Overnight Energy & Environment — Presented by ExxonMobil — COP26 negotiations stretch into the weekend

by Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk - 11/12/21 7:04 PM ET

Welcome to Friday’s Overnight Energy & Environment, your source for the latest news focused on energy, the environment and beyond. Subscribe here: digital-staging.thehill.com/newsletter-signup.

Today we’re looking at COP26’s new draft and continuation into the weekend, as well as a lawsuit from residents of Benton Harbor, Mich., over lead contamination.

For The Hill, we’re Rachel Frazin and Zack Budryk. Write to us with tips: rfrazin@digital-staging.thehill.com and zbudryk@digital-staging.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @RachelFrazin and @BudrykZack.

Let’s jump in.

Climate deal appears elusive

COP26 might just kill your weekend brunch plans, as the global climate summit is now expected to stretch at least through Saturday.

The latest draft of the summit agreement is expected to be released at about 8 a.m. local time, or about 3 a.m. Eastern, with additional meetings taking place during the day.

But we have some new text today! The latest iteration of an agreement at the global climate summit has watered down its call for countries to phase out coal and fossil fuel subsidies.

While a previous draft released early Thursday morning called upon countries to “accelerate the phasing-out of coal and subsidies for fossil fuels,” the new one says they should accelerate the phaseout of “unabated” coal power and “inefficient” subsidies for fossil fuel.

Your point? These qualifiers still leave space for the continued use of coal power when it uses technology to capture its emissions and for some government subsidies for fossil fuels to remain in place.

If the current draft is adopted, this agreement would still be the first out of a global climate summit to mention fossil fuels at all, but the call is weaker than in the previous draft.

This section also adds a mention of clean energy, calling for “rapidly scaling up clean power generation.

And the fossil provision got a shout out from U.S. climate envoy John Kerry. “The decisive decade and phasing out unabated coal and inefficient fossil fuel subsidies must stay. That language must stay,” Kerry said.

Meanwhile, some outstanding issues remain…

Developing countries are still pushing for a funding mechanism that would essentially pay reparations for the loss and damage they have suffered from climate change.

“The G-77 and China are deeply disappointed that our proposal of establishment of the Glasgow loss and damage facility has not been reflected in the revised cover decision,” said a delegate from Guinea on Friday, speaking on behalf of a group of developing countries.

And funding at large to help countries adapt to climate change and to limit their own emissions was also a hot topic.

“We must deliver a strong message of our collective resolve for accelerated mitigation and adaptation actions to combat climate change in this decade,” Indian negotiator Richa Sharma said during the session. “This resolve will have far greater credibility if also accompanied by an equally strong resolve of developed country parties to mobilize and provide enhanced climate finance to developing countries by developed country parties.”

Countries also appeared to still be figuring out the rules for carbon credit markets — in which countries and other parties can pay for climate cooling activities to offset their own emissions — under the Paris Agreement.

A MESSAGE FROM EXXONMOBIL

Here’s how we’re supporting the Global Methane Pledge

ExxonMobil supports reducing methane emissions by 30% by the year 2030, in line with the Global Methane Pledge. We are working to reduce methane emissions, and encourage others in and out of our industry to join. Learn more.

Officials sued over ‘toxic lead emergency’

Residents of a predominantly Black Michigan city have sued the state over allegations of lead contamination in their drinking water.

The lawsuit comes the same week as the announcement of a major settlement over the contamination of the city of Flint.

In the lawsuit, filed Wednesday, 16 residents of the city of Benton Harbor allege both city and state officials did not properly notify residents of lead contamination in service pipes dating back to at least 2018.

“[T]he state, its agencies, directors, the city of Benton Harbor, its mayor, and city managers and water plant manager treated the evidence that the water running through lead service lines in the city of Benton Harbor was poisoned with high levels of lead with deliberate indifference,” the complaint says.

The residents, it adds, “since at least 2018, were and continue to be, exposed to highly dangerous lead poisoning conditions caused by, and with deliberate indifference, prolonged by Defendants’ action to engage in a coverup and not warn the community that its drinking water supplied by Defendant City of Benton Harbor’s public water system had extreme lead toxicity.”

“Defendants, all of them, have not remediated these dangers or harms, notwithstanding their knowledge, since 2018, that the amount of lead in the water was increasing with each testing period from 2018 to 2021,” the complaint reads.

Read more about the lawsuit here.

ON TAP NEXT WEEK:

On Monday

President Biden is expected to sign the bipartisan infrastructure framework into law

On Tuesday

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will vote on the nominations of Laura Daniel-Davis to be Interior’s assistant secretary for land and minerals management and Sara Bronin chair Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee will also hold a hearing on energy price trends
The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on national security implications of climate change in the arctic
The House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing called “Plugging in Public Lands: Transmission Infrastructure for Renewable Energy.”

On Wednesday

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing on the nomination of Martha Williams to lead the Fish and Wildlife Service
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on nuclear fusion energy research

On Thursday

The Select Climate Crisis committee will hold a hearing titled “Tribal Voices, Tribal Wisdom: Strategies for the Climate Crisis”

A MESSAGE FROM EXXONMOBIL

WHAT WE’RE READING

A pipeline shutdown? Midwest war heats up over FERC permit, E&E News reports
Biden says supplies of petroleum sufficient to reduce amount purchased from Iran, Reuters reports
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rising, despite COP26 pledges, Al Jazeera English reports
Communities consider managed retreat from climate change, The Associated Press reports
Despite GOP Gains in Virginia, the State’s Landmark Clean Energy Law Will Be Hard to Derail, InsideClimateNews reports