 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Carol Werner. I'm the Executive Director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute and on behalf of EESI We want to welcome you to this briefing this afternoon To take a look at what's in the Paris climate deal and indeed. How did we get there get there And We're going to take a look at that this afternoon I think we have a wonderful panel to kind of lead us through that in terms of what happened, why, what is it, and indeed bringing us perspectives not only from here in the United States, and we will hear from one of our lead negotiators with regard to that, but also to have perspectives from the host country of those Paris negotiations as well as hearing from a counselor at the German Embassy. Germany has obviously been an enormously important climate leader for a very, very long time. So to start off our discussion this afternoon as we take a look at this global agreement that involved virtually every country in the world, which is something that is sobering and also very, very exciting to understand, to comprehend. Our first speaker will be Dr. Daniel Riefsneider, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment at the State Department. Dr. Riefsneider has been the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment since 2006, where he is responsible for U.S. involvement across a broad range of issues related to environmental quality, conservation, water, and of course global climate change. And he has led U.S. delegations under multiple, multiple bilateral agreements and treaties. And in his role obviously he has always worked very closely with the Special Envoy for Climate Change and has served as the alternate chair for the major economies forum on energy and climate change. Dr. Riefsneider has been involved on climate issues and looking at so many environment and energy issues during his work at the Department of State that goes clear back to the late 80s and indeed he was the alternate head of the U.S. delegation to the negotiations in 1991 and 1992 that led to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was signed in Rio. Before going to state, Dr. Riefsneider also came from a background at NOAA where he was for a number of years, so he brings a lot of experience coming from that scientific agency dealing with oceans and atmosphere. Dan? Well good afternoon and let me say it's a great pleasure to be here today to give, to talk about the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. I'd like to thank my good friend Carol Werner for inviting me and also say hello to my colleagues Bruno Fulda from the French Embassy and Georg Maurer from the German Embassy. Let me first say that I'm here not as a representative of the Department of State but in my former capacity as the co-chair of the ad hoc group on the Durban platform and I will speak from that perspective today. I'd like to cover three things in the time I have. First, I'd like to talk about the negotiating process that led to the Paris Agreement. Second, how the negotiations differed in important respects from what might be considered more traditional negotiations. And third, some key features of the Paris Agreement. So to begin, the negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement officially began in 2012 following an adoption of a decision at COP 17 in Durban that established the ad hoc group on the Durban platform or the ADP for short. The group met throughout 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 under three different sets of co-chairs. One from a developed country and one from a developing country. Negotiations did not produce a negotiating text until February of last year. In fact, it was this very week last year in Geneva, I should just note, in Geneva that we had that meeting. That is when my co-chair and I, Dr. Ambassador Ahmed Jogla from Algeria, began our work. What we had going in were 39 pages of elements for a negotiating text that were annexed to the decision taken by the COP at its 17th session in Lima, the so-called Lima Call for Climate Action. Our job at the Geneva session was to put together a draft negotiating text before May as called for in the Lima decision. To do this, the text had to be acceptable to all parties. This meant that the process in which it was produced had to be legitimate in the eyes of all parties. And that, in turn, meant that all parties would need to have an opportunity to provide their input. To get there, Ahmed and I asked the parties to tell us how the elements from Lima would need to be modified. What parts they wish to modify and what additions they wish to make. We established only two rules. First, that each proposal had to be read out in a plenary session so that everyone would know where it came from. And second, they had to submit their proposals to the secretariat in writing so that we could be sure we had very clearly what each party had proposed. It was clear to us, even at the time, that what would emerge from such a process would not be a thing of beauty. And it was not. The 39 pages of elements grew into the Geneva negotiating text that ran to some 86 pages. It was not so much a negotiating text as it was a compilation of the views of all parties. Still, putting together such a text in essentially the first three days in that six-week session in Geneva, a six-day session in Geneva, took people's breath away. And it created a very positive spirit, a very critical element given the ranker and the acrimony so familiar to the UN FCCC process. Evidence of this spirit could be seen even at the outset when parties agreed to refrain from making opening statements in plenary and instead to make their statements available electronically to save time. We were also able at the time to hold plenary discussions on three key issues. One was on the structure of the agreement because it was my sense that people had very different ideas in mind about what an ultimate agreement might look like. The cycles for updating the agreement and the issue of markets or what I referred to at the time as markets, non-markets, and no markets. Views were widely divergent on that issue. Geneva accomplished its task and the Geneva negotiating text was translated into all UN languages and circulated to all parties in March of last year, well in advance to the May deadline. The ADP then met thereafter in Bonn for two weeks in June. Its main task at that time became consolidating and streamlining this 86-page text and also trying to eliminate options. I forget how many options we had. In some cases I think they approached 18 in one particular paragraph. So this proved to be a very difficult task and by the end of the session, parties had managed to reduce that text by about four pages from the 86 pages that they began with. But everybody was happy. It was a good spirit and so forth. They were just getting frustrated that things weren't going faster. Nevertheless, I would just tell you several very critical things emerged at that June meeting. The first was that parties agreed to the schedule that we had proposed and that included working outside the normal hours. They agreed to work at lunchtime. They agreed to work into the evening, which was kind of unheard of at that point. And a very important accomplishment if we were going to get this work done in the time we had. The second was that they agreed to work with a set of 11 co-facilitators that Ahmed and I had carefully recruited to help us, breaking down the work into different sections. And again, that had been extremely controversial. Parties were very reluctant previously to let us use co-facilitators. Third, they agreed to work with textual proposals that were prepared by the secretariat to help consolidate and streamline and reduce the number of options. That may seem like just basic to you, but I'm telling you in that process this was extraordinary because people were so suspicious and so distrustful that they wouldn't even allow the secretariat to help them in that respect very often. Fourth, parties almost universally urged that broad conceptual discussions be avoided. And instead, they wanted to see complex concepts such as differentiation and equity taken up in the specific discussions of mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building, where having a context made them somewhat more tractable. I thought that was also quite revealing because we've spent endless, I can't, I don't want to subtract