Tom: Hi, everyone. Welcome back and thank you for joining us today. My name is Tom Timmins. I'm the energy sector industry group here at Gowling WLG and I'm absolutely delighted to welcome everyone back to our final Energy Innovator Roundtable of 2021. It's been quite a year. I think we're well positioned here to take on one of the most important topics in the world, obviously, the topic of COP26 here in our final roundtable of the year. Just to give you a little bit of background. We've been doing the Energy Innovator Roundtables now for a number of years here at Gowling WLG. They historically took place around a table, usually with breakfast was served, and they were meant to be an opportunity for a relatively small group to have an open and forthright conversation and the sharing of ideas. Of course since COVID-19 the Energy Innovator Roundtables have evolved. We now have a much larger group but we are doing our best to replicate the closer, smaller feel of the original roundtables. As such I'm delighted to welcome our panelists but I do want to invite everyone in the audience to please feel free to ask questions, and given the level of expertise that we have today ask your toughest questions if you can, because we have some of the best and the brightest with us here today. This roundtable will be recorded and it will be available on our website shortly after it concludes. It will be sometime tomorrow or Monday. So as I mentioned today we're going to be talking about COP26. You'd have to have been living under a rock if you don't know what that is or if you missed it. COP26 of course took place between November 1 and November 13 in Glasgow under the leadership of the United Kingdom. While Canada was at the table, and did make a number of commitments at COP26, the exact outcomes from COP26, and in particular the impact on Ontario businesses, remains to be seen. As most of you know we usually invite outside guests to join us at our Energy Innovator Roundtables, today is a little different because the complexity of the greenhouse regulation and the potential impact of COP26 invite a really deep dive into highly complex issues. To put it succinctly, we will be going into the weeds today, and I'm hoping that that's helpful to a lot of you. With us today to help us sort of the impact of COP26 for Ontario are three of my favourite colleagues, all of whom are uniquely qualified to help enlighten us on this complex topic. Ben Stansfield, as you can see joins us from the UK where it's evening. Ben is one of the UK's leading lawyers on planning and environmental permitting matters. Jennifer King, recognized as one of Canada's leading lawyers in energy and environmental law. Called to the Bar both in Ontario and in Nunavut, Jennifer has been deeply involved in the recent Supreme Court of Canada case, involving the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act and its constitutional impact for Canada, as well as in the development of the Henvey Inlet pattern wind project which many of you in the ... space will be quite familiar with. Last, but not least, my partner Adam Chamberlain. Adam is the leader of our Climate Change and Environmental Law group. Adam is certified as a specialist in both environmental law and in Indigenous legal issues. He's also recognized by Chambers, Lexpert and a number of other ranking agencies as being among Canada's leading practitioners in this field. Besides that he's a genuine nice guy. Adam, Ben, Jennifer, welcome. I'm going to pass it over to you, Adam, to lead us off.
Adam: Thanks very much, Tom, except for the cheesy part of my introduction there, that was great. Thank you very much. These are interesting times and interesting issues that we'll get to in a second. The first thing I wanted to do before I hand off to my colleague Ben over in London, is just mention a little bit. Many of you who are watching may have heard or know of Gowling WLG and our environmental practice, or for that matter other elements of our practice, but you may know of us more as a Canadian entity. But Gowling WLG is just not a Canadian entity. We have a Canadian environmental practice that is, frankly, second to none and involves lawyers across the country in our various offices, but we also have, frankly, one of the best global environmental practices that spans the globe and I don't know that the sun really ever sets on Gowling WLG, as the saying goes, but without getting into details we have offices in the UK where Ben is, but also in Europe and into Asia as well. So I won't get into listing them all but we need to understand these issues from a global point of view in order to be able to provide advice to our clients, wherever they are, and sometimes that means focusing on local conditions and we will talk about Ontario today, but it also means understanding what the regimes are in other jurisdictions and in the context of COP26 and climate change and greenhouse gas issues, it means understanding these things on a global basis because while this is, certainly nobody I think will argue that this is a global issue, it is, but it has different implications for different parts of the world, and different countries, and different clients and different sectors of the economy and that sort of thing. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody sort of gets a little bit of an idea of where we're coming from on this issue and why we're as interested as we are in it. Without further ado I think I'll hand it over to Ben to talk a little bit about the UK, and then Jen can talk a little bit about the Canadian perspective, and I'll follow up with some discussions about some implications for Ontario but this isn't meant to be a PowerPoint kind of presentation. This is meant to be a discussion and so to the degree that we hope that we will provide that discussion but, at the same time, if you have questions or comments please make sure to use the Zoom functions to convey them to us so that we can try to address them. Anyway, I think I'll take this opportunity to stop speaking and hand it off to you, Ben.
Ben: Okay. I'm going to say good evening because that's what it is here. Believe me, Tom, no one is more disappointed we can't get together than me because having spent a year and a half or 2 years not travelling I would have absolutely loved to have come to Toronto, one of my favourite cities so greetings from London. I thought before we sort of get into the detail of what COP was about, the good, the bad, the ugly and what the UK and the EU are doing about it, I thought it would be kind of helpful to set the scene because climate lawyers and environmentalists talk a lot about global average temperature rises, and we talk about in the UK, the phrase was 'Keeping 1.5 alive'. So we talk a lot about 2 degrees average temperature increase is 1.5, and this is all by 2100 so about 80 years time, and that feels like a long way away. 80 years is kind of the next generations problem, or the generation after that, and is there a big difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees and it's easy to forget that there is a huge difference. I thought I would just sort of illustrate that if you'll allow me. If the average global temperature increases by 1.5 degrees, we'll cope. It won't be much fun though. It won't be nice but we will survive. You're looking at coral reef declining by 70%. You're looking at really extreme heat days. They're going to be 3 degrees higher. Sea levels are going to rise by between 25 centimeters and 75 centimeters. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you think that 60% of the global population lives within a 100 kilometers of the coast, that's huge. Insects, plants, invertebrates, they're all going to lose their climatically determined range that's going to affect agriculture enormously, particularly as we move to plant based diets. The ice in the Arctic Sea will be ice free once every 100 years. There's going to be greater ..., food production is going to be dramatically impacted, mass migration. It's going to be pretty grim but we'll cope. Now if you get to 2 degrees it's a whole different kettle of fish. Coral reefs will decline by 99 to 100%. They'll just go. Extreme hot days, they will increase by 4 degrees, not just 3, but 4. Sea levels, you're looking at 40 centimeters to 90 centimeters. Terrifyingly the Arctic Sea will be ice free once every 10 years and you can barely begin to imagine what impact that's going to have for wildlife in the Arctic. Again, please don't think that 2100 is miles away. My kids are 16, 13 and 5. They will be 95, I can't really do the math, but they'll be that 95 and 85 at the turn of the century. They're life spans will be that their access to medical care, to good clean air will be great, but as elderly men and women at the turn of the century, how will they cope in 2011? It's going to be pretty, pretty horrible. We've put together a couple of slides and graphs which might help illustrate some of our points. I wonder, Jen, if you could get our first one up.
