Finance
India has joined the First Movers Coalition, a flagship public-private partnership led by the United States to clean up the most carbon-intensive industry sectors, ranging from heavy industry to long-distance transportation.
On Wednesday, the coalition announced a significant expansion to more than 50 corporate members worth approximately $8.5 trillion and a total of nine leading governments, including the United States, covering more than 40% of global GDP.
At a press conference hosted by the World Economic Forum, US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate Change John Kerry made the announcement alongside Bill Gates, founder of Breakthrough Energy.
The coalition welcomed India, Japan, and Sweden to the steering committee, as well as Denmark, Italy, Norway, Singapore, and the United Kingdom as government partners.
These government partners will invite companies from their respective countries to join the coalition and will pursue public policies to commercialise the green technologies that corporate members have agreed to buy.
The First Movers Coalition, led by the World Economic Forum and the US government, targets sectors such as aluminium, aviation, chemicals, concrete, shipping, steel, and trucking, which account for 30% of global emissions – a figure that is expected to rise to more than 50% by mid-century unless urgent progress on clean technology innovations is made.
To decarbonize at the rate required to keep the planet on a 1.5-degree trajectory, these sectors will need low-carbon technologies that are not yet competitive with current carbon-intensive solutions but must reach commercial scale by 2030 in order to achieve net-zero emissions globally by 2050.
To kick-start the market, coalition members agree to purchase a percentage of their total industrial materials and long-distance transportation spending from suppliers using near-zero or zero-carbon solutions, despite the higher cost.
If enough global companies commit a certain percentage of their future purchases to clean technologies this decade, a market tipping point will be reached, accelerating their affordability and driving long-term, net-zero transformation across industrial value chains.
The coalition is launching two new sectors: carbon dioxide removal and aluminium, which will join the four existing sectoral pledges launched at COP26 (aviation, shipping, steel, and trucking).
Piyush Goyal, Minister of Commerce and Industry, said: “India has been at the forefront of climate change actions. The idea of LIFE — ‘Lifestyle For Environment’ — as highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the call for a global mass movement on sustainable lifestyles, is very critical for combating climate change.”
“India has also taken global leadership with initiatives like the International Solar Alliance, One Sun One World One Grid, and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. We believe that the need of the hour is to strengthen technological innovation so as to have cost-effective climate technologies on a larger scale.
“The First Movers Coalition has a huge role to play in this and to achieve our climate goals.”
US Special Presidential Envoy Kerry said the purchasing commitments made by the First Movers Coalition represent the highest-leverage climate action that companies can take because creating the early markets to scale advanced technologies materially reduces the whole world’s emissions — not just any company’s own footprint.
“With today’s expansion, the coalition has achieved scale across the world’s leading companies and support from committed governments around the world to tackle the hardest challenge of the climate crisis: reducing the emissions from the sectors where we don’t yet have the toolkit to replace unabated fossil fuels and swiftly reach net-zero emissions.”
Borge Brende, World Economic Forum President, said: “The coalition’s members are truly the ‘first movers’ who are focused on scaling disruptive innovations that pave the way for long-term transformation rather than the lower-hanging fruit of short-term process efficiency gains.”
“Once the tipping point is reached in the market, the First Movers Coalition will demonstrate that a net or near-zero transformation across the value chain is not only possible but that it will be no more expensive than the high-emitting alternative.”
Source:OCN
