COP26 today: Climate impact on economy, low-carbon tech market emerge at summit finance day

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The latest at COP26:

• Coalition of nearly three dozen large corporations formed to build low-carbon tech market as $130 trillion worth of financiers take the stage
• Non-profit group to put spotlight on Indigenous clean energy voices
• The Bank of Canada said it will develop new models and data sources to better understand how climate change is impacting Canada’s economy
• UN climate envoy and former Governor of the Bank of Canada Mark Carney says “The money is here but that money needs net zero aligned projects”

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Catch up on yesterday’s events here, and read our recap on how Canada joined more than 100 nations in pledge to end deforestation by 2030. Also from yesterday, Canada’s global-carbon-price pitch is an uphill battle.

1:30 p.m. ET

Alberta, with largest oil industry, sends fewer to COP than any other energy province

The province with Canada’s largest oil and gas industry has sent one of the country’s smallest delegations to the international climate conference, where emissions from that industry are under scrutiny.

A preliminary list of the Canadian delegation shows Alberta has sent two bureaucrats.

Newfoundland has nine people at the meetings, Manitoba has six and Ontario has four, as does the Northwest Territories. Quebec has 36 representatives. Several Indigenous and environmental groups also have stronger numbers at the meetings, which are setting the world’s path to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Premier Jason Kenney has said he didn’t see the value of one more politician at what he called a “gab fest.”

- The Canadian Press

12:45 p.m. ET

Non-profit group to put spotlight on Indigenous clean energy voices at COP26 summit

As world leaders gather in Glasgow for COP26, they are facing calls to think big.

Mihskakwan James Harper and other delegates from Indigenous Clean Energy will be urging them to also think small: specifically, about how micro-grid projects owned and operated by Indigenous communities can help power a lower-carbon world.

In sessions this week at the climate change conference in Glasgow, Mr. Harper and three other ICE delegates will be showcasing such projects and making the case that Indigenous communities should have a key role in shaping the future energy landscape.

“We will not meet our climate targets unless Indigenous peoples are empowered – and I think the world needs to hear this and the world really needs to understand this,” Mr. Harper said in an interview from Toronto before he left for Glasgow.

- Wendy stueck

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12:00 p.m. ET

Coalition formed to build low-carbon tech market

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, nearly three dozen large corporations including Apple and Amazon, and the World Economic Forum are launching an alliance to build a market for technologies that generate low levels of carbon dioxide.

The First Movers Coalition announced on Wednesday aims to help companies set their purchasing plans in a way that will “create new market demand for low-carbon technologies,” the World Economic Forum said.

“Technology has given us the tools to reduce our emissions and build a stronger and more inclusive economy of the future,” forum President Borge Brende said. “For innovators and investors to play their part in tackling the climate crisis, they need clear market demand.”

- AP

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11:00 a.m. ET

Fears for farming and trade stopped India signing COP26 forest, methane pledges

India did not sign the COP26 pledge to stop deforestation and cut methane gas emissions by 2030 because of its concerns over the impact on trade, on the country’s vast farm sector, and the role of livestock in the rural economy, officials said.

Yesterday, world leaders pledged to stop deforestation by the end of the decade and cut emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane to help slow climate change.

Agriculture accounts for over 15% of India’s $2.7 trillion economy and employs almost half of the country’s more than 1.3 billion people. Around two-thirds of Indians live in the countryside and India’s large livestock population is central to the country’s agriculture and its village economy. That makes reducing methane emissions, generated by cows’ digestive systems and manure, a major challenge.

- Reuters

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10:00 a.m. ET

Kremlin defends climate actions after Biden barb

The Kremlin has rejected U.S. President Joe Biden’s criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin for not attending the U.N. climate conference.

“His tundra is burning — literally, the tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems, and he is mum on willingness to do anything,” Biden said Tuesday of Putin and the wildfires that scorched Siberia this summer.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday that Moscow does not agree with Biden’s characterization. He said the Russian delegation at COP26 actively participated in the summit.

“Russia’s climate action don’t have the goal of being pegged to an event,” Peskov said. “Of course, we are not belittling the significance of the event in Glasgow, but Russia’s actions are consistent, serious and well-thought-through.”

- AP

9:30 a.m. ET

Bank of Canada plans new tools to assess climate impact on economy

The Bank of Canada said on Wednesday that it will develop new models and data sources to better understand how climate change is impacting Canada’s economy, and said it would include these findings in its quarterly forecasts to help markets price risks.

The central bank, in a release tied to the UN’s COP26 global climate summit, said it will assess how more frequent severe weather events and the transition to low-carbon growth affect Canada’s potential output, the labor market and inflation.

“Climate change and the transition to a low-carbon net zero economy will have significant macroeconomic consequences, touching every region and sector of the Canadian and global economies,” the bank said in a statement.

“It will also have implications for structural change, the growth of potential output, and price stability,” it said.

