The end of the first week of the Paris climate talks is approaching, with limited progress reported so far. Carbon Pulse continues to publish updates throughout the day of key developments in the negotiations as well as on the sidelines.

2343 CET – CDM SUPPLY COULD BE FAR LOWER THAN THOUGHT: The global supply of CDM credits could be far lower than previously expected by 2020 because most projects won’t bother applying for the units, potentially bringing the ailing market into balance, according to a study from NewClimate Institute. The findings are a follow-up to a two-year study published in May from the researchers that surveyed 1,310 CDM projects worldwide and found that despite inadequate carbon credit revenues, hardly any expected their mitigation activity to stop. The follow-up study, launched on the sidelines of UN climate talks in Paris this week, found that the supply of CERs could be around 270 million CERs a year over 2015-2020. See full story.

1541 CET – BUILDING ACTION ON BUILDINGS: 18 countries (Austria, Brazil, Cameroon, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Senegal, Singapore, Sweden, Tunisia, Ukraine, UAE and the US) and over 60 organizations launched a Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction to speed up and scale up the sector’s huge potential to reduce its GHGs.  The buildings and construction sector is responsible for 30% of global CO2 emissions, but it also has the potential to avoid about 3.2 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2050 “through mainstreaming today’s available state-of-the-art policies and technologies,” the UN said. “Reducing energy demand in the building sector is one of the most cost-effective strategies for achieving significant greenhouse gas reductions.”  These efforts are estimated to require an additional $220 billion by 2020 – an almost 50% increase on 2014 investment in energy efficient buildings but equivalent to less than 4% of the current total global annual investment in construction activity ($8.5 trillion/year). “Returns on this investment could be as high as 124% if investments in ambitious policy and technology actions are being made now,” the UN added.  More than 90 countries have targeted emissions reductions in the buildings sector in their INDCs.

1520 CET – FEWER PAGES BUT MORE BRACKETS: While the latest negotiating text has been reduced to 50 pages from 54, the number of brackets has risen to 1,718 from 1,167 since Monday, analysis by the Tropical Forest Group and ParisAgreement.org showed.  “Even at this late stage, rather than reduce disagreements, negotiators are raising new specific issues of contention.  This would seemingly suggest that negotiations are moving backwards,” they said.  However, they point a few reasons to be optimistic, including the “larger blocks of discord (options)” being reduced to 205 from 228, and “certain critical sections” seeing “dramatic improvements, including the implementing body for the new Paris Agreement and the transparency system/framework to clarify overall implementation”.

1338 CET – DUTCH/UK LAUNCH $175M RENEWABLES FUND: The two nations launched the Climate Investor One facility to fund renewables projects in poorer nations though development, construction and operation. One of four winning innovative pilots under the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance this year, it aims to provide clean power to 6 million people, create 23,000 jobs directly and 300,000 indirectly while avoiding 1.5m tonnes of CO2.  The Netherlands announced a €50m contribution with $75m from the Dutch development bank FMO. UK officials attended the launch but were only able to put up a £50m “expression of interest”. “This enables Climate Investor One to move to the next phase and attract participation of private investors in renewable energy projects in developing countries,” said FMO, which will jointly manage the fund with private infrastructure company Phoenix InfraWorks.

1201 CET – DEVELOPMENT BANKS ON TRANSPORTATION: It’s transport (and buildings) day here at COP-21, and eight multilateral development banks have committed to accelerating their efforts to mitigate transportation emissions.  The sector accounts for about 60% of global oil consumption, 27% of all energy use, and 23% of world energy-related CO2 emissions.  In their statement, the African Development Bank, Asian Development Bank, CAF-Development Bank of Latin America, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, European Investment Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, and the World Bank pledged to speed up action in three areas.  Those are climate finance (substantially increase financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation over the next few years, with transport expected to play a key role in that), low-carbon transport solutions (increase their focus on this while continuing to harmonize tools and metrics to assess transport-related GHGs), and adaptation (jointly develop a systematic approach to mainstream climate resilience in transport policies, plans and investments).

1142 CET – NGO RESPONSE MIXED: Green groups responded to the new ADP text with careful optimism on Thursday. The text provides clearer options on long-term targets and provides a good basis for ministers to take further, said Greenpeace’s Kaisa Kosonen, but Raman Mehta of the Vasudha Foundation stressed that there is little progress on finance, and said there is a need for a new paradigm on differentiation (i.e. CBRD). Developed nations “are pushing for complete symmetry, which is inappropriate,” he told reporters.

1035 CET – NEW DRAFT TEXT: A slow start to Thursday, but the ADP contact group has published a new 50-page draft agreement and draft decision on workstreams 1 and 2 of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action. The document is available here.

By Carbon Pulse – news@carbon-pulse.com

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