UN Climate Change News, 15 December 2022 – At the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh in November, government delegates and a variety of experts highlighted crucial innovative approaches to tackle climate change notably in the areas of energy, food and buildings at Global Innovation Hub dialogues organized by the UN Climate Change secretariat.
Energy, food and construction are three key areas in which impacts can be made to significantly shift the needle in terms of slashing greenhouse gas emissions and building resilience to climate change, while making progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
In these sectors, proven technologies exist which have major potential to alleviate the climate crisis. The challenge is to quickly overcome barriers and to scale up transformative solutions to climate change so that the global economy can be decarbonized by 2050 and societies can be made resilient to impacts of climate change including more heatwaves, floods and droughts. One way to do this is through intelligent matchmaking and coalition building between institutions, companies and governments.
At COP27, the UN Climate Change secretariat launched version 1.0 of the Virtual Hub site - a tool for collating government entities’ demand for climate and sustainability solutions. Co-designed with the Amazon Web Services Innovation Studio and Open Earth Foundation, version 1.0 of the platform is designed to be a platform of global ambitions to tackle climate change.
Here some key results of discussions on three focus areas at the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub (UGIH) in Sharm el-Sheikh this year:
Green hydrogen for the first time in the focus as a major solution to climate change
At COP27, participants for the first time heavily focused on green hydrogen as a key component of the transformation to clean energy, which is essential to achieve the central Paris Agreement goal of holding global average temperature rise to as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Green hydrogen is produced with help of renewable energy, notably wind and solar. It is above all urgently needed to decarbonize heavy-polluting industries such as steel and cement and can be used in hydrogen fuel cells in trucks and cars.
At the Global Innovation Hub, experts discussed specific transformative innovations to drive innovation in the green hydrogen value chain.
Whilst representatives of the African countries Mauritania and Namibia explained that their countries were keen to capitalize on the potential of green hydrogen and to develop industries while creating jobs, they also noted a further key area in which green hydrogen can be deployed: boosting food production with the help of zero-carbon ammonia fertilizer produced with the help of hydrogen. Ammonia production is very energy-intensive and presently causes around 1.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions.
“At this stage, exporting hydrogen is challenging in terms of transport and efficiency. Ammonia seems to the be the one of the ready solutions, there is a market already for that,” said Khoumbaly Lebhbid of Mauritania’s Ministry of Petroleum, Mines and Energy.
The fact is that whilst there is presently a huge demand for green hydrogen in the world, from sectors ranging from steelmaking to transport, there is very little of the substance available.
Bernhard Lorentz, Global Consulting Sustainability & Climate Strategy Leader at the consultancy Deloitte said that the focus therefore needs to be entirely on the supply side. “Now it’s about making big deals, getting the money together and making the investments in the global south,” he said.
Given the clear demand, the UGIH Virtual Hub can serve as a collaboration platform that can connect these countries to key solution providers including financiers such as technology providers, consulting institutions such as Deloitte, and other facilitating partners such as the Future Glean Architects, the UN Industrial Development Organization and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification.
UN Climate Change hopes that in the run-up to COP28 in Dubai next year, the hub could be used to facilitate matchmaking between suppliers and consumers and attract innovators, potential off-takers and enablers such as financiers to upscale development and deployment of green hydrogen of participating countries and cities.
Betting on bamboo as a highly sustainable building material
At the Global Innovation Hub, experts highlighted the potential of bamboo as a sustainable building material which can be used for affordable housing. Bamboo can play a key role in reducing carbon emissions especially in developing countries and emerging economies of the global south.
Under the Paris Agreement, most countries have agreed to plant trees and other vegetation to increase their carbon “sinks” – parts of their land that absorb more carbon from the atmosphere than they release. Since bamboo is highly suitable to plant on unproductive agricultural land, degraded grassland, or eroded slopes, it is potentially an effective tool to help countries implement their national climate action plans
Currently, UGIH in collaboration with the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR) are facilitating discussions on assessing the use and potential of bamboo in national climate action plans and in carbon markets. Using case studies, various experts including representatives from the International Bamboo and Rattan Organizatio, the Technology Base Bahy Foundation Inc, FOB Consult Limited and Ecuador Government, and the Ugandan Government highlighted the benefits of bamboo as an alternative building material. They also explored existing barriers, innovative solutions, and opportunities for upscale development and deployment of the bamboo value chain.
For example, In Manabí Province, the Government of Ecuador is using sustainable bamboo to deliver housing solutions and revitalize local economies. Ecuador suffered a catastrophic earthquake in 2016, wreaking devastation across Manabí and Esmeraldas Provinces. Bamboo structures withstood seismic activity better than other structures. As a result, Ecuador launched a programme to mainstream bamboo construction in public and private infrastructure, spanning the agricultural and construction sectors. This ambitious scheme aims to not only address the housing deficit, but also to develop building solutions that help people adapt to extreme weather resulting from climate change while generating new green jobs.
Promoting beans as one of the world’s most sustainable foods
A new campaign dubbed “Beans is How” was launched at the Global Innovation Hub in Sharm el Sheikh. This is an ambitious campaign that aims to increase the global production and consumption of beans – including peas and pulses - by 2028.
Beans are one of the planet's most sustainable protein sources as they dramatically use less water, land, and petroleum compared to livestock. Some species are also particularly resilient to extreme weather conditions.
Due to their nitrogen-fixing properties, legumes that produce beans have a reduced need for fertilizers, which, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, helps decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
The Innovation Hub Pavilion brought together high-level advocates across climate, agriculture, nutrition, and food security to join a dynamic conversation on the power of beans to drive transformative change for people and the planet.
However, much research and capacity building are still needed, as well as innovations to scale up the development and deployment of bean value-chains that constitute integrated mitigation, adaption, and resilience approaches. The UGIH digital platform can be used to contribute in identifying, and enabling the development, and deployment of solutions that can enhance the scaling up of the beans value chain. One of the barriers identified by participants of discussions at COP27 to scale up the use of beans in climate initiatives is the lack of awareness by consumers and governments about their potential and impact. This includes using them more as elements of mitigation or adaptation strategies within the context of countries nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and national adaptation plans (NAPs) under the Paris Agreement.
About the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub Pavilion at COP 27
The UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub (UGIH) Pavilion at COP27 featured 85 back-to-back sessions each spotlighting a specific climate innovation theme including cities, finance, green digital transition, transformative climate action, green hydrogen, shelter and creative and culture industry, nutrition and health. Approximately 408 speakers (305 in-person) and 103 remote participants from more than 48 countries and affiliated with 217 organizations spoke at the UGIH Pavilion. The Pavilion represented a space to introduce new products, business models, innovations, and services. Importantly, the UGIH launched the UGIH Virtual Hub - a digital collaboration platform designed and built to meet core human needs alongside climate and sustainability goals. It seeks to connect demands by countries and cities to key solution providers including innovators and financiers. Following its launch, the platform will be used throughout 2023 on the road to COP28 to demonstrate the benefit and impact of specific climate and sustainability innovations. As a first pilot to be showcased at COP28, the UGIH Virtual Hub will focus on three key human needs for an expanded innovation on climate action: access (green hydrogen), nutrition and health (beans), and shelter (bamboo). The three identified value chains are only examples and the UGIH will continue collecting demands over 2023 to be showcased at COP28. The UGIH will also start working with solutions providers to start identifying transformative solutions that can help scale up a rapid deployment of the value chains.
Read more about the Global Innovation Hub here and the pavilion at COP27 here. A variety of freely available digital assets can be found on the UGIH Trello board here.