years off my life for all the conceptual discussions we've had in the UN that just go in great elliptical circles. But this was very, very positive. Fifth, they agreed to hold a series of side events that enabled parties who had prepared intended nationally determined contributions. Those are the specific actions that each country proposes to take to present what they had done and to respond to questions. Now, that may seem also to you like, well, what's the problem here? But there had been so much controversy generated in Lima over the issue of ex-anti-review. In other words, were countries going to be reviewing each other's INDCs and getting to comment on them before they were finalized? Would NGOs and others be able to do this in an official setting? Highly controversial in Lima, and it ended up not going forward as part of the Lima decision. So even bringing that back just to the extent of having these side events, we had to call them side events so people could relax, and then have them organized in a way that people could just present what they'd done and others could learn from it was extraordinary in my view. To these, I might add a sixth, that by the end of the meeting, parties actually asked the co-chairs to help prepare the next session by undertaking further elements and consolidating and streamlining the text and reducing options without omitting any views of the views of any parties. Now that, again, may also seem like a small thing, but in the context of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, it was huge. We agreed to do so, Ahmed and I, provided that we could go further in the streamlining consolidation effort and also in trying to reduce the number of options without taking positions off the table than what the parties themselves had done. But we also said, look, there are areas where it's clear something is going to go into the agreement, ultimately, because this agreement is only going to take effect from 2020 forward. So you can't put something that deals with actions before 2020 in the agreement. And they say, okay. And then we said, it's also clear that you're going to have some provisions that go into a decision. And you're not going to put things like certain things in a decision when these are actions that are much nearer term. And decisions are where you spell out details of what goes in agreement, kind of like the difference between a law and the regulations to implement the law. So they gave us permission, in effect, permission, to take this document and try to begin distributing these things in the appropriate category. And what we did then, we produced something for the following session that began at the end of August that came to be referred as the Co-Chairs Tool. I won't mention all of the various inappropriate remarks people made about the Co-Chairs Tool, but in any event, it was an effort to begin separating these things into these different categories. We only had three parts. One was agreement, one was decision, and one was, in effect, other. And other were a number of provisions that were very important to the final decision, final agreement. But where we couldn't, as Co-Chairs, decide where it belonged. And we needed further discussion from the parties. That was the document that we had going into the session then after June that took place at the end of August, beginning of September, for about a week. That was very good. I think the session, once again, was very positive. People said, the ambiente is good. But if they were concerned in June about the lack of progress, they became even more concerned at the end of that session in September. And they felt we were moving too slowly. And it was at this point they asked us to undertake a more significant step forward prior to the October session, which was the last one before Paris. Now, for that session, Ahmed and I produced a non-paper on the 5th of October. That consisted of nine pages of agreement text and 26 articles. We also produced 11 pages of decision text. This reduced the Geneva negotiating text from over 80 pages to 20. Without doubt, the non-paper generated controversy, as you might imagine. Some said that we'd gone too far. They said that we'd badly miscalculated. But I believe that the October 5th non-paper was the single most important precursor to the Paris Agreement that would emerge just over two months later on the 12th of December. This is because the October 5th non-paper created a vision of what the Paris outcome might look like, and it gave parties a workable template from which to fashion the final deal. Up to that point, they had nothing but the Geneva negotiating text and have revised but still unworkable co-chairs tool. I gotta move a lot faster, sorry. It's interesting that this agreement proposed on October 5th ran to nine pages that the Paris Agreement itself ultimately ran to 12. The agreement proposed on October 5th contained 26 articles. The Paris Agreement contains 29. The decision proposed on October 5th ran to 11 pages. The decision adopted in Paris runs to 19. In other words, what ultimately emerged in Paris largely followed the shape and structure of the vision that the parties had of the Paris outcome that we tabled in October. After the October session, parties negotiated for a week in Paris ahead of the final effort that the French led so ably between December 5th, when the ADP finished its work, and December 12th when the parties adopted the final text. The deal done in Paris was thus rooted in the negotiating process undertaken in the ADP and grew out of the work product produced by the ADP. No alternative text was parachuted in from elsewhere and no other negotiating process sought to substitute for that undertaken by the ADP and the Comité de Paris, which succeeded in the second week in Paris, which succeeded it, it succeeded the ADP. This was, in my view, a key ingredient to the agreement's ultimate acceptance by the parties. Now, I'd like to just quickly, if I could, address what was different about this negotiation from what we'd had previously. I've been doing this for about 41 years so far, and I've been involved in all kinds of different negotiations. And I'd like to just say, this negotiation really didn't begin in October in Durban. It began well before then in Copenhagen. I say this because it was the Copenhagen Accord that began to record mitigation actions taken, both by developed countries and developing countries, and that thereby began to break down the firewall that had existed between them ever since adoption of the Framework Convention in 1992. It was also the Copenhagen Accord that called for $30 billion in fast start financing and in which developed countries pledged to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation. It was also the Copenhagen Accord that decided to create the Green Climate Fund. So the fact that these actions were all taken well before Paris is what is remarkable. Normally, these are the items of end game in a negotiation. It's very rare that you don't put these on the table before the formal negotiation even begins. So that was the first point I found very different. Second, most negotiations took place. Most negotiations I've been involved with take place under a single chair who's elected at the outset and serves until the end. The ADP had no single chair, but it had two co-chairs. And the co-chairs did not begin at the beginning and serve until the end. They were switched out three times along the way. What does this tell you about the trust with which parties approach the negotiation of a protocol, another legal instrument or an outcome with legal force under the Durban decision? Third, it is accepted practice everywhere that the chair has latitude to propose text to the parties and that the parties accept to work with drafts that are prepared by the secretariat under the direction of a chair. In the case of the ADP, co-chairs were reminded time and again that this was a party-driven process in which the initiative should come from the parties and not from the co-chairs. So there was a great deal of distrust along the way of those people who had been elected to help facilitate an outcome. There are many other ways in which the ADP negotiations proved unlike any I've seen before, but despite these differences, they ultimately succeeded. And I'd like to just say why is that? I would note that in Copenhagen, there was what I've described as an upstairs-downstairs problem. That is, there