Copenhagen Climate Council

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The Copenhagen Climate Council is a global collaboration between international business and science founded by the leading independent think tank in Scandinavia, Monday Morning, based in Copenhagen. The councilors of the Copenhagen Climate Council have come together to create global awareness of the importance of the UN Climate Summit (COP15) in Copenhagen, December 2009, and to ensure technical and public support and assistance to global decision makers when agreeing on a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol from 1997.

[edit]Organization
The Copenhagen Climate Council was founded in 2007 by the leading independent think tank in Scandinavia, Monday Morning, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.

[edit]Purpose
The purpose of the Copenhagen Climate Council is to create global awareness of the importance of the UN Climate Summit (COP15) in Copenhagen, December 2009. Leading up to this pivotal UN meeting, the Copenhagen Climate Council works on presenting innovative yet achievable solutions to climate change, as well as assess what is required to make a new global treaty effective. The Council will seek to promote constructive dialogue between government and business, so that when the world's political leaders and negotiators meet in Copenhagen, they will do so armed with the very best arguments for establishing a treaty that can be supported by global business. By promoting and demonstrating innovative, positive, and meaningful business leadership and ideas, the Copenhagen Climate Council aims to demonstrate that achieving an effective global climate treaty is not only possible, but necessary. The strategy is built upon the following principles:

Creating international awareness of the importance of the Copenhagen UN Climate Summit and the successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

Promoting constructive dialogue between government, business, and science. Inspiring global business leaders by demonstrating that tackling climate change also has the potential to create huge opportunities for innovation and economic growth.

[edit]Manifesto
Published in November 2007, on the eve of the UN COP13 Climate Change Conference in Bali the instigation night of the Bali Road Map. The document outlines what the Council believes is required to tackle climate change and how this can be achieved through a new global treaty. The Manifesto articulates a clear goal for the maximum level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2050. The document will serve as input at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, outlining key elements for further discussion and inclusion in the recommendations to be delivered to the UN Summit.

[edit]Membership
Copenhagen Climate Council comprises 30 global climate leaders world.
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representing business, science, and public policy from all parts of the

Business leaders are selected to represent global companies and innovative entrepreneurs, who, through their actions, reveal that sustainable, climate-responsible business is both necessary and profitable.

Scientists are gathered to ensure that the work of the Council is underpinned by rigorous analysis.

Policy makers with experience in public policy are included in the Council to ensure that the work is informed by knowledge of what is required to assist high-level, complex policy negotiations.

[edit]Activities
The central aim of the Copenhagen Climate Council is to create global awareness to the urgency of reaching a global agreement on how to tackle climate change at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, December 2009. To achieve this end, the Copenhagen Climate Council provides a Web 2.0 climate website 'The Climate Community' which features latest climate news, intelligence, solutions and points of view, an online climate community, as well as the rest of the Copenhagen Climate Council activities, such as the 'World Business Summit on Climate Change'; launching the 'Thought Leadership Series'; launching the 'Climate LIFE' film, book, and digital exhibition; co-hosting with CITRIS the scientific conference 'Unlocking the Climate Code: Innovation in Climate and Energy'; and the Poznan side event 'Business Requirements of a Post-2012 Climate Treaty'. Recently, the Copenhagen Climate Council has also hosted a Business Roundtable in Beijing.

[edit]World

Business Summit on Climate Change

The World Business Summit on Climate Change takes place six months prior to the pivotal UN climate change conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, December 2009. The summit brings together business chief executives with the world's top scientists, economists, civil society, media leaders, government representatives and other leading thinkers to put forward recommendations for the next international framework on climate change to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. Among the prominent participants so far are Al Gore, Chairman of Generation Investment Management; Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark; and Sir Richard Branson, Founder and CEO of the Virgin Group. At the summit, chief executives will discuss how business can help solve the climate crisis through innovative business models, new partnerships and the development of low carbon technologies. They will send a message to the negotiating governments on how to remove barriers and create incentives for implementation of new solutions in a post-Kyoto. The results of the World Business Summit on Climate Change will be presented to the Danish government, host of COP15,[2] and to world leaders negotiating the terms of the next international climate treaty. Thought Leadership Series is aimed at elucidating and creating awareness of the key elements in the business and policy response to the climate problem. The rationale for the Thought Leadership Series is firstly to change the focus from stating we have a problem to communicating the solutions to the problem, and secondly to show the potential and opportunities inherent in tackling climate change. The themes of the Thought Leadership series are:

