COP27 summit agrees on landmark climate ‘loss and damage’ fund, but does little to encourage rapid cuts to fossil fuel use
Leadership on the world’s poorest nations – such as Malawi and the Philippines – are still waiting for financial help to build their clean energy sector, while more than a million people in the UK are still without clean energy services they can afford.
Brundtland’s successor as UN secretary general, the former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, said that it was time to put the money “to work”, as she announced the founding of the landmark COP27 Paris Agreement climate action fund.
The fund was set up by a consortium of 194 countries, with a target of mobilising US$100bn from 2020 to 2020 for the creation or expansion of new funds for adaptation, mitigation and low-income countries, to put the climate on a sustainable financial footing.
But while this could mean millions of people in vulnerable countries being provided with access to new investment in clean technologies, there is very little concrete ambition for how this money will be spent.
In the UK, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is currently working with its partners to develop a Clean Energy Transition Fund to bring investment into low-carbon sources such as renewables at scale. This is a key plank in the UK’s low-carbon transition.
However, the fund will not be the only way that governments are tackling the emissions problem. The Bank of Japan is setting up a new international climate and emission reduction fund of US$6.26bn to invest in low-carbon, carbon-negative, low-cost energy.
While the new fund may give a much-needed injection of investment in clean technologies, there is little evidence to suggest that it will lead to the rapid transition away from fossil fuels that is needed.
The fund has been welcomed by governments, including the Bank of England, who said the UK’s new Green Climate Fund will be a key tool in accelerating the transition to a