The United Nations COP27 climate summit beginning in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt on November 6 has a long to-do list. The 35,000 delegates and more than 100 heads of state expected to attend will not be able to check everything off over the course of the two-week gathering. And with the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine tightening governments’ budgets for climate action, it’s far from clear if countries will follow through on commitments made at last year’s COP summit in Scotland to dramatically increase financing for climate-change mitigation and adaptation.

But despite these headwinds, there remain glimmers of hope for meaningful climate progress at COP27. 

The United States and the European Union have accelerated policies to promote clean energy, helping to open up a credible path to reducing greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep global temperature rise below catastrophic levels — a path that seemed more elusive even just a year ago. 

There are also meaningful opportunities for progress in the Global South, which includes the large number of countries that are least responsible for carbon emissions but face the greatest harms from climate change. The world’s richest nations have yet to meet commitments to finance these poorer nations’ transitions to a low-carbon future, but there’s potential for progress with efforts to structure clean and just transitions in countries such as South Africa and Indonesia. 

At the same time, ground-up decarbonization efforts could accelerate beyond the path set by developed countries. In India, hundreds of millions of people could exchange fossil-fueled two-wheeled and three-wheeled vehicles for battery-electric-powered ones, for example. And throughout sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the Global South, microgrids powered by solar panels and batteries could bring electricity to hundreds of millions of people who now lack it and supplant dirty centralized energy for the hundreds of millions more who are now served by unreliable grids. 

These are some of the factors that Jon Creyts, the new CEO of climate and clean energy think tank RMI, has focused on as he’s been preparing for COP27. Canary Media, which is an independent subsidiary of RMI, sat down with Creyts last week to review the state of play for the upcoming U.N. summit. 

A focus on the Global South

First of all, Creyts says he thinks ​“the significance of the COP being in Egypt right now is huge” — it’s the first time in six years that an African nation has hosted the annual summit. The location brings additional focus to ​“this widening divide between the Global North and the Global South, and in particular, the capital starvation that’s happening in the Global South right now when it comes to the energy transition.” 

One major theme of the talks will be ​“loss and damage,” U.N. shorthand for discussions about how the wealthy world should compensate poorer countries that have already been hurt by climate disasters. Other big themes, Creyts said, will be ​“resilience and adaptation” — how to prepare communities for a world changed by climate — and ​“financial flows and transfers” — meaning who will be paying how much to whom. It’s far from clear what progress might be made on these issues, however. 

Rich nations have woefully underdelivered on a 2009 promise to provide $100 billion per year to developing nations for climate mitigation (transitioning from carbon-emitting systems to cleaner forms of energy, transport and land use) and climate adaptation (hardening infrastructure and preparing communities for the floods, droughts, heat waves and sea-level rise driven by climate change). And that $100 billion figure pales in comparison to the estimated range of $140 billion to $300 billion per year that developing nations will face in climate-adaptation costs alone over the coming decade. 

Nor have agreements been reached on how rich nations can compensate poorer nations that are trying to recover from the loss and damage already caused by climate change. That’s a bitter pill for the millions of people suffering from catastrophic flooding in Pakistan and Nigeria, harsh droughts in Africa and China, and devastating heat waves across the globe.

This lack of public-sector capital is matched by a lack of private-sector capital flowing to the Global South. Private lenders provide only a tiny fraction of the total funds flowing to climate investments in developing nations. 

Meanwhile, multilateral development banks such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are under increasing pressure to move more quickly to make loans and grants to combat climate change, Creyts noted. 

These trends mirror the broader gap between the global need for investments to combat climate change — at least $3 trillion per year, according to the U.N. Environment Programme — and the roughly $630 billion per year now being invested, according to the IMF. This gap, along with the continuing failure of most countries to meet the carbon-reduction targets they set at the 2015 COP21 in Paris, leaves the world on a path to well exceed the 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius rise in global temperature that climate scientists agree will spell disaster for the world. 

These failures are particularly frustrating given the enormous rewards that acting and investing heavily in climate solutions could yield, Creyts said. ​“One of the big fallacies about the energy transition is that it’s going to necessarily be an economic drag point,” he said. Rather, the shift to clean energy offers huge economic dividends. ​“For every million [dollars] that we invest in fossil industry, we get about two and a half jobs,” he said, while ​“we get almost seven jobs for every million invested in clean energy.” 

