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☆ Africa is hosting the UN climate summit. It's also home to 3 oil-and-gas deals announced in just two weeks.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Catherine Boudreau | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

During the COP27 event, three oil-and-gas deals in Africa have been announced. In the past two weeks — essentially the time of the COP27 summit — three oil-and-gas deals were announced for Africa alone, in Egypt, Nigeria, and Tanzania. That demand is evident even in announcements that purportedly support renewable energy. Plus, the projects are more expensive than building out renewable energy like solar. "If we really want to improve the lives of people, we need to invest in community renewable energy," Elmaawi said.

A G20 declaration on Wednesday said "we will play our part fully in implementing" last year's Glasgow Climate Pact, under which countries pledged to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial times. "As things stand, the Glasgow Climate Pact is broken, but the G20 have the opportunity to fix it." MISSED OPPORTUNITYThe G20 declaration recognised the need to phase down use of unabated coal and phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies. Avinash Persaud, special envoy on climate finance to Prime Minister Mia Motley of Barbados, meanwhile, told Reuters the G20 declaration missed the mark on finance. "Unfunded ambition gets us nowhere fast," Persaud said, adding he wanted G20 countries to unlock more lending from multilateral development banks they control to help climate-vulnerable countries.

☆ G20 agrees to pursue efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5C
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Delegates at the U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where progress towards an agreement by the end of the week has been slow, have been watching the G20 summit closely for signs that developed nations are willing to make new commitments on climate. "We resolve to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. This will require meaningful and effective actions and commitment by all countries," the G20 statement said. It also made reference to the need to accelerate "efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power, in line with national circumstances and recognising the need for support towards just transitions." "We will play our part fully in implementing the (COP26) Glasgow Climate Pact," the G20 leaders said.

☆ Column: A gasier Asia would emit less CO2, but may lift global power costs
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Gavin Maguire | Thomson Reuters | Gavin Maguire Is The Global Energy Transition Columnist. He Was Previously Asia Commodities | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Asia coal and gas power production & emissionsTop polluter Asia relies on coal for roughly 57% of electricity production, BP Statistical Review of World Energy data shows, so switching out coal for gas offers a potential way for power producers there to cut emissions without drastically overhauling current power supply systems. Asian power firms plan to build out natural gas pipeline infrastructureHowever, power producers across the region are planning to expand existing networks and link major consumer hubs to distant suppliers. According to a Global Energy Monitor study released in February 2022, more than 70,000 kilometres (43,000 miles) of gas pipelines are under construction globally, with more than 45,000 kilometres in Asia. Global gas markets have been drastically disrupted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine since the Global Energy Monitor study was published, and surging gas prices have clearly cooled Asia's near-term appetite for gas in some areas. However, more Asian gas supplies and use will also allow power producers to lower emissions, which for many of the attendees of the COP27 talks is of greater consequence for global energy markets.

☆ Brazil's Lula seen favoring leftist Haddad for finance minister, sources say
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Lisandra Paraguassu | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

REUTERS/Mariana Greif/File PhotoBRASILIA, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Leftist former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad is emerging as the front-runner to be Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's finance minister, three sources told Reuters, although they said no final decision has yet been made. Investors, already jittery over Lula's spending plans, are eager to learn who will be Brazil's next finance minister. Lula is not expected to announce any of his ministers until early December after he returns from Egypt and Portugal trips. Markets tumbled in Brazil last week on concerns that Lula was delaying the naming of his finance minister and disregarding fiscal discipline as he studied ways to bypass the budget spending ceiling. Haddad failed in his bid to be Sao Paulo governor in last month's election, losing out to Bolsonaro's pick for the job.

☆ COP27 climate talks seen as key to success at next month's U.N. nature summit
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Gloria Dickie | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

"Climate change is one of the big drivers of biodiversity loss," said David Cooper, the deputy chief of U.N.'s Convention on Biological Diversity. "If we don't have successful outcomes in the climate process, then we cannot halt biodiversity loss," Cooper said. "You cannot have a dream of coping with climate change only through the emissions," Virginijus Sinkevičiu, European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, told Reuters. "If ecosystems are not able to cope, you don't have a success story" in fighting climate change. President Xi Jinping has not attended the climate talks in Sharm el-Sheikh and is also not expected to attend COP15.

