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The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part one) global warming is occurring and (part two) that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol in 2020.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) established an international environmental treaty to combat "dangerous human interference with the climate system", in part by stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. It was signed by 154 states at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. It established a Secretariat headquartered in Bonn and entered into force on 21 March 1994. The treaty called for ongoing scientific research and regular meetings, negotiations, and future policy agreements designed to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.
Environmental finance is a field within finance that employs market-based environmental policy instruments to improve the ecological impact of investment strategies. The primary objective of environmental finance is to regress the negative impacts of climate change through pricing and trading schemes. The field of environmental finance was established in response to the poor management of economic crises by government bodies globally. Environmental finance aims to reallocate a businesses resources to improve the sustainability of investments whilst also retaining profit margins.
Infrastructure is the set of fundamental facilities and systems that support the sustainable functionality of households and firms. Serving a country, city, or other area, including the services and facilities necessary for its economy to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and private physical structures such as roads, railways, bridges, tunnels, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, and telecommunications. In general, infrastructure has been defined as "the physical components of interrelated systems providing commodities and services essential to enable, sustain, or enhance societal living conditions" and maintain the surrounding environment.
A carbon credit is a generic term for any tradable certificate or permit representing the right to emit a set amount of carbon dioxide or the equivalent amount of a different greenhouse gas (tCO2e).
Climate change mitigation consists of actions to limit global warming and its related effects. This involves reductions in human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) as well as activities that reduce their concentration in the atmosphere. It is one of the ways to respond to climate change, along with adaptation.
The current energy policy of the United Kingdom is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), after the Department of Energy and Climate Change was merged with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2016. Energy markets are also regulated by the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem).
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700-page report released for the Government of the United Kingdom on 30 October 2006 by economist Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE) and also chair of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP) at Leeds University and LSE. The report discusses the effect of global warming on the world economy. Although not the first economic report on climate change, it is significant as the largest and most widely known and discussed report of its kind.
A low-carbon economy (LCE) or decarbonised economy is an economy based on energy sources that produce low levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GHG emissions due to anthropogenic (human) activity are the dominant cause of observed climate change since the mid-20th century. Continued emission of greenhouse gases may cause long-lasting changes around the world, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible effects for people and ecosystems.
The Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) is a network of investors and financial institutions that promotes better understanding of the financial risks and investment opportunities posed by climate change. INCR is coordinated by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups working to advance sustainable prosperity.
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, causing climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and large oil and gas companies, many state-owned by OPEC and Russia. Human-caused emissions have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide by about 50% over pre-industrial levels. The growing levels of emissions have varied, but it was consistent among all greenhouse gases. Emissions in the 2010s averaged 56 billion tons a year, higher than ever before.
Post-Kyoto negotiations refers to high level talks attempting to address global warming by limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Generally part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), these talks concern the period after the first "commitment period" of the Kyoto Protocol, which expired at the end of 2012. Negotiations have been mandated by the adoption of the Bali Road Map and Decision 1/CP.13.
After the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference held on the island of Bali in Indonesia in December 2007, the participating nations adopted the Bali Road Map as a two-year process working towards finalizing a binding agreement at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference encompassed meetings of several bodies, including the 13th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the third Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 and 18 December. The conference included the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 5th Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. According to the Bali Road Map, a framework for climate change mitigation beyond 2012 was to be agreed there.
The economics of climate change mitigation is the part of the economics of climate change related to climate change mitigation, that is actions that are designed to limit the amount of long-term climate change. Mitigation may be achieved through the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the enhancement of sinks that absorb GHGs, for example forests.
Eco-investing or green investing, is a form of socially responsible investing where investments are made in companies that support or provide environmentally friendly products and practices. These companies encourage new technologies that support the transition from carbon dependence to more sustainable alternatives. Green finance is "any structured financial activity that has been created to ensure a better environmental outcome."
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) is a fund established within the framework of the UNFCCC as an operating entity of the Financial Mechanism to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change. The GCF is based in Incheon, South Korea. It is governed by a Board of 24 members and supported by a Secretariat.
Climate finance is "finance that aims at reducing emissions, and enhancing sinks of greenhouse gases and aims at reducing vulnerability of, and maintaining and increasing the resilience of, human and ecological systems to negative climate change impacts", as defined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Standing Committee on Finance. The term has been used in a narrow sense to refer to transfers of public resources from developed to developing countries, in light of their UN Climate Convention obligations to provide "new and additional financial resources", and in a wider sense to refer to all financial flows relating to climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The carbon bubble is a hypothesized bubble in the valuation of companies dependent on fossil-fuel-based energy production, because the future decreases in value of fossil-fuels as they become unusable in order to meet carbon budgets as well as many of the negative externalities of carbon fuels are not yet taken into account in a company's stock market valuation. While most of the campaigns to reduce the investment into, production of, and consumption related to fossil fuels has been done based on ethical reasons, financial analysts, economists, and financial institutions have increasingly argued in favor of doing so for financial reasons. In fact, properly pricing fossil fuels based on the carbon bubble theory would mean renewable energy would be significantly more attractive to invest in, and therefore speed up the transition towards sustainable energy.
The UK Infrastructure Bank is a British state-owned investment bank. It is intended to help with the UK Government's plan to reach net-zero carbon by 2050 and to support economic growth in regional and local sectors across the UK. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, stated that the bank would be tasked to invest in sectors such as "renewable energy, carbon capture, storage and transportation", and would provide "low-rate loans to mayors and councils to fund projects". The bank is publicly owned with its sole shareholder being the Treasury Solicitor in the capacity of HM Treasury. The bank was given initial capital amounting to £12bn, is able to offer up to £10bn of government guarantees, with its final capacity being £22bn.
References
- ↑ "Excel Conferences - Greener ICT Programme". 1 December 2007. Archived from the original on 11 May 2008.
- ↑ "City of London Website" . Retrieved 3 May 2019.
- ↑ http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=13899&channel=0 $600bn will tackle climate change