Environmental Audit Committee
Oral evidence: Prospects for UNFCCC COP31, HC 745
Monday 26 October 2026
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 26 October 2026.
Environmental Audit Committee members present: Mr Toby Perkins (Chair); Barry Gardiner; Sarah Gibson; Sojan Joseph; Dr Roz Savage; John Whitby.
Energy Security and Net Zero Committee member present: Bill Esterson.
Questions 24-42
Witnesses
II: Tania Kumar, Policy Director, Energy Transition, Confederation of British Industry; Kim O’Dowd, UK Campaign Lead, Methane and Energy Transition, Environmental Investigation Agency; and Pelin Zorlu, Head of Climate and Energy, Chatham House.
Examination of witnesses
Witnesses: Tania Kumar, Kim O’Dowd and Pelin Zorlu.
Q24 Chair: For those in the Public Gallery who joined towards the end of the last panel, you are very welcome. We are holding an Environmental Audit Committee hearing on the COP31 negotiations. We just heard from the Ambassador of the Republic of Türkiye and the Australian High Commissioner; their nations are the two host nations of COP31.
We are about to start our second panel, which will consist of a number of UK-based organisations that support us with both the international and UK context to these discussions. I will ask our three panellists to introduce themselves and the organisations they represent and briefly say where they see the COP31 negotiations as we head into them, having heard what our international visitors just said.
Kim O’Dowd: Thank you very much for having me. My name is Kim O’Dowd. I am a campaign lead at the Environmental Investigation Agency. I work specifically on methane from the energy sector and the energy transition. More widely, my organisation works on a range of issues, from forest and wildlife protection to oceans and plastics. In the climate team, we focus on the regulations, governance frameworks and financial mechanisms that drive mitigation, particularly for super-pollutants and the energy transition.
On where the COP31 negotiations are going, I think that we are lacking a bit of visibility on how the next COP interacts with the wide variety of other initiatives that are happening in parallel to the UNFCCC. You mentioned earlier the road map that the Brazilian Presidency led, and that is one, but there was also, for example, the conference in Santa Marta on transitioning away from fossil fuels that is being picked up; it will be held again in Tuvalu in 2027 with a pre-conference in Ireland. That has driven significant momentum on the issue of energy transition.
That is just one, and there are other initiatives—such as the global methane pledge or the global cooling pledge—that are happening, and it is not very clear how those interact. A bit more clarity on that would be interesting to hear.
Pelin Zorlu: Thank you for inviting me. My name is Pelin Zorlu. I am a senior research fellow and climate and energy lead at Chatham House, which is an international affairs think-tank. I am based in its environment and society centre, where we work on a range of issues including climate, energy, natural resources, innovation and futures.
In answer to your question, we don’t expect any landmark decisions this year; negotiations are expected to be at a more technical level. However, there are certain benchmarks for success, and the UK can be very helpful in securing them. The first one is protecting the fundamentals. This year, we will kick off the next global stocktake, which will conclude in two years’ time. Science has been the backbone of this process. Unfortunately, recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change progress has stalled due to blocking from a number of countries, which means that the best available science may not feed into the next global stocktake.
The science is not ambiguous. You will have seen UNEP’s latest report on overshooting 1.5°C. This is likely to undermine the process and the IPCC as an institution, so I would fully recommend that the Australian and Turkish COP Presidency, as well as the UK, unblock this going into the discussion. We do not want this to toxify the overall discussion, so it is really important that they work behind the scenes and unblock this issue going forward.
The other thing is upgrading and elevating the importance of adaptation and resilience going forward, as a red thread across multiple Presidencies. This is too important to be treated as a secondary issue, as we are seeing more and more the impacts of climate change. Sierra Leone and the UK are now co-facilitating the adaptation agenda at COP31, so this is a really great opportunity to elevate the issue.
Thirdly, electrification is a flagship initiative that the COP31 Presidency announced. We need to really position electrification as key to energy security and ensure that we do not avoid talking about transitioning away from fossil fuels. The tough discussions need to find a way of docking into the global stocktake process as well.
Finally—the Ambassador and the High Commissioner touched on this, as did your questions—we need a clear endgame. Australia and Türkiye have been working brilliantly together, but I think there are lots of questions around whether they have a clear endgame political strategy in place and who is going to bring whom if the discussions become difficult.