Jennifer: Ben, as I put that up I also wanted to add, as you talk about the impacts, what we hear in Canada all the time is that Canada's currently experiencing some of these impacts that you've already mentioned. This isn't something that we're waiting for. We're experiencing it now. We can see the flooding in BC and then what BC also faced earlier this year with the heat, experienced this summer, and the deaths associated with it, and what we're seeing from the IPCC and other international consensus of scientists is that this is also a global health crisis, a public health crisis. In Canada, in particular, we're facing warming at 2 times the global rate. In the Arctic it's 3 times and so these impacts are here and we're dealing with them now.
Ben: Yeah and it's easy to forget that stuff because these are big set conferences and it's hard to sort of lose the human reality, I think. So the emissions pathway graph that we've put up on screen there, you can see that sort of dark line going from the middle left, increasing quite rapidly and that's global emissions level. Now, we're currently at 1.1 degrees, by our count and the Glasgow Pact, which was the formal document signed at the end of COP26, the parties expressed their alarm and utmost concern. Which sounds quite a British way of saying it's horrifying but actually instead of international legal terms that's pretty strong stuff. You can see that green corridor going through sort of from the middle, it's like a kid's slide, it's so steep. We need to be within that corridor if we are to get to limit global temperatures to 1.5 degrees and so we need to get to net zero by mid-century. That's the whole point of keeping 1.5 alive. So we're currently at 1.1 and I think we're on course for something like 2.7. I could barely find the research to tell us just how grim 2.7 is. It just doesn't bear thinking about. The NDCs, these nationally determined contributions which is I guess it's like sort of each country around the world is almost the bit, how are they going to sort of contribute to that 1.5 - 2 degree limit. I think the NDCs are taking it to something like 2.4 degrees. Again, just ridiculously high. This slide was prepared, not by me, but just post-COP and I think the COP26 purchase should get us to just over 2, 2.1, something like that. With a fair wind a bit of luck we might get to 1.8. I mean talk a little bit about how we all feel about COP26, and whether it's a success or not, but I think John Kerry talked about it. Paris built the arena. Glasgow wasn't the race it just provided the gun and there's a lot of work to do. I guess from my perspective, it will be interesting, Jen and Adam, what you think but I'm just tend to think glass half full kind of guy and so I was sort of quite happy, I think, about COP. It would be lovely wouldn't it to have come away and gone, yeah, 1.5. We're going to get that. I think the press in the UK was almost a bit down beat. I think people expected miracles and we're disappointed when they didn't get them over here.
Adam: Yeah, I just would chip in a little comment about expectations. I think in Canada the press has been mixed about COP26. I think there's a fair level of skepticism about these large internationally meetings. I wonder, just wondering, whether the fact that it was being held in the UK might have coloured or provided a little bit more added optimism, or hopefulness by the UK press, and/or just everybody there. I think outside of the UK probably, at least in North America, there's been a little bit more skepticism perhaps going into it. That being said, as somebody who spends a lot of time watching these things and paying attention to what comes out of them, I was quite hopeful and initially I would say I was quite disappointed that we didn't see more from the final communiques and the final pact coming out of it. But what is interesting I think is looking at, not just in the whole all the countries in the world acting together but I think there's an acronym in there somewhere we could make up, but looking perhaps at the various different great groupings within the thing and actually if you read some of the press on COP26, whether it's the Economist which I would commend it is a good source of information, but a lot of the press is focusing on some of the elements that are coming out of COP26 that are not things that have been supported by all the countries but rather by multi-lateral groupings. A big of a hodgepodge of different ones because usually these groupings don't have support from all of the members. Some of the big emitters, notably China, US, India, aren't part of them. But it's worth noting, I'll take a bit of the wind out of maybe Ben and Jen's comments, and I'll just refer briefly to Mark Carney's work with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and just say this, Canada and UK share Mark Carney, I think it was Ben that said this to me the other day, but it's true. We, as Canadians, know Mark Carney well and the UK do because he's run both of our central banks, which is kind of an interesting thing to be able to put on someone's resume. But it's a good example. This is a bunch of businesses trying to do things, and I won't get into them because I think the others would like to talk about them a bit, but interestingly it's not, as I said, it's not all the countries in the world acting together, it's a bunch of businesses acting together and that's just one example of what we see and I think that's perhaps the way of the future with these COP things. It's not just what all the countries are doing together but rather what groupings of businesses and non-national actors are doing together.
Jennifer: Adam, it's kind of what you're talking about. I think that there is a lot of work and historically at past conferences have also been a lot of work happening outside. We have an articling student who's been there. She talks about all of the work that's going on around that kind of main table. I also think when we think about the impacts of client change we often focus on the things that Ben and I have already talked about. So what are the impacts of rising temperatures? But also what we're seeing more now, and I'm involved in climate litigation, we're seeing what are the impacts of reducing emissions and that's not a like a zero ... ... so particularly in Canada we see that. So we look at the hard work that all the participants have done in COP26 and whether or not they actually were successful or achieved all of the objectives, which Ben will be talking about. I think that we also have to keep in mind that there's consequences of reducing emissions and it's not just consequences. It's also consequences on our Indigenous peoples in Canada. It's consequences on our Prairie Provinces in Canada. So that's something also that the participants are thinking about.
Ben: Yeah. Should we talk about who the good and the bad folk are in terms of emissions because, I think that's on the next graph isn't? So should I sort of talk about the one on the left, Jen, before you jump in on the cumulative? You sort of almost Google climate data, you can see this stuff cut and diced any which way, so we've got blocks today rather than graphs. I guess it's fairly well known, isn't it, who the big polluters are in the word? This is on an aggregate basis. So if it were per capita, excuse me. Sorry, Jen, do you want to do the cumulative and I'll come back?
Jennifer: Yes, sure. Sorry, Ben. So I think that what Ben's going to talk about kind of the end of all emissions. What's important to remember is to see the sum of all legacy emissions. So this is not just about the snapshot. It's important to also look at who is responsible for the emissions, overall, in the atmosphere today. So that's what the image on the right shows. It really shows that into the 20th century global emissions were dominated by Europe and the United States because what you can see in this image, you can't really see all of the detailed writing and we can provide you with the sources of these at the end of the presentation, but what this really shows you is how much it's changed. So in 1900 more than 90% of emissions were produced in Europe and the US and even by 1950 they accounted for more than 85% of emissions each year. But in recent decades this has changed significantly and we've seen a significant rise in emissions from the rest of the world, particularly Asia and most notably China, which Ben can chat about.