was a major disconnect in Copenhagen between what took place on the second floor, literally on the second floor of the negotiating hall among some key heads of state and government and what was taking place on the first floor between negotiations, between negotiators of all the parties. When the two gears came together, they simply didn't mesh. In addition, in Copenhagen, the negotiating text on the table when the parties arrived was well over 200 pages. The presidency at the time undertook efforts among a subset of parties to develop a more workable basis for an agreement, but when other parties learned of those efforts in the press and they reacted very negatively to them, questioning the legitimacy of any separate process or text. The fear and suspicion that arose from that episode rippled long after Copenhagen. Fortunately, we were able to learn from the past and improve on it. First, the ADP last year was characterized by the absence of protracted discussions on process. This is because Ahmed and I met with each of the negotiating groups at length in the run-up to each negotiating session. For each session, we prepared a scenario note setting forth our thoughts on how to organize a session, and we changed the approach based on the discussions that we had with the parties. By the time we got to the formal negotiating sessions, most, if not all, of these procedural concerns had been resolved. And we also changed course as necessary in the course of the negotiating sessions themselves. Second, Ahmed and I were also clear from the outset that in our discussions with the French presidency that the ADP should end its work by a date certain and that afterward negotiations should continue only in the COP. In other words, there should be only one negotiating process underway at any particular time in Paris. The French presidency, I can tell you, completely agreed. And we did this, we worked together with the French presidency agreeing that we should end our work in the ADP on the 5th of December. And that was when we made the formal handoff that was actually televised presenting to Minister Fabius the text. And third, as described, there was never any separate effort to develop a negotiating text, and the French presidency was clear on this point throughout the year that there was no other negotiating text than that that we were producing in the ADP and that there would be no other text. This went very far to providing the needed reassurances to the parties. Finally, I might add that France, which took over as president of the COP in Paris and Peru, which held the COP presidency through 2015 until that point, worked together hand in hand throughout the year. They held a series of meetings first in Lima and later four times at the ministerial level in Paris, not to negotiate text, but to agree on, try to explore what the landing zones might be with respect to the most difficult issues. The socialization of these issues and the process and the possible solutions they undertook among ministers and the teams that they recruited to help them went far to produce the positive outcome in December. My party, I guess my parting observation here is that the UNFCCC can be a difficult place in which to maneuver. With many constraints that are not normally encountered elsewhere, it behooves anyone coming into the UNFCCC process to make no assumptions and to seek to learn the territory well in advance. In this, I recall a wonderful book written by Canada's ambassador to Washington a number of years ago, a man named Alan Gottlieb. And it's called, I'll be with you in a minute, Mr. Ambassador. And he says at the outset that notwithstanding his many diplomatic assignments elsewhere, including ambassadorships to several other important countries, he realized in his first week in Washington that his prior experience, however extensive, wouldn't help him here at all. That this was just too different a place and he had to start from the beginning. It's quite an amusing book, so I highly recommend it to you. I have a number of points on the key features of the agreement. I think in the interest of time, I'll forego those. I'd said, I'll be responding to that in the questions if you like, but the agreement, frankly, is so short you can read it and you can actually digest it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for providing those insights in terms of looking at how the process evolved and how critical that process and the whole role of these individuals in terms of the co-chairs, but all of the parties who were at those meetings, how important everybody was in terms of the development of those trust relationships were in order to bring us to where we are. It really is an amazing story of the whole role of people working together and wanting something to come out at the end in a positive way. So we will definitely come back and want to get your views with regard to some of those key elements too. And as you were talking also about the whole role of France and the French presidency with regard to COP 21, the Conference of Parties in Paris, we thought that it was so important therefore to have France be part of this briefing, to have the French government be represented here. And so I'm delighted to introduce Bruno Fulda, who is the Counselor for Ecology, Transportation, and Energy at the Embassy here in Washington. Where Mr. Fulda has responsibility for dealing with the United States as well as with Canada. And he is a French Foreign Civil Service with a background in financial, legal, and technical issues and has had numerous responsibilities in various fields of public affairs, as well as in the private sector. He's been an advisor to French transport ministers and was then the chief economist and planner for an airline to give you an example of that and has been in charge of the economics of the French airline industry within the French government. He's held a broad range of responsibilities within the French government, dealing with international affairs and a variety of UN agencies in terms of representing France. And one thing that I want to raise that I also thought was so important in the whole run up to Paris was the important role that the Embassy played here in Washington in terms of its outreach to the policy community, to the business community, to leaders in civil society, to mayors, et cetera through many, many meetings. Again, garnering opinions, building relationships, the French Embassy hosted and Bruno was in charge of this, a form of communities for urban sustainability. And that was held last March. And throughout there was this extensive work in terms of really trying to reach out and bring people together, which I think in terms of looking at the whole role of France with regard to hosting and leading COP 21 in Paris is really quite incredible in terms of the role that they played and of course coming so quickly after the horrific bombings that occurred just a week before. Bruno? Well, thanks a lot, Carol, for inviting us. And I should say that you are very privileged to have Dan Reusner having explained to you and that you should focus your questions to that guy who has so much knowledge. Every time I listen to him, I learn new things and I feel privileged to be here today, be it for that reason. I'm very honored to be able to be with you today. And I think I will not talk about the COP because you did that so well. Or very briefly, I actually took off the part of my presentation about the COP. After that huge work that was done in Paris and of course, I could say we only had to work during the second week and just harvest what Dan Reusner and his Algerian colleague had prepared for some in months, which was almost the case. It was really a fantastic achievement that he just described. What I want to focus on today is what we're gonna do now and why is 2016 the year to be mobilized? We, of course, we did do a great amount of work last year and Carol was kind enough to remind or describe the role of the embassies here. And at the end of it, we were saying, well, COP 21 in Paris is not the end. It's the start of a new process and there is a lot to be done. Why was it a success? Well, first, that mobilization that Dan has explained, the fact that it was prepared and not only in the previous months, but as long as from Copenhagen and we find in Paris many items that were prepared in Copenhagen. And also, I think there was a willingness of many nations, including this one, there