 Welcome to the virtual forum on fossil fuel supply and climate policy. We have a one hour plenary session and then two one hour parallel sessions today. My name is Peter Erickson. I am co-chair of this forum, along with my colleague Georgia Pigott. We, Georgia and I, are both senior scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute. The reason we are holding this forum is the same reason that we have sponsored two academic conferences that preceded. The climate problem is by and large a fossil fuel problem. About three quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions are from fossil fuels. Most fossil fuels need to remain undeveloped if we were to hold warming to two or 1.5 degrees. And yet as the production gap report has shown, the world's governments are currently planning on producing 50% more fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with the two-degree pathway and 120% more than would be consistent with a 1.5-degree pathway. This means that to address climate crisis, it may be important not only to create policy around emissions and fossil fuel demand, but also about fossil fuel supply and the workers and communities that currently produce those fossil fuels. Good morning, everyone. I'm Georgia Pigott. As Pete mentioned, we're co-chairing this forum here today, and I'm really happy to have you all here. I'm just going to speak briefly about the conference on which this forum is based. Some of the people on the call today have attended this conference, but I think we have a lot of newcomers as well. So I just wanted to explain a little bit about the conference. We're holding this forum today in lieu of a two-day conference that would have been held in Oxford this year, but has obviously been disrupted by the COVID pandemic. We hope to hold the conference again next year on September 27th to 28th in Oxford with an option for remote participation for those of you who might want to join remotely and not travel. We're going to post a link in the chat box now to the conference website that you'll all be able to go and see. I invite you all to sign up there for updates. That's how we'll be communicating when we open things like the call for paper, the call for presentations, and remote sessions. But it's never too early to start thinking, and we hope today's forum will spark some ideas for conference presentations or panels that you might want to host next year. We'll be opening the call up in February for that. On the conference website, you'll also find some archives of the previous two conferences and two journal special issues that came out of these conferences, which we'll put in the chat box now for those of you who are interested. And of course, these sorts of efforts, big conferences like these, take a team of people. It's not just Pete and I. We'd like to think we have a range of steering committee members, institutional partners, and sponsors who have helped make this event and our previous conferences happen. We're just going to rather than list them all off because we're lucky to have so many of them. I'll just plug a link in the chat box for you to check out who those are. And so with you all fully informed about the conference, I'll hand back over to Pete to let you know what the plan of action is for today. Thank you, Georgia. So this planary, this first hour is on fossil fuel production, COVID recovery, and just transitions. We have five panelists and an esteemed moderator from the United Nations lined up. We then have two breakout sessions. One is on prospects for international cooperation to manage a transition away from fossil fuel production. The other in Spanish is the implications of the crash in fossil fuel markets for fossil fuel producers in Latin America. A warning sign for what is to come, and again that one is in Spanish. There are separate Zoom links for each of those breakout sessions. We'll be posting the links for joining those in the chat at the end of this session. Please be aware that these sessions are being recorded. We'll be posting the recordings to the conference website later this week so you can watch any sessions that you missed. Throughout the forum, please use the question answer that is the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen to ask questions or to comment on other people's questions. Please do not use the chat function. We will not be monitoring that. So with that, I'd like to introduce Anne Sophie Sarasola, who will be our moderator. Dr. Sarasola is Director of the Climate Ambition Team in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary General. And Sophie, the floor is now yours. Thank you. Thank you so much and good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone. I'm very pleased to be here and I thank you again for this kind invitation and to be honest I'm very keen to listening to our panelists and which in the distinguished capacity I'm sure will help us a lot. As you know, I think we all made the same diagnosis, recovery plans against COVID, have to address the terrible consequences of the crisis, but they are also in a way, even though it feels terrible to say that now, but they are also a remarkable opportunity to make some structural changes and the transformation toward the low carbon resilience economies that leave no one behind, which is something that countries agreed to create when they signed the Paris Agreement in 2015. As you might have heard, the Secretary General has repeatedly emphasized the need to underpin recovery plans with what he calls six actions that would be positive for climate and for people. One, invest in green and decent jobs. Two, do not bail out polluting industries. Three, and fossil fuel subsidies. Four, take climate risk into account in all financial and policy decisions. Five, work together. We are the United Nations. And six, most