☆ 'Profoundly disturbing': The PR firm for the COP27 climate summit has a long history with Big Oil
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Sam Meredith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

"Hill and Knowlton is the main lobbying communications firm for the oil industry," said Duncan Meisel, campaign director at Clean Creatives, a U.S.-based group working to disentangle the PR industry from the fossil fuel sector. "Any PR firm that is actively supporting to promote [a] narrative of continued fossil fuel expansion under any circumstances is a problem," Muffett told CNBC via telephone. watch nowIt comes at a time of growing momentum for calls to end fossil fuel production worldwide. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently called out what he described as the "massive public relations machine raking in billions to shield the fossil fuel industry from scrutiny." "Fossil fuel interests need to spend less time averting a PR disaster — and more time averting a planetary one."

☆ Key takeaways from the G20 summit in Bali
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Here are key takeaways from the meeting:CONDEMNING RUSSIAN AGGRESSIONMeetings of G20 ministers earlier this year ended without joint declarations because of Russian opposition to references to the war in Ukraine. With the Ukraine war, as well as massive pandemic-era spending packages blamed for fuelling red-hot inflation, the G20 countries said further fiscal stimulus measures should be "temporary and targeted". Besides the meeting with Biden, Xi held talks with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and French President Emmanuel Macron. A meeting with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was cancelled due to scheduling issues, Downing Street said. Xi is set to meet Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida later this week.

☆ EU to propose natural gas price cap after Nov. 24 meeting
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Kate Abnett | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The 27-country European Union has for months debated whether to cap gas prices, as the bloc struggles to contain soaring inflation and energy prices driven by Russia slashing gas supplies to Europe. EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson said the Commission, which drafts EU policies, would propose a cap after a meeting of EU energy ministers on Nov. 24 where they are expected to instruct the bloc's executive to move ahead with the proposal. EU countries are split over whether to cap gas prices. Belgium, Poland, Italy and Greece have demanded Brussels propose a gas price cap before Nov. 24, and threatened to block other EU policies including faster renewable energy permitting rules, if one is not proposed. "In a global commodity market, we cannot attract these volumes unless our (gas) prices are competitive against the other world regions, namely the Asian market."

"Africa must have natural gas to complement its renewable energy," African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said Friday on the sidelines of the U.N. conference, being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Even if Africa were to triple its production of natural gas from current levels, its contribution to global emissions would only rise by 0.67%, he said. It has also put 85% of its investments between 2016-2021 into renewable energy. Still, natural gas is needed to balance out the electricity supply given the intermittent nature of renewables, he said. "My interest is how Africa uses natural gas as part of its energy mix to provide electricity for 600 million people today that don't have access to electricity."

☆ Should rich countries pay climate 'reparations'? What the COP27 debate means
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Leila Sackur | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

More than 1,700 people, including more than 500 children, were killed in the extreme flooding and 33 million more displaced. Pakistan’s environmental footprint — how much carbon it has put into the atmosphere in recent decades — is significantly less than other countries. And at an individual level, the environmental footprint of most Pakistanis is much smaller than people in countries like the United States. Wealthy nations increasingly are being called upon to pay up, with $75.8 million being pledged in “loss and damage” payments at COP27 so far. At the previous climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, wealthy nations rejected proposals for a specific loss and damage fund, although countries agreed to start a “dialogue” on the issue.

☆ China and U.S. to resume climate talks halted after Pelosi trip
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( The Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +2 min

Biden and Xi met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. Both committed Monday to directing their governments’ senior officials to “maintain communication and deepen constructive efforts” on matters including climate change and security of the world food supply, the White House said. “The United States stands ready to do just that — work with you — if that’s what you desire,” Biden told Xi. Kerry and Xie had informal contacts during the two nations’ break on climate cooperation, focused on what would help get the joint dialogue started again. Xi and Biden also agreed to resume the same kind of top-level contacts on other matters critical to global stability, including debt relief, the White House said.