Ben: Yeah. Sorry about that. I don't know what happened there. Anyway, I'm back now. As I was saying, you can see who the big polluters are. There's no surprise it's the Chinas, the India's, the US and if you group the EU together, and actually I think this might even be a pre-Brexit graphic because it talks about the EU28, I wish. So if it were a per capita basis you'd be looking at Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates. I think Canada's pretty high up on a per capita basis, possibly even higher than the US, and Australia. So you can cut and share this whichever you way want. I guess if we take the view that China, Russia, Turkey are all big polluters, it kind of hurts even more to sort of realize they weren't there. They're leaders didn't turn up. I know that the Chinese and the Russians both sent negotiators, there's a delegation there, but when the world really needed some leadership from those parts of the world it was, rightly so, quite a big headline. I think what we struck me, you can see red is Asia, green North America, yellow, Europe, and at the bottom I think green is South America, this light lime green, and it's kind of shocking, well not shocking, there's a lot of headlines that COP, Brazil and Brazil's role in climate change and what have you, but actually on an emissions basis South America's not really the problem here. I think we're going to talk about deforestation a little bit later and obviously there's issues there but Africa, that's the blue box, again, not the major problem here despite South Africa's reliance on coal. Just was a completeness in that bottom right box, that's international shipping and aviation, because I guess they can't really be ascribed to any of the continents when you're across the Atlantic. Should we, again, sort of move on to fuel types now, Jen? Again, just to start of help set the scene.
Jennifer: So this actually comes from the same source and these graphs show you emission services by fuel type. You can see on the image on the right, you can see emissions by fuel type through the world, and because carbon dioxide emissions associated with energy and industry or production would come from a range of fuel types, as you can see, and the contribution of these sources has changed significantly over time. We can still see large differences by regions. So you can compare that with Canada, for example, which you can see on the right. So you can see a really different makeup in the sources of carbon dioxide emissions by fuel type in Canada compared to the rest of the world. In these charts we see the absolute and relative contributions of CO2 emissions by source and the different fuel sources are coal, gas, oil, flaring and cement production. The reason why I wanted to show this is because we will be talking about the coal commitments that were discussed at COP26, and perhaps, Ben, you can comment on the emission sources by fuel type in the UK, sources which are different from Canada.
Ben: Yeah and if you get me in the pub after work I can talk at length about my views on British Government, but actually on the environment, we're kind of doing the right thing. It's hard for me to give Boris kudos but he's pretty green. Again, one of the startling things about, I think from a UK perspective of these graphs, is because we haven't had coal really significantly for quite some time. We have decarbonized power to a pretty substantial extent in the last 10 years. We've closed our coal power stations and we've put wind turbines out in the ocean. We put solar panels pretty much everywhere. So for example in the power industry, we've been pretty dramatic in our decarbonization. We have a little app which gives you real time data and we are, I think, just over 1/3 gas currently. Just under a 1/3 wind which is a bit of onshore but mainly offshore. Currently no solar but if we'd had this at my lunch time we'd have been at 7, 8%. Nuclear is generally around 12% and then we've got some imports as well. The government has pledged, interestingly seeing as we've got a lot of power clients on the well, we've pledged to fully decarbonize power by 2035 and we can perhaps talk about how we're going to do that or how the government thinks we're going to do that. But the bulk of UK emissions, at the moment, are from transport. Transport and our homes. So we heat our homes using gas. So it's quite interesting, someone asked me the other day, what are the challenges of the climate in the UK? Actually, it's persuading the tabloids to get on board with this stuff because we've got to be put into electric cars, we're going to have to insulate our homes and we're going to have to get rid of gas to heat it and gas is super, super convenient, and there's all sorts of concerns around air source heat pumps and stuff. If we can get the tabloids on board then we've got a chance of doing this but we've had protests in the UK ... persons. Sort of in the run up to COP and people were literally gluing themselves to motorways to get their message across. The press was horrendous and instead of focusing on why they're doing it and what the posted messages were, they were focusing on, understandably, the ambulance that couldn't get through or the kids didn't get to school, and I think that's the narrative I guess that needs to change in the UK. But I think we're up to about 48% cuts overall across the economy in the UK since 1990. Hard not to be a little bit smug.
Jennifer: Just to give a little bit more of a comparison with Canada and the UK, I just wanted to note that according to the Environment And Climate Change Canada's inventory, transport and oil and gas make up 50% of Canada's emissions profile and have increased since 2005 by 15 to 20%. Electricity emissions, on the other hand, only make up 8.4% and have declined by 48% in the same period. So just you were mentioning about the focus on transportation in the UK and we see the same thing here.