importantly, leave no one behind. And in fact, the Secretary General has flagged many times that taxpayers' money and public funds to be spent on the recovery should deliver green and decent jobs through a sustainable transition. And most importantly, he has insisted over and over that polluters must start paying for their pollution. In fact, he's been saying that he doesn't see why his own tax money should be spent on pollution. You must have seen also that the Secretary General is extremely concerned about coal, phase out, and energy transition. This is because, like you have, although we have seen a positive global trend of decreasing use of coal for electricity production, and we will hear more on that, the phase out is not happening fast enough. And in some countries, we are even seeing significant pipelines of coal power plants being approved and built, which means that they will be emitting deatables for the next 50 to 60 years. Our climate cannot handle this. People's lungs and overall health cannot handle this. And economies will suffer with the stranded assets being created when renewable energy is cheaper year by year. And major consumer preferences are evolving quickly. We have also noticed, as you have, I'm sure that the financial sector is opening its eyes to this tool, and that more and more fossil fuel projects are becoming impossible to fund due to lack of financing and increasing concerns from investors over climate risk looming over that portfolio. It's still worrying to see some governments that are using their tax payers money to finance these un-economic projects in other countries. This is why we need countries to unite and help each other enter the future and quicker. And moving toward key G20 meetings and top 26 next year, we need to gather momentum and show progress in energy transition for more financial entities, more governments, and more subnational jurisdiction. We at the UN, we hope that countries that are facing a critical junction between continuing traditional and polluting energy generation and expanding renewable energy and other technologies of the future. There are several countries in this position, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Colombia, South Africa, Poland. Many partners in this call, including our team at the UN, are ready to support them by any way we can to help them make the transition toward renewable energy. So I hope that we will hear more on policy supports and solutions in this panel, and we will now start the discussion. And if I have understood well, Peter, I will now ask Fatima Benton to speak and to make her first presentation. Fatima, you have the floor. Thank you. Fatima, I think you are unmuted. A classic. Thank you. Thank you very much, Anne-Sophie. And thanks to the organizers for inviting me. Let me sort of preface my commentary and just talk very quickly about COVID-19 and some of the realities on the ground that we are seeing. Just in a way of observations, I'd say first of all that COVID-19 has actually forced us to ask more pointedly, I would say, what is the future of hydrocarbon resources and what role will it play in terms of our growth and economic transformation plan? So that's one. I think there is no longer any doubt that we have to make the transition. I think the question now is about how fast we can get there, but I think it's clear that a green transition is necessary. I think it's also clear that fossil fuels can no longer be the fuel of choice. Certainly, we have to think about it in terms of how we decouple our economic growth from fossil fuel. And it's a radical paradigm shift. It means that in Africa, we have to start thinking that fossil fuel cannot possibly boost our industrial processes. The fossil fuel cannot drive our economies. The fossil fuel can we that we have to, they will put it differently, that we have to reproduce a new model of growth that is different from mature economies and a model of growth that is not dependent on fossil fuel. So that's the challenge for Africa. Now, let me put it in a more categorical manner to say that if the world needs to get to the Paris Agreement and to a 1.5 degree sort of warming, Africa has to become the world's conscience. Because if you look at the population of Africa today, and if you add another 1 billion in terms of where it might get to in 2050, if Africa uses all of its potential in terms of oil and gas, then we're going to be in a very big mess bigger than the one we find ourselves in. So Africa will have to be part of the global solidarity transition has to be part of that pathway in terms of how we get to our ultimate goal. Now, looking at it in terms of COVID-19 and some of the problems we've seen first, there has been a big revenue loss. The pandemic obviously has impacted on countries differently because African countries are not all the same. The hydrocarbon rich country are obviously going to be hugely affected because many of them depend on oil and gas revenue. So this is the case because many of these countries, if you take Angola, if you take Nigeria, Libya, these are countries that are price takers. Because they're price takers, they also risk takers. They do not have much in the way of influence in terms of shaping the oil prices or even making the big decisions, maybe with some exception Nigeria and to some extent Libya. But they are exposed because they are commodity driven economies. They are exposed to all of these exogenous shots and that is a major problem. So I would say that COVID-19 has actually fast forwarded the reality that African economies have to be more diversified and that tremendous dependency on oil and gas is not the way forward. Secondly, very quickly, is the fact that even when African countries wanted to take advantage of the cheap oil, it wasn't possible because of the fact that they do not have