COP30: IMechE’s work on climate change and sustainability

Many were disappointed with the outcome of the United Nations’ climate conference, COP30, which concluded in Brazil this weekend.

The host country’s ambitions to agree a roadmap away from fossil fuels failed to get agreement into the final negotiated outcome document – which is the formal agreed text adopted by all participating countries. One important commitment, to triple finance for climate adaption, did make it into the final text. To find out about the outcomes from negotiations in Belém, Carbon Brief have produced a comprehensive summary. 

IMechE has held COP ‘Official Observer’ status since 2021, when we sent a delegation of members, including our President, to attend COP26 in Glasgow. We have not sent a London-based delegation since then, as the financial and carbon costs of long-haul travel for a climate-change conference are difficult to justify.  

With Turkey likely to host COP31, we welcome expressions of interest from members, based in the region, who would be keen to attend on behalf of IMechE. Contact us at Policy@imeche.org

The three main topics for negotiation at COPs are: 

• adaption (how to be more resilience to climate change) 
• mitigation (how to reduce emissions)
• finance (how to pay for it). 

The IMechE Policy team focus in on these topics, and work with expert members to organise events and prepare reports with the aim to be a go-to organisation for engineering policy advice for governments.  

Adaption 

Adaption has been a key topic for IMechE in the last few years. In October, we held our second International Conference on Climate Adaption and Resilience in London. We have also published two significant policy reports, one on the need to design industrial infrastructure to withstand upper estimates of sea level rise this century, and a second on how industry needs to adapt to rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves.

We continue work on adaption this year through the National Engineering Policy Centre, who will be running series of public engagement activities on the topic.  

Mitigation 

In our 2021 report, Engineering a Net Zero Energy System, we called net-zero “the largest engineering project undertaken by humankind”. Engineers will be central to delivering it and it will be rare now for any design, manufacture, or construction project not to have some consideration of the greenhouse gas emissions involved and producing and operating the final product.

Indeed, the idea of the ‘circular economy’ has been gaining traction, and the Institution has been leading the debate on this topic in 2025 through a series of webinars.

Transport is an area of strength for the Institution, particularly through our expert committees that represent the road, rail and aerospace sectors. Our latest technical and policy output is a white paper that examines the various potential technological pathways for decarbonising aerospace.

Finance

Finally, the question of “who pays and how”, is often the thorniest issue during COP negotiations. Poorer nations argue that countries from the developed world who have the highest historic emissions should pay the most for both mitigation and adaption. The IMechE policy team is currently scoping out a programme of work of financing innovation and net-zero, so watch this space!