Ben: Yeah. Okay. Should I talk a bit about the actual sort of COP26 goals because we've spent 20 minutes building up to this crescendo. There's the problem and so what did COP do about it? There were four goals and I think it was Adam, very generous saying that the UK was the host of COP26. I forgot apparently Italy was the co-host. It's slightly curious that you'd end up in Glasgow but I think Italy had a few sort of warmup events in the land but I should, for the full disclosure, give some credit to the Italians as well. There are four goals which were set by the Presidency. So it was net zero by 2050 and that's how we keep 1.5 alive and we've got some little images there. How do you deliver on the net zero target? Well, COP26 President Alox Sharma said, you need to accelerate the phase out of coal. You need to curtail deforestation, which is a bit frustrating because there wasn't as much talk about reforestation and re-worlding, as the environmentalists may have wanted. So we're going to stop deforestation. We're going to speed up the switch to electric vehicles and, again, I think the UK's been pretty, pretty bold in that sense. Not quite Norway levels of bold, but we've been doing a pretty good job on that, and encouraging investment and renewables which kind of stands to reason. But the other goals were adaptation to protect communities and natural habitats. So there's the environmental tick from me. Again, in the UK, we talk so much about decarbonization. We talk about greenhouse gas emissions and there's just no real focus on the natural world which I think's quite interesting. All being well, many of our countries will have got to net zero in 30 years times. So we'll have kind of done that. We'll have ticked that box and then we'll be talking about how do we restore the world. I think that's a much longer play. It's interesting, quite a few of our clients in the UK are starting to talk. Not just about decarbonization, but actually why divest in all this kind of stuff, which is probably another podcast. So we're going to protect and restore ecosystems, build defenses, warning systems, all that kind of stuff. Green finance. That was a real major focus and, again, that's were Mark Carney was in his element and doing a fantastic job. Going green isn't cheap, right? I think in Paris the various signatures have committed to raising a hundred billion US dollars, per year, for developing countries to mitigate in their climate change. I think there's been pretty woeful performance and actually the Glasgow Pact was, again, use of language as sort of expressing disappointment and what have you, which again was a way of stiff upper lip way of saying, it's bloody outrageous that you guys haven't sort of raised the money yet. There was very much a focus I think at COP about how the private sector was going to be helping and unlocking the hundred billion from governments would unlock the trillions of pounds and dollars needed to address the climate emergency. It's a little bit cheesy, the whole sort of working together to deliver, but I think we've made it pretty clear that this is a global problem and we have to collaborate. That's a question of sort of government collaboration, businesses, like Adam, Jen and me collaborating across the Atlantic, and civil society as well. I think that was one of the real strong themes I got from COP that this is kind of a bottom up thing. For example, in the UK we declared climate emergency and net zero in 2019, but we took 2 years to get our net zero strategy as to how we're going to do that. and in those 2 years business just took over. Just did its thing and said, that's the direction of travel, leave it to us. I suppose, from my perspective, did it achieve goal? Again, I think I've talked about sort of being a glass half full kind of guy, I think it did. I think it did. I suppose my biggest worry about COP is that it almost felt like we needed another week, didn't it? Adam, you sort of talked about the UK was saturated with new source, living, breathing it, watching live coverage at times that suited me rather than amount of times and problems. It felt there was a lot of protesting, a lot of people power and that drove a lot of business leaders and certainly it drove Boris to go back to Glasgow. He started out, did his set piece, came back on a private jet, went for dinner with one of his mates in London Club, it didn't go down very well in the media. Various other issues in terms of sleeves and what have you hit the headlines so he thought, what do I do? I know. I'll go back to Glasgow. I'll start being a greenie again. So I think a lot of that was sort of public pressure, and I think COP27 is going to be in Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt, and I remember when Sharm El-Sheikh was attacked. It had tourist attacks a few years ago. They managed to shut that down, that resort, really carefully, very quickly. Are we going to get the same level of public participation in Egypt? Forcing and reminding global leaders to do the right thing? Again, I think COP28 is going to be in the UAE. So, again, are we going to get the same kind of people power?
Tom: Ben, we're starting to get questions coming in and we've had a couple of really good questions. One of our participants, Leo Flemming, made a point that our images on the COP26 goals need to be updated. The phase out of coal, of course, didn't happen and instead, and this is similar to several of Canada's commitments, you have to read the wording of the outcome very carefully. We're not going to phase out coal, according to COP26, we're going to phase down coal. Of course everyone saw that in the media. But if you drill a little bit deeper you'll see similar language changes have been made, including Canada's commitments, not to stop direct public financing of coal, oil and gas development but to stop new public financing. There's a lot of carefully worded language there so a great point from Leo there. Another question that came in, sorry to interrupt, but and, Ben, you had kind of alluded to this, but the concept of electrifying everything. This is from Ravi ..., the concept of electrifying everything. Is that something, Adam, Jen, that you're starting to see in Ontario or that you can see a future for Ontario?
Adam: I'll take a run at this, just quickly. It's a critical question, what is the source of electricity, because if you electrify everything, and you're electricity is coming mainly from coal derived power plants, then of course the electrification is sort of meaningless because you're just moving the emission from the tailpipe of a car to some other place farther away with big wires in between. So it really depends on where you are. Interestingly Canada has a lot of green electricity, and Jen already mentioned this in terms of the percentages, so electricity isn't a huge one for Ontario. We already use a lot of hydro electric. We use a lot of nuclear. Of course we use an increasing amount of gas. So over time we better figure out how to move that especially if there are implications for carbon banking does have a real price. Whether it's national or internationally. But we're in a much different place than we would be say if we were in the Prairies where you've got more coal generation, more fossil fuels supporting our electrical. BC, Quebec, Ontario, big parts of the country where we've got very green electricity. That is something to think about because this assumption of putting electric cars on the road is going to solve the problem is a little illusory if you're putting them in places where the electricity grid is largely supported by coal generation. So for instance in China, places like that, and different jurisdictions in North America as well. So there's a couple of thoughts there. Jen, do you have something you want to add to that?
Jennifer: I'll just add that Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding and a Declaration related to working towards zero emission truck and bus sales and zero emissions cars and vans within the next several decades. I'll just note here, through my interest in constitutional law, of course that's a commitment that Canada signed and how that's actually going to play out in Ontario, Tom, further to your question, it gets complicated. As we know from the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act reference which we were involved in, our firm, it is trying to turn something like that, like a Federal international commitment, to how Ontario is going to make choices and which is going to impact our Province, is going to require a lot of work, and I know Adam has already mentioned it and the Supreme Court mentioned it in the GGPPA case, we need to have cooperation and collaboration at all levels in government, including within Canada. So how that's going to play out, we don't know yet, and we haven't seen a plan yet. The specific plan from Canada let alone how it's going to really work out in Ontario.
Adam: It's a really good point and it's one that whenever I'm talking with my colleagues, not Ben, but other colleagues from the UK there's often a bit of a divide because UK is a unitary state, essentially, with one government, sort of other governments with increasing ... nice that it's always happening, I won't go into that. But largely are more unitarian, less Provincial, less confederal system than Canada has. So a little different in terms of how you coordinate. We do, constitutionally, have issues with joint responsibility for the environment in Canada. It makes it more complicated. So that's something to mention. I'm just going to pick up quickly, Tom, rather you just clarify the point that was being made there was more about source reliability. So I presume thoughts about you can't electrify your car, or charge your car battery, relying only on wind or solar if it's not windy or sunny. That does bring us to the point that you need not only to be concerned what is the carbon output of your grid but also how stable is it, how easily is it supported and these are very interesting and important questions to consider because you can't run electric vehicles just on wind power. Most grids have a mix and our Canadian mixes are relatively green and yet still fairly, depending on what you consider nuclear to be, but we'll see where things go as our initiatives continue to green the grids, if you will, sorry about the consonants there. Anyway, I'll stop for a second. Ben, I think you were talking about sort of digressed about.