the relevant infrastructure. They do not have storage capacity. They do not have refinery sort of capacity and therefore could not take advantage of this. And that is also to say that they must look at oil and gas differently. This is perhaps the only region in the world where we do not have a geo-strategic vision related to oil and gas. We produce, but we don't add value. And this is a problem because it means that we are going to be tremendously exposed to loss, but also to capital flight. And we know that that is happening and it's happening at a rate that is faster than what we can actually bring in in terms of oil proceeds. The break in the value chain also, I think, was one evident sort of observation that we saw because, as I mentioned, we are producing, but we are not adding value. And so the value chain was broken. And this, as I said, is a major problem. We've also seen that many African countries are going to have difficulties in terms of managing their fiscal spaces because with the economic fallout, the fact that most oil prices went below to almost zero, that this actually affected the space that countries have. And this is important because there are countries that are using oil proceeds in terms of social spending. Ghana, for instance, uses some of these proceeds towards spending on education, senior high school. In countries like Angola, proceeds they use also towards health and towards education. So when a country like Ghana loses about 40 percent of its revenue in terms of oil revenue, it will have impact on its ability to implement the sustainable development goals. And all the goals are crucial. But education is even more crucial. Other goals are also equally important. But for countries in Africa, this is something that we have to take into account. So I think we also find that we are going to be in a situation, and I'll just say this and stop there, of stranded assets. I think you mentioned this, Anne-Sophie, and it's a huge problem because Africa is no longer a bad crossroad. This is a reality. And I think what COVID-19 did was made the reality even starker. That's stranded assets is going to be a real problem because the value of these resources are depreciating. And because the world is going to turn its back on these resources. And it's coming at a time when Africa needs a stable supply of energy for its industrialization, for its cities that are growing, for its economic growth, Africa does need energy. And maybe the needs that it has may not all be, cannot all be secured through renewable energy. So it probably needs to have a dualized approach where it will probably work towards a managed exit. Natural gas is seen as a fuel of transition. And this is not lost on many of Africa's leaders who see this as a sovereign right. And these are some of the uncomfortable part of the discussion that we must have that in some countries in Africa, it is hard to dissuade political leaders or leaders in short, that they cannot use the resources that they have now because of their need to work towards climate action. So I'll stop here for now. And Sophie, because there's obviously quite a lot to say, but I know that there are other participants that are waiting to have the floor. But I'll stop here for now. Thank you. Thank you so much Fatima. And let me apologize to you and to our audience because I didn't properly introduce you. Fatima Denton is director, sorry, of the UNU Institute for Natural Resources in Africa. And prior to joining UNU, Dr. Denton worked in Ethiopia with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. And thank you Fatima, I think you touched on many crucial points, in particular that all revenue is revenue. And this revenue is used, of course, to found social programs, and that we cannot skip easily that question, especially in the time of credit crunch. And this we need to be properly addressed. Of course, we come back to that. Let me now turn to Dr. Iveta Gerasimshuk. Dr. Gerasimshuk leads the Sustainable Energy Supplies activities at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, as well as its Global Subreddit Initiative. Iveta, you have the floor. Many thanks for the invitation and the introduction. I'm going to speak on behalf of a group of organizations behind the energy policy tracker and focus on where the government support is now going in response to the crisis. So it's a big group of organizations, some of them are involved into today's forum, and it's a privilege to represent them all. My main point for today, and that's the next slide, is that the COVID crisis has been, of course, a test to many systems. And unfortunately, that also was a test to our fossil fuel addiction, and most governments have tested positive. So in terms of green recovery, unfortunately, there was a big failure on behalf of most governments according to our data. So with the next slide, I'm going to focus on the G20 countries. But at the high level, the COVID crisis has intensified the trends that existed before. So those governments who have traditionally subsidized and supported fossil fuel production and consumption have thrown even more money at fossil fuels. And those countries that started the clean energy transition tried to use also recovery response measures to green their systems. So for the G20 countries, you can see here the data from last week, we're updating it every week on Wednesday. So for the G20 countries, over 200 billion went to fossil fuel consumption and production, and only around 136 billion went to clean energy. So I have to say that this is, of course, data that we have been able to collect for main sectors of energy production and consumption. And this is mainly the sectors of mobility. Three-fourths of the support you can see here is for mobility airlines, airports, highways, car manufacturers. And then we also have looked