As the Ambassador and the High Commissioner alluded to, both countries have very strong regional economic security ties with different groups, and they will be really well placed to unblock issues, but we really need that transparency. Even the perception of a lack of transparency can derail discussions in these negotiations, so I would strongly encourage the UK to also support progress in these areas.
Tania Kumar: Thank you very much for having me. I am Tania Kumar, the energy transition director at the Confederation of British Industry, one of the UK's leading business groups. I cover every single sector of the economy across the UK British business community. That means not just those directly involved in delivering our energy, but all the manufacturers across our communities and those that are involved in sustainability, waste, supermarkets—you name it—looking at the entirety of our energy transition.
To your question, thinking about what we have heard from the Ambassador and the High Commissioner and what we will be looking at as a business community, the context is really important, and both ambassadors reflected on that. It has been a critical year across the globe. If we look at what has happened in the middle east and the closure of the strait of Hormuz, we have been reminded of the second global energy shock in five years.
The last one was quite localised to Europe. That has also given a new aspect to what we are looking at during this summit. It will be all-pervasive in the negotiations at the talks, most notably across the business community globally when it thinks about how it delivers the transition, but also for our households and communities regarding how we have this discussion with the public all over the globe.
The second bit reflected on the opportunities, and the green industrialisation story must be key. There are two truths to hold here, and delivering a transition is extremely difficult. We are talking about something that has not been undertaken before. There is the question of how we, as part of the negotiations, think about how and where there is room for that and what the set-up is for the UNFCCC process to engage in those topics, because it was designed for an emission-reductions process. The UNEP report is extremely startling, but it is also another moment where we have to look at the science and how we deliver against that.
The third important area, which many people have repeatedly reflected on, is the UK’s role in climate diplomacy. I also think foreign diplomacy should be included when it comes to these issues, and not just across energy, but also when we think about the CBD COP. It is a very pivotal role for us as the UK. At the end of the year we will be taking on the G20 presidency. Looking ahead to what comes out of COP, there is the question of how we tackle some of these issues. We have an incredibly important role to bring both the Global North and Global South together in those areas, not least because thereafter we also have the G7 presidency as well. It is a really pivotal moment for the UK, as the world will turn to us to help navigate what have been very controversial topics. Building that consensus and retaining it is, for us, not just a COP process. We should instead now be thinking about this as a three or four-year process that is under way.
Q25 Sojan Joseph: We have already seen lots of changes in the diplomatic relations between various countries in recent months. As you touched on, it is going to be a very important year. Pelin, what is driving climate diplomacy in 2026, including the trend towards negotiating outside the UNFCCC process?
Pelin Zorlu: As you will know, in the past 15 or 20 years, climate diplomacy has evolved from primarily being in the domain of environmental policymaking and now heavily intersects with economic policy, energy and national security and trade and industrial policy. We are seeing examples of that at various levels: unilateral, bilateral and plurilateral. There is the EU’s CBAM, and South Korea recently announced a very significant green transformation package on a par with the USA’s Inflation Reduction Act. We have also been seeing this prominently in the critical minerals discussions within the G7, G20 and lots of sectoral coalitions, such as the UK-led just energy transition partnerships. There has been a lot of change in terms of what climate diplomacy means now and it very much intersects with all those aspects.
The second point is specifically on the energy side. As my colleague mentioned, this is the second fossil fuel-related energy shock since 2022, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and now the Iran crisis and the closure of the strait of Hormuz. We are again seeing energy and economic security becoming the driving forces for the clean energy transition, as countries see the deployment of renewables and the infrastructure around them—including EVs, solar PV and so on—as a way of maintaining their strategic autonomy as well as energy security.
That has been gaining momentum even though south-east Asia was not directly impacted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; however, they were feeling the impact of the international oil and gas markets and have been building their resilience in that direction anyway. I think Pakistan avoided $12 billion in the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine crisis in imported fossil fuel bills. That is the second trend that we are seeing.
Finally, going forward, as we overshoot 1.5°C, which hopefully will be temporary, climate-related risks—those related to food, water and other related infrastructure—as well as the threat from actors who may weaponise emerging vulnerabilities, will also become salient. In that regard, I really welcome the Foreign Secretary’s announcement at UNGA about mobilising funding for climate security and working in partnership with other countries.
Kim O’Dowd: More and more, we are seeing an acceptance of two-tier multilateralism. That concept has not just been invented; we have been talking about it for a long time, but it was emphasised by the last Brazil COP presidency, which talked about two tiers. There is one tier, which is the UNFCCC, and that is about consensus, signal giving and negotiation outcome. There is then a second tier that is more about the coalition of the willing, and that is focused on implementation.
