Delivering the opening address as the patron of the fifth Budapest Climate Summit on Monday, Dec. 2, the current chairman of the Blue Planet Climate Protection Foundation he co-founded lashed out at COP, usually proclaimed as the leading global climate event, alleging its sole achievement of late has been the record participant numbers.
“Attendances! 65,000 people attended Baku,” he said, referring to the COP29 conference held in Azerbaijan just two weeks previously. “Is there any sense to this? How can 65,000 people agree on anything?” he asked scathingly, comparing this figure with the 2,000 attendees at the first COP meeting in Berlin in 1995.
Far better and more effective would be for “a few hundred” experts from the G7 or G20 nations to meet regularly to thrash out policy goals. After all, it is the very nations within these groupings that produce 80% of the greenhouse gases emitted annually around the globe, he noted.
As for COP30, to be held in Brazil next year and expected to attract up to 80,000 participants, he hinted strongly in his own assessment of the enthusiasm behind the numbers: “It’s a great place to go,” he said.
Impassioned it may have been, but Áder’s address, entitled “Dreams and Reality,” was no emotional rant. The former Fidesz MP and MEP, long known for his environmentalist concerns, reeled off a sadly impressive list of negative climate trends, ranging from rising global temperatures and GHG emissions via ice cap melting rates to a disastrous shortfall in funding for developing nations to enact effective climate-change policies.
As regards the latter, the requested USD 1.3 trillion needed annually by developing countries to avoid “climate catastrophe” has resulted in a promise to provide only USD 300 billion, with even that sum at risk given that the world’s two largest polluters, China and the United States, have threatened to pull out of COP agreements, Áder warned.
Diána Ürge-Vorsatz, vice-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reinforced Áder’s main thrust of concerns with her own list of climate-trend woes. In a breathless 20-minute video presentation, she underlined, “Almost every climate indicator climbed off the charts last year […] we are exceeding almost every record, and we’re really in unchartered territories.”
The latest increases in average annual temperatures do not necessarily breach the 1.5°C threshold target stated in the Paris Agreement of 2015, as this figure is based on a 20-year rolling average. Nonetheless, “We can no longer think that [climate change] is just an issue for polar bears or our grandchildren. We can feel it on our own skins and our own economies,” she said.
Indeed, she noted three recent tornadoes alone have caused an estimated USD 300 bln in damage globally, precisely the combined support for climate protection for developing countries referred to by Áder in his earlier address.
“Yes, mitigation is also costly, but […] Even the International Monetary Fund shows that actually it’s still a really important investment, and […] there will be considerable GDP benefit if we invest in these transitions,” she said.
There are, however, positive developments, too, Ürge-Vorsatz noted, pointing to the trends in renewables. “There is a lot of good news in the energy transition; in 2023, over one-third of global electricity was produced by renewable energy sources,” she said.
Focusing on Hungary, State Secretary for Energy and Climate Policy Attila Steiner of the Ministry of Energy highlighted how recent years had seen very significant developments in the climate-change battle.
“Last year was the first year when we managed to decrease our emissions in the transport sector. There was more than a 6% drop, for the first time ever in the transport sector, and I think electro-mobility here has a clear role,” he said.
He also emphasized the ongoing expansion in solar energy, with total capacity now at 7,400 MW, almost perfectly matched, coincidentally, in the last week of November by a new record peak in electricity consumption of 7,450 MW.
The massive increase in photo-voltaic capacity also enabled Hungary to export electricity in the summer for four consecutive days, another first. However, one of the hottest summers since records began brought its own problems, ironically coinciding with the visit of the European Union’s Energy Council.
“The electricity grids were not built for 40-45°C [temperatures lasting] for two-three weeks. When we organized our council session here in July, for the gala dinner, we had quite a challenge […] because there was no electricity because the sub-stations exploded due to the heatwave,” Steiner revealed.
Along with such technical supply security concerns, July and August saw record high electricity prices of EUR 900 per MWh after sunset when solar arrays were no longer generating power, but electricity demand from air-conditioning systems remained at full power.
Steiner asserted that such fluctuations between available generating capacity and demand mean that Hungary must continue with plans for batter storage enhancement, nuclear expansion and, over the longer term, pumped-hydro schemes.
“Electricity usage is going to go on rising inexorably. The rapid growth of the electricity-intensive data processing industries, the arrival of artificial intelligence and all the other characteristics of a modern economy require electricity to be on tap continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year” noted Tim Yeo, chairman, New Nuclear Watch Institute.
“And that requirement cannot be met by renewable energy alone. Renewables have a huge contribution to make, but they can’t do it all because the real growth in renewables is now only in solar and wind, both of which are intermittent sources.”
“So, a complete decarbonization of electricity generation must include nuclear as part of the solution. All kinds of nuclear, and lots of nuclear. Small modular reactors as well as large, more familiar reactors with the capacity of 1 GW or more. Hungary, I may say, is setting an excellent example with its overwhelming political support for nuclear.”
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of December 13, 2024.
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