What Can We Learn From Cop26?

• Published date: 07 December 2021
• Subject Matter: Environment, Energy and Natural Resources, Energy Law, Environmental Law, Renewables, Climate Change
• Law Firm: Gowling WLG
• Author: Mr Ben Stansfield

COP26 saw two weeks of debate and discussion in Glasgow on how to tackle climate change across the globe.

In this podcast moderated by Inspiratia, partner Ben Stansfield and Foresight Group's sustainability lead, Lily Crompton, discuss whether expectations were met and their thoughts on the draft agreement, the UK's Net Zero Strategy, how investors can incorporate more sustainable assets into their portfolios and more.

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Transcript

Omolola Coker: Good afternoon. My name is Omolola Coker, Head of Research here at Inspiration and we are back with another Joint Venture episode for you all.

Today's episode in particular looks at what has been on everyone's mind and, most likely, social media over the past two weeks; the COP26.

Helping me digest the outcomes of COP26 and the impact this will have on renewables and infrastructure is Ben Stansfield, Partner at UK law firm Gowling WLG with an expertise in environmental and planning law, and Lily Crompton, Sustainability Lead at Foresight Group.

Thank you both for joining me today.

To begin I think it will be great for both of you to tell us a bit about yourselves before we dive into your thoughts on the past two weeks.

Why not start us off Ben.

Ben Stansfield: Hi, so I am Ben, a Partner at Gowling WLG. I am a lawyer specialising in environmental and planning law so I have got a particular focus on low carbon projects and infrastructure across the UK.

I advise a variety of clients in our UK base and overseas, whether it is developers, investors, funders or public authorities, and across a range of lifecycle issues so whether they are consenting their project, whether they are dealing with operational and environmental permits or regulation reporting, that kind of stuff. The litigation when it goes and then through to decommissioning at the end.

Omolola: Thanks and yourself Lily.

Lily Crompton: Hi, I am Lily Crompton. I work for Foresight Group. I am their sustainability lead. I have been working in the sustainability field for about 13-14 years now.

Foresight is a sustainable investment manager and I am actually really new to the investment sector.

My background has primarily been in major infrastructure projects, particularly in the construction phase. But at Foresight my role is very much to focus on the infrastructure assets that they own and that they manage and so I am supporting them at understanding their sustainability performance over a whole suite of metrics that we have recently rolled out. Hopefully from there we will be able to set some really meaningful targets for continual improvement. Of course carbon is a huge one that we are looking at. Most of our infrastructure projects actually are renewable energy, but that does not mean that they come without a bit of a carbon price tag, so that is something that we are working on at the moment.

Omolola: So in terms of COP26 this has been all over the place in the past two weeks. I will be interested to kind of get you guys' views of the event so far. Today, as of recording, it is the last day. So what were your observations and thoughts of the event and were your expectations met? We can start with you Lily.

Lily: So I would say that my expectations were probably relatively low - I was trying to be realistic - but my hopes were high. It was a real buzz that we were hosting it here in the UK, really exciting. Lots of discussion between loads of different businesses and industry types that was really exciting, and it still is quite exciting. We are yet to find out what the final draft text is going to be following COP26 (at time of recording). I had a little look earlier and there are some positive things in there.

I think the topics that were discussed were good. The themes across all of the days were really interesting and it was good to see that they were touching on inequality in gender and culture just as much as environmental damage and degradation, as I think there has not been a lot of talk recently about how those two things, climate change and inequality, go quite nicely or badly together depending on how you look at it.

I would say overall I am not disappointed. I am still really hopeful, but the fact is it is all very well that commitments have been made and some of them have been great and really positive, but really the point now is that action needs to be taken and we are not going to know how that will unfold for another six months or so. But I think it has been really interesting to see that COP26 has not just focused on governments and government funding but also asking the private sector to get involved and to really help influence where their money goes. Where there is money often there is power and so I think that has been quite interesting over the last couple of weeks.

Omolola: And Ben did you manage your expectations the same way?

Ben: I think so. In the run up to it, it is a bit like holding the Olympics in London again, was it not, because it was happening here. It was the right timezone so you could watch it live rather than getting up at stupid o'clock. I am a glass half-full person so I liked it. On the positive side, yes it got climate on the front page. World leaders broadly, those who were there broadly said the right things and I think there is some real evidence that people got it, which was great. There was some controversy I think about people from the southern hemispheres struggling to get there because of COVID-19 and vaccines and all that kind of stuff and I think that is clearly a very fair criticism.

There are obviously some big headlines about the delegation being from the oil and gas and fossil fuel sectors and I do not think we have a major issue with that because if a sector or an industry is part of the problem it has got to be at the conference to work out what it needs to do, so I think that was fine.

I think much was made about the lack of the attendance from Russia, Turkey and China and I think yes that was a shame. I know they sent negotiators on their behalf so it is not right to say they were not involved, but as significant contributors to manmade climate change it would have been nice for some leadership there.

But I think my excitement preCOP was if you look at the COP26 presidency programme and they were talking about keeping 1.5 alive and there was not really talk about the 2 degrees that we had in Paris in the materials for COP. I was quite obsessed by that because I thought it actually showed the measure of expectation or aspiration.

So I guess when I looked at the draft COP26 decision most recently today and a couple of days ago, I am a bit disappointed to still see this focus on 2 degrees. It is healthy trying to keep it well within and aim for 1.5 but I really wish there were stronger words about keeping to 1.5 and having 2 as this horrendous stop. You know 1.5 is terrible, 2 is outrageous. So I would like that to have been a bit stronger, but I guess we will find out how successful it is in a couple of years' time. It is hard to tell in the moment how good it has been.

Omolola: So generally it seems that from what you were saying Lily that the engagement more from the private sector side was very much welcomed and it was good to see. So from your perspective then was there anything in particular that investors were looking to get out of COP26? Do you think they felt that things were made clearer or were there any pressing questions that they were expecting to be answered from their side?

Lily: I am not sure whether there were answers they were expecting to be answered but I think, as you know the company that I work for, we are very much driven by sustainable investments and that, like I said, tends to be renewable energy, but also transition technology such as like battery storage. Things that will help the transition to a greener energy economy.

So I think for us it was actually really important that there was real recognition that renewable energy should now be a real focus. Those of us in the industry already knew that the likes of solar power is quite an affordable asset to build but now that is actually being discussed as COP more people are aware of this. That it is not something that is out of reach and difficult to attain. If you have the means and you are a big business that can afford to invest properly in renewable energy then there is absolutely no reason why you should not.

So I think if anything that sent a really positive message. I think there is still a lot of clarity required around where some of the funding may go to and I know that large private businesses did commit to spending a huge sum of money on decarbonised technologies and that is really positive.

I think we need to be aware as well though that we should not just be investing in high tech solutions because with the high tech solutions there will be other problems as there always is when you are balancing the needs of sustainability, and so I think investors still need to maintain credibility in weighing up the sustainability of some of these higher tech solutions.

We keep hearing at the moment about supply chains in various parts of the world being linked to forced labour, for example. We all know that lithium comes from areas that are facing high environmental degradation. All of these will start to potentially get worse because of some of the decisions that are being made from COP26 and we all need to go into this as investors as does the general public, with our eyes wide open to the other issues that this may bring.

I think the investment field are just excited now that there is more scope for us to look at some of these things that potentially were looked at in a light where they were not particularly exciting. People really did not understand what they meant. They were seen as high risk. It has kind of de-risked some of the greener...