Ben: That's fine and I think Leo made a really good point and I'm going to dip in myself here and say that phasing out coal was the goal. That's what the COP Presidency talked about and that's what the slide was intended to achieve. That was the big headline over here as well that it went from phase out to phase down coal. Boris, in his final statement, was sort of saying I don't understand any difference between phase out and phase down. But actually it is quite interesting. If you look at the Glasgow Pact, maybe phase down is the right word. So they talk about calls upon the parties, accelerate development, yadda, yadda, yadda, rapidly scaling up the deployment of clean power while accelerating efforts to phase down on unabated coal power. So if you look at sort of the preceding sentence, when they talk about scaling up renewables, maybe phasing down is intended to be the opposite. I don't know. I'm a lawyer. I've been a lawyer for 20 years and I've been sort of thinking, is there a difference between phasing out and phasing down? I don't know but it's interesting, I think the bigger issue is about unabated coal. I think for a while it was hoped. Unabated has sort of slipped in, hasn't it, and there was a really interesting news night on BBC and they had the Columbian Energy Minister and he was saying, we don't really burn coal much over here but it's massive export for us. Without coal exports we're really screwed. Actually, exporting coal, there's no carbon issue there. There's no carbon issue in mining it and selling it. It's the people who are burning it. Blame them. If you abate it, if you capture the carbon, then it's fine. We should use it. It's kind of hard, isn't it, to argue against some of these sort of developing countries who have a real trade gap without it. So I don't really know how I feel about it but just on coal, again, I think we've both said that Ontario and the UK are coal free and so, again, it's very easy to forget that it's a big thing. Coal is 40% of global power production, isn't it? It's monstrous. We were talking earlier about the series of mini agreements, mini protocols and what have you, which is almost like side events and certainly one which got the biggest press, I think in the UK, was the transition statement around coal. The various sedentary said yeah, we're going to scale up renewables, we're going to scale up tech, which I interpret as carbon capture and storage type technology. We're going to cease giving out new permits for new unabated coal plant and we're going to give support to workers and local communities so we sort of adjust. I think they talk about adjusting inclusive transition. So they're supporting people out of one economy into another but I think the really interesting issue on this coal statement is who signed it. Or rather, who didn't. So the press in the UK were over a hundred countries signed this new coal statement. I think about a quarter of them have no coal. Either no coal reserves or they don't generate power from coal. So why are they signing it? There's no wind there. But the big folk who didn't sign it. Let's look at the graph on the left. So you can see that these are some of the signatories to the coal plan and you can see that Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea and Canada and the UK, they're all there and I think Indonesia and Vietnam and South Korea are the top three. But if you look on the right, which are the countries which are reliant on coal, those three countries are pretty far down the list, right? I've put little arrows on them, which might not appear so well on the webinar, but China didn't sign. India didn't sign. The US, Japan and you think, how valuable really was that process? I don't know. I'm a bit frustrated by it, I think.
Tom: Just to jump in, Canada did sign the commitment to end coal exports by 2030. So that's worth noting. I think it was Adam and Jennifer mentioned coal's not that important, at all, in Ontario at this stage in our electricity generating story. It has been historically but the other piece is, to move on from coal, questions about methane. I'm not sure who among you paid much attention to the impact of methane on climate change and any of Canada's commitments on methane. Methane, natural gas of course, Ben as you probably know, does constitute a big piece of the energy mix here in Ontario and across Canada. It also is a major export for our country and has a big impact actually on our balance of payments and our dollar. So I don't know if, Jen or Adam, you have any thoughts on how Canada's commitments on methane might impact local players.
Jennifer: Why don't I just say, first, before I pass it to Adam that on methane during COP26, Canada re-upped it's support for the global methane pledge. This is something that the Federal government initially offered its support to in October and vowed to cut methane emissions by 30% from levels recorded in 2020 by 2030. This pledge now has a 110 supporters. ECCC does say that methane accounts for 13% of the countries total greenhouse gas emissions. What I will say, before I pass it to Adam, is to say Canada still hasn't told us how they're going to meet those targets. So Canada, consistent with Canadian law, granted COP26 just ended but these commitments that Canada has made, many of them aren't new. They're kind of reiterating or re-emphasizing the commitments that we're already making, including in their new climate plan from last year, from December of last year and we still don't have a specific plan of how they're going to meet that target. With that I'll leave it to over to Adam.
Adam: I'll make a comment about the process. In Ontario, for instance, there is a regulatory requirement that if you run a large landfill, by the way landfills account for a significant amount of methane emissions and methane is somewhere in the order of 24 times as bad as a greenhouse gas is as carbon dioxide, so converting methane emissions into carbon dioxide still gives off greenhouse gases but it reduces them quite dramatically. So in Ontario there's a requirement that landfills gather, collect, that are methane, the landfill gas created by all the stuff decomposing and either flare it or somehow manage it. That has been in place, from the regulatory point of view, now for some time actually. So arguably any benefits that you see from that conversion of methane to carbon dioxide from landfills is already been accounted for by regulation, required by regulation, so there's no, arguably, shouldn't be part of a reduction that you see at a national or Provincial level, for that matter. The interesting thing I think that's neat about methane management is we're starting to see it being used differently. There's now an increased move to, and I'm one of many large projects in Ontario, where you've got a landfill gas that will be moved from the landfill into a scrubber and into the natural gas system. So it's not being just flared, which means that even though, again, still combust that natural gas, that methane, the clean natural gas or RNG as it's often called, renewable natural gas, it does get burned in my house to heat my house and many other houses, its carbon footprint is being reduced. So you're starting to see that happen more and more. The challenge is going to be where do we see those things accounted for. Will they be accounted for by Federal commitments or does that somehow fall into some other category? Those are interesting questions and there are similar questions with respect to electricity and who gets the benefit, or who gets the credit, for emissions being reduced and the contracts deal with that and they're complicated questions but I think it's going to be interesting to see how we manage those issues, as between Canada and Ontario, among the other Provinces as well. So just a few thoughts there, Jen.
Jennifer: Can I just, to pick up on something you said that perhaps it's a bit too far field, but you talk about how to account for this, the reductions. One of things that I've heard mentioned quite a bit, that Canada's quite excited about, is the, I'm going to have to read this out, International Sustainability Standards Board. So Gowling WLG has a ESG group that Adam and I are both parts of in Canada, Ben is involved over in the UK in ESG work, and this is pretty exciting to me. So at COP26 it was announced, the formation of this new International Sustainability Standards Board to develop comprehensive global baseline of high quality sustainability disclosure standards to meet investor's information needs. It's been great that there's been a focus in the past several years, in particular, on ESG disclosure and recording but it's really resulted in complicated web of standards and processes. So the intention is to focus on that and there is a lot of excitement in Canada that Montreal was selected as one of the host cities to host one of the central offices. We share that with Frankfurt. I think that, from what I hear, Canada would have liked to have had that office but we have one of them. The ISSB has already released early frameworks and drafts demonstrating a change in direction. I think that will give everybody some more clarity and some more focus on how the standards are going to be across the globe because as we know, I'm sure everyone's heard a lot about carbon pricing, these are the kinds of things that have to be broadly adopted. So having broad standards that aren't piecemeal will be useful.
