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It warned that due to methane leaks these terminals could produce an estimated 10 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade, or almost as much as the annual emissions of all the coal plants in operation worldwide. Justine Duclos-Gonda, a campaigner at Reclaim Finance, said: “Oil and gas companies are betting their future on LNG projects, but every single one of their planned projects puts the future of the Paris agreement in danger. Banks and investors claim to be supporting oil and gas companies in the transition, but instead they are investing billions of dollars in future climate bombs.” The latest findings are expected to fuel growing fears that unchecked investments in the global gas market could lead to an oversupply of gas that would threaten the world’s climate targets. The International Energy Agency warned In October that the global LNG markets are heading towards an unprecedented glut of gas supply that would contribute to putting the world on course for a rise of 2.4C (4.32F) above pre-industrialised levels by 2100, “well above the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C”. It warned that the world’s LNG capacity was on track to grow by almost 50% by 2030, greater than the world’s forecast demand for gas in all three of the agency’s modelled scenarios......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/05/climate-bomb-warning-over-200bn-wave-of-new-gas-projects
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It warned that due to methane leaks these terminals could produce an estimated 10 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade, or almost as much as the annual emissions of all the coal plants in operation worldwide. Justine Duclos-Gonda, a campaigner at Reclaim Finance, said: “Oil and gas companies are betting their future on LNG projects, but every single one of their planned projects puts the future of the Paris agreement in danger. Banks and investors claim to be supporting oil and gas companies in the transition, but instead they are investing billions of dollars in future climate bombs.” The latest findings are expected to fuel growing fears that unchecked investments in the global gas market could lead to an oversupply of gas that would threaten the world’s climate targets. The International Energy Agency warned In October that the global LNG markets are heading towards an unprecedented glut of gas supply that would contribute to putting the world on course for a rise of 2.4C (4.32F) above pre-industrialised levels by 2100, “well above the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C”. It warned that the world’s LNG capacity was on track to grow by almost 50% by 2030, greater than the world’s forecast demand for gas in all three of the agency’s modelled scenarios......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/05/climate-bomb-warning-over-200bn-wave-of-new-gas-projects
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It warned that due to methane leaks these terminals could produce an estimated 10 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the decade, or almost as much as the annual emissions of all the coal plants in operation worldwide. Justine Duclos-Gonda, a campaigner at Reclaim Finance, said: “Oil and gas companies are betting their future on LNG projects, but every single one of their planned projects puts the future of the Paris agreement in danger. Banks and investors claim to be supporting oil and gas companies in the transition, but instead they are investing billions of dollars in future climate bombs.” The latest findings are expected to fuel growing fears that unchecked investments in the global gas market could lead to an oversupply of gas that would threaten the world’s climate targets. The International Energy Agency warned In October that the global LNG markets are heading towards an unprecedented glut of gas supply that would contribute to putting the world on course for a rise of 2.4C (4.32F) above pre-industrialised levels by 2100, “well above the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C”. It warned that the world’s LNG capacity was on track to grow by almost 50% by 2030, greater than the world’s forecast demand for gas in all three of the agency’s modelled scenarios......read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/05/climate-bomb-warning-over-200bn-wave-of-new-gas-projects
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While the share of coal used in the global power sector has been gradually ticking down in recent years, it needs to start declining much faster. Developed countries should reach zero coal the soonest, as they’re in a stronger financial position than developing nations and are already, for the most part, less reliant on coal. But all countries will require an incredibly swift transition.Phasing out coal at the speed needed will be extremely challenging, but a handful of countries are already proving that a rapid, sustained shift is possible. While each one must chart its own path forward, other coal power-reliant countries can learn from these leaders.
Which Countries Have Reduced Coal Power the Fastest?.....The world has eight years to scale down its use of coal power from 36% of electricity generation in 2022 to less than 4% in 2030. To explore how such a quick phase-down might be achieved, we analyzed the 10 countries that have reduced coal power the fastest over any eight-year period since 2000. Greece and the U.K. achieved the fastest coal power reductions — moving at a quicker pace than what’s needed globally — followed by Denmark, Spain, Portugal, Israel, Romania, Germany, the United States and Chile. Of the top 10 countries, only Portugal has reached zero coal power already. Some other countries, such as Austria and Belgium, have also eliminated coal power entirely, but did not make the top 10 as they either used very little coal to begin with or phased it out over a longer time span. Greece reduced coal power faster than any other country in the world over an eight-year span, from 51% in 2014 to 10% in 2022, replacing it with a combination of gas and renewables. At number two, the United Kingdom reduced coal power from 39% in 2012 to 2% in 2020, replacing it mostly with wind and bioenergy but also some gas. Denmark was third fastest and is notable as the only country on the list where the reduction in coal power was replaced by 100% zero-carbon power sources. While many of these leading countries are European, there are positive examples from other areas of the world as well. The United States cut its coal power use in half between 2014 and 2022, replacing it with a combination of gas, solar and wind.In Chile, coal plants were booming as recently as a decade ago, but the country has quickly reversed course; it is now supporting early retirement of coal plants and replacing them mainly with solar and wind power.
