Momentum for change, debunking the climate myths

Durban Growth Series Day Two

By Thomas Kerr* in Durban

Congratulating South Africa and the World Economic Forum for Hosting a “Strategic Celebration”

United Nations Convention on Climate Change, Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres has congratulated the World Economic Forum and the South African government for hosting a “strategic celebration of positive, tangible results”. She said more discussions such as those hosted by the Forum in Durban are critically needed.  Ms Figueres The successful partnerships featured and formed during the Durban Growth Series helped to debunk three key myths that persist in the climate change debate:

• Because the climate change negotiations are moving slowly, there is nothing happening on the ground to address mitigation and adaptation;
• The private sector only acts when there is no risk; and
• Climate change action is expensive.

Ms Figueres highlighted the vibrant set of new, profitable business opportunities that forward-thinking companies were investing in, and congratulated governments for thinking outside the box in forming new partnerships with industry and civil society.  She was joined by the other panellists in congratulating the participants for offering positive examples of successful bottom-up approaches, and in challenging the group to do more:  the scale and the urgency of the climate change problem necessitates it.

Rapporteurs from the clean energy, climate-smart agriculture and water and adaptation sessions fed back their findings and key messages at the closing plenary on Sunday afternoon.  The high-level panel featured Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change, Trevor Manuel, Minister of Planning for South Africa, United Kingdom Department of Energy and Climate Change Minister Gregory Barker, Kamdeh Yumkelleh, Director General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and Ms Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa and host of COP17.

The UNFCCC “Momentum for Change” event:

During the evening of December 6, COP17 delegates and climate change negotiators took a break from debating language, talking to reporters, and running from meeting to meeting to attend an unusual event hosted by the UNFCCC.

The event was the launch of a new UNFCCC platform designed to showcase “lighthouse” projects from around the world that are addressing climate change.  The large hall (capacity 1000) was nearly full, and delegates were welcomed by UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres, who said it was time for a breath of fresh air to blow through the negotiating halls, one that shows how real people are taking meaningful steps to address the challenges of climate change adaptation and mitigation.  A hush fell over the crowd as the lights went down to show a powerful video (link to video on UNFCCC site)  featuring ten public/private partnerships across the energy efficiency, transport, solar power, water resources management, tree planting, and agricultural insurance sectors.  Ms Figueres highlighted that each of these projects were showing real results, were scalable, and involved substantial public/private partnerships.  She congratulated project champions for their leadership, and challenged the audience to follow the examples set by these lighthouse projects.

Watch: The Momentum For Change Ceremony

The World Economic Forum was proud to be a part of this celebration, as our Scaling Up Solar in India through financial innovation project was chosen to be featured in the video and in the Momentum for Change Initiative. I shared the stage with Mr Kirit Parikh, Chairman of the Integrated Research and Action for Development organization and Mr Shreemat Pandey from the Government of Rajasthan State, India—two real champions behind the tremendous success we have seen in solar scale-up in India.  They testified to the great strides India has made in a short time in adding nearly 1 Gigawatt of solar to the grid.  You can bet that India will quickly become a world leader in solar power, just as it has in wind power and IT.

Now to the World Economic Forum’s role in this partnership.  There is a lively debate about “who will pay?” for scaling up renewable energy worldwide.  While the price of solar in India is nearing grid parity with imported coal, there remains another key barrier to scaling up:  the banks’ perception of risk that policies might change, or that the Indian utilities might not honor their obligation to purchase power.  This perception translates to a high cost of debt.

To address this, the Form helped to bring together Indian and international banks, project developers and donors like the Asian Development Bank and the United Kingdom government to design breakthrough financial models that address risk and leverage public monies with much larger private capital.  As a result of this work, the UK has invested monies in the Asian Development Bank’s Partial Credit Guarantee, leveraging their initial investment of 6m£ over 4,000% to achieve 265M£ of private investment.  Imagine what a pool of donors could achieve!  We think this example offers a critical lesson to the climate change negotiations.  Transformative change can be achieved through strategic use of public monies to leverage the private sector.

To build on the India solar and other examples, the UNFCCC will be collecting and documenting additional public/private partnerships through the Momentum for Change project over the next few years.  For more information vist the UNFCCC website for Momentum for Change

*Thomas Kerr is a Director at the World Economic Forum and Head of Climate Change Initiatives. He is in Durban South Africa hosting the Durban Growth Series as part of the COP17.

Read: Durbn Growth Series day one

Watch: Thomas Kerr on the COP17

More: Durban Growth Series day two