As the COP21 climate change conference in Paris enters its second and final week, businesses and government leaders are increasing their calls for a climate deal and initiating new programs to limit global warming. Here are some of the recent announcements:
The Compact of States and Regions, a reporting mechanism for state and regional governments to submit climate targets, today announced plans to reduce their emissions by 12.4 GtC02e by 2030 — greater than China’s current annual output. The commitments come in the initiative’s first Disclosure Report, released at COP21.
Schneider Electric says it will provide access to big data generated from its WeatherSentry weather intelligence platform as part of the UN’s Data for Climate Action campaign. Last week Schneider Electric said it has networked more than 4,000 disparate rural area Weather Stations to provide a more holistic view of rural weather patterns across the US; now it is making this data publicly available.
Acciona pledged to achieve carbon neutrality across its entire global operations by 2016. The utility says it will invest a further $2.5 billion in new renewable energy installations over the next five years, mostly in developing countries, to increase installed capacity to 10,500 MW. This will avoid the emission of more than 20 million metric tons of CO2 a year.
RE100 says it has passed a milestone as BMW Group, Coca-Cola Enterprises, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., Nordea Bank AB, Pearson and Swiss Post have announced they will source 100 percent of their electricity from renewable energy, taking the total number of committed companies to 53. Other major companies including Microsoft, Adobe and Google have also joined RE100 in the last week.
Global e-Sustainability Initiative members say they will improve energy efficiency by 24 percent by 2030 compared to 2015. This effort builds on the findings of the GeSI #SMARTer2030 report, which identified the CO2e emission reduction potential that ICT can enable by 2030.
Green building councils from around the world pledged to register, renovate or certify 1.23 billion square meters of green buildings in the next five years. Also at COP 21 a new alliance of 16 countries and more than 60 organizations called the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (which includes WorldGBC, its 74 green building councils and their 27,000 member companies) also launched.
The Financial Stability Board it is establishing an industry-led disclosure task force on Financial Stability Board under the chairmanship of Michael Bloomberg. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures will develop voluntary, climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by companies in providing information to lenders, insurers, investors and other stakeholders.