was a very important role of the US in the success of the COP. To make it a success. And let me, I could have several examples. I'm thinking about, when was it November 2014 when there was this agreement between President Obama and President Xi of China? That was a game changer. The world thought, well, they're serious and if China is on board, maybe we should consider. But everyone, well, many actors wanted to be in and one of the reasons of the success also was this bottom-up approach that was chosen. That means listening to people. That's the process that Dan described for the ADP negotiations. But that's also what was done. And here on the field, we did go and talk to numerous NGOs, to the cities, to states, to provinces in Canada, and to the business, I'll come back to that. So there was more than one year preparation and as was mentioned, when we arrived in Paris, more than 180 INDCs contribution by states were on the table and that was new and there was a big, big contributing factor. Just without being too long, just mentioned also the action of Pope Francis. He came here, he talked. That also was something to be taken into account and as was very nicely reminded by Dan, we worked very closely with Peru as we go now to handle the presidency in one year to Morocco, we will work with Morocco, the preparation with Peru. So the Association of One Northern States and developing countries and developed countries helped talking to everyone. So globally, the Paris Agreement, we used to describe it in three words and many of you remind, remember, sorry, the mobilization that happened in New York during the Ban Ki-Mung Summit in 2014. Unfortunately, due to the attacks in Paris, we could not replicate that but there were 500,000 people in New York who were expecting one million people on the street of Paris and the COP was not only a big diplomatic meeting, there were also thousands of side events because everyone wanted to participate. So we used to describe the agreement as ambitious and universal. I'm gonna maybe try to be a bit quick on that assuming that you have looked through it and you're familiar with the thing, universal because most of the, well, all the parties have signed it and ambitious because we have put the two degree target in the agreement but we have also written the 1.5 degree and it describes a pathway to decarbonize the industry, the economy and to come to a beginning point and by the second half of the century, neither did I, go to buy, sorry, by the middle of the century, come to a non-carbon economy if possible. So it is, and this is ambitious and that's the way to limit the climate warming. The agreement is dynamic and why did I put the ratchet instead of a huge table that you'll find in the handouts? It's dynamic because it has a lot of mechanism in it including a review mechanism which will set time by time after certain meeting points, the targets, there will be an initial review of the efforts as soon as early as 2018 and then there will be a formal meeting schedule in 2023. This is supposed to motivate each party, each country to bolster its commitment. Even before the agreement comes into force in 2020 as Dan Reitzinger reminded you, the work which was done in Paris will come into force in 2020 and also the agreement establishes a common framework of transparency so that, sorry, commitments and contribution can be attract and can be accounted for. This is a very tricky or complicated or specific part of the agreement and of the negotiation and I think this is a good part of the victory. And finally, the Paris Agreement is usually considered, what did I do? Okay, I got it. It's considered as fair and inclusive. It has in itself the concept of differentiation between developed and developing countries. That's what the Prime Minister Modi of India calls the climate justice and that applies to all subjects. So rich country basically are responsible to helping the most vulnerable countries and one way of doing so is through their commitment to provide $100 billion per year as soon as 2020 in financing project in the field of climate. So as I mentioned already, the involvement of civil society was very important and it definitely played a role in the negotiations. I would like, every time I meet the negotiator, I'd like to have those story of how the NGOs were part of the negotiation, they were observers, how the involvement, the fantastic implications of cities, networks of cities, of businesses throughout the world were helping the negotiators and my feeling is that if we are 60 negotiators in this room for a week and we have a task to achieve or if we are in the same conditions but we know that outside this door and when we go back to our hotels tonight and for the coffee, we will meet people who are as much convinced as we are but with different agenda and they talk to us, maybe we'll come with some different results and I think that in some way that's what happened in Paris. So the civil society, we put all the initiatives in a big basket that we called the Lima Paris Action Agenda, maybe that's a simplification, under that umbrella, those are the numerous initiatives, more than actually 11,000 stakeholders were presenting either in Paris at the COP, at Le Beaujet or within the city or on the website that was provided by UN, their contribution, their commitment, their initiatives. You'll have more details in the hands out and anywhere on the net. To give you an idea, I will just quote a few of them. One is the, what's the first one? The first one is the portfolio for the Decarbonization Coalition. So numerous, more than 100 companies committed to get out of carbon to make it easier or to provide financing towards green economy. Another one is the pact, I can't see it here so do you read the blue? So the Paris pact on water and climate change adaptation which aims at not only exchanging good practices between river basins, managers, but also brings a big amount of money. Another one is of course the International Solar Alliance that you may have heard of recently and they are in every field. There is a building alliance, there is a building alliance for green building or energy efficiency. There are commitments in the field of public transportation, et cetera, et cetera, agriculture, forest, you name it. So the DLPGA is what we will want and one of the things we will concentrate on this year. Actually, we set ourselves as the presidency, you know that France is present of the cup until we hand over the presidency to Morocco next November. So we have three priorities. Of course the first one is to have that agreement signed and ratified and I'll come back to that. Maybe not everyone is familiar with international negotiation but when you have an agreement so that it comes into force, it has to be ratified by a certain number of parties and here it's 55% of the parties which represent more than 55% of the global emission. I'd like to ask when is that 50% measured? Is it today or later? When it's ratified by that number of parties it comes into force at the date it is decided. The second priority is the preparation and implementation. As Dr. Reifsnader mentioned, there is the agreement and there are decisions which are part of the agreement and I also urge you to browse through it to read it and there are many issues that still have to be determined, that have to be fine-tuned. I mentioned the five year review, I mentioned transparency, you may have heard about climate finance. All those notions represent broad principles and in many cases they have to be more defined, put into national policies and that will prepare the implementation of the agreement and for that there is a processing course. There will be a new meeting in Bonn, in May Bonn is where usually the negotiators it's the headquarters of the UNFCCC so that's where they have their base when they're not in Geneva or somewhere else and before even they formally meet in Bonn, Laurent Fabius who is still our foreign Affair Minister has prepared a meeting in April. And then I mentioned it, the agreement will take into force, will come into force in 2020, we will not wait until 2020 to act so those five years that we have in front of us should be used and here we come back to that LPAA, the Lima Paris Action Agenda. NASCAR is the name of the platform of the website of UN and the Action Day we had at the COP an Action Day where civil society was invited to express its commitment and I understand that