In these discussions, it is very important to remember—my colleague touched on this earlier—what the UNFCCC and COP are actually meant to do, and what the Paris agreement is meant to do. It is a temperature target, nationally determined contributions and a financial accountability mechanism. However, it is not necessarily the place to discuss how we are going to transition away from fossil fuels, how we are going to mitigate specific greenhouse gases, or how we are going reduce emissions in a specific sector.
It is a positive sign that we are accepting that we might need to have other means to accelerate implementation, rather than just focusing on the UNFCCC. Initiatives such as the UK near-zero methane marketplace, which was launched at COP30, are a very positive sign to accelerate the reduction of methane emissions in the fossil fuel supply chain, as well as initiatives on cooling or, as I mentioned earlier, the Santa Marta conference. I think those are a certain novelty in the current geopolitical climate context that I think are interesting, and we should pay attention to them.
Q26 Sojan Joseph: How are the positions of the EU, the UK and the major polluting countries crystallising as COP31 approaches, particularly around fossil fuels? What coalitions are evident?
Pelin Zorlu: That is a bit of a hot potato. There is a very strong rationale for the UK and the EU to work together in this space, as they have been on the same page in their directions of travel. There are interesting and really impactful projects, such as the UK’s North sea grid project, which involves building joint infrastructure and harnessing not only offshore wind potential but interconnections. There are lots of areas where there is a huge amount of co-operation.
On their relationship with other countries, what we have been saying is that energy geopolitics has very much been shaped by the US-China geopolitical rivalry, and climate action and clean energy deployment has been very much embedded within that, as the US has become the world’s largest LNG supplier and China has become the world’s largest clean energy supplier—it is very much within that.
However, that very much suggests a zero-sum game, and I think we should avoid that sort of world. It is about the role of not only developed countries but emerging middle powers, whoever you consider those to be—it is an ambiguous concept at the moment that is still evolving. Working with countries like Brazil and India, as well as China, is consequential for the economies of both the UK and the EU, and the economies of those countries. The fact that most of the emissions will come from these emerging countries will have an impact on how quickly we bend the curve and also on how long we stay above 1.5°C. But because the growth will come primarily from those countries, that offers a great opportunity for the UK and the EU to work with them and expand the opportunities around green industrialisation and clean energy transition.
Q27 Sojan Joseph: Thank you for mentioning the dynamic between the US and China. How far does international climate finance reduction among key donors drive climate diplomacy?
Pelin Zorlu: Finance has been a difficult issue in the context of COP negotiations. Obviously, we have an agreement, which was quite difficult to land, but it landed with NCQG.
Personally, I always thought that we need private sector finance; public sector finance is not nearly sufficient to get us where we need to get to. It has always been about how countries can create the enabling environment and give the right policy incentives, both to drive investment domestically and to create markets for their own products where they have comparative advantages internationally.
The economics of the clean technologies make it much easier now, but obviously there is a big division between some of the developing countries’ emerging markets in terms of accessing capital. It is much more expensive for them to access capital; for them, the cost of capital is a lot higher.
In that regard, the UK’s initiative on the EMDE taskforce is really valuable, as it leverages the expertise in the City of London and works with key emerging markets to reduce barriers, or the perception of barriers, and reduce the cost of capital. I think that is how we will be able to do it. The countries will then be able to tap into their own public and private financial resources, as well as being able to attract foreign direct investment and other forms of support.
Kim O’Dowd: Obviously, we need to continue talking about the quantity—how much money countries need to continue committing to new financial assistance—but it is important that we move beyond the discussion about just the quantity of finance and discuss where this finance is going, and consider whether we have the right financial architecture to support countries with the different issues that they need to tackle.
Let me give an example. If you are a Global South country and want to get support to transition away from fossil fuels, you currently have so many points of access: the Green Climate Fund; the Global Environment Facility or GEF; bilateral agreements; and the private sector and so on. This is not organised in a coherent way that enables a country to go from point A to point Z. The sequencing to ensure that countries have first access to support, to get staff to work on this issue and then develop the plans, the policy and the regulatory frameworks to work on the transition, and then get support to unlock private sector finance to invest in projects, is not done at the moment. It is very important that we fix that, because it will not only accelerate mitigation but make the money that we have more efficient and cost efficient; it will considerably reduce the administrative burden.