at resources at the extraction sector, at power generation, and at buildings. So speaking of the trends, I think the evident thing here is that responses have been rushed, and most governments that didn't have a plan or blueprint for genuine clean energy transition have been at a disadvantage in these terms for green recovery. There are some notable exceptions. There are some emerging kind of good practices. For instance, the European Green Deal, there are good ideas in New Zealand in terms of recovery in Germany, in France, to a certain extent in South Korea. But most governments didn't have this blueprint. And as I said, unfortunately, for this reason, they have failed this test. We're expanding now our database. We're adding more countries. We're going to add public finance to the database as well. And we do have hopes for greener recovery. But this balance at the moment is very, very fragile. So I'll stop here. Thank you. Thank you so much, Iveta. And I very much keep what you just said now that we need a plan. Governments need plans really to move forward because this is so complex to organize the transition that they need to see the way forward. And this is, of course, something that all of us work on one way or another. Let me now introduce, speaking of plans, Christoph Maglade, Dr. Maglade is a senior analyst with the International Energy Agency, where he works on the word energy outlook. He recently co-led the word energy outlook special report on sustainable recovery. So speaking of trends and plans, Christoph, tell us what you have found. Thank you. Thank you very much, Sophie. And thank you to all of the organizers for the opportunity to speak to you. So just, I think, to premise my remarks, I think it would be useful just to give a little bit as to what has happened so far because of the pandemic. So obviously, it's been a huge economic shock for the world as a whole, and it impacted all employment and investment across different sectors. The energy sector in particular has been very badly affected. It's around about 6 million jobs that we believe or we estimate have either been lost or are at risk of being lost in the energy sector globally. In total, energy investment globally is down by around about 400 billion. That's around about a 20% reduction globally, and all different parts of the world and all of the different parts of the energy system have been affected. But major producers of oil and gas have been, I've seen the largest falls overall. Clean energy investment in renewables, efficiency in power grids and so on and so forth, they've been slightly more resilient. And we estimate that around about 35% of investment in the energy sector now is into clean energy technologies. And this is its highest ever share and will be its highest ever share in 2020. But at the same time, this is far from sufficient and as far from what we need to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and the other sustainable development goals that exist. So in absolute terms, for example, investment in efficiency in renewables in particular, more or less needs to double from current levels between now and the late 2020s in order to meet all of these climate and sustainability goals. So how governments respond to the crisis is really going to be crucial. Decisions that they make now are really going to reverberate throughout the energy system and throughout emissions levels for decades to come. And as with this in mind that we at the IEA put together what we call the sustainable recovery plan, fractions that governments could take now in order to boost the recovery from the pandemic and also to put us onto a more sustainable pathways going forward. So the overall objective of this plan was to mobilise around about three trillion dollars of new money to be spent over the next three years. So one trillion dollars to be spent in 2021, 2022 and 2023. And as we have heard, there are some signs that some countries are taking this seriously. They're looking to make the best of a bad situation in terms of how they recover from the pandemic. But I think we should take as a bit of a warning what happened after the previous crisis. So after 2008, 2009 financial crisis there was a slight dip in greenhouse gas emissions. But in 2010 we saw the largest ever pickup in CO2 emissions following the following the recovery. The recovery in that case was unfortunately not a green recovery. So while we expect CO2 emissions to fall by around about two and a half billion tonnes in 2020, from this recovery there's really uncertainty over how emissions are going to go from this point on. If the governments don't enact plans as laid out in the sustainable recovery plan it's very likely that emissions are going to peak or going to pick up again and surpass that level in 2019 very soon. However, we estimated that if all of the world's governments were to implement the sustainable recovery plan this would mean that emissions would be around about four and a half billion tonnes lower than it would have been otherwise by the end of the sustainable recovery plan. And not only that but it also kick-started a new wave of clean energy investment. So it's not just about the spending in the next two years but if they use this as an opportunity to really change investment patterns and change their energy priorities we could really start to see emissions being put onto the necessary downward path and therefore see a reduction in emissions and also in fossil fuel consumption. I'll finish there. Thank you very much. And thank you. Thank you so much Christopher and also for reminding us that you know lots of jobs have been lost and it's not the transition from the old jobs to the new jobs. It's not that easily done and I suspect that Mustafa will speak to this issue later. Let me now turn to Dr. Tatiana Mitrova. Dr. Mitrova