☆ I ate lab-grown meat. Here's what 'cultivated' chicken made in a bioreactor looks and tastes like.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Catherine Boudreau | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Good Meat served its "cultivated" chicken at the UN climate summit in Egypt. Cultivated meat is getting attention at the UN's COP27 meeting because at least 14% of global greenhouse-gas emissions come from animal agriculture, largely driven by beef and dairy cattle. Good Meat went to great lengths to get its "cultivated" chicken served in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, where the COP27 meeting is taking place. The restaurant 1880 in Singapore sold two dishes with Good Meat's chicken for $23, but the revenue from that still isn't enough to make Good Meat profitable. But it will take a whole lot of "cultivated" chicken to offset the world's poultry obsession.

☆ California tries to harness megastorm floods to ease crippling droughts
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Sharon Bernstein | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

[1/3] The dried out Arroyo Pasajero Creek is seen alongside an aqueduct in Huron, California, U.S. on October 25, 2022. Outside the United States, countries including India are also beginning to increase the use of recharge ponds to store water in natural or human-made aquifers. While the idea of storing water underground is not new, a recent California law regulating groundwater use has spurred a spate of projects that the state is helping to fund. The new pond, on about 20 acres of former farmland , will help to guide water underground to store it for residents as well as agriculture. Since then the state's population has nearly doubled to 40 million residents.

A UN study last year found "negligible" correlation between household food waste and gross domestic product, indicating most countries "have room to improve." "We do have a long way to make the goal," said Jean Buzby, the food waste liaison at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration agreed in 2018 to tackle America's food waste together. A spokesman for New Zealand's environment ministry said the country is finalizing its baseline food waste estimate so it can establish a target. SLOWEST GAZELLEIn California, which has America's most ambitious climate policies, officials are trying to ensure food waste goes to composting, not landfills.

☆ EU supports COP27 call to phase down all fossil fuels
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 15 (Reuters) - The European Union supports a call by India to phase down fossil fuel use as part of a COP27 deal, the bloc's climate policy chief Frans Timmermans said on Tuesday, provided it does not weaken previous agreements on reducing the use of coal. India wants countries to agree to phase down all fossil fuels at the U.N. climate summit in Egypt, rather than a narrower deal to phase down coal that was agreed at COP26 last year. "We are in support of any call to phase down all fossil fuels," Timmermans told a news conference. A wider push to phase down use of all fossil fuels would put oil and gas consumers and producers in the spotlight as well as those countries that rely on coal. The document did not refer to fossil fuels, although a COP Presidency spokesperson later said the list was not exhaustive and did not contain the language that would be used in the final version.

☆ Tuvalu turns to the metaverse as rising seas threaten existence
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Lucy Craymer | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 15 (Reuters) - Tuvalu said on Tuesday it plans to build a digital version of itself, replicating islands and landmarks and preserving its history and culture as rising sea levels threaten to submerge the tiny Pacific island nation. Kofe grabbed global attention at last year’s COP26 when he addressed the conference standing knee-deep in the sea to illustrate how Tuvalu is on the front line of climate change. Tuvalu was having to act because countries globally were not doing enough to prevent climate change, he said. Tuvalu, a group of nine islands and 12,000 people halfway between Australia and Hawaii, has long been a cause celebre for the risks of climate change and rising sea levels. Kofe said he hoped the creation of a digital nation would allow Tuvalu to continue to function as a state even if it becomes completely submerged.

Lula's team also worked to secure a jungle conservation alliance announced on Monday between the three largest rainforest nations - Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That includes pushing for rich nations with high greenhouse gas emissions to pay poor nations for historic damage the climate. Colombia's Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said Lula's election would allow for renewed regional cooperation among Amazon rainforest nations to tackle deforestation, a major contributor to climate change. Lula environmental advisor Izabella Teixeira said she felt the mood about Brazil has shifted at COP27 from previous summits. "When I come to COP and meet people after the election of President Lula, there is hope," she said.

The failure by rich nations to deliver in full on a past pledge to deliver $100 billion in annual climate finance to developing countries has rankled in recent years of climate talks. "We cannot afford a further erosion of trust between the developed and developing countries," said Samoa's Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa. The burning of fossil fuels is the main cause of climate change, but coal, gas and oil were notably absent in the draft deal. The draft COP27 text did not hint at which route the final deal will take on this issue. "We cannot lose 1.5 at this COP," said Alok Sharma, president of last year's U.N. climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland.