I am not necessarily talking about creating a new fund for each issue that we need to tackle—absolutely not; there is a big fund fatigue. It is about looking at what funds we currently have and ensuring that they are connected and talking to each other, so that we give countries a credible and structured architecture.
I think this topic is not necessarily talked about enough in the spaces that we go to and it is something that the UK could also bring into the different spaces that it engages with.
Chair: I am pleased to say that we have been joined today by the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, Bill Esterson. Bill, you are very welcome. May I invite you to ask a question?
Q28 Bill Esterson: Chair, thank you for inviting me to join you today. This cuts across some of the work that my Committee has been doing. You probably are aware of some of the reports we have published. We are about to publish a report on international climate finance, which is very timely with COP coming up. It will be published in time for COP as well. I am reflecting on the answers to the questions about the role of the private sector in climate finance. Tania, do you think the business community’s role in climate diplomacy is about climate finance, or is it wider than that?
Tania Kumar: First and foremost, I should reflect that the UK set the precedents for increasing involvement of the private sector since COP26. That has been something that we need to draw on because that is where we had cross-party consensus. I do not want that to be missed from this Committee or the work of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. It is increasingly important.
There are threefold areas where the business community gets involved.
Q29 Chair: Sorry to interrupt you, but are you saying that you think business should be involved in rebuilding the broken political consensus?
Tania Kumar: Absolutely, and that is exactly what we are doing. We at the CBI have done that quite proactively. The first bit where I see the role of businesses in climate finance specifically is the aspects of the green growth opportunity. CBI Economics and the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit have done work talking about those opportunities. The £108 billion that many will have heard about has contributed in the last year. We have been taking that internationally. In fact, I will speak about that with many international counterparts when I go to Antalya at the end of next week. That is the first opportunity for us.
I am not just talking about the way we have collaborated with Governments to create stable policy frameworks, such as the contracts for difference for offshore wind. I cannot tell you how many different delegations consistently talk about the value of the CFD. How has that been constructed? How did we create the LCCC? How has the LCCC expanded into other forms of technology? The regulated asset base model for Sizewell is heralded in nuclear and has built a lot of coalitions globally. The role of nuclear in energy systems has been a big focus for many countries that have not looked at that to date. That is one area.
The second bit that is incredibly important is how that finance is used to build new technologies and make the proof case for them. It is not easy to do that. Coming back to my colleague’s point, where do businesses sit outside this two-tier multilateral process? We are not in the negotiation rooms, but we are helping our negotiating teams to show what the art of the possible is on financing some of these projects. However, it has to be a whole system. Where does private capital fit into the road map? It has to allocate risk appropriately. There is not a role for the private sector all the time; you need the multilateral development banks to be involved. How do we assess that risk across various different countries? Where do you need the private sector to play a role in demonstrating that this can be an investable, bankable project?
A lot of our businesses in the UK are leading some of those coalitions. We have companies like SSE, National Grid and Octopus all at the front and helm of the Utilities for Net Zero Alliance. They will be going to COP in Antalya to talk about how we are electrifying in the UK, how we are treating blockers on grid investment and reflecting on recent announcements such as GB Grid and what the role of the private sector is.
In conclusion, we have a fundamental role, and increasingly so because of the pressures that many Governments are facing at the moment to fund these transitions. We are sitting around those tables with international policymakers alongside the UK Government to demonstrate the strength and leadership that we are able to show.
Q30 Bill Esterson: You have demonstrated a role there for business in this country, in leadership and in sharing good practice. Perhaps I can turn to you, Kim O’Dowd: what is the equivalent in your part of the forest, so to speak, in the environmental agencies?
Kim O’Dowd: We absolutely see a role for private finance. Coming back to the point I made earlier, it is very important to talk about sequencing. Private finance will not happen if we do not have a strong basis to de-risk investment, and one way of doing so, for example, is having strong regulatory frameworks. It is very important to think about what the sequencing looks like and to accompany countries all along that sequence.
First, for example, a country probably needs grants for enabling activities—capacity building, policy development, training and so on—and that will help it build its regulatory framework. Then the country will probably need help in accessing private sector investment. There are instruments that exist, notably the Green Climate Fund—GCF—which had the Private Sector Facility, whose role was to help countries access private sector finance. Ensuring that countries continue accessing that and are aware of the various instruments that exist is extremely important. I would emphasise the need not to take the problem in the wrong order, but as a sequenced pathway.
