IEEJ：November©IEEJ 2021
Special Bulletin
A Japanese Perspective on the International Energy Landscape (559)

November 15, 2021

COP26 Closed with “Glasgow Climate Pact” Adopted
Ken Koyama, PhD
Chief Economist, Managing Director
The Institute of Energy Economics, JapanThe 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, known as COP26, adopted the Glasgow Climate Pact to enhance climate change
countermeasures before its closure on November 13.
COP26 took place in Glasgow, the United Kingdom, from October 31 as a large-scale
event attended by U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, U.S. President Joe Biden, Japanese Prime
Minister Fumio Kishida and other top national leaders, environment and other ministers,
nongovernment organizations and media organizations from nearly 200 countries. The conference
was extended for one day to compile the Glasgow Climate Pact. Participants reached the pact as aresult of coordination and compromise, ending the conference late night on November 13.
The wide-ranging Glasgow Climate Pact attracted global attention by (1) reaffirming thegoal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5℃ from pre-industrial levels and (2) urging the parties
to the Paris Agreement to reaffirm or strengthen 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction goals
known as nationally determined contributions as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement
temperature goal by the end of 2022. It also called for achieving the goal of $100 billion in annual
aid from developed countries to developing countries by 2025, for phasing down unabated coal-fired
power plants and for phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Until the end of COP26, whether
any agreement would be reached on rules for implementing the Paris Agreement’s Article 6
regarding a market mechanism for credit trading had been attracting attention. The conference
eventually achieved an agreement on a framework to support the expansion of the emissions credit
market while avoiding double-counting of credits.
In this way, COP26 compiled the pact covering various fields and measures for climatechange prevention through two weeks of negotiations. At a time when the enhancement of climatechange prevention initiatives has become a global trend, COP26 can be viewed as having made someachievements by compiling the abovementioned deals. At the same time, however, details of the pactand negotiations toward the pact indicate various challenges and difficulties regarding theenhancement of climate change countermeasures and the implementation of relevant international
initiatives.
The most essential challenge is that the Glasgow Climate Pact, while reaffirming the 1.5℃
goal, fell short of indicating concrete pathways to the realization of the goal or leading such
pathways to be shared among participants. How to realize the goal has been left uncertain. It is also
important that COP26 has demonstrated discord and differences between the Paris Agreement parties
on how to enhance climate change prevention initiatives at a time when initiatives to achieve the1.5℃ goal have become a key future challenge.
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In 2020, advanced economies and China offered their respective net-zero GHG emission
goals for 2050 or 2060 (for China). In the run-up to COP26, Indonesia, Russia, Saudi Arabia,
Australia and others came up with such goals. At COP26, India, the third largest GHG emitter in theworld, declared it would pursue net-zero emissions in 2070. Toward COP26, the global momentum
for enhancing climate change countermeasures accelerated. Nevertheless, target years for net-zeroemissions vary, demonstrating uncertainties about the achievement of the 1.5℃ goal.
Furthermore, only a few among major countries that have announced net-zero emission
goals have released comprehensive and consistent energy supply and demand outlooks that secure
the achievement of the goals or indicate pathways to the goals. Most of them have only declared
their net-zero emission goals in 2050 or later years without indicating comprehensive energy
outlook/scenario on how to achieve the goals. Symbolic among them is the United States that has
turned positive about climate change countermeasures under the Biden administration but failed togive any energy supply and demand outlook for realizing the 2050 carbon neutrality goal (or the2030 goal of cutting GHG emissions by 50-52%).
Even energy supply and demand scenarios given by a few (including the European Union,
the United Kingdom, France, Germany and China) to realize net-zero emissions are uncertain to berealized. As the world enters a stage to promote specific decarbonization measures while reaffirming
the 1.5℃ goal based on the Glasgow Climate Pact, how countries would specify and materialize
initiatives to realize the 1.5℃ goal will be tested.
In this sense, COP26 talks indicated that the Paris Agreement parties, though sharing thedirection of enhancing emission reduction measures amid growing momentum for enhancing
decarbonization initiatives, face their differences and discord and have difficulties in forming
consensus as emission reduction measures become stricter.
Symbolizing this were negotiations on the revision of a written agreement on coal-fired
power generation. An original draft agreement to phase out unabated coal-fired power plants faced
opposition from India and was revised into a pact to phase down such power plants. The COP26 hostand other European countries remained unsatisfied with the weakened the language on coal power
generation but had no choice but to concede it by giving priority to forming a consensus, according
to media reports. India for its part might have thought that it could enhance global warming
prevention measures and seek to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070 in cooperation with theinternational community but should refrain from allowing the phase-out of unabated coal-fired
power generation as its current main power source to be put into any written agreement inconsideration of Indian economic and energy realities.
I think that the Paris Agreement on which COP26 talks were based features a key point inaddition to the temperature goal. That is the adoption of the bottom-up approach where parties to theagreement would pledge and implement voluntary emission reduction goals. Countries shared aperception that it would be difficult to produce any agreement under a top-down approach used for
the Kyoto Protocol and adopted the bottom-up approach as a means to prevent the escalation of thenorth-south confrontation accompanying the climate change issue. This allowed nearly 200 countries
to join the arrangement to pursue global interests while avoiding the north-south confrontation. If
developed countries increase pressure on developing countries to seek net-zero emissions amid atrend for enhancing emission reduction goals and strongly urge them to specify when and how torealize net-zero emissions, however, developing countries may grow discontent and hold developed2IEEJ：November©IEEJ 2021
countries responsible for global warming again. This is the reason developed countries’ greater
assistance to developing countries is increasingly requested and given priority. The Glasgow Climate
Pact has become a milestone for enhancing climate change countermeasures but demonstrated
various challenges to be overcome for further steps from the milestone. How to overcome thesechallenges would become a top future priority.

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