Adam: Excellent. Maybe we'll go back to Ben about, Ben you were doing some thinking about methane, I thought, at one point.
Ben: That's very generous if you thought my face was thinking about that. I probably didn't have much to add to methane actually that hasn't been said. We can talk about deforestation. Again, it's sort of one of those really interesting sort of side agreements that came out of COP26. What is really positive about deforestation, we've shown you a load of graphs and me saying coal, the global baddies who have been at the top of those graphs, haven't signed the agreement. But actually when it comes to deforestation you can see Brazil has got a pretty substantial part to play. They did sign the agreement. So did the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I don't think Bolivia did but Indonesia did. So we've got 3 out of the top 4 who signed up to the deforestation principles, which is grand I guess, until you look at what they signed up to and it's all about ... . I suppose a lot of these things are, aren't they? But I think the point around deforestation is in the last 60 years more than half of the world's tropical forests have been destroyed. Mainly as a result of agriculture. That's responsible for 80% of all deforestation. So there are all sorts of good stuff, good principles, good comments made at COP26 about conserving forests, facilitating stable trade, reducing vulnerability and enhancing all for a livelihood again. It's just sort of one industry being phased out/phased down and a new one putting in. Sustainable agriculture being incentivized and what have you. Again, sort of think about this in the power sector, biomass in the UK was a very exciting thing about 10 years ago. They were getting a lot of big biomass plants of 300 megawatts were getting a lot of consent. Often in poor and struggling areas because there was a port which was sort of on the wane and the idea was they would be bringing over woodchip from South America into quite a heavy process in the sense of there'll be a lot of jobs, compared to gas fired or nuclear or something like that. So local authorities, local municipalities, are really going crazy for this stuff but none of the really big schemes every took off because the sustainability was just so sensitive. So biomass produces about 5% of the power in the UK but it's really difficult to see it ever going beyond that. So, again, I don't know if biomass is a big feature of Canadian life.
Adam: It has been relatively growing. I'd still say it features somewhat similar to the way you're describing it in the UK, Ben, but it has been part of feed-in tariff development in Ontario, in particular. We've also seen it in other jurisdictions where other forms of carbon credits, or offsets, can be attached to the facility. For instance, in Alberta, there's been some biogas largely related to the food industry or feed lots, that sort of thing. We do see it. It's an area that could be doing more. I think some of these areas we've learned in Canada require some very definitive government policy direction and programs to help implement it. So for instance, as one example, is the Ontario Green Energy Act that was, I believe, introduced in 2009. We went from having like three wind turbines in the Province to having, I don't know, thousands within a decade. So clearly, so maybe not thousands but over a thousand anyways, so clearly government policy was, at the time, it changed. Not everybody agreed with the particular policy direction, but if you're looking to introduce more renewables into the economy, clearly government policy and implementation does matter. So we're going to have to think a little bit about that, I think both at a national and Provincial level in Canada, because offering the real work on some of these things gets done at a Provincial level, and I use the Green Energy Act as one good example of that. There's a question here about whether we can speak to, and I'll just bring it up now and introduce it for a second, whether we can speak to urban design and that is active transport, less reliance on cars, etcetera. I know that Britain has done this, at least to some degree, and I know in Canada it's happening and it's happening more. Depends really on where you are, I would say. The lead certification for buildings and the introduction of efficiencies, green roofs, various things, these are things that have largely been driven, not by government policy as say wind development has been, but rather by, I think, the private sector taking it and trying to make it real. Government does tag along a little bit because government has significant ownership of buildings in various parts of Canada. Government's a big part of our economy but really, I think, this has been driven more by more local initiatives. Some you see to some degree in different cities and municipalities have sought to introduce these sorts of things. So there is, I think, growth here and I think one of the things that I'm seeing coming out of COP26, and also just generally, is that carbon and greenhouse gases, this has been big and small as an issue throughout my career, which is more than I like to admit, it seems to be cool for one minute or one year and then it kind of goes away and comes back. It's a big deal right now. Well it's also a big deal, look at the markets, they're going up. So people can afford to think a little bit about greenhouse gas reductions. When the economy goes in the tank then everybody stops thinking about that for a little while and thinks about jobs. But it seems to me that some of these things are becoming more baked into our economy in a variety of different ways. Whether it's government policy on renewables, whether it's things like municipalities trying to reduce their carbon footprints, and organizations like the one Mark Carney marshalled at COP26, trying to make initiatives stick and move companies towards net zero emissions. You take all of these things together and I think things feel stickier right now. Actually it's a question maybe I'll pose it to Ben, and to Jen, is whether that stickiness, whether you see the same stickiness I'm starting to see. I have no doubt that in the next 2 or 3 or 5 years, at some point, the economy will go badly or relatively badly, and this won't be quite as cool. I was never a cool kid in school so I'm used to that, attached to the subject matters that kind of go like that, and I'm very comfortable when it's not cool but it seems to me, anyways, that the breadth of the attention being paid to this from private sector and public sector, around the world in different ways, has to at least be leading us towards some improvement. Whether it's enough to get us to 1.5, or limit us to 1.5, I don't know. I don't know, Ben, do you think it's maybe feeling stickier this time?
Ben: Yeah, I think so and I think you're right about cycles of green being cool. I qualified as a lawyer in London in 2003 and I remember working on a very big development, and maybe this picks up some of the stuff about smart cities, and it was actually a great experience. If you've been to London and you've been to the Dome and watched a concert. That used to be just some the most horrendously polluted site in London. It was a gasworks or that kind of stuff. They got consent for 10,000 homes. There's going to be schools. All sorts of cool stuff and they where was talk about having green leases. So leases which would require tenants to have their waste management in certain ways. Not just putting lightbulbs in but really strong tenant commitment to that public transport, all this kind of stuff. But then there's a bit of a crash in the market, generally, and people go, oh look. Tenant's aren't going to pay for this stuff. It's too expensive and actually, I've been at a meeting with a large institutional developer who's sort of saying, no, we should be thinking about this stuff. Yeah, it is going to be expensive but we've got the clout to do it. If any tenants quibble and say they don't want to sign up to green lease terms, we'll just go on their website, download the CEOs report of this retailer and say, you've got ESG standards. You promised to be green. So I think there is a feeling that it's going to stick. I hope it does. It's an interesting question around smart cities and what have you, because if you look at the Glasgow Pact, there's no mention of walking or cycling in this. EVs, yeah. Green corridors for shipping, yeah. How aviation may play it's part but nothing about maybe we could redesign our cities so that you could walk to places. We could put pavements in. London is, I'm biased so I'm going to say we're quite progressive, we have a pretty cool mayor in Sadiq Khan and his London planning policies are pretty worth thinking in terms of requiring sustainable transport, green buildings, net zero buildings, all this kind of stuff. On a wider environmental perspective, there isn't enough about parklets and these mini urban parks. We've been doing some work with some charities in the UK who planted these mini forests. 600 trees and they're really densely packed to create bi-diversity and what have you. There's a real issue in London at the minute about air quality in poorer parts of cities and what have you. For the first time ever, recently, a young girl who died of asthma. On her death certificate, it was poor air quality was put down on the death certificate. So I think urban design is a very, very significant issue but I think it's getting traction. I really hope so.
