funding will be used to mobilise private sector funds to support work across North Africa and the Middle East, including in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan and Lebanon. This funding will be used to support energy transition and green infrastructure and growth in the region. Read More
The UK announced new funding today to support African governments to roll-out critical adaptation projects so at-risk communities can adapt to the impact of extreme weather and changing climates. COP26 President Alok Sharma announced the new UK support for the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) – an initiative endorsed by African Union leaders and led by the African Development Bank, Global Centre on Adaptation and the Africa Adaptation Initiative, to back African-led plans to accelerate resilience-building across Africa.
Today’s announcements came on the second day of COP26, the two-week UN Climate Change Conference, where world leaders are meeting with the aim to agree how to tackle the urgent threat of global climate change. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also today announced the UK is offering an ambitious new guarantee mechanism – the ‘Room to Run’ guarantee – to the African Development Bank (AfDB). This is expected to unlock up to £1.45 billion ($2 billion) worth of new financing for projects across the continent, half of which will help countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. Read More
Today, at COP26 in Glasgow, the countries listed below launched the Breakthrough Agenda – a commitment to work together internationally this decade to accelerate the development and deployment of the clean technologies and sustainable solutions needed to meet our Paris Agreement goals, ensuring they are affordable and accessible for all. The 2020s must be a decade of delivery across all major emitting sectors. While we acknowledge our different national circumstances, we will endeavour to work together in each sector, including through public-private collaboration and by mobilising finance at scale, to make the global transition to a clean economy faster, lower cost and easier for all, while making solutions to adaptation more affordable and inclusive.
This is essential to meeting the Paris Agreement goals, including holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C, noting that the science shows further acceleration of efforts is needed if we are to collectively keep 1.5°C within reach, which will prevent the worst effects of climate change, especially for the most vulnerable countries. The benefits of this Agenda go beyond tackling climate change alone. Our ambition is to catalyse the growth of markets, jobs and economic development globally for clean technologies and sustainable solutions, support the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, strengthen the climate resilience of our societies and realise multiple cobenefits such as cleaner air, water and better health. Read More
Although the UK has this week committed a further billion dollars of international climate finance, taking our total to £12.6 billion by 2025, and just a few hours ago Japan announced another $10 billion over the next five years , a big commitment by Japan, the reality is the developed world will still be late in hitting the $100 billion target. It’s brilliant that so many countries have embraced Net Zero this week but we’re going to keep working with all the leaders around the world to get them there sooner – to accelerate their timetable. And while we’ve now got measures to protect more than 85 per cent of the world’s forests protected and 90 per cent of the world’s economy working to net zero- those commitments will be 100 per cent useless if the promises made here aren’t followed up with real action. Read More