now every COP will have an Action Day. So I'm ready to conclude in a few pages. Again, in the immediate action, France is very much committed to work towards, sorry, to work towards the concretization of many of those initiatives. I mentioned already a few. A new one that I did not mention is Mission Innovation that was proposed by President Orland, President Obama and Bill Gates which aims at doubling the amount of money which is put in research and development in renewable energies and this is of tremendous importance if we want to decarbonize the economy. We will be working at implementing the cruise which is the climate risk early warning system. It's a system of warning for vulnerable countries towards climate, violent climate issues. We will also work to the electrification of Africa and I noticed actually that this very Congress very recently passed the Electrify Africa Bill or ACT of which I'm quite happy and I just mentioned the Quito, the Habitat 3 which is United Nations Conference on Sustainable Urban Development that occurs every 20 years. The next occurrence is next October and this will be a very good occasion, very good opportunity to see the Paris Agreement in action. You cannot talk about climate development, you cannot by the way talk about sustainable development goals and climate separately. Those three issues are intermingled. So you missed that, so all these comes to 2020 and we aim to, you did miss it. So red is off, no? We got it back, sorry. Okay, because I have it here. So I'll go forward. Without my nice slides, to tell you that, I'll say again actually, how do we want to achieve those priorities? We want to pursue the negotiation, we want to implement the LPA and by the way, to implement the LPA, it was decided that France and Morocco will designate a champion which will be a chief coordinator. I'm very happy to confirm that Laurence Tubiana, who was the chief negotiator, has been designated the French champion a few days ago and today I don't know, I think Morocco has not designed its champion but they have already built their team and negotiation LPA and there is a third issue in 2016 which is, oh that will be, pardon. The third issue is things that have not been covered by the COP and I'm talking about the maritime sector, the aviation sector or HFCs and we will still work on that and for example, on aviation, there is since last week and for two weeks a big technical meeting in Montreal about the IKO, the UN body for aviation and they just two days ago came up with new standard for aviation which makes it, by the way, the first global agreement of a sector on standards on CO2. So work is ongoing and now where am I in my own? That says the same, just a bit more complicated. Here you have the negotiations with the different milestones, here you have the LPA and of course the Paris agenda since it covers all the initiatives is very complicated. You'll see meeting with Irena, you'll see meetings of Abu Dhabi, I suppose Davos is on the slide. There will be a meeting of civil society in Nantes, France by the end of the year. All this is supposed to, all those initiatives will converge into decarbonisation and here are the three other domain that I just mentioned. Now I'm close to conclusion, I just want to mention that France will be mobilised more than ever and we want to be exemplar. That means that we will be among the first one to ratify the agreement. We will post a bill in our parliament as early as May and we hope to ratify it before the summer and prison alone will be here at the opening of the ratification process here, that means United Nations in New York on April 22nd. We do put a lot of money, we have raised our commitments from three billion dollars to five billion dollars to contribute to that big aim of 100 billion. We have raised our commitments also for Africa. We want to show leadership and that means hand in hand with Morocco doing a bit of what I do, outreach, but mostly a lot of what Lawrence Tjubiana is going to do, structure the governance of that LPA, play a leading role in the cooperation project, and I mentioned already a few of them. And we want to use what we call public diplomacy, which was what we did during the whole year to help the COP being efficient. And since you want a conclusion, here it comes, to sum it up, in 2016, 2016 will be a year of action, it will be a year of mobilization, and this is as you know, I hope I've understood, not only for governments, but for all stakeholders, as we move forward toward cleaner, less carbonized word, to a more resilient development, it is vital, that's what we think, we think it's vital that everyone, and here again, businesses, cities, citizens as you are, NGOs, they're part to build upon the foundation that have been developed in Paris, and thank you for your attention. We will now turn to Dr. Georg Mao, who is the counselor for energy and climate policy at the German Embassy here in Washington, and he has served in this role for a few years now, and prior to that, had played various roles, worked on a number of different environmental topics with the German Environmental Protection Agency, as well as having worked with the German Federal Ministry for Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety, and his whole background in engineering and science has served him very well in terms of being a very active collaborator in the ministry's development of energy policies targeted at moving the Germany energy system towards greater use of renewable energy and much higher energy efficiency, and of course Germany has been taking a lead role on climate and clean energy policies for decades, and so we are delighted to have Georg with us today. You should have maybe my presentation, but anyway. Well, good afternoon everybody, and thank you so much Carol for inviting me again. After Dan and Bruno so well described the preparation for the COP 21 and what happened there and the outcome and what's next, my focus will be more on the German implementation of what is our target and what is our so-called national contribution to the climate policy process. But first of all, let me share one observation around this Paris Agreement. Actually, from the German perspective, it was outstanding what we observed the role of the United States. Actually, we had seen different times regarding the role of the United States, and I think with this, particularly with a proactive role and with their activities partnering with China and with India and being so active, I think this outcome would never have happened. And at the same time, we also congratulate France for a wonderful hosting and managing the process. In Germany actually, we are quite happy with the Paris Agreement. Of course, we were looking for a legally binding agreement in the beginning, but of course it was clear for everybody that this would not be possible with a number of parties, particularly the United States, giving the situation and the Congress. So we are happy, very happy with the outcome. And in Germany, this is the boring part. Not much has changed since then because the implementation of what we think is necessary doesn't change so much after Paris because we did that already before and the exciting part is we are well underway already on our development and on our energy policy which is very crucial for implementing our climate policy. I just wanted to show you some elements, what is going on in Germany, where are we working at, and the most important part, a centerpiece of our climate policy is of course the so-called energy transition because the only chance for us to really drive down our greenhouse gas emissions is work on the energy sector. And that is why we have very ambitious targets all over the energy sector. We want to drive down the emissions, not only in the energy sector, but overall by 80 to 95% by 2050. With regard to renewable energies, we identified as the main source which is available in Germany, carbon-free source. We want to boost the use of renewable energies in the electricity sector and achieve at least 80% in the electricity sector and more than 60% overall. And we think it's also important in order to achieve our other goals to improve our energy efficiency. So our target here is to drive down the energy demand by 50% until 2050. So with regard to renewables, we are quite well underway. Actually, just the last year, our percentage of renewable energy in the electricity sector reached 30%. We came from