directs the Sokolkovo Energy Center at the Moscow School of Management. She has over 20 years of experience in analyzing Russian and global energy markets including production, transportation, demand, energy policy, etc. We are very keen to hear Tatiana on the particular challenges of a country like Russia. Over to you Tatiana. Thank you Ansefi. Thank you for the introduction and good afternoon to everybody. So indeed many things were said already about the challenges which are really facing this green transition in the post-COVID world and definitely there are very contradictory messages coming from the different countries. So basically it's only the European Union which is stating very clearly that it is moving with the green course but as for the rest of the world actually there is no consistency and I think Iveta has shown it very well during her presentation but for the producers of the fossil fuels these misleading messages are really creating additional uncertainty because on top of all the disasters they are facing right now with this dramatic drop in their revenues which is quite understandable with the demand collapsing and prices going down very very sharply but they also do not actually understand what will be the post-COVID recovery looking like and what will happen with the fossil fuels demand and therefore as usual any system has its own inertia they prefer to think that okay God will bless us and somehow the demand will come back to the pre-COVID levels. So if there is no clear message from the consumers producers prefer to think that the status quo will be restored. It might be a wishful thinking, it might be a mistake but this is how the psychology of the decision makers work around the world in all resource-rich countries and indeed they are facing these problems with stranded assets but probably the biggest problem is this decline in budget revenues which they have no idea how to replace. So they need to find some other options. What are the alternatives if it is not coal oil and natural gas then what could drive their economies and protect their stability? So basically I can see only three things which could help them to make these strategic decisions which will actually define their economic systems for the next 30-50 years I don't know and Russia indeed is a very good example because so far all the packages are only to support the biggest state-controlled oil and gas companies so it's very clear but what could be done theoretically to carrots and one stick? Carrots are capital allocation mechanisms for renewables really to support new technologies and to support new energy we need access to cheap capital or maybe for some countries even free capital. Second carrot is access to the technologies they should be really available and technological transfer should be made much more easy and fast than it is and one stick which is at the moment the only thing that has really forced Russian government to start thinking about carbon regulation is this announcement from the european side on their thoughts about carbon and border tax mechanisms. It is painful it causes a lot of resistance and irritation but it works so clear messages from the consumer countries on the new rules of the game that they are going to establish are really crucial for the producing countries to make their decisions I'll stop on that thank you. Thank you thank you Tatiana and that's quite a challenge that you have led in front of us and we will come back to what you said in particular on capital allocation and the question of access to technology and I might even you know be a little provocative and ask everyone to think for a letter of what kind of technology could be considered as a global public good for example the kind of technology that would allow access to renewable energy can we see that as a global public good the way for example a covid vaccine could be just again asking the question maybe we want to come back to that. I'm going to now turn to our last but not least panelist Dr. Mustafa Kemal Gev who is coordinator of the green jobs program at the international labour organization in Geneva who was working before at UNEP where he served as acting head on green economy advisory services and of course we are all very keen to hear Mustafa on how do we make the job transition which is going to be central of course but if I have the floor. Well thank you very much and Sophie and then colleagues Christof has mentioned the tremendous impacts that the covid-19 pandemic had on the world of work you know this has been devastating and and because of that the way the eye will try to respond to the crisis working with our constituents has been to work on a policy framework with four pillars the first element was in the context of this crisis to stimulate the economy and and employment because the crisis had negative impacts on boss demand and supply sites of the labour market then second how to support enterprises jobs and income you know those are loss employment opportunities and enterprises that went scaling down how to keep business continuity and a third element was to protect workers in the workplace because some could not afford to stay at home and this is also what we have seen in the fossil fuel industry despite all the the the collapse in crisis people had to go to work to earn a living and finally relying on social dialogue to find solutions so I wanted to just focus my point on social dialogue because we think that in the context of this crisis of this nature building strong consensus among government workers and employees organization on the process of managing the crisis in the first place and recovering from the crisis is fundamental and here we really talking of social dialogue which you know in the ILO we understand as all types of negotiations consultations or or just the changes of