Energy crisis and energy transition: An uneven playing field 

The global energy crisis does offer an opportunity for clean energy to cement its predominance over fossil fuels, Creyts emphasized. The International Energy Agency’s new World Energy Outlook reports that the price shocks of this year have driven governments around the world to seek longer-term energy security by making investments in renewable energy, electric vehicles and other carbon-free resources, leading to forecasts of a plateau in fossil-fuel demand by the mid-2030s. 

“I think we now have the momentum and a pathway to get 3 or 4 or 5 billion people to a net-zero economy at or near 2050,” Creyts said. But without major support for developing nations, for another ​“3, 4 or 5 billion people, we don’t have a pathway right now. And if that’s the case, we have failed fundamentally.” 

The world will not be able to decarbonize unless developing nations are offered a path to grow their economies without developing their own fossil-fuel resources. As long as governments and banks continue to invest in fossil fuels, that path will remain elusive. 

Creyts pointed to the example of Indonesia, which has enough coal reserves to supply more than 200 times its annual consumption. Indonesia’s government has reported that rich countries haven’t responded to its call for direct investment of the estimated $600 billion it says will be needed to replace its coal generation capacity with renewable energy. Finding ways to drastically reduce the capital required to make that transition will be vital for the country’s coal phaseout to become a reality.

Similar challenges face African governments that are responding to fossil-fuel shortages with demands that they be free to invest in exploiting their relatively untapped reserves of natural gas to serve European markets. Without progress in providing the hundreds of billions of dollars African nations need for climate mitigation and adaptation, those demands will be hard to ignore. 

“This should be a moment of great democratization of access, of freedom from resource constraints,” Creyts said. ​“The idea of a two-speed world — a world where those that can least afford to manage the negative consequences of climate change are the ones that are not getting the kind of access to the resources to address it — doesn’t make any sense.”

Filling the financing gaps 

RMI is focusing much of its attention on helping developing nations build capacity to design climate mitigation and adaptation programs that can draw their fair share of international capital. 

“We’re thinking about ways to grow leadership capacity so that countries and communities throughout the Global South can choose the pathway that makes the most sense for them,” Creyts said. That work includes programs such as the Climate Finance Access Network and the Energy Transition Academy, which support individuals and organizations in developing nations. 

RMI is also working on novel structures to enable financing for the myriad climate investments needed around the world, Creyts said. ​“We’re very much focused on the financial acupuncture points for how we get that capital to flow in different ways,” he said. ​“How do we help multilateral institutions shift and change their roles here overall?” 

One aspect of that work involves finding viable models for blended finance, a mix of public and private investment where governments and multilateral development banks can reduce the risks of lending to encourage greater private-sector engagement. 

Today, every dollar in World Bank funding for projects in the Global South yields less than one additional dollar in follow-on financing, he said. ​“It should be $10 of private capital for every $1 of public capital, with a focus on creating blended capacity here so that we get a multiplier effect. And that’s simply not happening on the basis of how the projects are selected by the World Bank and others.” 

This concern is shared by John Kerry, the special presidential climate envoy for the Biden administration, who has been increasingly strident in calling on the nations that fund the World Bank and IMF to pressure these institutions to increase climate funding. 

“We’re looking at how to significantly increase the leverage and the amount of money that the banks are able to deploy to meet development needs, and to help…developing countries that are trying to do the right thing,” Kerry said during a press conference at the Breakthrough Energy Summit in Seattle last month. ​“Most people think that the World Bank today needs to be taking some risks. They can’t be operating by the same standard as a typical commercial bank.” 

One way to reduce this reluctance on the part of multilateral development banks is to design and implement a few vanguard projects that can serve as precedent, Creyts suggested. ​“Once the pattern is established and there are reference projects to be executed against, it becomes more straightforward for financing to happen.” One example is the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet, which pledged last year to help finance the transition from coal and other fossil fuels to clean energy with $1.5 billion in philanthropic funding and $9 billion from international development institutions, with the aim of mobilizing up to $100 billion in follow-on private investment. 

There may be limits to private-sector appetite for climate investments at this scale, however. Recent data shows that blended finance has been falling over the past year as the global energy crisis has crimped available capital. ​“We need to take a much more cautious approach in terms of projecting how much it can fill the gap,” Rachel Simon, climate and development policy coordinator for nonprofit group Climate Action Network Europe, said in a pre-COP27 press conference this week. 

