As elections approach, political tension looms over Climate Week in New York

This week, New York will be the center of global climate action as the annual NYC Climate Week brings together thousands of business, government, and citizen leaders for more than 900 climate-related events across the city.

According to organizers from the Climate Group, the organization that launched Climate Week 16 years ago as a side event to the UN General Assembly, this is a new record for the number of events.

As clean technology and renewable energy advance, Climate Week has become a major milestone on the calendars of activists, politicians and executives who use the expo as a platform to announce new initiatives and reports and to prepare the ground for the annual UN climate talks later this year. This year, oil state Azerbaijan is hosting the UN Conference of the Parties, or COP, which is set to begin on November 11.

Expected announcements this week include calls to turn renewable energy expansion pledges made at last year’s COP28 into reality, a report on the need to address emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, and a review of net-zero emissions pledges made so far by companies, states and cities. The UN will hold a “Summit for the Future” that will examine the links between climate change, biodiversity loss and conflict, as well as a separate session on the threats from rising sea levels.

But even with COP29 on the horizon, another November date looms particularly large for participants in this year’s Climate Week: Election Day.

“The election is a subtext of Climate Week,” said Helen Clarkson, CEO of the Climate Group Newsweek.

The major party presidential candidates, former Republican President Donald Trump and current Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, present a striking contrast on climate and energy policy.

Early in his presidency, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the U.N.-brokered Paris Agreement, which commits countries to cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avoid the most dangerous levels of warming. Trump has also called climate change a hoax and frequently devalues ​​climate solutions like wind and solar power during his campaign speeches.

Harris cast the deciding vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature climate change legislation and the largest climate action in U.S. legislative history. IRA tax incentives and public financing for clean energy have unleashed billions of dollars of private investment in renewable energy, electric vehicle manufacturing and battery supply. Early in his presidency, Biden also restored U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement.

Clarkson said that during Climate Week meetings, people will be wondering which of these policy frameworks U.S. officials and businesses will be working under.

“The climate world looks at the U.S. election and thinks, ‘You know what, we can’t afford another withdrawal,’” she said.

“China will be watching”

As President Barack Obama’s special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern helped lead to the successful conclusion of the Paris Agreement in 2015, which President Trump withdrew from two years later.

“That really pissed me off,” Stern said. NewsweekStern will speak at a Climate Week event on Monday and has also written a history of the Paris Agreement negotiations titled Achieving the Paris Climate Agreementwhich will be released next month.

Stern said other countries were also angry about the U.S. withdrawal. “A lot of the structure of the Paris agreement reflected things that the United States had to have, so people accommodated us,” he said. The negotiations involved some painful concessions to reach consensus, and when the U.S. abruptly withdrew, other countries “were furious,” he said.

Even with the United States back in the agreement, history is influencing international approaches to climate commitments now that Trump is close to the White House again, Stern said.

“They know Trump will do what Trump is doing, and they’ve been through it,” Stern said.

The actual outcomes of the Paris Agreement are based on each country’s climate plans, Stern explained, and a new round of those commitments is coming soon. China’s strong plan is especially important, Stern said.

“China currently accounts for 30 percent of global emissions, more than twice the U.S.,” he said, predicting that China’s approach to the next round of Paris commitments would depend largely on U.S. leadership.

“China will certainly want to see who becomes America’s president,” he said.

The need for certainty

Clarkson of the Climate Group said that as the U.S. reasserted its leadership on climate action, it had a knock-on effect on the international stage, fueling a sense of domestic rivalry. U.S. policies like the Inflation Reduction Act are not just aimed at increasing clean energy in general, but specifically at increasing clean energy jobs in the U.S. through domestic production of solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries and more.

“There’s a lot of ‘America first’ stuff out there,” Clarkson said. “It’s been interesting to see how other countries are responding to this competition.” For example, she said, the U.S. move to create a new industry for producing “green” hydrogen has prompted other countries to try to catch up.

“Other countries are responding by saying, ‘Wait, if America thinks it’s going to dominate the green hydrogen market, we want to do it.'”

She said repealing the IRA or otherwise changing the White House’s climate policy decisions could undo the work of both the U.S. and the international community, as well as disrupt the private sector and increase uncertainty in business decision-making.

“What businesses want — and we hear this everywhere — is regulatory certainty,” she said. “Investors in particular want to know, ‘What are the next five years going to look like? Because then I can put my money there.’”

She added that regardless of the election outcome, the fact remains that the world is not on track to meet the science-based targets needed to avoid dangerous warming.

During Climate Week, the Climate Group is releasing a new edition of “The Global To-Do List,” calling for seven climate actions in key sectors. They include paying coal workers when coal operations close, taxing oil and gas operations to fund clean energy sources, and using technology mandates to accelerate cleaner steel production.

“Everything we do has to be driven by that urgency,” Clarkson said. “Whoever wins the election, there’s going to be a lot of work to do.”

A look at the events scheduled for this week also reveals emerging issues in the climate fight. For example, several events focus on AI and climate. Salesforce is hosting an “AI and Climate Summit,” and several panels feature companies applying AI to cleantech and climate issues.

Newsweek is a media partner of Climate Week NYC this year and will host an event focusing on companies’ efforts to reduce emissions in their supply chains. While many companies are working to reduce the carbon pollution that comes from their operations and energy use, known as scope 1 and 2 emissions, the majority of greenhouse gas emissions for many companies come from their supply chains, known as scope 3 emissions.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the election and its impact on climate policy, Clarkson said she saw no evidence of business leaders backing down on their sustainability targets.

“We’ve even seen more and more commitments,” she said. “They’re moving on.”