almost nothing. So if you look over the last 10 years, we more than tripled our share of renewable energies and it's working quite well in the electricity sector. And of course, this is the best sector. That's why we always show it. With regard to other sectors, particularly the transport sectors, we are still working on different solutions. But with regard to the electricity sector, that means we basically have to decarbonize that sector by the midst of the century. And that is basically our target. So Germany as the United States still relies on the use of coal. So 45% of our electricity comes from coal power plants. And of course, this doesn't match with our emission targets. So by the midst of the century, we probably will have renewables 80 to 90% and then the rest stemming from less emission intensive gas. The process of the energy transition is a very complex one, as you can imagine. And we follow it very intensively and it's a multitask project and we have an implementation plan for all the important sectors. And this is basically managed by the Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Well, I wanted to present a few questions I wanted to present a few challenges which we have of course in implementing our policies. The first one is drive down the emissions. The first 20 years were quite successful in driving down our emissions. Our next target is minus 40% compared to 1990 until 2020, we stand at 27%. So there's a lot of things to do. And we basically will have to touch upon the coal sector. So we have to develop new measures which are very difficult to implement. And we just learned not only since yesterday that in this country it's very difficult to bring through a measure on coal power plants and the same is true for Germany. So without the coal sector actually we won't without achieving success in the coal sector we won't achieve our targets, our emission targets. The second very important sector is using tapping the saving potential in the buildings. Two thirds of the energy spent in private households is spent on heating or cooling. And that is where we can save 80% of our energy used. And we are working on that with giving incentives for electric, for energetic renovation of buildings for example. Another big challenge in Germany is providing for a better infrastructure and one major project is building electricity transmission lines between the North and the South because we will have a lot of additional wind coming from the North. And we just started with offshore wind and there will be a lot of electricity being produced in the North but our demand centers are mainly in the South and in the West so we will need high voltage transmission lines for that. And then of course the whole infrastructure has to become much more intelligent. So that is a big project over the next decades. And in the long run of course we will need storage. And then if you look at the electricity sector again everything is about flexibility. So in the future the concept of base power will not be needed anymore. We are looking for flexibility solutions including storages, including demand response, including smart grids. So that is basically what is ahead of us and how we are implementing the climate policy and our climate targets. This is maybe a first take from the German perspective. Thank you. Thank you. And of course I think that we've seen a lot of the costs of wind and solar and particularly offshore wind. Those costs have really been driven down by the much earlier deployment of those technologies by Germany because Germany's really led the world in terms of very, very rapid deployment which has really, really helped the economics for everybody else I must say. So let's open it up for your questions or comments and if you could just identify yourself please, okay. How does the support. Thank you. Well, can we move that thing back? Because actually I don't see that part of the city. Sorry. That's fine. Stand here. That's my question. The point is I do not, I don't have any answer to that. First it isn't in the matter and I'll be very interested to see how it developed here. I could refer to my colleague but I don't think that the Department of State would have any comment on that. And what I just a very personal feeling is that from what I've seen on the ground talking with governors, with local EPAs and also with utilities, the fact that the Clean Power Plan was written and was negotiated for years made that the industrialists have taken it into account even if they oppose it. They are making plans just in case it is compulsory or not and they are working several hypotheses. I've been, well, so they're planning ahead with different hypotheses and only that has a positive impact on decarbonization. Now I shall not comment on something which is very new and internal. Thank you. Maybe I could add a little bit. I mean what we heard so far from the White House and from the EPA is that there are, of course, no plans to change anything around the agreement, the Paris Agreement so they are not afraid of achieving the targets but of course it's a centerpiece of their climate policy. And I agree with Bruno what we see on the ground is that a lot of things are already happening in terms of implementing the Clean Power Plan and on the other side, I mean, I just learned that last year, for instance, 14 gigawatt of power plant capacity was shut down due to economic reasons. So this is a process which is happening anyway and of course the extension of the tax credits for renewable energies will play a role. And so altogether, I mean, we all hope for the best that the Clean Power Plan will be implemented in the one or the other way but even without immediate implementation we see the things are already happening but of course at the end this could be, this could mean that the Supreme Court decides in a let's say in a not supportive way in the end and the Clean Power Plan might not survive the way it is now but still we see there's a lot of reason why this development will maintain. Thanks because I think that everyone is sort of looking at this whole issue and obviously as both speakers made clear, there is so much that is already underway and in fact I know that there are meetings here in town this week involving state regulators and state energy officials looking at how things are moving forward. Over here, okay. Hi, Dean Scott, Bloomberg BNA here in DC. I guess my question is also for our friends from France and Germany to ask a little bit about the way in which we created the agreement in Paris in terms of having a pledge-based system, does the Supreme Court decision sort of raise questions in terms of the detail that countries were to put forth in their INDCs which is rather vague in terms of where each party was to get its emissions reduction. And here we are sort of in this question, these questions have been raised by the court decision on a key component of one country's pledge. I'm not sure I totally got the question. Is it that INDCs are not very precise and we are not sure how they will be enforced? Well, for example, the US, if you look at the US pledge, it's INDC, it's rather brief. It's a few pages, I think, at best. That's the question. And so it doesn't really, I believe, even suggest how much of its emissions reduction is to come from the Clean Power Plan. So I'm saying in terms of what does it get from this one policy that's now under attack? So what I'm saying is looking back, should we have had more specifics from countries to put more meat on exactly how they were going to get to the emissions reduction they were pledging in the first place? Well, here I think you are going into the detail and mechanism of the negotiation. And it was broadly explained at the beginning that it is a bit complicated to have 200 countries agree on something. And that is the next step, actually. This transparency, those ways of mechanism of reviewing by the parents, that will be a way to monitor what people do. Now, what they will actually do effectively is left to every country. And we have not, for the time being, set up a blue helmet force to go and enforce in the countries what they have committed. I think that one of the, maybe two things, which are more or less the same, very briefly, the momentum that was in Paris. And the fact, I've talked about millions of people on the streets. I won't be long on that because you all have seen that there was a mobilization around the world. And