A major proving point for international climate finance at COP27 is expected to come in negotiations over the future of the Just Energy Transition Partnership, a pledge made at last year’s COP by France, Germany, the U.K., the U.S. and the EU to channel $8.5 billion to aid South Africa in speeding its shift from coal to clean energy. While both South Africa and Indonesia have secured $500 million apiece from the World Bank–affiliated Climate Investment Funds to shift from coal to renewables, the total investment required will be far greater than that. 

Building the energy transition from the ground up

Africa, where an estimated 600 million people live without access to electricity, could be ground zero for another form of energy transition, Creyts said: microgrids that take advantage of low-cost distributed solar power and batteries to deliver cleaner and more reliable power at a lower cost than building central power plants and grid infrastructure. 

“Many microgrids that are built [with renewables] can be not just more cost-competitive, but also provide greater resiliency and support for local economies,” he said. That view is backed up by studies by the World Bank that found that nearly half a billion people around the world could be cost-effectively served by minigrids and microgrids by 2030. 

Microgrids are also a job-creator, Creyts said — if the investments in workforce development can be made alongside microgrid financing. For Nigeria to build the amount of solar needed to reach its Paris clean energy targets, the country will need to grow its number of solar installers from about 800 today to about 25,000 in the next few years, he noted. ​“The idea of building up that leadership capacity to allow or to support a transition happening of that magnitude is just enormous.”

Another example of ground-up transformation is the Shoonya campaign, he said. The partnership between RMI and India’s government think tank NITI Aayog, named after the word for ​“zero” in Sanskrit, has created a labeling and marketing regime for electric two-wheeled and three-wheeled vehicles. Small vehicles outnumber four-wheeled cars on India’s roads, and the campaign’s aim is to promote the cleanliness of electric versions. 

“In the first few months of this year,” small electric vehicles ​“delivered over 50 million packages or people” across India, Creyts said. India wants 80 percent of all small vehicles on the roads to be electric by 2030. To make that happen, the small businesses and solo owner-drivers that provide most of the country’s delivery and taxi services will want to be able to earn a premium price for their service, which is what the Shoonya label is designed to encourage. 

This bottom-up transformation offers an alternative to the idea that all innovation must flow from wealthier countries to less wealthy ones, Creyts said. In other words, it’s a way to reverse the 20^th-century structure of rich nations dominating technological advances and resulting profits. While big-picture issues of global financing gaps and climate inequities will dominate the debate at COP27, these kinds of efforts indicate how small-scale improvements, multiplied across millions, can make a difference. 

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Welcome to the first in a series of dispatches from COP27, the U.N. Climate Conference being held November 6–12. What goes on here matters to everyone in the world who’s concerned about energy. For decades, priorities set at the U.N.’s climate gatherings have increasingly rippled out into global financial markets and countries’ long-term energy policies and priorities.

Over the coming two weeks, stay tuned for regular roundups of the big developments, key context and notable news emerging from the discussions. Drafted by on-the-ground watchers from RMI (née Rocky Mountain Institute — of which Canary Media is an independent affiliate), these dispatches aim to keep the jargon to a minimum and make the relevance crystal clear.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Happy election, America! As I write, Americans are headed to the polls to pick their leaders. Here in Egypt, more than 180 heads of state are converging for COP27’s first full week of proceedings. (See yesterday’s dispatch for some scene-setting.)

Monday opened with a bolt of urgency from U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who thundered to attendees:

The clock is ticking. We are in the fight of our lives. And we are losing. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing. Global temperatures keep rising. And our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.

Guterres’ apocalyptic language underscores a widening reality gap around the world. On one side are poorer countries, which have done little to cause climate change but are being hit hard by the crisis here and now. On the other side are richer regions that are responsible for most emissions, but where climate impacts can feel distant and less urgent. 

For those observing from a global perch, like Guterres, climate-amped disasters are multiplying faster than many societies can respond, let alone afford — from unprecedented flooding in Pakistan and drought-induced famine in Africa to heat waves in Europe and wildfires around the globe. 

Loss and damage

This reality gap animates a rising sense of injustice among developing economies. Low- and middle-income countries are arguing for compensation to help them survive the effects of climate change (adaptation) and prevent worse in the future (mitigation). Already, many experience greater harm than do rich countries, but they have less wealth with which to repair storm damage, house refugees or feed famine-hit peoples. 