information between or among government workers and employees organization on issues of common interest so I think that there are this is critical to build the consensus that is needed for a crisis of this nature but then I would like to emphasize three dimensions of of social dialogue that I think are essential and we have seen that happen in a number of countries and we have found those in the ILO that countries that use social dialogue effectively have been able to manage the crisis better than others so the first one is how to use social dialogue in addressing the crisis you know finding ways to respond addressing a health crisis but taking into account its economic and social dimensions the second is covering a broad spectrum of ways to strengthen social dialogue even in the context of this crisis you know with all the lockdown measures that we have seen in countries supporting collective bargaining and labor relations the institutions that make labor relations work and the processes that make labor relations work second is social dialogue on the social economic policies and here is where you need government to agree together with employees and workers where money should be going in the economy you know if we had proper social dialogue in all countries it's not very sure that what we have seen you know that what Iveta was mentioning all this money going to the fossil fuel industry would have happened because there are others who see alternative pathways to recover and finally I want to ensure to just quickly mention the importance of social dialogue on conditions of work and employment and this relates also to occupational safety and health and we have seen this in the context of the fossil fuel industry some have identified as part of the the mechanism of spread of the virus in in oil and gas platforms and and it is it's essential that workers are protected that you know a dialogue takes place between employers and workers to make sure that conditions of work are decent and that conditions of occupational safety and health are in place in the context of of this crisis and the transition so I will maybe just stop here and and happy to expand further not to consume more time that I was allocated but this last point is quite important I'll be very happy to talk a little more on the critical importance of occupational safety and health in these conditions this condition that we live in today thank you thank you Mustafa and I agree with you it would be very important to go back to this question and in general to the issue that you just addressed it's true that we talked earlier about the needs for governments to make plans and to make clear plans to present the transition but as you reminded us of and we saw it happening in some countries as well this cannot be a vertical decision if you don't take the people with you if you don't create this form of social engineering mechanism to to consult workers to consult different sectors of the population on what needs to be done how it needs to be done and what kind of conditions can be put in place including as you said the safety health decent salaries etc none of this will work if this transition comes you know from the top and is in a way imposed we have seen examples in history showing that this really cannot work and I see in the question and answer box you know some a lot of question on that someone I think it's had Winkler that mentioned and it's true that it's a good example that in South Africa for example a just transition mechanism had been put in place before COVID and this is certainly something we at the UN with you Mustafa have been looking at closely to see how this could be used South Africa of course having a huge call issue to address and this is certainly part of the discussion maybe I'll turn to back to Fatima and ask her because Fatima you gave very precise and concrete examples on Ghana and Angola and how our revenue is being used for education maybe could you expand on these examples of social transition dialogues you know between governments and citizens there is South Africa but are there other examples that you think would be interesting to discuss and to use in this panel okay thank you Ansofi well I think the Ghana example is a very good one whereby as I said the revenue of oil is being sort of funneled to support education especially providing free senior high school education so that's a very concrete example but I think these examples are few and far between in Africa and I think I did also made the point that the way in which oil and gas revenues have been used have not been very sort of strategic and certainly haven't been very productive because you know it's an empty economy whether we like it or not and I think it's been a sector that has really benefited a compredor elite if you like and what we need to see is if Africa is going to continue to really harness its growth and maybe continue with you know fossil fuel production for some time it would be good to see how the proceeds of these resources could be used in a way that would develop human capital could be used in a way that would also support relevant technologies there is definitely a sense that this is a continent that could actually harness its expansion of renewable energies but obviously that expansion would also need some investment and this is also a continent that hasn't been able to grow outside its natural resources you know there are countries that have done it but the majority of countries are very much reliant and very much dependent on their natural resource base so we do need to find a way of rebasing our economies but the example I gave the gander example is a very concrete one I think angola is also another concrete example where revenues of oil and gas are being funneled into specific growth areas related to health and education