Jennifer: To add to this. I think Sharon asked this question about urban design and I think that, I like to talk about division of powers, but the municipalities, although not recognized in our constitution as a third level of government, talk about being baked in, Adam, I think it's going to stick for a number of different reasons. So the Planning Act, which kind of governs decisions at the municipal level in Ontario, has included right in section 2, it requires municipalities, boards and the tribunal that governs these decisions, municipalities to consider when we're thinking about the public interest, mitigation of greenhouse gases and adaptation to or changing climate. What we're seeing is different municipalities update their official plans. Municipalities across Canada have declared climate emergencies. They all have to then follow the Provincial statement in Ontario and pass the plans and we're seeing that being baked into beneficial plans and the way they make decisions. What we're seeing in cases, before tribunals, we're seeing arguments about climate change and adaptation, and mitigation being made in support of development or concerns about development, and we're seeing that not just in Ontario but right across the country. So Greater Vancouver also has a specific plan with respect to climate change mitigation in addition to their other plans. It doesn't exactly answer the question but I think, because it's so diverse, Sharon, like right across Ontario and across Canada the way that municipalities govern these things but we're seeing this. We're seeing it in the governing legislation. We're seeing it in official plans and I know that Ottawa City Council just passed an official plan that has a whole chapter on climate change.
Adam: Tom, I thought you had something you wanted to address.
Tom: So yeah, we have another interesting question. Just before we leave the topic of municipalities, and businesses too, I would say that at the municipal level, of course municipalities are quite important in Canada, as they are in the UK. This has become an organizing principle of governance and so just to go back to that excellent question. It's perhaps a little bit beyond the topic of energy, but that question was from Sharon ... about organizing municipality's urban design, urban transportation, sustainable transportation, active transportation, rail, light rail, all of those things. There is a lot of good things happening for some of us for the first time in our lives really, in Toronto, in terms of the build out and that, of course, is the build out of rail and public transportation. These projects are gigantic. They haven't been done for two generations and they really do involve cooperation by all levels of government and they will have a very positive impact on climate and on carbon emissions. So things are happening. I think a lot more will need to be done. Other questions, a really interesting question from someone, Ben you kind of touched on it but I just think it's an important question, how do I encourage my employer to do their part? I think that's an interesting question. Not technically a legal question but I'm sure we all have opinions. Maybe I'll start with you, Adam.
Adam: My first response to that would be start with a conversation. I think the trick for most employers is going to be what do they do if they open the door? Does it let the floodgates go and their employees are running in the streets and up in arms wanting their workplace to be completely different? How's that going to affect my business? I think my first piece of advice is be constructive. Come with ideas and not complaints and see what you can make work is probably the way I would do it. Of course it depends on your employer. If you're employed by the Government of Canada you're going to have a different time. If you're employed by one of Mark Carney's 450 companies you might have some, in his arrangement through the financial lines to net zero, you might have a lot easier time. You'll also have a lot easier time if you happen to be the CEO or the CFO of one of those companies than you might be if you are further down the line. But a good idea is always a good place to start, I think.
Jennifer: I think to add to Adams comments, I think it does depend on who your employer is, but I think that we talk about these risks. There's a couple of other things that you can use in the arguments. I think that on the other side of all the risks that we're talking about there's also opportunities, and so a way to encourage your employer to make these changes and take these steps is to talk about, right now we talk about all this money that's in reducing emissions in the world, we've got an opportunity right here and your employer has an opportunity to take advantage of this and be ahead of the curve. Because what we know is that these requirements are not going to lessen. This is the whole point of these COP meetings is to pressure and encourage participants to continue upping their commitments, over time, and it's better to start now than to wait until it's required. For example, the Canadian Securities regulators have out for consultations right now, reporting requirements related to climate change. There's a question as to whether or not they're going to be mandatory or not but, again, this is the kind of information that if you can marshal this information for your employee, depending on who your employer is, it can be really motivating. Why wait for it to imposed and required? Be ahead of the curve. Then finally I'd say that there's a number of really great resources in Canada, depending on who your employer is, for boards to think about climate and climate risk and how you can address it as a company. You could encourage your employer, for example, to look at CCLI which is the Canadian Climate Law Initiative. Some of us in our group are experts, and we go speak to boards about what they can do, to think about not just address the risks and requirements, think about what's coming down the road with respect to the requirements and mitigation, but also how to take advantage of the opportunities.
Adam: Tom, if it's okay, I just wanted to chat a little bit for a minute, turn the conversation a bit to Ontario. I do this because I know we're getting close. We're not at the end of our time but we don't have a ton of time left. There's one topic I wanted to just address that shows up in COP26. It also shows up in the front page of the newspapers and websites today, in Ontario, and that's cars. The reason I bring it up is because first of all there's a zero emission vehicle group at COP26. I believe it was 10 automakers that committed to 100% of their fleets being made that be zero emission vehicles by 2040. So Ontario has a robust, and healthy, and active, and vibrant power sector that frankly creates a huge amount of economic activity for us, partly because we're sitting next to this huge economy that buys the largest plurality if not the majority, I think it's about 3/4 of the cars built here are sold in the US. For Ontario, and Ontarians, the auto sector is important at least to some degree, a significant degree. So this commitment, what does it mean for the sector? Not all of the companies that build cars in Ontario are signed onto this commitment but, frankly, you know that all auto manufacturers are starting to look at or examine increasing their zero emission or reduced emission vehicle fleets. The question really becomes is this an opportunity or a challenge, or both, from the point of view of the Ontario auto sector. Then on top of that, and the reason I wanted to make sure I brought up is that, on top of that the incredibly complicated inter-relationship between the Americans and Canadians from a trade point of view, and the challenge that the White House is trying to address, both in funding and encouraging their economy to come back to life after COVID, but also frankly looking at electoral politics as well. So we're seeing the introduction, from what I understand of about $12,500.00 subsidy, up to that, for certain electric vehicles made in the US with US built batteries. So what does that do for Ontario? At the very least it's going to be a real challenge, I would suggest, because the Ontario marketplace is not nearly as big as the US marketplace. The Canadian marketplace isn't as big. Like less than a tenth the size of the American economy. So if we're not able to sell there that's going to be a real challenge. So I think as Canadians, and Ontarians, we should be hopeful that our politicians who are currently in Washington talking about these very things, are successful in those conversations because they're going to be critical to keeping our auto sector alive. We may have these international obligations, or commitments, that are being made Federally by our Federal government but if they can't be backed up with a healthy, vibrant auto sector, Ontario, it's going to be challenge. This is just one example, of course. There's many other parts of the economy. It's not just about the auto sector but I think what this reminds me of, when you look back to the comments about the breadth of the initiatives that we're seeing coming out of COP, whether it's all the nations acting together, or just groups of nations or groups of the economy, or different people in different sectors, they're all going to play a part in seeing this change. If we're going to be able to be more optimistic then sometimes we feel, and Ben has articulated some of the concerns about how we're going to get to where we need to be, it's going to take everybody rowing in the same direction in all different ways. I would just say that I think that the auto sector, just put it out there, is one area in particular that we have to watch for and look for how we can make it into an opportunity and not make it a challenge.