To date, wealthy nations haven’t met even their current commitments to spend $100 billion a year to help developing countries cut emissions and cope with the climate crisis — even in a year when many mobilized hundreds of billions of dollars to cushion citizens from the impacts of energy-fueled inflation sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The real cost of funding climate needs in developing economies will likely be closer to $1 trillion per year by 2030, according to a major new report out today. 

At COP27, advocates for loss-and-damage transfers frame the obligation as a mix of environmental justice and simple financial liability — after all, one party has caused harm to another, and thus the harmed party should be compensated for damages. The issue is geopolitically fraught given the enormous potential payments at stake.

In past negotiations, the United States (historically the biggest emitter ) has resisted loss-and-damage terms. But the U.S. negotiating team has signaled a new openness to the idea so long as China (today the biggest source of emissions) also ponies up. On Monday, The Financial Times broke news about a pending U.S. plan to use carbon offsets to channel funds from rich economies to help poor countries adapt and transition.

The case for loss-and-damage payments is growing, but the politics are fractious — particularly as many economies teeter toward recession. Sometimes referred to as ​“climate reparations,” the issue typically triggers populist conservative factions, including many Republicans in the U.S.

💰 Coming up: Wednesday is finance day at COP27, so expect a wave of announcements from the public and private sectors related to loss and damage. Our next dispatch will include a peek at RMI’s work to train financial professionals to help developing countries better access climate finance.

📉 More on energy trends: Putin’s war has roiled energy markets globally. But the crisis has also steeled the European Union’s resolve to end its addiction to Russian energy. As a result, the continent is decarbonizing faster than ever, argues RMI’s Kingsmill Bond.

Temperature check

“Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing,” the U.N.’s Guterres said, and ​“global temperatures keep rising.” The question of how much and how soon average global temperatures will increase has occupied COPs since the ​‘90s, starting at a time when the world was on track for 4°C or more of warming — a doomsday scenario that would involve mass extinctions, melted poles, submerged cities and worldwide starvation. 

At 2015’s COP21 in Paris, a coalition led by island nations — such as Fiji, little more than a meter above sea level — overcame rich nations’ resistance and pushed through an ambitious goal. To the surprise of many, nearly 200 countries committed to take steps to limit the rise to 1.5°C.

The hard-won target has since become an epochal rallying cry: a world-unifying goal that guides everything from national policy to corporate net-zero goals. And there has been substantial progress since, thanks to technology advances, big investment in clean energy and greenhouse-gas-cutting policies. 

Yet it’s not been enough. Ahead of COP27, with the world currently on a path to around 2.5°C of warming, the U.N. Environment Programme concluded that no credible path remains to avoid exceeding 1.5°C, at least for a time. What’s more, science is finding that actual climate damage is exceeding levels predicted by the models that inform current targets. 

As The Economist notes, ​“Overshooting 1.5°C does not doom the planet. But it is a death sentence for some people, ways of life, ecosystems, even countries.”

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — In the run-up to this global gathering of climate leaders, the collective vibe was that this wouldn’t be a ​“big COP” like Paris in 2015. Back then, following years of incremental haggling, the people, politics and pressure aligned to produce an unprecedented commitment to limit climate warming to 1.5°C. Nothing like that is yet in the cards here at COP27, but expectations are rising that real progress may emerge on the question of who will pay for climate damage. (See our first and second COP27 dispatches.) 

The U.S. plan, for now

After news leaked earlier this week, the U.S. officially announced its new carbon-offsets plan — and kicked up a sandstorm of criticism. The plan could let corporations neutralize their emissions by buying offsets from avoided emissions in developing countries. But the details are sketchy for now, and until they are hammered out, worries will fester that the program could be dogged by the same weaknesses as past carbon-credit schemes, including questions about credibility and additionality. Watch for the specifics of the U.S. plan to take shape in coming months. 

Whether or not the U.S. plan proves fruitful, the world needs new kinds of financing mechanisms to get money to developing countries quickly. ​“Emerging economies need support to phase out fossil assets while delivering energy security and economic prosperity for their citizens,” said RMI CEO Jon Creyts. ​“Status quo financing will not be sufficient. We need more innovative solutions on top of other types of funding already available to unlock private capital.”

A higher price? 

How much money will be needed each year to help developing countries cut their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the effects of the climate crisis? The estimated price tag continues to grow. 