sector but we need more examples of these these examples are very few across Africa thank you Fatima yes indeed they are and maybe now I will turn back to to you Tatiana because what you've said in particular on capital allocation has raised a lot of interest of course and this is one of the discussions taking place globally maybe you've seen that the secretary general along with Canada and Jamaica has launched an initiative on financing for development looking specifically at debt relief or consolation for some countries to again give them some breathing air to reinvest in the sustainable sector of the economy there's another global conversation and this is something that we talked about about shifting subsidies you know and and this is you know technically complicated it has to be also socially accepted this is what why Mustafa mentioned was so important so maybe could you give us a little more detail of maybe what's happening in in Russia where is the conversation the public policy discussion in Russia or in other countries like Russia on on the relocation of subsidies and and and the capital where I location specifically well thank you for the question I'm afraid that the public discussion in Russia actually doesn't cover this topic at all because for the establishment it is still only focus on fossil fuels investments and all the financial system is designed specially to support them there is one single mechanism of special support for the solar and wind projects which provides them guaranteed return on investment it works until 2024 but then it will expire and that's it they are not actually now speaking about any prolongation of this whole project and it is really a big pain for the whole green energy not only renewables but also energy efficiency hydrogen or electricity storage electric vehicles or whatever we are talking about because in such countries like Russia cost of capital is really very high so borrowing you cannot find money cheaper than 10 15 percent yeah which is really very high cost and therefore providing any reduction in this cost of borrowing that already makes these new sources much more attractive and if you add to that also a bit different structure of cupcakes and optics in renewables and in the fossil fuels yeah with renewables you have high cupcakes and rather low optics so you are investing first and then actually doesn't require that much money to keep those installations working so the cost of capital is really critical to make the first step and therefore finding some ways through the state guarantees through the international guarantees or whatever which reduce this cost of capital they will make really investments in the green energy more attractive from the economic point of view not just because of regulation and that could really switch the interest of the investors thank you Tatiana and I agree with you this is also definitely a discussion that started a little for example in the the G20 I know that it's currently Saudi Arabia leading the discussion which which is also you know which is extremely complex and this is something that I believe the Italian incoming presidency of G20 next year I want to discuss exactly what you mentioned the the the cost of capital basically I would like us now to come back maybe we have 10 minutes left with Iveta Mustafa and Christoph on what we discussed earlier which is the need to make plans and some of you mentioned South Korea and some of the European Union and other countries that are presenting green sustainable recovery plans of course as you know countries also have to prepare their climate plans and long-term strategies for the climate change COP26 next year in Glasgow these countries are expected to present more ambitious nationally determined contributions with higher targets in terms of emission cuts but also they can include in these plans and Mustafa for maybe can address that question also mechanism to ensure that there is a just transition and the social dialogue in place to make sure that these plans are properly implemented uh so Iveta maybe very quickly tell us where we are in terms of of preparing making these plans and the connections between recovery plans and these NDCs if you see them already what should be done to encourage them Mustafa maybe could come in after to to discuss how these mechanisms of social this debate and and just transitions can be also part of these plans and maybe Christoph also on on on on investment you know being also allocated to discuss Iveta yeah thank you so I'm afraid that the connection hasn't been really made I mean it's something that is discussed in the climate community but as you may know political environment ministries are always weaker much weaker than finance ministry so economic development ministries and that's the agency that work on recovery I can just give an example so there was a clean energy green recovery ministerial in Japan hosted by Japan on the 3rd of September and you can see the submissions of countries on linking green recovery and climate goals and by submissions unfortunately you can see that some countries didn't even understand the question so I'm very sorry to end on this note but this is for all of us to continue working and also talking not to the usual suspects and at wonderful conferences like this but to a much broader audience thank you don't be sorry you know we are here to to to to address reality you know as it is and not as we wish reality to be otherwise we will fail Mustafa would you like maybe give us agreement or hope or also tell us where we are on the climate plans and and just transition discussions if any but thank you I think there is a positive news at least as you know in the in the last climate action summit that the UN Secretary General convened the Secretary General included in the debate not only the typical