Two years of negotiations ‘ended’ tonight with little clear and much confused.

As we leave Copenhagen Friday evening, we hold a leaked draft “Copenhagen Accord” which appears to contain the outcome of these talks. Its status is unclear.

The Accord is non-binding and contains no individual national targets. It leaves details – just about everything – to be worked out be COP16 in Mexico City. It also ensures the continuation of the confusing two track negotiation process.

The presence of a small galaxy of celebrities was impressive but ultimately proved another source of unwanted distraction to negotiations attempting to finalise a deal.

Ultimately, however, it has been the unwillingness of both developed and developing nations to move from long-held positions that has ensured that our road to Copenhagen has been extended to Mexico City and beyond.

Two years of negotiations at the bureaucratic level have failed to create the grounds for bridging significant remaining gaps between developed and developing countries over a post-2012 climate change regime. No number of Heads of State at this point could resolve these differences in the hours remaining.

There will be a political statement at best confirming the continuation of the two track negotiation process (LCA and Kyoto Protocol), with a new timetable to complete a treaty by mid or late 2010.

Today has been more focused on work than at any previous time over the past fortnight. If a developed/developing country consensus can be reached overnight, this fortnight will be the beginning of a negotiation to finalise the detail of a treaty that can be signed by the end of 2010.

With less than 24 hours remaining, attention is turning toward a warmer climate at COP 16 in Mexico City.

The Bella Centre was finally closed to all non-government stakeholders in the face of violent demonstration and a pronounced escalation of security. We believe even the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency may have been caught up in the lockdown while outside the Centre.

With just two days left, the talks took a dramatic turn of events, as the President of the conference, Connie Hedegaard, unexpectedly resigned this morning. She will be replaced by her boss the Danish Prime Minister. There are competing explanations for this development. The Danes themselves argue this was always planned and an appropriate step in light of the numbers of Heads of State participating. An incredulous audience questioned this:

• if it was planned why was it not announced at the outset? Connie resigned around 5 am this morning;
• if it was protocol to handover to the PM, why has this never happened in any other COP or under any other treaty?

The only certainty is that whether by design or disaster they have succeeded in merely further focusing attention in these remaining hours on process rather than outcome.

There was more confusion within the hall – the Brazilian Delegation took the floor to say that their head negotiator was not present because he was being held at the doors by Security and was not being allowed in, the South African Delegation ‘on behalf of the G77’ asked for another day to finish some issues, and tensions only grew as the day progressed.

It finally fell into turmoil when the Chair said that they would again use the controversial ‘Danish text’ in an effort to move the process along. This predictably inflamed the developing countries and prompted China, India, Brazil and others to proclaim they would formally refuse to continue with any of the talks.

Meanwhile a bomb threat closed the central station and the UK PM Gordon Brown was told it was not safe for him to leave the Bella Centre. Whether it is now safe for any of us to remain in the Bella Centre is another question.

Copenhagen is now covered in deep snow, police and protestors. Comfortingly, Blackhawks now whir through the leaden skies!

Another day in Copenhagen; another day of queues. At least today they were a little more organised … but no more successful, as after two hours of shuffling, the queues came to a halt and did not move again. During that time, secretariat staff paraded up and down the line telling all that anyone with a press pass could make their way to the front of the queue. Many did. Media were now at the front of a queue that did not move. One quipped, “At least we’re travelling first class on the Titanic!” He was mocked; the Titanic was a ship that moved.

Inside the Bella Centre, the climate glitterati were starting to arrive … Prince Charles, Al Gore, Arnold Schwarzenegger and so on.

The past few days of negotiations were replaced with the ceremonial opening. Negotiations that did continue were almost all closed to non-government stakeholders.

There was no movement on CCS in the CDM but Saudi Arabia is insisting that this is one issue that needs to be moved from bureaucrats and ministers to Heads of State.

However, the reality is that at this point all the minutiae of any post-2012 agreement is secondary to the bigger picture. Despite global expectations of a success in Copenhagen, developed and developing countries remain well apart and getting any area of agreement between them that can be portrayed as a ‘success’ is the primary and possibly only focus of frantic late night closed meetings.

Back outside the Bella Centre, after two and a half hours of shuffling progress, a message was finally broadcast that the frozen masses could expect to wait at least another five hours before collecting their badges. We had hit rock bottom.

And then it started sleeting.

Delegates queued for over four hours outside the Bella Centre this Monday morning in zero degree (centigrade) temperature waiting to enter the compound. Around midday came the first official announcement to a now almost frozen mob of 5000 that it would be at least another 3 – 6 hours before they would gain access to the compound (where they would have the pleasure of further queuing to actually register).

Apparently the machines issuing photographic passes had broken down and the UNFCCC secretariat were now only able to process 50 people per hour!