Rich countries have so far promised $100 billion per year — and failed to deliver. Some estimates have put the needed total at closer to 10 times that amount. But as climate damage intensifies faster than modeled and inflation drives up costs, newly revised analysis suggests that developing countries will need $2 trillion per year by 2030, reports The Guardian. The grim reality is that this number is likely to keep rising even after emissions peak. 

💲Dig deeper: For more on the climate-finance targets being discussed at COP27, check out RMI’s Climate 101: NCQG, the Most Important Climate Goal You’ve Never Heard Of.

Taking small steps

For decades, rich countries have refused to offer ​“loss and damage” compensation to poorer countries that have been hit hard by climate disasters. But that freeze is beginning to thaw, The New York Times reports, as some nations are now pledging this type of direct climate aid. This week Scotland promised $5.7 million, on top of $2.2 million pledged last year, and Ireland pledged $10 million. 

These are relatively modest amounts, given the rising estimates of need (see above), but the small steps may portend bigger commitments to come later this week and next. 

Why access is equity

Whether millions, billions or trillions, the wave of climate funding that will flow to help developing economies can crash into a little-known barrier: too few experts with the time and know-how to navigate the bureaucratic labyrinth of global financial players, funding requirements and applications necessary to secure and disperse the funds. This means countries with the most urgent need for assistance to cope with the climate crisis spend years bogged down in the climate-finance system. 

Expertise in this area can be developed, though, and multiplying the number of experts able to navigate climate-finance arcana in recipient economies will speed the deployment of the funding and boost its impact. RMI designed and coordinates the Climate Finance Access Network (CFAN), which supports countries by training dedicated experts in the skills needed to access support for their climate goals. CFAN announced new funding at COP that will enable it to extend its reach — from eight countries in the Pacific to additional Pacific and Caribbean nations — thanks to support from the government of Canada, the Open Society Foundations and an anonymous donor. 

📲 Follow @cfanadvisors on Twitter to track CFAN’s work helping to unlock climate finance for developing countries.

Visualizing (way more) emissions 

Climate Trace — a nonprofit backed by Al Gore, RMI and a coalition of other big environmental players — on Wednesday announced that it can now track greenhouse gas emissions at more than 70,000 hot spots around the globe, including individual cargo ships at sea, single cattle feedlots, small oil fields and specific steel mills. 

In the past, by combining satellite sensors with big data analysis, the team showed that the emissions self-reported by the oil and gas industry were undercounted. The new release of the tool shows that underreporting of oil and gas emissions is far worse than previously known, with actual emissions up to three times higher than claimed in countries’ self-assessments submitted to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Canary Media’s chart of the week translates crucial data about the clean energy transition into a visual format.

During the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, wealthy nations agreed to start contributing $100 billion per year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with climate change. They failed to meet that goal, contributing only $83 billion in climate finance in 2020, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The U.S., Canada and a handful of other rich nations have fallen especially short of paying their ​“fair share,” according to new analysis from Carbon Brief.

The agreed-upon $100 billion target did not specify how much each wealthy country should pay, so climate news outlet Carbon Brief came up with a formula that calls on each country to contribute a fair share that reflects its historical greenhouse gas emissions — essentially, its overall contribution to the climate crisis. It found that a number of countries are exceeding their fair share of financing, leading with Switzerland, Norway, France and the Netherlands.

At the other end of the spectrum, the U.S., which bears the most responsibility for causing climate change, has paid the least of its fair share — less than $8 billion in 2020, just 19% of the $40 billion that the Carbon Brief analysis determined the country should pay. 

Even countries that look good on the chart are coming in for criticism, though. Developing nations have asked for climate finance to come in the form of grants rather than loans, but some of the countries with the biggest surpluses above have given much of that money in the form of loans. 

And $100 billion a year falls far short of what developing countries will really need in order to simultaneously develop clean energy systems and deal with climate disasters. One new report out this week calls for an order of magnitude more — $1 trillion in climate finance per year by 2030 for developing countries and emerging economies excluding China. 

At the COP27 U.N. climate conference now underway in Egypt, there are small signs of progress as some rich nations make new pledges for climate finance. But don’t expect much more from the U.S. in the next few years. If Republicans take control of the U.S. House, as they look to be on track to do, ​“you’re not going to see that money,” U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry said during a COP27 panel discussion.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Week two at COP27 has begun. 

Last week closed with the announcement of the United States’ ambitious plan to track and cut methane emissions — a greenhouse gas that’s over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the near term — timed with a visit by President Biden. (Catch up on last week’s news with our first, second and third dispatches from the U.N. climate conference.) This week opened with Gender and Water Day. 