01 Tackling Emissions Growth: The Role of Markets and Government Regulation 02 Achieving low emissions energy systems in rapidly developing economies 03 Drawing down CO2 from the atmosphere 04 The role of city planning and buildings in tackling emissions growth 05 Achieving the capital investment required to tackle climate change 06 The CEO's survival guide to climate change 07 Adapting to the impacts of climate change 08 Role of Information and Communications Technology in Addressing Climate Change 09 Beyond a global agreement: Scenarios from the future

[edit]Climate

LIFE

Climate LIFE is a film, book and digital exbition project initiated by the Copenhagen Climate Council. Climate LIFE is intended to be a virtual tour of how communities across the globe can both fight climate change and adapt to a warming world. The purpose of Climate LIFE is to encourage awareness of and appreciation for the human and commercial potential in a low carbon future. The Copenhagen Climate Council With hopes for Climate LIFE to act as a catalyst for a new public discourse on climate change.

[edit]FILM : Climate LIFE - the 5th revolution

Climate LIFE - the 5th revolution is an emotional and strong story of a journey across the world in search of the solutions so urgently needed for avoiding a world climate life gone a wreck. It is produced in the realisation that we need a new climate agenda in order to achieve a transition to a sustainable society. The Copenhagen Climate Council has stated it is necessary to tell the story of climate change using a new positive language that can appeal to new audiences. Particularly, the Copenhagen Climate Council wishes to use evocative and emotional storytelling to get behind the real motivations, which has made pioneers, community leaders and others act on climate changes. Through compelling and evocative story-telling, the audiences will themselves feel the urgency of the quest and be inspired to take action. Climate LIFE will be a follow-up to Al Gore's 'An inconvenient truth'. Where Al Gore opened the world's eyes to the massiveness of climate change, Climate LIFE intends to tell the new convenient truth of climate change - that the knowledge and solutions we know today give us the opportunity to create communities that enhance quality of life; that it is possible to build a greener, safer and more sustainable Earth. Climate Life - the 5th revolution aims to show that the precondition for the success is already present. A short feature will be launched at the World Business Summit on Climate Change and subsequently it will be shown at events, on the web, and will also be distributed to TV broadcasters across the world. The film is produced in collaboration with Koncern Film and TV. .

[edit]Business

Requirements of a Post-2012 Climate Treaty

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On December 8, 2008, the Copenhagen Climate Council hosted an official side event

at the UN COP14 Summit on Climate

Change in Poznan, Poland from December 110, 2008. The theme wasBusiness Requirements to a Post-2012 Climate Treaty. At the event, Council representatives from business and science presented their key principles for a new treaty. The thoughts presented at the event will feed into the development of the final recommendations delivered by international business leaders at the World Business Summit on Climate Change, to be held in Copenhagen in May, 2009. The speakers delivered their views on what they would toast to in Copenhagen. They included: Copenhagen Climate Council Chairman Tim Flannery; Robert Purves from World Wildlife FundInternational; Jerry Stokes, president of Suntech Europe; Dr. Zhengrong Shi, Founder and CEO of Suntech; Steve Harper of Intel; Susanne Stormer from Novo Nordisk; Michael Zarin of Vestas; and Thomas Becker, the lead climate negotiator for the Danish government that will host the UN COP15 climate summit in December, 2009. The session was moderated by Nick Rowley, strategic director at Copenhagen Climate Council. Read the entire news summary from Poznan side event here

The Kyoto

Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), aimed at
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fighting global warming. The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty with the goal of achieving the "stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."

