It is lucky that Copenhagen is such a charming city because there are rumours that next week only 15,000 of the 35,000 people registered to attend the climate change conference will be allowed in…due to fire regulations!
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.
