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UN climate change chief Christiana Figueres applauded progress towards an international emissions deal yesterday.
Speaking during a visit to Australia, she said that improvement in the efficiency of renewable energy was one of several factors that had led to “a very changed political environment” since the Copenhagen summit in 2009.
As a result, countries were ahead of schedule in negotiating an agreement on curbing greenhouse gases that could be adopted at a Paris meeting in December.
Ms Figueres was appointed in 2010 following the failure of the Copenhagen conference to reach agreement on cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
But since then, the price of solar panels has fallen by 80 per cent, while their efficiency has risen by 40 per cent.
Improvements in battery technology have allowed solar-generated electricity to be stored in the home.
Crucially, the cost of solar power was already the same or cheaper than electricity supplied through the national grid in at least 60 countries, Ms Figueres said.
She added that investment in solar, wind and geothermal energy technologies had increased massively since Copenhagen, demonstrating “confidence that the investment into clean technologies is viable and is profitable.”
Last year a record £178 billion was ploughed into renewables, which outstripped fossil fuels in terms of capacity growth.
Ms Figueres also pointed out that the number of laws and regulations over climate change and renewable energy had increased 20-fold since 2009.
UN negotiators produced a 47-page draft agreement for the Paris summit in February, four months ahead of schedule.
“That is remarkably different to where we were in the lead up to Copenhagen where we did not have an official negotiating text, where we had 300 pages of compilation of texts, but certainly no negotiating text,” Ms Figueres said.
The hope is that all 193 member states of the UN will sign up to a common agreement on climate change, where previously differences between the developed and developing world had prevented such an accord.