Not on track

To hit midcentury emissions targets, emissions should by now be bending downward. Yet Friday brought news that global emissions from fossil fuels, after a Covid-induced dip, are once again heading up, on track to hit another record high this year. The news highlighted the urgency of making further progress on climate strategy by the end of these talks.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Today the world population surpassed 8 billion people, according to U.N. projections. ​“The milestone is an occasion to celebrate diversity and advancements while considering humanity’s shared responsibility for the planet,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a statement.

This ​“shared responsibility for the planet” came through at COP27 today as countries and organizations banded together to provide funding and projects where the need is greatest. (Check out our previous dispatches from COP27.)

A just transition for Africa

Half of the people living in sub-Saharan Africa don’t have access to electricity. Today, the COP27 presidency launched the Africa Just and Affordable Energy Transition Initiative during the opening session. The aim is to provide all Africans with access to clean energy and economic development. 

At the same time, the U.N. Development Programme, RMI and the African Development Bank promoted the new Africa Minigrids Program. It’s a country-led technical assistance program to help African countries scale up and accelerate the deployment of renewable energy minigrids. ​“The Africa Minigrids Program is a clear demonstration of developing countries taking more control over their development destiny and addressing the need for access to electricity with a clean energy future,” Achim Steiner, administrator of the program, said at the launch. 

Ironically, also at the same time, the Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance was protesting the decision at COP27 to postpone until 2024 the negotiations over loss-and-damage funding, a term for compensation to developing countries for the losses and damages that they face due to climate change.

Countries unite to help Indonesia get off coal

Indonesia is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of coal. Its own electricity comes largely from its coal reserves as well. 

Today at the G20 summit in Indonesia, a coalition of countries including the U.S., Japan and Canada committed to mobilizing $20 billion to help Indonesia shut down its coal power plants. Under the Indonesia Just Energy Transition Partnership, the country is committing to hitting peak carbon dioxide emissions from electricity in 2030, seven years sooner than its currently estimated peak, with the larger goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. 

Back at COP27 in Egypt, the news resonated with efforts to develop funding models to decarbonize grids in other developing regions. At a press conference, German Development Minister Svenja Schulze called it ​“a signal here at the COP that we are moving toward implementation and advancing concrete partnerships.” 

Indonesia is the second nation to launch such a partnership. South Africa joined with a handful of wealthy nations to launch the first Just Energy Transition Partnership at last year’s COP26.

Clean energy for the Caribbean

RMI and Lion’s Head Global Partners collaborated to launch a $75 million Caribbean Climate Smart Fund to invest in energy projects across the Caribbean. Although the region has seen an increase in climate finance and local interest in the prospect of transitioning to clean energy, more than 44 million people in the region still rely on fragile, fossil-based electricity systems. Projects under the new fund will support climate resilience in the face of intensifying storms. The projects will also stabilize electricity prices and increase energy security while avoiding many millions of dollars’ worth of fossil fuel imports each year. 

WTF? Where do we stand with loss and damage?

The first draft of the official COP27 agreement was released, and the language on loss-and-damage finance is unclear. The draft actually doesn’t give any hint of whether the final deal will include a new loss-and-damage fund. 

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Today, with only a few days left of COP27 negotiations, nature took center stage. Not only is it Biodiversity Day, but there have also been a couple of high-profile appearances by Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as ​“Lula,” who is raising hopes that the world might actually have a chance to save the Amazon rainforest. (Check out our previous dispatches from COP27.)

Is a ​“Nature Agreement” in the works?

Last night, the architects of the 2015 Paris climate agreement — including Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework on the Convention on Climate Change — urged world leaders to reach a similar deal for nature at the U.N. biodiversity conference that will take place in Montreal, Canada next month. They pointed out the intertwined nature of the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis, warning that keeping global warming below 1.5°C is impossible without protecting ecosystems. 

“Leaders must secure a global agreement for biodiversity which is as ambitious, science-based, and comprehensive as the Paris agreement is for climate change,” they said in a statement.

Lula da Silva makes waves

And speaking of biodiversity, Lula arrived at COP today to much fanfare with the hope that he will end deforestation in the Amazon. ​“I’m here to tell all of you…that Brazil is back,” he said speaking to the crowds at the Amazon pavilion. He announced a new ministry of Indigenous people that would ​“take very good care” of Amazonian communities. He also requested that one of the next COPs be held in the Amazon. ​“I think it’s important that people who defend the Amazon know the region and the concrete reality,” he tweeted.