The Protocol was initially adopted on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, and entered into force on 16 February 2005. As of September 2011, 191 states have signed and ratified the protocol.
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The only remaining signatory not to have ratified the protocol is the United States. Other United

Nations member states which did not ratify the protocol are Afghanistan, Andorra and South Sudan. In December 2011, Canada denounced the Protocol.
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Under the Protocol, 37 countries ("Annex I countries") commit themselves to a reduction of four greenhouse gases (GHG) (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride) and two groups of gases (hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons) produced by them, and all member countries give general commitments. At negotiations, Annex I countries (including the US) collectively agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% on average for the period 2008-2012. This reduction is relative to their annual emissions in a base year, usually 1990. Since the US has not ratified the treaty, the collective emissions reduction of Annex I Kyoto countries falls from 5.2% to 4.2% below base year.
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Emission limits do not include emissions by international aviation and shipping, but are in addition to the industrial gases,chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are dealt with under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
[clarification needed]

The benchmark 1990 emission levels accepted by the Conference of the Parties of UNFCCC (decision 2/CP.3) were the values of "global warming potential" calculated for the IPCC Second Assessment Report.
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These figures are used for converting the various greenhouse gas emissions into

comparable CO2 equivalents (CO2-eq) when computing overall sources and sinks. The Protocol allows for several "flexible mechanisms", such as emissions trading, the clean development mechanism (CDM) and joint implementation to allow Annex I countries to meet their GHG emission limitations by purchasing GHG emission reductions credits from elsewhere, through financial exchanges, projects that reduce emissions in non-Annex I countries, from other Annex I countries, or from annex I countries with excess allowances. Each Annex I country is required to submit an annual report of inventories of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from sources and removals from sinks under UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. These countries nominate a person (called a "designated national authority") to create and manage its greenhouse gas inventory. Virtually all of the non-Annex I countries have also established a designated national authority to manage its Kyoto obligations, specifically the "CDM process" that determines which GHG projects they wish to propose for accreditation by the CDM Executive Board.

eThe view that human activities are likely responsible for most of the observed increase in global mean temperature ("global warming") since the mid-20th century is an accurate reflection of current scientific thinking. throughout the 21st century and beyond.
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Human-induced warming of the climate is expected to continue

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) have produced a range of projections of what the future increase in global mean temperature might be.
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The IPCC's projections are"baseline" projections, meaning that they assume no future efforts are made to reduce

greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC projections cover the time period from the beginning of the 21st century to the end of the 21st century.
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The "likely" range (as assessed to have a greater than 66% probability of being correct, based on the IPCC's expert judgement) is a
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projected increased in global mean temperature over the 21st century of between 1.1 and 6.4 C.

The range in temperature projections partly reflects different projections of future greenhouse gas emissions.

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Different projections contain

different assumptions of future social and economic development (e.g., economic growth, population level, energy policies), which in turn affects projections of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
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The range also reflects uncertainty in the response of the climate system to past
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and future GHG emissions (measured by the climate sensitivity). [edit]Article 2 of the UNFCCC

Main article: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change#Interpreting Article 2

Most countries are Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

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Article 2 of the Convention states its

ultimate objective, which is to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (i.e., human) interference with the climate system."
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The natural, technical, and social sciences can provide information on

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decisions relating to this objective, e.g., the possible magnitude and rate of future climate changes.

However, the IPCC has also concluded that

the decision of what constitutes "dangerous" interference requires value judgements, which will vary between different regions of the world.
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Factors that might affect this decision include the local consequences of climate change impacts, the ability of a particular region to adapt
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to climate change (adaptive capacity), and the ability of a region to reduce its GHG emissions (mitigative capacity). [edit]Objectives

Kyoto is intended to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. In order to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of CO2, emissions worldwide would need to be dramatically reduced from their present level. The main aim of the Kyoto Protocol is to contain emissions of the main anthropogenic (i.e., human-emitted) greenhouse gases (GHGs) in ways that reflect underlying national differences in GHG emissions, wealth, and capacity to make the reductions. agreed in the original 1992 UN Framework Convention.
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The treaty follows the main principles

According to the treaty, in 2012, Annex I Parties who have ratified the treaty must have

fulfilled their obligations of greenhouse gas emissions limitations established for the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period (20082012). These emissions limitation commitments are listed in Annex B of the Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol's first round commitments are the first detailed step of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (Gupta et al., 2007).
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The Protocol establishes a structure of rolling emission reduction commitment periods, with negotiations on second period commitments
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that were scheduled to start in 2005 (see Kyoto Protocol#Successor for details). end of 2012.