climate agenda of mitigation adaptation technology etc but he added a component on social and political drivers because there is this realization that we need social and political drivers to achieve climate ambition and this includes the imperative of just transition strategies if we're not able to manage well the labor market transition the social consequences of climate action the work is likely to face very powerful forces of resistance so therefore the the good news is that at the last climate summit countries were were invited to put forward what is called just transition plans which means that they have a social plan alongside their objective to raise climate ambition and we had 46 countries that committed to put forward those plans no major economies but developing countries and I have even another good news which is just last week Nigeria joined this coalition made a formal pledge to develop a just transition plan which takes us to 47 countries now we're working with those countries from Samoa we have set up an international board to guide this initiative with the Minister of Development planning of Indonesia, Minister Ribeirov span, the Minister of Labor of Costa Rica of Ghana so we have a pool of ministers of environment labor and economic planning that we hope together can drive forward this agenda and helping countries put in place those plans for a just transition and implement them. Thank you Mustafa this is indeed the good news and this is something that that all of us have to look closely at and encourage and really make sure that it remains at the core of these climate plans as you said and it's not just considered as some kind of a sad activity that must be done you know it is indeed central and it must be in the discussion. Kristoff on your side maybe to finish by looking at for example what Tatjana mentioned on allocation of capital and of capital sorry and cost of capital what are the trends that you've been seeing you mentioned a few of them in your initial presentation but maybe you could expand a little on that. Certainly thank you and perhaps just before getting on to that I think one thing for us all to be aware of when we're having these discussions is that it is unfortunately the case that in a number of countries around the world climate change and reducing emissions is not the number one priority and they have other priorities it could be energy access it could be air pollution and in particularly right now it could be jobs unemployment and also how to stimulate the economy and it's very much with this in mind that we developed the sustainable recovery plan that we put together because what we wanted to show was that you don't need to have a trade off between a lot of these different things you don't need to trade off creation of jobs with reducing emissions you can do both you can also stimulate the economy you can also improve energy access for example while also helping to reduce emissions and similarly also for helping to reduce air pollution so one of the key things that we wanted people to take away from our sustainable recovery plan and the investments that are embedded within that is that there is no trade off between all of these different objectives you can achieve all collectively with this if you aim to maximize the synergies between them and perhaps just to finish briefly on your point on in terms of cost of capital because again I think this is one of the areas for a bit of cause of optimism because we have seen that the cost of capital for renewal projects for solar is in many places much lower than the cost of capital for when you fossil fuel projects and that's really helping to improve their economic so in many places now around the world the cost of installing new renewable technologies is lower than installing new fossil fuel power plants for example and I don't think that message is is fully appreciated by everybody and there are other hurdles to overcome when thinking about deploying renewables and deploying fossil fuels but from a pure cost perspective the massive cost reductions we've seen in renewables and in storage for example in recent years is really driving us in the in the right direction in terms of where we're seeing starting to see some investment flows thank you Christopher and to the point you you made at the at the beginning I think it's very clear for all of us at the UN and elsewhere that you know what we are doing is not about carbon it's about people's health people education people welfare and even if in countries they don't use the term climate change necessarily a lot of it actually as you said it's connected you know this is about you know making sure that your heirs is clean making sure you have access to electricity making sure that you have a proper education that workers rights are respected that you know women can be in charge and again even if the term climate change is not you this is also what it's about and it is in fact all connected and I will finish on that I want to thank all our panelists I want to thank the audience that asked questions I was looking at them and tried to pick some of them and I'm sorry that we could not properly respond to all the questions but of course the discussion is still ongoing Peter maybe I will give you back the floor I think you might have some housekeeping announcements to make and thank you again everyone Indeed thank you again all panelists and Sophie to you as moderator and to all our attendees you're now invited to join one of two parallel sessions the links are in the chat box as well as on the screen here and please do remember to go to fossil fuels and climate.org to sign up on our mailing list for future events like this especially the conference that we hope to have again in Oxford next year so thank you everyone and see you at the parallel sessions Bye thank you