Showtime for climate talks

Presented by Chevron: Your guide to the political forces shaping the energy transformation

Nov 04, 2022 View in browser   By Sara Schonhardt , Jean Chemnick and Corbin Hiar Presented by Chevron A vehicle drives near wind turbines at Lekela wind power station, near the Red Sea city of Ras Ghareb, some 186 miles, from Cairo, Egypt, on Oct. 12. | Amr Nabil/AP Photo After years of haggling over dashes and semicolons, it's time for international climate talks to get real. Roughly 40,000 people — including delegates, activists, C-suite representatives and around 100 heads of state — will gather starting Sunday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the U.N. climate summit known as COP 27. With the big negotiations of past years largely over, the focus is on action. Countries will get the chance to showcase how they are delivering on emission reduction pledges — or face pressure to ramp up their transition. President Joe Biden will be there Friday, following the midterm elections that could see Republicans grab the reins in Congress. A GOP sweep wouldn't do much to derail Biden's signature climate spending law, which put a major down payment on the U.S. pledge to slash planet-warming emissions. But it could make it much harder for the United States to deliver on the topic at the heart of this year's summit: climate finance. Egypt's COP 27 presidency says it's aiming to restore the "grand bargain" at the center of climate negotiations. That's the idea that wealthy, high-emitting nations pull together trillions of dollars (with the help of the private sector) for the countries that have contributed the least to the climate crisis, so they can address mounting impacts and afford to transition off fossil fuels. It's a bargain developing countries are rallying behind as the impacts of climate change accelerate and as wealthy countries fail to deliver on a decade-old promise. But will anything actually get done? That's hard to say. This year's climate summit is unlike any other, and not just because the agenda is different. COP 27 is taking place amid heated geopolitical tensions, economic turmoil and an avalanche of climate-fueled disasters. Those are bad conditions for cooperation . There are still a few high-profile issues on the negotiating agenda. All eyes will be on whether countries can put their self-interests aside and work together to reduce emissions before it's too late. Expect announcements on methane reductions, coal-to-clean-energy transitions, financial arrangements, technology innovations and more. Biden climate envoy John Kerry is working on a proposal that would allow the purchase of offsets to help fund those fossil fuel transitions, people familiar with the effort say. What else to expect: China and India are taking a pass on the climate summit but are likely to show up in Bali in mid-November for a meeting of the Group of 20 major economies. That gathering could become more heated, and any conflict among the leaders could either shape or undermine the climate negotiations winding down in Egypt. The U.S. is also sending a smaller delegation to COP 27 than last year. Administration officials are expected to tout enactment this year of Biden's $370 billion climate package. But they may have to answer for that law's "buy America" provisions, which the European Union and others have said might violate international trade laws. In a call with reporters Friday, Egyptian official Wael Aboulmagd warned against confrontation. "Everyone must rise to the occasion and must move away from the adversarial winner-takes-all kinds of approach that has plagued this process for too long," he said. The weekend is here — thank you for tuning in, and turning on, POLITICO's Power Switch. I'm your host today,  Corbin Hiar , with help from Jean Chemnick and Sara Schonhardt . Arianna will be back soon! Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to chiar@eenews.net Today in POLITICO Energy's podcast: POLITICO's Zack Colman breaks down the COP 27 climate talks .   A message from Chevron: The fuels of the future can come from unexpected places. Find out how Chevron is working with partners to convert the methane from cow waste into renewable natural gas. Learn more.   Featured story Bill Coffee was surprised last year to learn an oil company had proposed to drill next to the subdivision in Firestone, Colo., where he'd recently bought a home. | Kathryn Scott/Kathryn Scott Photography, LLC The oil and gas industry fiercely opposed a 2019 Colorado law that prioritized health, safety and the environment ahead of drilling. But some industry executives have now come to accept the regulations it created, or even embrace them, Mike Soraghan writes in the first story of a new series . As a result, oil leaders now fear other states might adopt the Centennial State model. "We certainly worry about things like that making their way outside of Colorado," said Lynn Granger, executive director of the American Petroleum Institute's state affiliate.   A message from Chevron:   Power Centers EPA Administrator Michael Regan, then secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, meeting with Mark Ruffalo in February 2020 to discuss PFAS. | michael_s_regan/Instagram Celebrity management When Hollywood star Mark Ruffalo criticized EPA's plan to regulate long-lasting contaminants known as "forever chemicals," agency officials scrambled to set up a call with the actor who plays Hulk in Marvel Studios movies, Kevin Bogardus and E.A. Crunden report . Internal documents they obtained shed light on how EPA tracks and mitigates high-profile criticism of the agency. On the road The White House announced a road map Friday to help the country effectively eliminate its carbon emissions, which promised to direct research and billions in federal dollars toward "game-changing" energy technologies, David Iaconangelo reports . The plan highlighted five key areas for energy research and development to reach net-zero emissions by 2050: power grids, aviation, fusion energy, efficient buildings, and net-zero fuels and industrial products. Withered hopes Few climate adaption projects can match the sheer ambition — or unfullfilled promise — of Africa's "Great Green Wall," Daniel Cusick writes . The United Nations-backed initiative, launched in 2007, aims to plant a 5,000-mile belt of trees across Africa's Sahel region from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east. But 15 years after its launch, most of the Great Green Wall remains unrealized as funding pledges go unfulfilled and the first planted forests wither under the very climate change impacts they were intended to buffer. in other news In a lead editorial that's likely to the the talk of Sharm el-Sheikh, The Economist says "there is no way Earth can now avoid a temperature rise of more than 1.5°C" Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund has agreed to a deal with Apple partner Foxconn to produce electric vehicles in the kingdom as part of its push to diversify its oil-dependent economy, according to the Financial Times . Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Workers installing solar panels on a house in Florida. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images Two years after federal regulators issued a policy to help clean energy technologies join the grid, climate advocates are worried that new barriers could emerge instead . BlackRock is giving clients more say in how their shares are voted as the world's biggest asset manager seeks to defend itself from Republican claims that it's pursuing "woke" policies harmful to the fossil fuel industry. Occidental Petroleum Corp. unveiled plans this week for what it says will be the world's largest carbon removal project , with capacity to suck from the air the equivalent of the annual emissions of eight coal-fired power plants. Time to power off. Thanks for reading!   A message from Chevron: Energy demand is growing. Meeting that demand calls for innovation. That's why at Chevron, we're working with partners to convert the methane from cow waste into renewable natural gas. Through our partnerships, we expect to increase our RNG production 10x by 2025. Learn more.     Follow us on Twitter Arianna Skibell @ariannaskibell   Follow us

To change your alert settings, please log in at https://www.politico.com/_login?base=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.com/settings This email was sent to rouf@idiot.cloudns.cc by: POLITICO, LLC 1000 Wilson Blvd. Arlington, VA, 22209, USA Please click here and follow the steps to unsubscribe.