Meanwhile, inside the Bella halls, there was a similar (if more comfortable) cooling. Both developed and developing nations had walked out of talks over specific targets for each group.

This morning African nations led a boycott of a key session led by the President of COP 15 and CMP 5, Connie Hedegaard (who is set to become the new European “Commissioner for Climate Action” in 2010), bringing negotiations to a halt. After a suspension of nearly four hours, during which Australia also led a developed nations walkout, the delegates returned later and the talks resumed. These tactics have only increased the pressure and lost time for both sides.

The briefing for non-governmental organisations by Yvo de Boer, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary was cancelled again. Instead for almost an hour, other UNFCCC representatives took questions on the logistics (or lack of logistics) for the Conference rather than on the actual issues before negotiators.

Later in a Q&A for NGOs, President Connie Hedegaard also answered questions about the logistics of the conference, the status of the negotiations, and gave a candid assessment of where she sees the process going. She confirmed that it is still a two-track process that the delegations are working on, with the details in annexes to be worked out later in the year. She said that while there has been a lot of noise throughout the weeks, she has confidence that the ‘world leaders won’t go home empty handed’.

Hits of the day:

The comment by the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, that “carbon capture and storage is the most important technology to achieve the 450 scenario.”

The charm and good humour demonstrated by our colleagues from Friends of the Earth International for their camaraderie in the horrendous queues to enter the Bella Centre.

Miss of the day:

The failure of the UNFCCC Secretariat and the Danish Government to plan and then cater for the thousands who had booked for the Conference but were left stranded and uninformed for over four hours outside the Bella Centre in zero degree temperatures.

For business and industry there were numerous side events, lunches and workshops. A key event for us today was supporting an EU Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP) event on CCS at the Danish National Museum.

Speakers included Graeme Sweeney (Shell and Chairman of ZEP), Frederic Hauge (President Bellona Foundation) and Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

All speakers spoke strongly in favour of CCS with Sweeney remarking that it was the missing element in the mitigation armoury. Pachauri emphasised the need to be realistic, stating that coal cannot simply be ‘wished away’ and will be an important feature of the global energy scene for decades to come. Given this reality, CCS needs to be commercialised, and will only be successfully deployed if there is a partnership between government, industry and civil society.

Next week

Tomorrow formal negotiations resume with a heightened sense of urgency. After two years of negotiations it comes down to this week.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, speaking at the Zero Emission Technology Platform CCS event

Disarray

Negotiations broke down on Wednesday in the COP plenary over proposals by parties for protocol amendments, after developing countries split between those who favour a new protocol and others who want to continue with the Kyoto agreement. Notably disruptive was an intervention by Tuvalu. Tuvalu has proposed a strengthened protocol that would not only mean much greater (some would say impossible) efforts from developed countries but also necessitate emissions reductions from developing countries.

Both COP and CMP talks are now suspended, pending consultations on whether to establish contact groups to consider proposed new protocols under the convention and proposed amendments to the Kyoto Protocol. A Q&A session with Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, had been scheduled for this morning but it was cancelled at the last minute. Numerous other meetings were also cancelled…perhaps a signal that the negotiations are sliding into disarray.

AWG-LCA & AWG-KP

Today at a session closed to observers, both Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Chair of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA), and John Ashe, the Chair of the Ad-Hoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP), presented new draft texts to the Parties. The drafts that both Chairs put forward try to make some progress from the current, very lengthy, non-papers that are being negotiated. Both drafts have been cut down to seven pages for the LCA and 27 pages for the KP (they were originally over 100 pages long!). One of the most contentious issues of the talks has been the debate around a base year. The new AWG- LCA draft maintains a base year of 1990. However, the US position is based on 2005 as the base year.

The AWG-KP draft considers the issue of CCS in the CDM. Two proposals are put forward; the first concludes that CCS projects are not eligible for the CDM, laying out reasons for their exclusion. In the second option, CCS projects would be eligible in the second and subsequent commitment periods (that is, well beyond-2012) but requests that the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) recommend ”modalities and procedures for inclusion under the CDM, with a view to forwarding a draft decision to the COP/CMP at its Seventh Session”. This would delay any decision on inclusion for another two years!

Hit and Miss of the Day

The Chinese and Saudi Arabian delegations for complaining about the conference branding. Both parties lodged complaints with the Secretariat on Wednesday, arguing that the conference should be called COP15/CMP5 (see Wednesday’s blog).

The Bella Centre is a small city in itself. Over the past four days the energy level in the Centre has continued to grow, with more and more people arriving each day. There is growing anticipation of what will happen next week when more than a hundred world leaders arrive…and over half the people registered to attend cannot get in!