The first period emission reduction commitments expire at the

The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."
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Even if Annex I Parties succeed in meeting their first-round commitments, much

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greater emission reductions will be required in future to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations.

For each of the different anthropogenic GHGs, different levels of emissions reductions would be required to meet the objective of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations (see United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change#Stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations).
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Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most important anthropogenic GHG.

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Stabilizing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere

would ultimately require the effective elimination of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The five principal concepts of the Kyoto Protocol are:
[citation needed]

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Commitments for the Annex I Parties. The main feature of the Protocol

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lies in establishing commitments for the reduction of greenhouse

gases that are legally binding for Annex I Parties. The Annex I Parties took on legally binding commitments based on the Berlin Mandate, which was a part of UNFCCC negotiations leading up to the Protocol.
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Implementation. In order to meet the objectives of the Protocol, Annex I Parties are required to prepare policies and measures for the reduction of greenhouse gases in their respective countries. In addition, they are required to increase the absorption of these gases and utilize all mechanisms available, such as joint implementation, the clean development mechanism and emissions trading, in order to be rewarded with credits that would allow more greenhouse gas emissions at home.

Minimizing Impacts on Developing Countries by establishing an adaptation fund for climate change. Accounting, Reporting and Review in order to ensure the integrity of the Protocol. Compliance. Establishing a Compliance Committee to enforce compliance with the commitments under the Protocol.

[edit]2012 emission targets and "flexible mechanisms" Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community (the European Union-15, made up of 15 states at the time of the Kyoto negotiations) commit themselves to binding targets for GHG emissions.
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The targets apply to the four greenhouse gases carbon

dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride, and two groups of gases, hydrofluorocarbons andperfluorocarbons. The six GHG are translated into CO2 equivalents in determining reductions in emissions. These reduction targets are in addition to the industrial gases, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are dealt with under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. Under the Protocol, only the Annex I Parties have committed themselves to national or joint reduction targets (formally called "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives" (QELRO) Article 4.1). Parties) are mostly low-income developing countries, (explained below).
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Parties to the Kyoto Protocol not listed in Annex I of the Convention (the non-Annex I

and participate in the Kyoto Protocol through the Clean Development Mechanism

The emissions limitations of Annex I Parties varies between different Parties.

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Some Parties have emissions limitations reduce below the base

year level, some have limitations at the base year level (i.e., no permitted increase above the base year level), while others have limitations above the base year level. Emission limits do not include emissions by international aviation and shipping. Although Belarus and Turkey are listed in the Convention's Annex I, they do not have emissions targets as they were not Annex I Parties when the Protocol was adopted. has declared that it wishes to become an Annex I Party to the Convention.
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Kazakhstan does not have a target, but

Annex I countries under the Kyoto Protocol, their 2008-2012 commitments (% of base year) and 1990 emission levels (% of all Annex I countries)
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[show]
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For most Parties, 1990 is the base year for the national GHG inventory and the calculation of the assigned amount. an alternative base year:
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However, five Parties have

Bulgaria: 1988; Hungary: the average of the years 1985-1987; Poland: 1988; Romania: 1989; Slovenia: 1986.

Annex I Parties can use a range of sophisticated "flexibility" mechanisms (explained in the following sections) to meet their targets. Annex I Parties can achieve their targets by allocating reduced annual allowances to major operators within their borders, or by allowing these operators to exceed their allocations by offsetting any excess through a mechanism that is agreed by all the parties to the UNFCCC, such as by buying emission allowances from other operators which have excess emissions credits.