From next November 30th to December 11th, Paris will be hosting the COP 21(1), a conference without precedence in terms of its size, orchestrated by the United Nations. For the first time, 40 000 delegates from 194 countries will meet to find an agreement that will limit by two degrees the planetary warm-up in regard to XIX century.
What’s new about this? Well, we have numerous reasons to be very optimistic concerning the resulting impact of this conference.
1/ Barack Obama and Xi-Jiping have already made an accord. The United-States will reduce their carbon emissions from 26 to 28 % by 2025 in comparison to their 2005 emissions, and 20 % of the Chinese energy will be renewable by 2030. This accord is fundamental. These two countries are responsible for 40 % of all gas emissions causing the greenhouse effect. (2)
2/ 50% of the new electrons in the world are produced by renewable energy, mainly because “in less than 4 years, the prices have fallen by 42 % for wind power, 68.1 % for photovoltaics and by 45.6 % for concentrated solar power. In France, these renewable energy programs would have saved 410 billion euros for the country.” (3)
3/ Developing countries start to organize themselves to adopt directly these renewable technologies, in the same way that they went to mobile telephone bypassing the fixed lines. (3)
4/ Last May in Paris, for the Climate Business Summit, more than 1000 firm deciders, investors and major companies CEOs met to come up with solutions. A declaration of intention was signed by 25 enterprise and investor coalitions, representing more than 6 billion companies based in 130 countries! Invest of course, but also “act on the emergence of a carbon tarification.”(4)
5/ It’s quite a challenge for all the companies but, in the end, « An opportunity for growth » (Pierre-André de Chalendar, Saint-Gobain CEO) and “a factor for innovation” (Jean-Pascal Tricoire, Schneider Electric CEO).(4)
6/ It’s also a wonderful opportunity for equilibrium between North and South: “The emerging economies are as important as the developed economies to fight against global warming » underlines Mahendra Singhi, the Indian CEO of Dalmia cement. (4)
7/ And the 7th reason is that we are certain that we, Future Shapers that play a determining role for tomorrow, are going to find innovative solutions to brilliantly insuring this necessary planetary transition! Congrats to each of us!
(1) 21rst Conference of The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
(3)Le Monde, April, 2015, Article « There is no trade-off between climate and prosperity » says Pascal Canfin, former European deputee and former French Minister for the development ancien député européen EELV et ancien ministre délégué au développement, est aujourd’hui conseiller principal sur les affaires internationales et sur le climat auprès du World Resources Institute Watch also the French video
(4) Novethic : « Climate Business Summit : work together to build a better economy »