*[Enwl-eng] 🌏 CAN EECCA Newsletter: Disputes over COP29, Greta Tunberg meets Zelensky, Eco-friendly transport
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CAN EECCA English news Digest
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Climate Action Network
Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia
Digest of news on climate change, energy
issues
www.caneecca.org
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Regional Climate News
Bitter conflicts stop Eastern Europe from
choosing next year’s COP host
Conflicts between Russia and Ukraine and
Armenia and Azerbaijan have stopped the group of Eastern European nations
from picking the host of the COP29 climate talks next November. At a group
meeting in the German city of Bonn, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan and Armenia each
made the case for why they should host the annual climate summit which
rotates between the United Nations’ five regions each year. But, according
to two sources with knowledge of the meeting, the group could not come to a
decision and postponed their choice until a later date. The uncertainty
gives the eventual host less time to prepare for the crunch summit. The host
for COP30, Brazil, has already been effectively decided. The decision for
COP29 must be made by COP28 in November.
Tajikistan: Resource-saving equipment - a
gift for Yagnob villagers
On the eve of the Idi Kurbon holiday, Little
Earth provided 20 sets of energy-saving equipment to the most vulnerable
families in the villages of the Yagnob Valley. 20 women - participants of
the project "Sustainable use of natural resources and women's participation
in the mountain communities of Yaghnob" and their families (more than 100
people in total) received long-awaited energy-efficient equipment. “Our trip
was postponed several times due to problems with the only road that can get
to the valley. There was still a lot of snow in the spring, and the road was
closed for a long time. Closer to summer, several large avalanches and
rockfalls descended here. We again had to wait until the road was cleared
using heavy construction equipment. And only at the end of last week we were
able to reach our target communities,” says Anton Tymoshenko, executive
director of the Little Earth.
The Role of Renewable Energy in Armenia’s
Energy Market
Armenia, a landlocked country in the South
Caucasus region, has been making significant strides in recent years to
diversify its energy sources and reduce its dependence on imported fossil
fuels. With its abundant renewable energy resources, Armenia has the
potential to become a regional leader in clean energy production and
contribute to global efforts to combat climate change. This article explores
the role of renewable energy in Armenia’s energy market and the potential
for growth in this sector. Armenia’s energy market has traditionally been
dominated by natural gas and nuclear power, with the latter accounting for
around 30% of the country’s electricity generation. However, the Armenian
government has recognized the need to diversify its energy mix and reduce
its reliance on imported fuels, particularly in light of geopolitical
tensions in the region and the potential for supply disruptions. As a
result, the government has set ambitious targets for the development of
renewable energy, aiming to increase the share of renewables in the country’s
energy mix to 26% by 2025 and 38% by 2030.
Kazakhstan to raise RES share to 15%
On June 30, Prime Minister Alikhan Smailov
chaired the 12th session of Kazakhstan-European Union dialogue platform with
the participation of top officials of the central executive bodies and
foreign diplomats, Kazinform reports. Addressing the participants, Alikhan
Smailov said the expansion of partnership with the European Union had been
one of the priorities for Kazakhstan. The country is interested in using all
existing opportunities for further expansion of trade-economic and
investment cooperation. The promising areas here are ‘green’ transition and
strengthening the transport interconnectedness. In his words, environmental
issues became key ones in Kazakhstan’s sustainable economic development. By
2030, the country plans to raise the share of renewable energy sources in
its energy balance from 4.5% to 15%.
Azerbaijan starts installing first major
solar power plant
Azerbaijan has begun installation of solar
panels at its 230 MW Garadagh plant, the country's first major solar power
plant. Developed by United Arab Emirates-based renewable energy company
Masdar, the plant is expected to be operating by the end of this year,
producing 500 gigawatt hours (GWh) annually. Azerbaijan has been encouraging
the development of new renewable energy projects with the aim of meeting 30
percent of the country's power demand from renewables by 2030. Baku believes
that by developing its renewable energy potential, it can reduce its
dependence on natural gas for power generation, freeing up more gas for
export thus maintaining its export revenues as production from the country's
oil fields declines.
Kyrgyzstan To Boost Its Renewable Energy
Potential With Support From The World Bank And The Green Climate Fund
The World Bank’s Board of Executive
Directors approved today $67.7 million to help finance the first phase of
the Kyrgyz Renewable Energy Development Project that aims to increase
renewable energy generation and promote private sector participation in the
Kyrgyz Republic. The project has a multi-phase programmatic approach with a
financing envelope of $125.7 million over 10 years.The first phase of the
project will focus on supporting the Kyrgyz Republic to increase hydropower
generation and enable renewable energy integration by strengthening the
country’s transmission systems. It includes $12.5 million in grants and
loans from the Green Climate Fund mobilized by the Sustainable Renewables
Risk Mitigation Initiative (SRMI).
Challenges and prospects of energy
efficiency discussed in Uzbekistan
More than 100 stakeholders, energy
policymakers, representatives of academia and civil society from the
Republic of Uzbekistan, the European Union (EU) and its Member States, as
well as international financial institutions gathered at the International
Conference “Energy Efficiency in Uzbekistan: prospects and challenges”. The
Conference was organised jointly by the Agency for Strategic Reforms (ASR)
under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the EU-funded SECCA
project as part of the European Union – Uzbekistan Sustainable Energy Days
2023. It aimed at providing an action-oriented forum for decision-makers to
share experiences in the implementation of energy efficiency policies in
practice.
