COP 18: Doha

The 2012 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference took place in Doha, Qatar. Many thousands of delegates from the world’s governments and observer bodies attended the climate change talks to discuss ideas on how to further address the challenges of climate change, as well as negotiate national commitments to actually drive significant emissions reductions.

Negotiations at the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 18) and the 8th session of the COP served as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) seeking to enhance the global effort to pursue meaningful mitigation and adaptation action in order to halt global average temperatures rising above 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial times, and to advance a number of key issues on CCS.

At COP 17 in Durban in 2011, the rules of including CCS in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) were adopted, paving the way for developing countries to access alternative project finance and so potentially enhance their ability to contribute to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. Two main CCS-related matters were negotiated at these climate change talks, these being the trans-boundary movement of CO₂ and the establishment of a Global Reserve of Certified Emission Reduction Units (CERs) under the CDM.

However, many other matters negotiated at these climate change talks may also materially influence how CCS is developed and deployed over the coming years, including the establishment of new market mechanisms to further incentivise the deployment of low emissions technologies (such as CCS), as well as an ever evolving UNFCCC architecture to further encourage deep emissions reduction ambitions.

The Institute kept members updated on the developments of the climate change talks as they unfolded by posting a regular blog series. As it has done in previous years, the Institute also hosted several major side events to:

• raise public awareness of the role CCS must be allowed to play if the UNFCCC is to deliver on its ultimate objective of stabilising human-induced atmospheric emissions to avoid dangerous levels of climate change;
• present the excellent track record of CCS projects to date;
• continue to advocate for CCS friendly considerations by negotiators; and subsequently
• influence positive outcomes in the negotiations on the design of all UNFCCC mechanisms.