CCS

Although there haven’t been many side-events focused on CCS, two were held this morning at the US Center. The first event covered the results of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) Ministerial meeting, which was held in London back in October. At the second event, Ken Salazar, US Secretary of the Interior, gave a speech on transforming the way public land is managed to harness their potential for capturing carbon and for renewable energy production (the speech and other footage from the Center can be found at: http://cop15.state.gov/about). Both events were crowded affairs, with people spilling out of the room and watching on screens outside. Over-crowding at the US Center is only likely to get worse as other members of the US Cabinet, including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, are confirmed to speak over the coming week.

There has also been a ‘Contact Group’ meeting on CDM activities earlier today. This Group was created out of the yesterday’s CMP in order to address the recommendations made by the CDM Executive Board. The debate on whether to include CCS projects in the CDM was again the most contentious issue, with most of the two hours spent debating it, despite the Chair’s best efforts to move to other subjects! The Saudi delegation was the most vocal in urging support for CCS, taking to the floor numerous times. In comparison, Australia and Norway – two countries very active on CCS – remained surprisingly silent. Opposition was once again led by Brazil, Jamaica and Granada. Informal consultations will continue, but they will no longer be open to non-government stakeholders.

Yvo de Boer, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, said that it is looking like there will be a second Kyoto Protocol in addition to another agreement, thus continuing with the two-track negotiating process after Copenhagen.

CCS in CDM

Late last night, I attended a Q&A session with the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). As I was on my way over, I walked past the ‘Fossil of the Day’ awards ceremony, which takes place every night. There was a huge gathering and I stopped to listen as I heard the announcement of the second place prize being awarded to The Umbrella Group (which consists of Industrialised non-EU countries, Canada, Iceland, Japan, Kazakhstan, New Zealand, Norway, Russian Federation, Ukraine, United States and Australia). The ‘Fossil Award’ was given to Umbrella Group for proposing that CCS projects should qualify as CDM projects. The Fossil of the Day website says that three ‘Fossil of The Day’ awards are given to the countries that they consider “perform the worst during the past day’s negotiations”. There were many cheers and claps as The Umbrella Group was awarded their fossil.

The divergence on the issue of CCS in the CDM is clearly not only left to the negotiators in the official meetings! Once I made my way to the CDM EB Q&A, the room was so full that people were sitting on the floor. The question on CCS in the CDM was covered, but the EB told the group that they do not want to work on CCS anymore and that it is time for the COP to make the decision.

CCS CDM intervention

This afternoon, the CMP heard the recommendations from the CDM EB. The overview of the recommendations put forward by the EB caused over two hours of comments by different parties – with most of the time on spent on CCS. The strongest voice for the inclusion of CCS in the CDM was, again, Saudi Arabia; while Brazil and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) again strongly opposed this. After all the parties had spoken, an intervention was given on behalf of those in the business community interested in the inclusion of CCS in the CDM. The WCI was apart of this group and strongly supported the document.

Miss of the day: The possibility that half of the main hall of the Bella Centre could be closed next week due to the number of heads of state attending

Hit of the day: The CCS CDM intervention made on behalf of the business community, including WCI

There are competing official sessions throughout the day and that does not even include the many side-events, press briefings and demonstrations. With over 10,000 people present, whispers are making their way through the halls. The most prominent rumour since Sunday is that there is a secret ‘Danish Text’.

Secret Text

Before the talks began in Copenhagen, many thought that the negotiations would produce a political ’grand deal’ with the annexes to be worked out later. But since the weekend, insiders have been saying that a political statement had already been written.

The text has just been leaked to The Guardian newspaper (the link is below). It seeks to hold temperature rises to 2°C, and mentions the sum of US$10bn a year to help poor countries; however, it only includes a few numbers because these would be worked out later by world leaders. The ‘Danish Text’, which is understood to have included the US, UK and Denmark, has only been shown to a few other countries. The developing counties that have seen the text are said to be rather upset by the document and have openly criticised it. This will only widen the rift between developed and developing countries as the leaked report is a departure from the Kyoto Protocol principle under which rich nations take binding commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. It suggests that some countries are so desperate for world leaders to have a text to work from when they arrive next week that they are willing to sideline the UN negotiating process.

While the leaked document is being sent around the centre, the talks still continue, and I was sitting in on a discussion by the SBSTA (Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) on CCS when I received the leaked document.

CCS Update

It is only early in the talks but already CCS has already been mentioned numerous times.

Although there hasn’t been much movement on CCS in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), there has been an ‘informal group’ created that will report back to the SBSTA on the issue by the end of the week. The difference of opinion between the delegations has stayed the same; with Brazil being the most opposed to CCS in the CDM, while Saudi Arabia, Norway and Australia reiterated their positions, advocating for CCS to be included in the CDM. The issue of CCS as part of CDM activities is also scheduled to be addressed in the CMP tomorrow morning.

Hit of the day: There are now 110 heads of State expected to attend next week.

Miss of the day: Leaked text: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-change