GHG Monitor
10/9/2015
ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT
Hoesung Lee has been elected chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC announced this week. Lee, a South Korean professor in the economics of climate change, won the election 78-56 in a run-off with Jean-Pascal van Ypersele. “I am honoured and grateful that the Panel has elected me as the IPCC’s new Chair,” Lee said in an IPCC release. “The IPCC remains deeply committed to providing policymakers with the highest quality scientific assessment of climate change, but we can do more.”
The Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) announced this week that it will no longer finance any new build conventional coal-fired power plants. “We will consider financing new coal fired power plants if they use advanced technologies and higher quality thermal coal to significantly reduce emissions to at least 0.8 tC02/MWh.2,” according to an ANZ climate change statement released this week. The bank also said it will fund and facilitate at least $10 billion to support efforts to transition the nation to a low carbon economy, including research into carbon capture and storage. “We understand some of our stakeholders view our financing of fossil fuel industries as a material risk and in direct conflict with our stated position on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the statement.
