The path towards decarbonization has never been a straight line. With war, however, the fight against climate change may go backwards before it goes forward.
Sustainability loses priority in the face of the conflict in Ukraine, its geopolitical implications and the energy crisis. Increased military spending takes resources away from other agendas, including the transition to a low-carbon economy. In the short term, the war has led to a race towards conventional energy security based on fossil fuels, including gas, but also coal.
In the US, Joe Biden’s environmental agenda is losing steam, even as large corporations maintain their environmental goals. Under the argument of decreasing Russia’s power over Europe, Washington increases production and exports of oil and gas to the bloc. Furthermore, if Republicans regain control of Congress in November, the relative importance of the clean energy transition drops even further.
In China, sustainability is certainly not top of mind at the moment. In the year that Xi Jinping seeks a new term, the priority is to ensure decent economic growth even in the face of a zero-tolerance policy for Covid. For this, there can be no lack of light (which happened in 2021).
Concern about energy security raises coal production to levels never seen before. The relationship with Russia guarantees the oil that China is not ready to give up. It is true that, at the same time, the country happily invests in clean energy. But coal, which is abundant, is a safe haven in the face of the imperative to ensure growth and stability.
In Europe, the tension is more acute between, on the one hand, energy and national security and, on the other, climate transition. In seeking to reduce energy dependence on Russia, the continent wants to take away the oxygen that finances Putin’s war, but it needs to achieve this result without compromising its own supply.
And the challenge does not end there: Brussels intends to take advantage of this moment to accelerate the transition towards clean energy, instead of delaying the process. Nuclear energy appears, more and more, as necessary to close the bill. It is not known to what degree the EU will be able to achieve the different objectives at the same time. In the heat of conflict, however, security concerns take precedence.
The war contributes to the fragmentation of the global energy market, as Eduardo Viola, from IEA/USP and FGV-SP tells me. There is an increase in energy interdependence between China and Russia, as well as between the US and Europe, with the Middle East acting in both markets.
Such a rearrangement strengthens those in both the US and China who prioritize the security agenda and have a hard-line view of the bilateral relationship. This new configuration of energy geopolitics favors pro-coal forces in Beijing and pro-shale forces in Washington, notes the professor. Such a scenario further diminishes the space for climate cooperation between the two largest global emitters of COâ‚‚. To top it off, India, in third place in emissions, intensifies its use of coal in the face of fears about energy supply (and a brutal heat wave).
The day before Russia invades Ukraine, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an alarming report on global warming. For it became a footnote in the news around the world in front of what followed. The Glasgow Climate Summit, held in November 2021, appears to have taken place in another geopolitical era.
In the short term, at least, the climate agenda is yet another casualty of the Ukraine War.