Tom: Interesting, Adam. That is one area where the current Ontario government has some enthusiasm. Although the current government might not be as a enthusiastic about renewable energy development as say, for instance previous governments were, I hope I put that politically correctly, but they certainly are enthusiastic about EVs, and the development of EVs, and what an incredible opportunity that is. There was a really great piece in The Economist, just before COP, talking about the concrete and cement industry and if put together I think their view was that if aggregated, the concrete industry worldwide, would be the world's third largest emitter after China and the United States. Then of course aviation fuels. Ben, you might have some views on this from the UK side, but there's a lot of innovation happening in Ontario on concrete and trying to create carbon negative concrete. Which is absolutely incredible. The same with aviation fuels and I know there's a lot of great things happening in Ontario. Also in Quebec, in the Montreal technological ecosystem, as well on aviation fuels. Ben, I don't know if you have any thoughts on those kind of industry plays that are coming down the pike.
Ben: Yeah, and I think actually the UK issued its net zero strategy about a week or two before COP26, which some may say was very convenient and possibly even a press opportunity, it was like an offering circular or information memorandum. Overseas companies to come and invest in the UK and the government is giving all sorts of seed funding, essentially, to universities and entrepreneurs and innovators and saying, here's a few million pounds. Go and see what you can do and as you say, concrete absorbing CO2 is one of them. Another interesting one was seaweed farming. The amount of carbon that is absorbed in the ocean through plankton and seaweed and what have you. It's bonkers. The carbon sequestration in the ocean is insane. So yeah, hopefully we'll start seeing seaweed farms just off the British coasts. A lot of stuff if you'd read about 5, 10 years ago you'd just think, someone's been at the beer. But it's coming.
Tom: Alright. I want to wrap up with a final question to each of you. So back in, I believe it was the summer of 2016, Mark Carney who has gotten a lot of press here today, another great Canadian, just like Elon Musk by the way, Ben, another great Canadian, Mark Carney was interviewed, and it was July of 2016, by the Toronto Board of Trade and it was the first time I'd heard him make reference to this term: a Minsky moment. The idea that a sudden unforeseen market change has occurred. Was COP26 a Minsky moment? Has the world changed as a result of COP26? What's your takeaway? Jen, I'm going to start with you. Any views?
Jennifer: Maybe this is a cop out but I think, from Plato's perspective, I think we need to wait and see. I don't see any commitment that was really significantly different than what Canada had already committed to. Again, we haven't seen their plan. Other than perhaps the commitment, I don't know if we talked about this much, but to end the public financing of fossil field projects. But, again, that had to do with international projects and it wasn't about Canada as public financing of its own projects. So I think we don't know yet but I do think it's kind of a building on. It's continuing some momentum. It's continuing the conversation. We're talking about it right now and hopefully it will help continue to push actual meaningfulness.
Tom: Great. Adam, over to you. Ben, I'm going to give you the last word. Adam, any thoughts?
Adam: Yeah, I don't think it was a Minsky moment. I think though it was a signpost along the way or snapshot in time. An opportunity for attention to be paid by the mainstream media, to broaden the exposure to a lot of these interesting ideas and to make people more aware of them. So I don't think it changed anything. Maybe I'll be proven wrong in a few years but I do think that it allowed an opportunity to stop along the way and say, this is some stuff. Some will work. Some of it's not bad. Some of it's not as good as we'd like but it's all part of where we need to go. I think it will be remembered. It was one of the major, every so often we have a major COP, and Paris was a major COP. This was a major COP. So expectations are raised very, very high for these meetings. I think in this case we probably didn't reach those or achieve those expectations but we moved the needle along a little bit and it continues to move. So that's what I would say.
Tom: Thanks, Adam. Ben, over to you. Minsky moment or not?
Ben: Well I'm still Googling what a Minsky moment is. I think something's been lost in translation here, Tom.
Tom: Big deal.
Ben: I'm going to say, yes, it was a big deal. Partly just to be contrary but I think it was. I think it showed that people, it's the Greta Thunberg effect. 16 year old goes on a climate strike and to our anonymous question about how you do that, start a campaign. Look what it did for Greta. I think it's clear that this is an issue close to millennials hearts. Our generation have messed up the planet but I think the next one is really going to sort it out. I think there's been some really good stuff coming out since COP. The UK and the EU have proposed legislation on forest risk commodities, saying companies have got a due diligence if they're using beef, leather, cocoa, palm oil, timber, rubber, all that kind of stuff. I think there is momentum. As I say, I just have a slight anxiety as to whether that momentum will continue in the next year or two at future COPs, but I think it was a good thing and I hope that continues.
Tom: Excellent. With that I want to thank each one of our panelists, Adam Chamberlain, Jennifer King, Ben Stansfield, thank you all very much. I also want to thank each of you in the audience. Your questions were amazing and we see that most people, almost everyone who signed in, stayed on so hopefully the hour was good. We look forward to seeing everyone again, hopefully live and in person, at our roundtables. They're held in September, October and November each year. They're focused on energy and energy innovation and we're always looking for topics. We're always looking for speakers. We're always looking for ideas and, once again, this session was recorded. It will be available online on our website. If you have any questions or any ideas feel free to reach out to me or to any of our speakers. Once again, everyone, thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the day. Take care.