Nature-based solutions are the talk of the day

Biodiversity Day wouldn’t be complete without discussion of how nature-based solutions can help accelerate climate transformation. This is the exact aim of an initiative called Enhancing Nature-based Solutions for an Accelerated Climate Transformation (ENACT) that was launched today by the Egyptian COP27 presidency and the government of Germany, in cooperation with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. ENACT will serve as a hub for those working on nature-based solutions to share experiences and knowledge, support the implementation of activities on the ground, and inform policy alignment across climate and biodiversity negotiations.

🌳RMI has found that by 2050, the annual global net benefits of implementing nature-based solutions in cities could be $3.1 trillion per year. Read more in the Growing to Its Potential report. 

Tackling methane from waste

Methane emissions were also discussed throughout the day. RMI, Clean Air Task Force and Carbon Mapper announced the Waste Methane Assessment Platform, an open-source platform connecting satellite data with best practices to mitigate landfill methane. It will be accessible to national, state and municipal policymakers, operators and the finance industry around the world to help them make informed decisions on how to reduce methane emissions from waste. Methane accounts for 30% of global warming, and the waste sector accounts for almost 20% of global methane emissions. 

🌫️Want to go deeper on how organizations are stepping up the measuring of methane emissions? Check out Climate Trace.

Lack of progress on loss and damage still frustrating to many

Not to sound like a broken record, but loss-and-damage talks are still stalled. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, is one of the latest to raise concerns about the lack of progress in negotiations over compensating developing countries for loss and damage suffered because of climate change. ​“There does seem to be a bit of a block in loss and damage. There isn’t an agreement, it would appear, across the board, on a fund here and now,” she said, according to Reuters. With only a few days of talks remaining, and many wealthy nations proposing 2024 as a target for delivering a solution, developing countries are getting fed up.

Parting shot

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt — Today is supposed to be the last day of the COP27 U.N. climate negotiations, but talks are continuing past the official Friday deadline, as nations could not agree on funding to compensate developing countries for loss and damage caused by climate change. However, for some good news, Thursday was Solutions Day, and there were some exciting initiatives launched on electric vehicles, urban resilience, global waste and more. (Check out our previous dispatches from COP27.)

Loss-and-damage talks go into overtime

Wealthy nations and developing countries have still not come to an agreement on details for a loss-and-damage fund. Most climate COPs actually go into overtime (out of 26 past COPs, only six ended on time), and nobody knows how long negotiations will continue. In a press release on Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said, ​“No one can deny the scale of loss and damage we see around the globe. The world is burning and drowning before our eyes. […] We cannot continue to deny climate justice to those who have contributed least to the climate crisis and are getting hurt the most.”

No phasedown beyond coal

The draft of the COP agreement released on Thursday calls for a phasedown of coal but does not include other fossil fuels, which some countries, including India, were calling for. The document can still change before it is finalized, and many are hoping that it will include a managed phaseout of all fossil fuels.

Solutions Day produces some fun acronyms

A handful of initiatives to help countries meet their climate goals came out of Solutions Day on Thursday, including a few with creative acronyms. 

• The Low-Carbon Trust for Urban Sustainability (LOTUS) focuses on low-carbon mobility solutions such as vehicle electrification and transportation alternatives for cities in developing countries. 
• The Accelerating to Zero Coalition (A2Z) supports the transition to zero-emission vehicles around the world.
• The Sustainable Urban Resilience for the Next Generation (SURGe) initiative will address some of the barriers that limit urban emissions reductions and help build urban system resilience in housing, water, mobility, waste and energy. 
• The 50 by 2050 waste initiative will help treat and recycle at least 50% of the solid waste produced in Africa by 2050.

More countries tackle methane

At least 150 countries have now signed the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030, 50 more countries than had signed the agreement at the time of last year’s COP. And although China didn’t sign, it developed a draft plan to curb its methane emissions. 

RMI and the Clean Air Task Force launched a new digital platform to connect satellite data with best practices to mitigate methane from waste, which produces almost 20% of global methane emissions. 

🌫️ Read about other COP27 announcements on initiatives to tackle methane, a super-potent greenhouse gas.

Stay tuned for an overview of big COP27 developments after the conference wraps up.