Similarities and Differences Among the Top 10 Countries. On the whole, the countries with the fastest coal phase-outs are high income, with relatively small populations, less growth in electricity demand than average, and coal plants already nearing the age of retirement. Nine of the 10 countries have announced coal phase-out targets and eight have implemented some form of national carbon pricing. All of these factors can work in favor of a clean energy transition.However, key differences among the top 10 countries demonstrate that phasing out coal is possible in a variety of circumstances.....read on https://www.wri.org/insights/countries-phasing-out-coal-power-fastest
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The protests roiled the country for months and forced the national government to cancel the contract, returning water services to public control. But after the consortium filed a legal claim against the Bolivian government in 2002, seeking up to $50 million, the popular uprising transformed into a broader fight against the legal system that allowed this. Investor-state dispute settlement, or ISDS, lets foreign companies bypass national courts and sue governments before international panels of arbitrators.
These tribunals have awarded hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to companies, even in cases where they flouted national laws, polluted the environment or were accused of violating human rights. Most of these cases have been filed by companies from wealthy nations against developing countries, prompting critics to say ISDS acts like a form of modern-day colonialism. Bolivia wanted out of the system. Within a few years, it started a movement that has spread around the globe. From the United States to Europe, Colombia to Indonesia, governments are re-examining a cornerstone of international trade and investment that has held strong for decades. Many elected leaders, activists and legal experts from the political left and right have come to see ISDS as a threat to government policymaking and national sovereignty.
The system has also emerged as a hurdle for climate action: Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States have collectively faced billions of dollars in claims prompted by policies to limit fossil fuels or promote renewable energy. “ISDS is highly problematic, to put it mildly,” said Surya Deva, United Nations special rapporteur on the right to development. “An investor telling a government, ‘We will bring an arbitration case if you try to protect a local community or give them access to water or limit our mining operations,’ that is crippling.” Yet even as opposition to ISDS has spread, the system is not going anywhere soon. In some cases, wealthy nations have started to eliminate foreign investor protections among themselves while insisting that poorer nations maintain them. Many business groups and some academics continue to advocate for ISDS, saying it helps drive foreign investment, especially to small and politically unstable countries like Bolivia. In these places, investor-state settlement protections serve as a guardrail, said Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Its presence, she said, sends a signal to prospective investors: “They have ISDS, so if something goes wrong, I’m protected.”
Research on this question has been notoriously inconsistent. Analyses of dozens of studies show no conclusive evidence that these protections increase investment. Any nation seeking to extricate itself from investor-state arbitration faces an uphill battle: The protections are built into more than 2,600 treaties and countless contracts that would need to be renegotiated or canceled, a daunting task. Bolivia spent more than a decade snipping the threads tying it to those legal agreements. And yet, it’s still not quite free.
“We Want Partners, Not Bosses”......Like many developing countries, Bolivia bound itself to ISDS in the 1980s and 1990s. The nation was emerging from a period of military dictatorship that had left debilitating debt and hyperinflation. When the civilian government looked for help overseas, World Bank officials and other global financiers promoted a set of policies, known as the “Washington Consensus,” that included market-friendly reforms like privatization, deregulation and lower taxes. Investor-state arbitration, the officials said, would attract foreign investment, which in turn would lead to prosperity. Bolivia signed 22 investment treaties with ISDS clauses from 1987 to 2002. The policies brought down inflation and stabilized the economy. But they did little to improve people’s standards of living or reduce inequality. For the majority of Bolivians still living on less than $2 a day, prosperity never came. It was those Bolivians’ formidable social movements that in 2005 propelled an outsider to the presidency who promised to “end the colonial state and the neoliberal model.”
Evo Morales, a former coca farmer who’d stood with water protestors in Cochabamba years earlier, pledged to renationalize natural resources and disentangle the country from Washington, D.C. “We want partners, not bosses,” became his tagline. The government took control of oil and gas and other industries. On his 100th day in office, Morales led a military contingent to a gas field operated by a Brazilian-Spanish consortium in southern Bolivia to announce that foreign companies had six months to renegotiate their contracts........read on https://insideclimatenews.
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