Q31 Bill Esterson: Beyond finance and business, what is the role of environmental groups in taking climate diplomacy forward?
Kim O’Dowd: I hope it continues to be a very important one. I think we have expertise that we can share with the negotiators, and we need to have a continued role in the negotiations. On what we were talking about earlier, in the current geopolitical context we are seeing a shift towards more fragmentation, which is not necessarily a bad thing; it just means that there are more points of entry to interact with the negotiations. The UNFCCC continues to be one. However, we also have coalitions of the willing, for example, that often have secretariats hosted in think-tanks or NGOs, which I think is a very positive thing, because it is an easy way of tapping into the expertise of NGOs and civil society groups. We are seeing, for example, in the context of the Santa Marta conference, that they have again appointed NGOs and think-tanks as—I think the name is—“godmothers”, who are going to help build the position of the conference and give expertise on various issues, be it finance, trade and so on. That is a very positive outcome.
The only risk I might see, though, is that because we are increasing the points of entry to negotiations, smaller NGOs, and even certain Global South and developing countries, might have more difficulty attending some of those spaces. That is a risk we need to be conscious of, and we need to ensure that civil society is present in any space.
Chair: We are really grateful to our panellists for the detail we are getting, but I am conscious that we have quite a bit to get through, so could I ask panellists to be a little more succinct in their answers?
Bill Esterson: They were very good answers, I thought, Chair.
Chair: Indeed.
Q32 Sarah Gibson: Following on from that, how do you respond to the priorities and approaches laid out just now by the Ambassador and the High Commissioner? They talked about what their priorities were, and you have mentioned some of them to a certain extent. Where, if anywhere, do you think the gaps were in their approach? That question is to all of you.
Kim O’Dowd: I will be brief. One point mentioned earlier was methane. It is great to see methane on the agenda, but it is very important that we continue talking about energy sector methane as well as agriculture methane, especially in the context of the energy crisis. Methane in the energy sector is just a waste of gas: you let it leak into the atmosphere when it could be captured and reused. In fact, the International Energy Agency found that around 200 bcm of gas is wasted every year just through leaks and vents, which is equivalent to twice what Qatar exports every year. In the current context, it is key that we continue to put methane in the energy sector at the forefront of the agenda. The UK is doing that, so I would say that that is great and should continue.
The other thing is that agriculture remains a topic that is not sufficiently addressed. It is on the agenda for this year, but not in the context of mitigation. We seriously need to start talking about mitigation in the agriculture sector. I know that it is difficult—I am very aware—but that does not mean that we should not do it. It is also difficult to transition away from fossil fuels, but we are doing it, so we need to start talking about agriculture. For that, we need to create spaces to talk about agriculture in terms of policies and not just research and development, which is often the case today. I will focus on that, but I have more if you need it.
Pelin Zorlu: I mentioned some of the things that I think would serve as benchmarks, but there perhaps needs to be more clarity on how electrification and TAFF will somehow connect, or not connect, and if not, what the pathway is to ensure that it remains a priority.
I would also love to see a TAFF road map or plan from Türkiye and Australia, obviously, but also from the UK. I think that that is just the way forward: for all countries to come and put forward how they are going to go about this. There is also science; the importance of science in the global stocktake process needs to come up as an early issue to resolve.
Tania Kumar: The first quick point is that the difficulty with the UNFCCC process is that whoever has the Presidency often announces new initiatives. As both my colleagues reflected on, we still have the targets of trebling renewables and doubling energy efficiency. I agree with the point about electrification.
We have more and more alliances. From a business community perspective, consolidation is really important, so that it does not just become about many people signing up to lots of different initiatives, essentially. The UK business community is working with the UK Government on really identifying which alliances we are part of and where we can coalition-build and bring some of those alliances together. That includes reflecting on how Brazil progresses its Presidency and how we look ahead to Ethiopia, for example.
Secondly, adaptation and resilience continues to be the poor cousin of the UNFCCC and COP process. Globally, that has ignited us. Again, to the spaces, because we are so focused on the emissions reduction targets and 1.5°C, a new space has now been created. Because of that overshoot, what are the consequences, how do we adapt, and how do we come together to talk more about adaptation and resilience?
Q33 Sarah Gibson: So that is about consolidation, in a way, rather than the exciting, new, shiny things, which is a good sign.