the second point is name and shame. If governments don't do what they have committed to do, there will be pressure by the streets. I know a bit of China. China, I would declare, is a democracy like here or in Europe. Nevertheless, in China, environment is a very sensitive issue. And the people, the real people, we the people on the street, they pressure their government on those issues. For that answer. Dan, do you want to talk about that piece of the process a little bit more in terms of these commitments and what was involved in that and that process? I think that'd be really helpful. Sure. Well, as Bruno said, trying to get close to 200 countries to do anything, even to agree on what time of day it is, rather big deal. And I think what we had, what's remarkable to me about the Paris Agreement is just how robust it is, given all of the concerns that countries had. And one of the ways we dealt with that was by saying, OK, we'd like you to come forward, and we'd like all countries to come forward and put your contributions on the table, which is what they did. In fact, as we came to Paris, I think we had nearly 190 countries had come forward with INDCs, which was, I mean, it frankly staggered everyone. No one had any idea that we would do that well prior to the beginning of the Paris negotiation. And that commitment that they've made in those INDCs is an initial commitment. I mean, it's one under the agreement that is nationally determined. So each country decides what to do and how to approach it. But then each country has agreed that that will be updated periodically, essentially on a, well, I think ultimately will be on a five-year cycle in terms of the mitigation commitments. And I think it's quite remarkable. We knew that these INDCs, even though there were nearly 190 of them, everyone knew it was very clear from a number of studies that had been done, they would not add up to minus two degrees, much less minus 1.5, which was one of the objectives of the agreement. So then the question became, OK, well, what are you going to do? Well, what we're going to do is we have this fairly rigorous process in which we're going to be periodically renewing those commitments and discussing those commitments. And it's not so much the pressure that comes from governments pointing the finger at each other as it is from countries putting these out publicly for review and consideration by everyone, other governments, but NGOs, think tanks, analytical groups, and so forth. It's that public pressure in light of the concerns that people have about climate change that we think is going to lead to, ultimately, to the kind of action that is needed to attain the objectives. But trying to do too much in the beginning, you say, should we have been more specific in Paris? I don't think so, because I think we ended up in Paris with something that was really remarkable for what we were trying to accomplish. And it's a beginning. It's not the end of the process, as Bruno mentioned. Maybe a small comment on the gap you were talking about. I think that's a correct observation. There is, of course, a gap if you compare the reduction from the INDCs and then the implemented policies. And of course, there's always a gap. So I mean, few people are here calculated that might be 50, 60, 70 million CO2 tons. Equivalence in Germany would be around 20 or 30 million tons. That is true, but I think that's a very nature of a target. So you start with a target, and then, of course, you have to implement more. You have to do more than only today's implemented policies. And that's exactly what we're looking forward to. OK, here first. But I also represent a parliamentarian in Australia. Australia has been the first country to go backwards on climate change policy. Recently, the former Tony Abbott government got rid of the carbon tax. How does the Paris climate deal react to actions like these? And what are the contingency plans if countries underperform to the targets they have set? Is it just that they get shamed for not doing it, or is there actual reaction where countries will actually pressure more than just, oh, you didn't do it? Dan, do you want to start? Yeah, I mean, without actually, I was going to flip and try to quote you some things from the agreement itself. But the notion is that countries will come forward with nationally determined contributions, and that the successive nationally determined contributions will be more progressive than the last. So there's nothing that people are exhorted to do this. Now, you can adjust your contributions along the way if you have to. But all the trends are forward and to progressively lower greenhouse gas emissions, because that's what we think the science is going to demand. So in terms of, are there penalties for not doing this? Will people come after you? What we found, I think, in many other global environmental agreements, is that even when someone is found to be in violation of a commitment, for example, or not meeting a commitment, it's very rare that anyone goes after them, and there's no court where you can sue them. And the whole issue is, how do we help them get back into compliance? Because at the end of the day, you're not so much interested in penalizing them as you are in helping them to achieve compliance. That's the goal of the agreement, and that's the notion behind this. It's much more facilitative than it is punitive. Tim Judson with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. I think we share the optimism of the implications of the agreement. But I think a lot of the NGO community has been very ambivalent about the lack of specificity in terms of what the path is to get to the goals that are laid out in the agreement. And I think especially in terms of the Green Climate Fund and exactly what that very large pot of money is going to be spent on, and I think there's a lot of sense that one of the areas of contestation was about what solutions or what is the path to reducing emissions and what's that money going to be able to be spent on. And I wonder if you can talk to what the process is going to be for defining what the Green Climate Fund can actually be used for. Well, thanks. I think the Green Climate Fund and the pledges that were made to this, there were two things in Lima that really put wind in the sails. And one was mentioned, which was the agreement between the United States and China, the joint announcement, if you will, or the simultaneous announcements of their plans. The other were the over $10.2 billion in pledges to the Green Climate Fund because this was a radical departure, this agreement from the past in the sense that developing countries were being asked to come forward and take commitment, take action. It was no longer confined to the developed countries. And their concern was, well, wait a minute, is there going to be enough money? Is there going to be enough technology and capacity building and the help that we're going to need to do these things associated with this agreement? And that's where the Green Climate Fund, as I mentioned, it was established in Copenhagen. And last year, I know there was a big push to actually come up with the first, I think there were eight projects that were funded prior to Paris, prior to the beginning. It was very important to demonstrate to countries that not only is the money there, but projects are going forward. Now there's been an agreement that there would be a 50-50 split between adaptation, on the one hand, or trying to mitigate the, well, I shouldn't use the word mitigation, trying to increase resilience and help countries deal with the adverse impacts of climate change, on the one hand, and mitigation, which is essentially to reduce, avoid, or sequester greenhouse gas emissions on a grant or equivalent basis, I should mention that. So there is this notion that adaptation and mitigation should be at a certain par, and there's increased focus because for many developing countries, even if they stopped emitting tomorrow, it wouldn't change the ultimate path of global emissions. It's really, their concerns have much more to do with adaptation, and it's also our concern because we've seen over the course of time that if problems are not dealt with within countries, they become international problems, so. Thank you. Okay, back here, and then we'll come up here. Yes, thank you for a great panel. Dan Wildcat, a UCHI member of the Muscogee Nation, faculty member Haskell Indian Nations University