Paris Agreement Updates and the Ukraine Crisis’s Impact on Climate Action
On May 12th and 13th, 2022, representatives from nearly 50 countries met in Copenhagen to revisit 2022 climate targets and promote compliance with the Paris Agreement. This interim meeting was jointly hosted by Denmark, the United Kingdom (host of COP26 in 2021), and Egypt (host of COP27 in 2022). The meeting’s goal was to refocus global leaders on fulfilling and strengthening their climate pledges this year.
COP26 in Glasgow, held in late 2021, established a consensus that countries must do much more to address the climate crisis. However, nations stopped short of adopting commitments sufficiently ambitious to avert catastrophe. The meeting ended with an acknowledgement that, in 2022, countries must increase the ambition of their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), make progress on implementing existing NDCs, and greatly increase the amount of climate finance sent from developed countries to developing countries. Since that meeting, no countries have officially submitted updated commitments.
At the Copenhagen meeting, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry announced that Egypt would be the first country to strengthen its NDC in 2022. He said that the new commitment would be officially announced “within a matter of weeks.” In recent years, Egypt has lagged behind other countries in updating its NDCs; its most recent update was in 2017.
The meeting in Copenhagen was largely focused on holding countries accountable for putting their existing NDCs into action. This has become a matter of heightened concern in 2022 in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent shifts in the dynamics of energy geopolitics.
Russia is the largest supplier of oil and gas to the EU, and the EU has historically relied heavily on Russian imports to meet it energy needs. Since the invasion, sanctions have caused imports to be reduced, but drastic price increases have allowed Russia’s fossil fuel revenues from the EU to double. This revenue is helping aid the Russian war effort; continued fossil fuel imports are a significant gap in the efficacy of sanctions.
In response to this situation, European countries have sought to augment their energy supply from non-Russian sources. Despite climate pledges, this has included significant investment in new fossil fuel infrastructure. Germany, Italy, and France have begun investing in new liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals to import gas from countries like Canada, the U.S., Norway, and Qatar. Use of coal is also increasing. Across Europe, planned shutdowns of coal plants have been delayed, and some retired coal plants are now set to reopen.
The European effort to reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels has also included an initiative to scale up deployment of renewable energy. A new proposal from the European Commission, titled REPowerEU, would double solar photovoltaic capacity by 2025 and install 600GW by 2030. It would include a legal obligation for newly-constructed public, commercial, and residential buildings to include rooftop solar. It also aims to double the rate of deployment of heat pumps, promote the deployment of renewable hydrogen, and improve energy efficiency.
The war has diminished climate ambition in the U.S. as well. High gas prices have created political pressure for the Biden administration to augment energy supplies. In response, the administration has increased leasing for the extraction of oil and gas on public lands, despite a campaign promise to place a moratorium on such leases. This will hinder the U.S.’s ability to accomplish its commitment to reduce carbon emissions to half of 2005 levels by 2030. Critics have noted that these new leases will take years to actually produce energy and will not reduce gas prices in the short term.