☆ Rich nations stick to coal phase-out plans as China builds new projects
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Rich nations have stuck to pledges to phase-out coal power despite the war in Ukraine to help reach their climate targets but expansion of China’s coal fleet risks counteracting the impact of the closures, a report said on Tuesday. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning coal are the single biggest contributor to climate change and weaning the world off coal is considered vital to achieving global climate targets. China has pledged to bring the country's carbon emissions to a peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. On Monday, China said it did not oppose mentioning 1.5 degrees Celsius as a goal for limiting global warming. Reuters GraphicsThere are still plans for almost 300 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power capacity globally with around two-thirds of this, or 197 GW slated to be built in China, the report showed.

[1/5] Yael Gabay, The Plant Based Treaty global co-director with a team give away free vegan burgers during COP27 climate summit in Red Sea resort at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, November 14, 2022. "We have to move away from animal production." "It would result in more intensive livestock production that would require larger areas of land to produce the animal feed, putting pressure on forest land," Reisinger told Reuters. THE OTHER WHITE MEATCampaigners have even protested the food kiosks at the summit selling burgers and chicken - foods they say don't belong at a climate conference. "When you enter the conference, you have the scent of grilled animal meat in your nose.

An EU official said Lula would also meet on Wednesday with EU climate policy chief Frans Timmermans. Last month, Lula defeated right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, who oversaw mounting destruction of the Amazon rainforest and refused to host the 2019 climate summit originally planned for Brazil. His team also worked to secure a jungle conservation alliance announced on Monday between the three largest rainforest nations - Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia. They said other countries know Brazil will soon have a Lula government that has promised to take the issue more seriously than Bolsonaro, a climate change sceptic. Colombia's Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said Lula's election would allow renewed regional cooperation among Amazon rainforest nations to tackle deforestation, a major contributor to climate change.

☆ COP27 considering loss and damage fund among other finance options - draft text
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Monday published a draft text setting out what the COP27 climate summit could agree on the subject of 'loss and damage' financing for countries being ravaged by climate impacts. The draft text, which could change before it is adopted at the conclusion of the summit and in places contained multiple options, included a reference to the establishment of a new U.N.-administered fund. The document said: "Arrangements for funding for responding to loss and damage may include:a) A new fit-for-purpose fund under the UNFCCC;b) An operating entity of the Financial Mechanism;c) The strengthening of existing operating entities of the Financial Mechanism, recognizing their governance/governing instruments;d) Public finance, including in the form of grants;e) Grant-based funding from multiple sources;f) Development finance;g) Debt reliefh) Reform of multilateral development banks and international financial institutions;i) Humanitarian assistance;j) Innovative sources of funding;"Reporting by William James; editing by Dominic EvansOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Reuters reported in August that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, elected as Brazil's president at the end of October, would seek a partnership with the two other leading rainforest nations to pressure the rich world to finance forest conservation. The rapid destruction of rainforests, which through their dense vegetation serve as carbon sinks, releases planet-warming carbon dioxide, imperiling global climate targets. "South-to-south cooperation - Brazil, Indonesia, DRC - is very natural," the Democratic Republic of Congo's Environment Minister Eve Bazaiba said prior to the signing. In the agreement, the alliance said that countries should be paid for reducing deforestation and maintaining forests as carbon sinks. Talks on the alliance to protect rainforest until now had foundered due to "institutional difficulties," Teixeira said.

Carbon offsets allow countries or companies to pay others to cut greenhouse gas emissions to offset their own. Countries applauded each other at last year's climate summit in Glasgow for agreeing on broad principles governing carbon markets, breaking six years of stalemate. Applying to join the new system without knowing what rules will govern it would be difficult, said Pedro Martins Barata, a carbon markets expert observing the talks for the non-profit Environmental Defense Fund. Voluntary carbon offset markets have struggled to gain trust for years. Reuters GraphicsPrivate initiatives like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) and the Carbon Credit Quality Initiative (CCQI) have drafted guidance on what they see as a high-quality carbon offset.

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