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World Climate News
Ukraine’s Zelensky Meets With Greta Thunberg
to Discuss the War’s Effect on Ecology
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met
Thursday with Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg and prominent
European figures who are forming a working group to address ecological
damage from the 16-month-old Russian invasion. The meeting in the Ukrainian
capital came as fighting continued around the country. The governor of the
Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said two people were killed in the
region’s capital in a Russian strike that hit residences, a medical facility
and a school where residents were lined up to receive humanitarian aid.
Another person was killed in a morning strike on the village of Bilzoerka,
the regional prosecutor’s office said.
Eastern EU countries veering away from 2030
climate goals, report says
Central and Eastern European countries
display low ambitions with their National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs),
raising concerns about the region’s ability to meet EU climate goals,
campaigners warn. NECPs are an essential building block in the EU’s climate
policy architecture because they lay out the specifics of how each country
plans to achieve the collective goals agreed upon at a European level. Only
three EU countries – Spain, Croatia and Slovenia – have met the EU’s annual
30 June deadline to submit their updated national energy and climate plans,
campaigners say.
The world cut down 11 football fields of
forests every minute in 2022 – study
Researchers from the University of Maryland
found that in 2022, about 11 football fields of forest were cut down every
minute, and the total area reached the size of Switzerland, that is, more
than 4 million hectares This released an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent
to India's annual fossil fuel emissions, the BBC reported. It is noted that
the largest amount of forests was destroyed in Brazil. The article said that
such a trend does not correspond to the Glasgow Declaration, which was
signed by more than 100 countries at the COP26 climate summit in 2021. The
signatories pledged to stop forest loss and land degradation by 2030.
Apply for the Climate Journalism Award
With the Climate Journalism Award we will
acknowledge outstanding climate journalism that adopts an innovative or
original storytelling approach. Stories can be submitted in five categories
and winners will each receive a cash prize of €2,000. The Award is managed
by the European Journalism Centre, in partnership with Google News
Initiative. The submission process starts on 14 June 2023, and ends on 17
July 2023 at 17:00 CEST. Print, online, video, and multi-platform
storytelling formats are eligible to win an award and these may have been
published behind a paywall. You can enter more than one submission but with
a maximum of two categories per submission.
These are the best and worst cities in
Europe for eco-friendly transport links
When it comes to eco-friendly public
transport, it won’t surprise many that cities in Denmark, Norway and Sweden
made the top ten. In fact, Copenhagen tops the chart, followed by Oslo,
Paris, Amsterdam, Hamburg and Helsinki. Milan comes in seventh, with Lyon,
Ljubljana and Lisbon rounding out the top spots. Paris, Helsinki, Lisbon and
Brussels all scored a ten on their shared bikes and e-scooters ranking,
while Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Ljubljana scored the same for electric car
sharing. Not one city received full marks for zero-emission buses. The five
worst overall scorers are Edinburgh, Birmingham, Granada, Dublin and lastly,
Greater Manchester.
The climate change-denying TikTok post that
won't go away
Earlier this year, TikTok vowed to clamp
down on climate change denial. But a BBC investigation tracked one video
that has been viewed millions of times - and found the company is struggling
to stop false climate information from spreading across the platform. If you
searched for "climate change" on TikTok in recent months, you might have
come across a video featuring Dan Peña, a self-styled "business success
coach" with thousands of followers on social media. The video, shot during
the 2017 London premiere of a documentary film about Mr Peña, shows a heated
exchange between the American businessman and a member of the audience.
China urges developing countries to oppose
‘unrealistic’ shipping levy
China has urged poorer countries to oppose a
levy on shipping emissions and stronger targets for decarbonising one of the
world’s most polluting industries, criticising wealthy nations for setting
“unrealistic” goals with “significant” financial costs. Beijing distributed
a “diplomatic note” to developing nations as they prepared for a critical
meeting at the UN’s International Maritime Organization in July, according
to four people present at IMO discussions. The lobbying effort comes days
after France rallied 22 allies behind a shipping emissions levy. China
warned that “an overly ambitious emission reduction target will seriously
impede the sustainable development of international shipping, significantly
increase the cost of the supply chain and will adversely impede the recovery
of the global economy”.
Watch One Year Of Carbon Emissions Take Over
The Planet
It’s hard to miss something that weighs 37
billion tons—especially when it’s all around us. Thirty-seven billion tons
is the amount of fossil-fuel-related carbon dioxide humans release into the
atmosphere every year. We see the damage it does everywhere—from heat waves
to floods to droughts to wildfires and more. But the CO2 itself? Entirely
invisible. Until now. In a striking new video, NASA has made visible the
production—and, in some cases, absorption—of human-produced carbon dioxide
for the entirety of the year 2021. Over that period, the CO2 in the
atmosphere rose by 2.13 parts per million (PPM), marking the eleventh year
in a row in which the increase exceeded 2 PPM.
The choice between a poorer today and a
hotter tomorrow
The thought experiment is a simplified
version of a dilemma currently facing global institutions and developing
countries. On June 22nd politicians arrived in Paris for a summit to design
“a new global financial pact”. The aim was to work out how to spread the
cost of climate change. Leaders from poor countries turned up in droves;
aside from Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, no Western head of state
made it. Little surprise, then, that the jamboree ended without rich
countries contributing a single extra dollar. Instead, attendees tinkered
with the World Bank and the IMF, the biggest of the multilateral agencies
that seek to reduce poverty. The lack of action means painful trade-offs lie
ahead.
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Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2023 5:37 PM
Subject: 🌏 CAN EECCA Newsletter: Disputes over COP29, Greta Tunberg
meets Zelensky, Eco-friendly transport
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