Thread by @KellerZoe

China is the final giant piece of a surprisingly successful #COP26. Don't believe Greta blah blah blah: by Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday a deal that brings a 1.6-1.7-degree world is within plausible range.

— thread from AEP's article
telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/…

China got what it wanted at Cop26. The bilateral deal with the US underscores that only two countries are shaping events in the 21st century. The regal recognition of Sino-US parity is what matters most to Xi.

What also matters is that nobody should succeed in telling China how to manage its internal affairs, or mark its homework, or dictate the pace of decommissioning coal plants. With that point established, CO2 cuts are no longer such a problem.

The US-China declaration relegates the EU to a lesser status, bordering on irrelevance in great power geopolitics. The near-total absence of German, French or Italian influence at this meeting has been extraordinary as if these states had fallen off the edge of the earth.

“It has really been a missed opportunity given the green deal,” said Laurence Tubiana, the top French negotiator during the Paris Agreement. “The EU has been defensive on financing. I don’t get it, and I am not happy,” she said

China is likely to deliver on its pledges: its commitment moves the needle further on greenhouse emissions. It locks in the 1.5-degree aspiration, to the dismay of Russia, Saudi Arabia and the fossil bloc, which no longer has the clout to block it. China joins the war on methane.

Almost all the text refers to this decade. It pledges “enhanced climate actions” before 2030, the date that now matters. It vows to “phase down coal consumption during the 15th Five Year Plan” starting in 2025.

In reality, China’s coal use will decline sooner. John Kerry, US climate chief, said China may already have passed peak CO2 emissions, 10 years before its target date in 2030. This astonishing conclusion must reflect the thinking of US energy and intelligence officials.

It's plausible: Chinese economic exceptionalism is over. The old model of breakneck industrialisation has broken down. The workforce is contracting by 3m a year, rural migration has dried up and new household formation is collapsing. GDP growth is slowing to 2-3%.

China’s headlong rush into wind, solar and nuclear will lead to surplus power. If Xi does not succeed in reining in coal-addicted regional bosses, economic forces will break the back of China’s coal lobby by other means.

The Chinese delegation had to avoid being the villain — a role it played in Copenhagen in 2009 and now deems a mistake. Its climate envoy, Xie Zhenhua, was a leader of the country’s “green GDP” movement 20 years ago, with the backing of the Zhejiang regional leader: Xi Jinping.

China was the giant missing piece in Sharma’s plan for Glasgow. India had already pledged to reach 50% clean power by 2030, bringing peak emissions into sight this decade. Carbon Brief says Modi’s speech in Glasgow — if delivered— is worth 0.2-degrees lopped off global warming.

Climate Action Tracker poured ice-cold water this week: the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted so far put the world on a 2.4-degree trajectory. This hit global headlines and has fed the false story of an empty summit.

The IEA said the figure falls to 1.8-degrees taking into account all the 2030 and 2050 net-zero pledges that have been pouring in each day. China pulls down the trajectory yet further.

Climate number crunching should be taken with a pinch of salt. Scientists do not agree on carbon cycle feedbacks or tipping points. Nobody knows what new technology is coming and how far costs will fall. So far renewable costs have fallen more quickly than forecasts predicted.

One can guess that markets, armed with Mark Carney’s $130 trillion (£97 trillion) credit card, will now blindside them again, pulling forward the Great Disruption with brutal dispatch.

Morten Bo Christiansen — from the global shipping giant Maersk — said that, until very recently, his company had thought it impossible to build its first vessel powered by zero-carbon methanol before 2030. “We’ve since learned a lot,” he said.

Maersk now plans to build the 1st one in 2023, with more to follow in 2024-2025. Its entire 740 ship fleet will progressively go net zero. Another 3% of global emissions, once thought unreachable before 2040, are moving into the “doable” category.

The last COP26 hours will see bare-knuckled brinkmanship. There is anger that the $100bn pledge for poor countries has not yet been nailed down. The Saudis will battle to expunge from Sharma’s draft text “accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels”.

There has never been anything like this language in a Cop conclusion. “The UK presidency has a chance to make history here. These words must stay in the text,” said Fernanda Carvalho from the World Wildlife Fund.

What is likely by Friday night or in the early hours of Saturday is a deal that brings a 1.6-1.7 degree world within plausible range. Stunning progress given the widespread fears just 7 years ago was that the world was on a catastrophic 4-degree path.

Yet it will be decried as a failure. Hardline activists outside the official summit in the rebel Green Zone refuse to recognise that anything has been achieved. All talk is of betrayal.

Liebreich (@MLiebreich), founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said Greta Thunberg and her youth movement are missing a trick. They should be saying to governments and businesses: ‘I love your pledges, they’re great, now we’re going to hold you to it”.