and convener of the Indigenous Peoples Climate Change Working Group. I wanna know how come there's no mention of indigenous peoples and obligations, responsibilities that larger governments have to the indigenous peoples of those lands in the body of the document. There's some language in the preamble, and there are appended requisitions where it speaks to indigenous issues, but I think given the fact that many indigenous peoples around the globe are living in vulnerable environments where they are really gonna be the first to affect some of the most devastating features of climate change, whether they're in the central rainforest of Brazil, fighting dams, or whether they're in coastlines that are very vulnerable or desert in very arid areas where tenuous sort of maintenance of life is maintained, I'm a little bit disappointed that with the presence of indigenous peoples and large numbers at COP 21, that there was no inclusion actually in the agreement itself regarding those issues of indigenous peoples. Thanks, I think first of all there's widespread recognition of the concerns of indigenous peoples and the impacts of climate change on indigenous peoples in their communities. And as you noted, there is recognition in this agreement in the preamble of the rights of indigenous peoples, but your question is why don't you have something operative in the operative section of the agreement? And there I can just tell you it's all part of this negotiation. It's very difficult, some of the issues we were dealing with raise very sharp concerns among certain countries and what you could negotiate and how far you could go was just a matter of trying to see what the balance would be and where we could make progress. So I think we have it in the preamble. There is widespread recognition of the rights and the concerns of indigenous peoples. It wasn't possible to go further in the body of the agreement at that time. Hi, Ori Gutten with the Center for American Progress and this question is for Mr. Fulda. So you talk a lot about this year kind of working with Morocco to transition leadership over the COP. And so Morocco has recently been developing as a clean energy leader, but throughout most of the MENA region clean energy has fallen far behind in emission, cuts have fallen far behind in Saudi Arabia and past years has been like an inhibitor to conversations on climate negotiations. So how do you think that Morocco could use its leadership and its host status of COP 22 to kind of facilitate greater transition to clean energy embrace in the MENA region overall? You know the word you're asking me what would be the roadmap for Morocco preparing the COP 22 and the year after that? Well, I'm not reversed on that. My feeling is that after the COP 21 which was the big meeting point announced and looked for since Copenhagen which sets the rules for 2020, as I said and as we all said, a lot of work is still to be done in presizing the details. And I'm sure that the role of Morocco will be to first work with us as soon as now to go as far as possible towards the preparation of Marrakesh and then also I see the quality and the enthusiasm of the negotiators. I am not sure that everything will be finished by the end of this year. So there will still be a lot on the table for Morocco to address. Okay, last question. Back here. Okay, could you take the mic? Thank you. Hi, my name is Patrick Benasillo and I'm with Senator Schumer's office and my question is this. I know in order for ratification it requires 55 nations which comprise among 55% of the world's carbon producers to get ratified. My question is this. How important is it for the United States to sign on to this bill? To sign on to this agreement. If the United States for some reason, whether it be the Supreme Court or other legislative battles isn't able to sign on, is this treaty dead in the water? Or would you say you're optimistic that it can get ratified elsewhere? Do you want me to start? Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, start. Well, I think first it is important for the United States to ratify and to have a very tenuous and strong action against climate change, be it only for the health and wellbeing of its own citizens. And that's something that most of the scientists around the world and including this country would agree with. Second, regarding the agreement itself, I don't have in mind the numbers, I'm sure you do, whether the non-signature by the US would make the global amount short of the 55%, I'm not really sure. And on the other hand, I do not envisage the US not signing. Well, I'd like to answer on sort of two levels. On the first level, the technical official level, would the United States not signing on to this agreement to prevent its entry into force? No. I mean, there are enough other countries that make up a significant enough percentage and there are enough other countries that could go forward, I think would go forward. I mean, evidence of that is the Kyoto Protocol, where the United States didn't sign on to the Kyoto Protocol and that entered into force nonetheless. The question is, how effective would any agreement be without the United States? And I think that's what Bruno was just answering and I guess in my own experience, it's quite important for the United States to take part in this global effort because not only because the United States, our own emissions are so significant in comparison with other countries, but also because we have the resources in terms of the people, the technology, the know-how, the innovation, the work crucible of innovation in this country and it's quite important to solving this problem globally that we engage and that we take part. And I think what the bigger concern I would have is the signal that it would send to the rest of the world about how serious we are about the problem. I think the signal has been very positive up to this point. I think it's very important that we keep it positive. Thanks Carol. I would like to add another point that we did not discuss much today and just rebounding on what Dan said, not only in terms of, well, it is a matter of signal, but addressing the climate change is also building an all-new green economy, new or newer and that is the creation of hundreds and thousands of jobs and it is also developing an industry. We insist it on the capacities of Germany in certain field of renewable energy and they're doing that not only in their own country, but in the kind of export technology. We all know that to decarbonize, we have to work on energy storage, on better batteries, on smart grids. Georg mentioned that about Germany. Those technologies will be developed here, there, and if the US is not on board, they will lack a bit of credibility to export their own capacity. So in terms of economics, I think it's also an argument. Okay, thank you very, very much and I think as we've heard today and I want to thank our wonderful panel because this has just been an extreme wealth of experience and of knowledge and in terms of providing us all some insights about the process, what has been involved, what is part of this agreement, the kinds of momentum and commitments of countries around the world I think is really quite incredible and now there will be obviously need to be a lot of vigilance in terms of going forward, in terms of knowing what we know, in terms of the transparency of the process and the ongoing review that is scheduled to happen on a five year, every five year basis and I think that as our panelists have also talked about the kinds of changes that we're already seeing in the United States in their respective countries with regard to many different kinds of actions and activities that are already happening on the technology side and on whether it's adaptation and resilience or in terms of looking at mitigation efforts. EESI will be pursuing a variety of briefings during this year looking at various technology issues as well as looking at some of the other issues that are coming up in the Clean Power Plan. Just want to mention that we will have a briefing on February 25th, I believe it is, that is looking at some of the environmental justice issues in conjunction with the Clean Power Plan. So I want to thank you all for coming. I want to thank our terrific panel and if you've got questions or whatever please do follow up with our panel members or with EESI happy to help you look at this issue more fully. Thank you all very, very much.