This week the United Nations published its new Emissions Gap report, showing that government actions announced to date have the world on track to 2.8 degrees of heating. “As today’s report makes clear, we are headed for economy-destroying levels of global heating,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “We need climate action on all fronts - and we need it now.”

The report said updates on government actions since Glasgow would make “negligible difference”.

It found only “urgent system-wide transformation” could deliver the enormous cuts needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2030: 45 per cent compared with projections based on policies currently in place to get on track to 1.5 degrees and 30 per cent for two degrees.

We don’t have the finances in place

In order to secure the support of developing nations that had not enjoyed the economic benefits of burning fossil fuels but were suffering the worst impacts of climate change, developed nations promised in 2009 to supply $US100 billion in finance per year by 2020 to aid in transition from fossil fuels, as well as building societies more resilient to a warming world.

The finance was never seen as sufficient for the purpose, but was considered by many developing-world negotiators to be an indication of good faith by wealthy nations. The promise was never kept, with a recent OECD analysis of the years between 2013 and 2020 calculating that the highest amount mobilised was $US83 billion in 2020. The commitment to transition funding was reiterated in Glasgow and will be central to talks hosted by Egypt this year.

The hosts have for the first time put an even more controversial demand on the agenda: the call from the developing world not just for financial support in mitigation and transition, but for compensation for loss and damages due to climate catastrophes.

Discussions about loss and damage have been long rejected by wealthier nations, which fear accepting culpability for causing climate change.

At the talks in Egypt, held after recent catastrophic floods in Pakistan and Nigeria, record droughts in the Horn of Africa and China, heatwaves over Europe and India and record-breaking hurricanes hitting the United States, negotiators will have to address whether those nations that have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases should have to compensate others.

But it’s not all failure and disagreement.

America has come to the party, and so has China

In August this year the Biden administration finally secured the last vote it needed to pass the biggest ever climate initiative by the world’s largest economy. The so-called Inflation Reduction Act will see almost $US400 billion on clean energy initiatives and transition from fossil fuels.

Early analysis suggested that the Act would reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 40 per cent compared to 2005 levels by 2030.

It is expected that it will have international implications too. “The investments it makes in energy, in technologies, even food systems — those investments actually show how you transition an economy. This is a lesson that India would need, South Africa would need, China would need,” said Ani Dasgupta, chief executive of the climate think tank World Resources Institute.

In China too there is progress. Though much attention has been paid to China’s expanding coal fleet, it has also stopped funding international coal infrastructure, knocking 70 per cent of funds out of the global coal pipeline.

It is also deploying renewables at eye-watering pace. At present it is installing more renewable energy infrastructure each year than Europe and the United States combined and is on track to beat its own target of having 33 per cent of its energy provided by renewables by 2025.

As international energy analyst Tim Buckley told The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this year, while China leads the world in coal use, it also leads the world in “wind and solar installation, in wind and solar manufacturing, in electric vehicle production, in batteries, in hydro, in nuclear, in ground heat pumps, in grid transmission and distribution, and in green hydrogen. They literally lead the world in every zero-emissions technology today.”

The Paris Agreement is having a serious impact

It may well be that the world is not yet on track to avoiding catastrophic climate change, but the Paris Agreement is having a serious impact.

Professor Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University, says that 15 years ago climate scientists believed we were on track for four degrees of warming.

The landmark 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate change prepared for the British government focused on what actions might be taken to hold warming to three degrees because two degrees seemed implausible, he adds.

Over recent years global emissions have largely flatlined while populations have grown. This is not enough to maintain a safe and stable climate, says Jotzo, but it suggests that policy driven by the Paris deal is having an impact.

When nations first agreed to set reductions in 2015 under the accord, it was clear those targets were woefully insufficient, which is why the process includes a “ratchet” mechanism which requires signatories to the treaty to regularly increase their ambitions.

In the years up to 2025, as nations begin to submit their 2035 targets, we should see projections for warming fall further.

“We are in a far better place than we were a few years ago,” says Jotzo. “The largest reason for that is the rise of zero-carbon technologies that are far, far cheaper and much easier to deploy.”

Indeed, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the cost of residential solar systems in Australia, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US declined from around US30¢-46¢ per kilowatt-hour in 2010 to just US5¢-24¢ in 2020.

Last year the International Energy Agency (IEA) declared solar to be the cheapest power in human history. But it is climate policy that has accelerated the investment in those technologies and driven down their cost.

The end (of fossil fuels) is nigh

This week the IEA, historically an organisation with very conservative views on renewable energy, predicted for the first time that oil, coal and gas use are likely to peak near the end of this decade.

Crucially it found in its World Energy Outlook - a blockbuster annual report - that the war in Ukraine had hastened the demise of fossil fuels as the world scrambled to reduce use via efficiency measures and the fast deployment of green technology.

While predictions of coal’s demise are not new, it is the first time that the longevity of gas has been questioned by the IEA.

“After rapid growth in gas consumption in the last 10 years, we think the golden age of gas is coming to an end,” the IEA’s chief Fatih Birol told The Financial Times. “Together with the decline in coal and oil that we were already expecting, we now see a peak around 2030 for all fossil fuels.”

Loading

The world is witnessing, he said this week, a historical turning point. Jotzo agrees.

While many world governments failed to raise their climate ambitions this year as they focused on security and energy, the policies they adopted to answer those crises are now improving the climate outlook.

According to the IEA, as a result of the energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war, new investment in solar, wind and power will rise to $US2 trillion by 2030, a 50 per cent increase.

“No nation wants to be reliant on a foreign power for the bulk of their energy now, that is a lesson they have learned this year,” says Jotzo.