My next question is really aimed at Ms O’Dowd. Beyond CO2, we have mentioned methane and other super-pollutants. In terms of tackling these super-pollutants, are F-gases equally important, or is methane the part that you are most concerned about?
Kim O’Dowd: No, that is equally important. If my colleagues heard me, they would not be happy if I said it was not. It is just that I specialise in methane, but my organisation does a lot of work on F-gases and HFCs. That is extremely important, so thank you for asking the question.
That should also be a key priority for the Presidency, especially in the context where we have just gone through the hottest year we have ever experienced, with record heat in many, many countries. The conversation around cooling is going to be big, but you cannot cool at the expense of the planet. We need to have important conversations about how we ensure that we give people access to cooling—not just AC, but through things like buildings—and also talk about the acceleration of the Montreal protocol on reducing HFCs. That needs to be an essential part of the discussions.
We would love to see the UK develop a cooling action plan. That would notably consolidate some of the work that you have done in the EAC on this topic. We should remember that it is an important part of the climate discussion, but also of the adaptation discussion.
The UK is the co-chair of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which is a UN programme working on super-pollutants. It has been great at leading on methane, and I really salute the work of DESNZ colleagues on this. But the UK also has to remember that the CCAC is not just about methane; it also covers F-gases and nitrous oxide. I know that we said that we do not want new initiatives, but it would be great to put it more clearly on the agenda.
Sarah Gibson: This Committee shares that concern.
Q34 John Whitby: You have just given us some of your views on the COP31 Presidency priorities. Seeing as Ms Zorlu has already mentioned breaching 1.5°C probably three times in the last half hour, should there be and will there be a focus at this COP on getting back to 1.5°C?
Pelin Zorlu: This is very much the framing question of the latest letter from the Presidency: how do we progress the implementation of the goals of the Paris agreement, which basically stipulates that we aim for 1.5°C? There are different aspects to it. On the mitigation side, it is obviously about transitioning away from fossil fuel, and it is also about electrification, finance, and adaptation and resilience. That is very much going to be the framing discussion at COP31, I imagine.
Q35 John Whitby: Is it accepted that we have gone past the original target?
Pelin Zorlu: The latest UNEP report basically said that we will be breaching 1.5°C in the next three years, at least temporarily. That does not mean that the goals of the Paris agreement are no longer valid or that we should not pursue that. Every fraction of a degree that we avoid or reduce by has a huge impact on the planet and livelihoods.
Q36 John Whitby: What are the UK’s specific priorities for COP31?
Kim O’Dowd: I will focus on the topics that we particularly work on in my own organisation. I already mentioned methane; maintaining the leadership the UK had on methane in the energy sector is particularly important. It led the last COP declaration on methane from the fossil fuel sector and is working towards a near-zero methane marketplace. It would be great to see some announcements about any progress or any new signatories that the UK might have worked with. That would be very important.
In terms of methane and other super-pollutants, there is again a key question around finance. There is still a big lack of financial assistance for super-pollutants. At the last COP, an initiative was created called the super-pollutant country action accelerator, which is led by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. It is a mechanism to support countries in developing plans and regulations to reduce super-pollutants, and it mirrors the approach of the Montreal protocol and the multilateral fund—one of the key reasons that the Montreal protocol was so successful was that financial mechanism. Supporting that mechanism for super-pollutants would be very important, especially as the UK is the co-chair of the CCAC. We would like to see a new financial commitment towards the accelerator.
Also on super-pollutants, the UK signed the Belém declaration on fertilisers last year, and we would like to see the UK recommit to that and explain how it is planning on implementing the declaration. Finally, something on cooling would be key because it is the only big topic that has not been broached.
Q37 John Whitby: Any other UK priorities?
Tania Kumar: I will add two quick ones. One is definitely electrification. The UK is leading another initiative called Electrify Now, bringing together a consortium of countries to demonstrate practically what economies and policymakers need to do to electrify an economy. That is twofold. There has been so much focus on the energy sector and power. Reflecting on the UK’s progress on its own carbon budgets, a lot of it has been delivered by the power sector, but we need to talk about the demand side to that. There is a huge piece that we need to discuss on electrification of demand.
Another topic to bring to the COP discussions is industrial decarbonisation. That is the biggest question here around the energy transition not being a deindustrialisation, which we are contending with domestically in the UK. When we head to Antalya, the Budget will have just taken place, so we will be looking at the raft of domestic measures that come out and how we can demonstrate that we are reconciling how you actually deliver these transitions practically and deliver the economic opportunities that we at the CBI have been able to identify, essentially.
