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 next conference in the series is COP15, which is scheduled to take place in Copenhagen from 30 November to 11 December 2009.

The significance of Copenhagen 2009

The historic significance of the Copenhagen event is that its primary objective is 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 are to decide upon a new agreement to enter into force before the Kyoto Protocol expires, COP15 in Copenhagen is the final opportunity to do so. The conference will be attended by around 10,000-15,000 government officials, advisers, diplomats, campaigners and media representatives from nearly 200 countries, including significantly the USA and China. President Barack Obama is highly likely to attend in person, undoubtedly attracting many other heads of state from around the world.

The stakes in Copenhagen are 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. With this in mind the Institution is representing the UK in the Future Climate project, which brings together engineering institutions from around the world to communicate practical, deliverable technology-based plans addressing the energy, transport and environment challenges of mitigation, as our contribution to the activities feeding into the Copenhagen COP15 negotiations.