Bristol mayor Marvin Rees will travel to Egypt next week for a climate conference and try to raise cash from investors. He said at COP27 he would be representing not just Bristol, but also other UK cities and “cities all over the world” to get investment in climate projects.
Each year the United Nations hosts a global climate summit, called the Conference of Parties (COP), to get countries around the world to work together on tackling climate change. Last year, COP26 was held in Glasgow, and this year the summit will be in Sharm El Sheikh. Mr Rees said the annual climate summit was increasingly about finding investors to help pay for climate projects like district heat networks or underground metro systems, during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, November 1.
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He said: “For the world’s cities at the moment, particularly off the back of COP26, COP is the place where cities are going to connect with the finance they need to go on that journey of decarbonisation. There is no decarbonisation without investment, in retrofitting homes, putting in new heat systems, putting in heat networks, investing in mass transit systems.
“All of that takes investment. It’s not all in the public purse, it’s in private finance as well. In Glasgow last year, while there were many ways where COP underperformed, we were relieved about at last a recognition that cities were going to be at the front end of the world’s decarbonisation.
“Most of the world lives in cities, they have density on offer, that offers greater efficiencies, and they can move faster than national governments. The aim has been to align finance, places and technology. But it’s the financial innovation that’s needed to allow the technology to be rolled out.”
This year’s COP27 begins on Sunday, November 6, and will see world leaders once again attempt to agree global policies on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, initially caused controversy by choosing not to attend, before U-turning and deciding to travel to Egypt, after criticism about the new government not prioritising action on climate change.
But Bristol and other cities cannot rely on government funding, according to the mayor, to pay for the gigantic amount of public works needed to cut carbon emissions to net zero. Bristol and other British cities are attempting to raise investment for carbon-cutting projects, through a newly formed group called the Cities Commission for Climate Investment, or 3Ci for short.
Mr Rees added: “I’ll be going to COP myself, as part of 3Ci, along with Susan Aitken who is the leader of Glasgow which hosted COP last year. And obviously I’m chair of Core Cities now. Our real drive in COP is to begin to connect the near £300 billion of decarbonisation opportunities that we’ve identified across the UK’s biggest cities with the finance that will be at COP.
“It’s not going to happen if we’re reliant on government spending and government money, and it’s not going to happen if we rely on the current government for making our case. We have to go there and make the case ourselves.
“The case we make at COP is not just for Bristol, it is for the UK’s cities. But there’s also a very strong international angle to this, in that we’re making the case for cities all over the world. One of the big areas of challenge is how do we get the finance to cover and shape the rapid urbanisation that’s happening in the global south.
“If that happens in a chaotic manner, not only will it compound the climate change challenges brought about by chaotic, unplanned, inefficient urbanisation, but if urbanisation isn’t helped to happen in the global south in an orderly manner, we will add on top of climate challenge to the already growing burden of climate-driven migration.
“We’re looking at 150 million climate-driven migrants by the middle of the century unless we get ahead of it. So the case we’re making is for UK cities and cities in the global south as well, and how we make sure international finance begins to work the way the world is.”
Last year’s COP26 saw an agreement from world leaders to cut down the use of coal, a fuel which emits a huge amount of greenhouse gases and contributes to global warming — but this agreement was watered down at the last minute. COP21 was held in Paris in 2015, and saw a landmark agreement to aim towards limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. But last week a new UN report found the world is currently on track to warm by 2.8 degrees this century.