Pelin Zorlu: The UK is held in very high regard in these negotiations and is seen as an honest broker and a coalition builder. Given the geopolitical shift in allies, that is a very good role for the UK to continue to play. The UK has led lots of initiatives: some of the acronyms that I mentioned but also Electrify Now. Prioritising which ones are the highest-impact ones and working in partnership with some of the key countries in this way is really important, while protecting the fundamentals of the process that we definitely need to maintain multilaterally.
Q38 John Whitby: When do you think we can expect to see a written ministerial statement outlining these priorities for the UK? It is not really a question for you, but when do you think we will see one?
Tania Kumar: I am hoping before we go to Antalya in the next week or so.
Chair: Bill Esterson has a final question to follow up there.
Q39 Bill Esterson: Kim O’Dowd, you have been asked, and have said quite a lot, about “me-thane” or “meth-ane”.
Kim O’Dowd: Sorry, I am French, so I do not pronounce it “me-thane”.
Bill Esterson: It is fine, as long as we all know what we are talking about. On the one hand, we have very high numbers of people who rely on burning methane: the heating industry relies on it in the UK, and that is true across the world. On the other hand, we have emissions that are uncontrolled. What is your sense of how achievable it is to put those two together while we reduce our usage of methane, given that it is very hard to see how we can move particularly quickly away from using it? How viable is biomethane? How viable is it to collect and use some of these other sources that your analysis clearly points to as being very worrying?
Kim O’Dowd: I am not a biomethane expert, necessarily. We have looked a little bit into it. It is a valuable option if it does not drive the production, for example, of manure. We have seen cases, notably in California, where because farmers can make money by producing biomethane, they will just expand their herd sizes to collect more manure to produce more biomethane. There has been an investigation by colleagues from Friends of the Earth USA on this. We need to put in some guardrails to ensure that we are not replacing one problem with another.
However, if we manage to produce biomethane in a sustainable way, we need to ensure that it does not leak, which is currently not looked into as much. There is more and more conversation about methanation of the energy sector, but biomethane leaks almost as much as fossil fuels. Countries have not really developed any regulations yet in terms of monitoring, reporting and verifying emissions in this sector, so that is one thing that countries could prioritise. Then, as for the fossil fuel sector, they could do leak detection, repair, and avoid venting and flaring. As we move towards this potentially valuable solution for waste and agriculture by way of reducing methane emissions, we need to ensure that it does not leak, basically. That is one important point.
If you mean gas as just the fuel that we extract from the ground, and how that fits into methane remediation, methane is the sprint and the general transition is the marathon. We need to do both hand in hand. Obviously, we want gas to be used less, but we know that it is still going to be there for a few years, so we need to urgently reduce the emissions associated with the production and consumption of that gas.
Q40 Bill Esterson: On the point about biomethane, I noticed that France is one of several countries where there are greater incentives for farmers, in particular, to collect biomethane. Is that something you would advocate more widely?
Kim O’Dowd: Again, it depends how it is produced. If there are guardrails, that does not mean that it is incentivising the extension of herd sizes, which is something that can happen. But in the context of the current herd sizes, then, yes, I think it is a valuable solution.
Q41 Bill Esterson: So with the right safeguards. Pelin, your organisation will have carried out some analysis on methane and these tensions. What is your take?
Pelin Zorlu: I have not been involved, but recently my colleagues published a paper on biofuels. That basically made the case that not all biofuels are equal. Whether they are sustainable and economical really depends on the country context.
As a side note, on the back of Hormuz we have seen some of the mandates for the mixing of biofuel with diesel being brought forward. That creates a tension between food security and energy prices. It can also lead to further degradation of primary forests, for example in south-east Asia. It is basically about being very clear about where it is good and useful—it depends on the country context—and where it should be avoided.
Q42 Bill Esterson: Can I push you a little bit beyond “it depends” for a moment? You mentioned the strait of Hormuz and the very severe energy security concerns it brings. What is Chatham House’s analysis of how viable biomethane or other biofuels might be as alternatives to improve our energy security?
Pelin Zorlu: That is not really my area of expertise, but I am very happy to give further evidence through my colleagues on that.
Chair: Thank you very much, Ms O’Dowd, Ms Zorlu and Ms Kumar, for the excellent evidence that you have provided. It is incredibly helpful. We will have a short break before we start the final panel.