UK’s Miliband ‘confident’ of binding climate pact in Mexico

London,14 January: UN talks in Mexico at the end of this year are likely to produce the legally binding climate change treaty that eluded negotiators in Copenhagen, according to the UK’s climate change secretary of state.

He also said that he believes the EU will increase its 2020 emission reduction target to a 30% cut below 1990 levels, from 20%.

Copenhagen “was definitely a disappointment”, Ed Miliband told a meeting at the UK’s Houses of Parliament last night, convened by the Aldersgate Group, a grouping of European businesses promoting high environmental standards. But, he added, “we shouldn’t give up on a legal treaty.”

“In retrospect – we were expecting a lot. But we were right to raise the stakes,” he said. “Movements that have right on their side rarely succeed at first attempt … I’m confident we can get a legal treaty” at the talks in Mexico City, which will take place in December this year, he added.

Environmental groups and many developing countries were pressing at Copenhagen for a legally binding climate change agreement to take effect from 2013, when the first target period of the Kyoto Protocol expires.

However, amid near-chaos in the final hours of the talks, heads of state were only able to salvage the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, which is light on detail, omits any emissions reduction commitments and was not formally adopted by the conference but merely “noted”.

Miliband argued that, while Copenhagen disappointed, the run up to the conference generated significant progress in efforts to tackle climate change – including commitments from a number of key developing countries to constrain their emissions growth.

“The world moved in the [preceding] year,” he said. “I think this shift is irreversible.”

He also said that he believes the EU will raise its emissions reduction target – which it had promised to do if other industrialised countries signed up to similarly ambitious undertakings. In Copenhagen, some environmental groups called on the EU to move unilaterally, in an effort to break the deadlock – which it declined to do.

Nonetheless, Miliband said “I think Europe will move to 30%,” stating that “it’s important for the carbon price.” This, he said, is “important for economic as well as climate change reasons”, as a higher carbon price would incentivise low-carbon technologies.

Also addressing the meeting, Neil Carson, CEO of materials company Johnson Matthey, pointed out that “as far as business is concerned, not much has changed” since Copenhagen.

While the business community wants an “ambitious, robust and equitable deal”, the negotiations did not lead to any more certainty. However, business can nonetheless assume that energy prices will rise, consumers will increasingly value low-carbon products and there will – at some point – be a legally binding treaty, he said.