- Reuters

8:30 a.m. ET

Canada loses bid to host corporate sustainability data to Frankfurt at COP26, but gets a secondary hub

Frankfurt has been named as the headquarters of a new global organization responsible for providing companies with standards for reporting sustainability measures – and Montreal will be home to a secondary office.

The locations of the offices for the new International Sustainability Standards Board were announced along with other details of the organization at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow on Wednesday.

The secondary hub in Montreal is consolation prize for Canada. Numerous banks, insurers, pension funds, industry associations and major corporations backed a Canadian bid to host the ISSB, even offering a “welcome fund” to support its operations for an initial period.

- Jeffrey Jones, James Bradshaw

7:40 a.m. ET

As politicians exit, $130 trillion worth of financiers take the stage

With national leaders gone from the U.N. climate conference, attention turned on Wednesday to the state treasuries and the businesses and financiers responsible for carrying out the pledges to cut emissions and build infrastructure.

A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure enough national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions - mostly from burning ubiquitous fossil fuels - to avert the worst climate disasters by keeping the rise in the global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But how exactly to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world -- is still being worked out. Above all, it will need a lot of money.

Among the most vexing questions are who should pay and how the funds can be channelled through the financial system quickly and effectively. A major goal will be to attract more private money.

The issues are so important that organizers dedicated all of Wednesday for executives and public finance leaders to discuss them.

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero - an umbrella group that includes all the major Western banks as well as insurers and asset managers - announced that firms responsible for managing $130 trillion in capital, equivalent to 40% of the world’s financial assets, had signed up to assuming a “fair share” of decarbonisation.

- Reuters

Andrew Coyne: How much we cut carbon emissions is less important than how we do so

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6:30 a.m. ET

Climate financing target for 2023 in reach “if we are lucky”

A spate of last-minute pledges from developed countries have made it possible but not certain that a target of $100 billion in climate financing could be reached in 2022, Germany’s state secretary for the environment said on Wednesday.

“We thought already three weeks ago that we would have all the pledges,” he told a news conference with his Canadian counterpart, natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson, at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow.

“But we saw even yesterday from Japan a very substantive announcement... So if we are lucky we can reach $100 billion in 2022 but definitely in 2023.”

- Reuters

‘Greta Mania’ sweeps COP26 climate summit as Thunberg visits Glasgow

Deforestation done well: Gabon’s green logging laws offer COP26 countries a path to climate action

6:00 a.m. ET

Mark Carney says ‘money is here’ for net zero aligned projects

UN climate envoy Mark Carney called on Wednesday for more blended finance facilities to mobilize private finance to help the developing world access climate finance, saying the money was there.

“We need blended finance facilities that don’t mobilize fractions of private capital for the public dollar but multiples ... in double digits. There are facilities that are being developed that can do this, we need to scale them dramatically,” he said.

“The money is here but that money needs net zero aligned projects and there’s a way to turn this into a very, very powerful virtuous circle and that’s the challenge.

- Reuters

5:30 a.m. ET

Britain’s Sunak pledges to ‘rewire’ global finance system for net zero

British finance minister Rishi Sunak pledged on Wednesday to “rewire” the global financial system for net zero, saying London will also commit 100 million pounds ($136.19 million) to make climate finance more accessible to developing countries.

Outlining Britain’s strategy over the next five years to the United Nations COP26 climate summit, he said in addition to the 100 million pounds, London would also support a new capital markets mechanism to issue billions of new green bonds.

“Six years ago Paris set the ambition, today in Glasgow we are provided the investment we need to deliver that ambition,” he told an audience in Glasgow.

- Reuters

5:00 a.m. ET

U.S. backs new effort to issue green bonds

The United States on Wednesday announced its support for a new capital market mechanism that will issue investment-grade bonds and raise significant new finance for scaling clean energy and sustainable infrastructure in emerging economies.

Underscoring the urgency of acting to stop global warming, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the COP26 climate conference in the Scottish city of Glasgow that the United States would join Britain in backing the Climate Investment Funds’ (CIF) new Capital Market Mechanism and its innovative leveraging structure.

She said the initiative would help attract significant new private climate funds and provide $500 million per year for the CIF’s Clean Technology Fund, as well as its new Accelerating Coal Transition investment program.

- Reuters

More reading

• Trudeau reaffirms pledge to impose GHG emissions caps on Canada’s oil and gas industry
• A guide to the Glasgow climate talks – the world’s most consequential environment conference
• COP26 is a circus with a purpose: Putting climate change in the spotlight so no country can ignore it
• What’s a COP? Who sets NDCs? Explaining key concepts for the Glasgow climate conference

Opinion and analysis

• Campbell Clark: After COP26 climate conference, the carbon trade war will inch closer
• Editorial board: The global warming alarm clock is ringing. Wake up
• Gary Mason: Steven Guilbeault is the right environment minister for our times

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