The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Paris, France, from 30 November to 12 December 2015. It was the 21st yearly session of the Conference of the Parties to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

During this conference, an historic global climate change deal has been agreed.This new agreement aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.

Limiting the temperature increase

Key goal of the Paris climate summit is to hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

Failure to set a cap could result in superdroughts, deadlier heat waves, mass extinctions of plants and animals, megafloods and rising seas that could wipe some island countries off the map.

The end of fossil era

To limit average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius threshold would require the world to move off fossil fuels between about 2050 and the end of the century. To reach the more ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius goal, some researchers say the world will need to reach zero net carbon emissions sometime between about 2030 and 2050.

This is why the agreement decided on increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and fostering climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production.

Therefore, it can be expected that in the near future renewable energy, including the solar, will get more attention than before.

Finance

The agreement calls for developed countries to provide financial resources to developing countries to enhance the implementation of their policies, strategies, regulations and action plans and their climate change actions with respect to both mitigation and adaptation to contribute to the achievement of the purpose of the Agreement.

Agreement set a new collective quantified goal from a floor of USD 100 billion per year, taking into account the needs and priorities of developing countries.

Those pledges must be increased over time, and starting in 2018 each country will have to submit new plans every five years.

Source: CNN, UNFCCC