What is the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference?

In 1990, the UN General Assembly decided to start work on a climate change convention and in 1994 the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) came into force. Their goal is to stabilise the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere at a level that prevents dangerous man-made climate changes.

Each year a Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC is held, where the countries that have ratified the convention meet and discuss how its goal can be implemented in practice. The most recent conference in the series was COP15, which took place in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The significance of Copenhagen 2009

The historic significance of the Copenhagen event was that its primary objective was to establish an ambitious agreement on reducing man-made GHG emissions for the period from 2012, a post-Kyoto Protocol agreement.

Indeed, if the world’s nations were to decide upon a new agreement to enter into force before the Kyoto Protocol expires, COP15 in Copenhagen was the final opportunity to do so. The conference was attended by around 10,000-15,000 government officials, advisers, diplomats, campaigners and media representatives from 192 countries, including significantly the USA and China. President Barack Obama attended in person, undoubtedly attracting many other heads of state from around the world.

The stakes in Copenhagen were high.  The limited participation in the Kyoto Protocol means that it has had a negligible impact on global greenhouse gas emissions, and projections for the mean global temperature rise this century range from 1.1 to 6.4°C depending on the degree of success a future climate agreement might achieve.

What is the Institution doing?

Mechanical engineers are fundamentally involved in developing and deploying the technical solutions required for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation), whether it be new machines for electricity generation from renewable energy sources, carbon capture and storage devices or technologies that reduce emissions at source in vehicle engine etc.

Indeed, as a profession we are in a position to advise society on what is technically possible, what can be expected to be achieved from technology and what the limits are, and bring some technical rigour into the mitigation debate. The Institution's Head of Energy and Environment, Dr Tim Fox attended COP15, to represent the UK engineering profession.  Read Dr Fox's assessment of COP15