The Rt Hon Chris Skidmore OBE, Chair of the Climate Action Coalition, reflects on COP29, the COP process and recent data on the public perceptions of the climate threat in the UK and US
The key announcements of COP29, including the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance of $1.3 trillion annually to be spent by 2035, including $300 billion annually for developing countries, and the agreement to Articles 6.2 and 6.4 of the Paris Rule Book are perhaps what COP29 will be remembered for.
Yet many other initiatives outside the formal UNFCCC process were either agreed or begun, that highlight the opportunity that the convening power COP can deliver, ensuring that it is a gathering greater than the sum of its parts. For the UK, this included further announcements on the Global Clean Power Alliance, with potential partnership work with Brazil, and the publication of a new ambitious National Determined Contribution of 81% emissions reduction by 2035 on 1990 levels.
In between COP29 and COP30, other countries will also be required to publish their new, revised, NDCs 3.0 to be formally agreed at Belém in November 2025. These are due to be submitted in February 2025 and will likely be the critical moment of reckoning for climate policy next year.
Whether all countries who have previously submitted NDCs at COP26 in Glasgow will continue to do so for COP30 in Brazil is a different matter. COP29 took place against the backdrop of the US Presidential election, where climate related policy had been a clear dividing line between parties. With President-elect Trump having confirmed that he intends to pull the USA once more out of the Paris Agreement, any agreed outcome at COP29 was going to be foreshadowed by the potential lack of future participation by both the largest investor in green and clean technologies and the largest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions.
Without US involvement in the Paris process, and with others such as Argentina pulling their delegation from the COP talks, the future outcomes of COP hang in the balance. Yet a deal at COP29 was better than no deal: globally, countries recognise not only the vital importance of taking climate action to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change, and adapt to existing warming, they also understand that there is no turning back on the energy transition.
Solar power is expanding exponentially, at the same time as the costs of renewable technologies coming down sharply to be cost-competitive with fossil fuels. China, having previously announced that it would be net zero in 2060, is now on track to deliver net zero by 2050.
Neither net zero, nor the energy transition, nor indeed wider climate action will be delivered by talks and negotiation alone. COPs provide direction, inspiration and influence, yet the delivery and implementation of policy lies with national governments, business, industry and the establishment of new net zero markets. It was for this reason that Secretary John Kerry launched the Climate Action Coalition earlier this year at the Guildhall at London Climate Action Week, in order to focus on real world, real economy, solutions to deliver recognisable and achievable solutions at scale to meet our climate commitments, not for 2050 but also for meeting the trebling of renewables and doubling of energy efficiency measures as set out at COP28 in Dubai.
Having already held meetings with Germany’s Climate Envoy Secretary Jennifer Morgan, and Catherine McKenna, Chair of the UN Director General’s Net Zero Taskforce, the Climate Action Coalition focused its attention at COP29 on this real-time delivery opportunity: we held roundtables with Vanessa Chan, the US Department of Energy’s Director of Commercialisation, Chris Stark, the Head of UK Mission Control, tasked with delivering the UK’s net zero power mission by 2030, and Simon McWhirter, the Deputy CEO of the UK Green Building Council and now co-chair of the Built Environment Taskforce of the Climate Action Coalition.
The importance of demonstrating not only why climate action needs to be taken, but what can and should be done now to make that action a reality will be a central mission of the Climate Action Coalition. Yet this cannot be delivered without both public acceptance and support for the energy transition and the opportunities that decarbonisation can bring.
With the recent political developments in the US in mind, new polling conducted by Ipsos on behalf of King’s College London and the Climate Action Coalition, comparing the views and perceptions of members of the public both in the UK and the US – the first of its kind since the US Presidential Election – reveals important difference yet also similarities between the public perception and experience of the energy transition, that provides useful reflections for policy makers tasked with building support for net zero and the energy transition. Â
Most striking, perhaps, is the fact that in the UK, the percentage stating that climate change is the single most important problem facing the country, or one of the most important problems, has risen between 2023 and 2024 from 46% to 52%. At the same time however, the percentage of respondents stating that climate change is not important at all has risen from 5% to 8%.
In contrast, in the US, where only 2024 data is available, the combined percentage of respondents stating that climate change is either the single most important problem or one of the most important problems is 39%, some 13 percentage points lower than the UK. Equally, 21% of US respondents believe that climate change is either not important at all, or not very important, compared to 14% in the UK. Â
The discrepancy in public opinion between the US and the UK is also striking when analysing the perception of climate change among supporters of political parties. In the UK, Labour voters are most likely to consider climate change as either the most or one of the most important problems, totalling 64% of Labour voters, though still 47% of Conservative voters also consider climate change the most or one of the most important problems also. Nearly a third of Reform voters, 32%, however, consider climate change not to be important at all, in stark contrast to 1% of Labour voters and 9% of Conservative voters.
This is the highest proportion of any political party in the UK or in the US- where 17% of Republican voters consider climate change not an important issue. Yet still, of Reform voters, nearly a quarter, 24%, consider climate change to be the most important or one of the most important issues facing the UK.
For the US, the divides between the two mainstream parties are even more polarised and stark. 66% of Democrat voters consider climate change the most important or one of the most important problems, compared to 15% of Republican voters: in contrast, 40% of Republican voters believe that climate change is not important at all or not very important.
While the polling points to these important distinguishing factors between the UK and the US, there are also interesting areas of commonality: in both countries, women are twice as likely to consider climate change an important issue; in both countries there is also a significant minority (18% in US and 15% in UK) that consider the effects of climate change to have been overexaggerated; in both countries also, more people are pessimistic rather than hopeful that we can combat climate change, though in the UK, more people are both more hopeful and more pessimistic than the US, where there is a larger number of those uncertain.
The polling also provides a fascinating insight into what will drive people to make changes to deliver climate action and emissions reduction: in both the UK and the US, potential cost savings feature prominently as the number one driver of what would influence people to adapt, with 47% of those polled in the UK and 42% in the US highlighting this as a priority.
Practicality and better information about how to implement changes featured more prominently in the UK compared to the US- 37% compared to 30%- yet what also united both countries was the agreement that celebrity or public figures being involved in advocating for climate action had the least possible impact on people’s decisions: 10% in the UK considered that this would influence their decisions, compared to 4% in the US.
What is clear from the polling released is that both in the UK and the US, while there is a risk of increased polarisation on climate change issues, in particular with 55% of those polled who believed they received too much information on climate change agreed that climate change is being used to put forward a political agenda, compared with 45% in the UK, there also remains uncertainty about the future, and a willingness for further action.
I hope that the more detailed findings from this polling can be utilised by policy makers to better understand how to work with, and not against, the grain of public attitudes and opinion, to ensure that there can be greater understanding of how net zero and the energy transition can and will be an opportunity and not a cost.
Already it seems that 2024 will be the warmest year on record: beating only the previous record set in 2023. Global temperature rises are currently 1.7°C above pre-industrial levels, and while it will not be confirmed until the end of the decade, it seems that the hope of limiting global warming to 1.5°C as set out in the Paris Agreement is fading fast.
2025 will mark the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement, a year in which all nations will need to step up their ambition to deliver if we are to hope to keep global temperatures even beneath 2°C also set out in the Agreement. Yet hope is not a strategy, while ambition remains just words on a page: what matters is action, action that can only be delivered and implemented across all nations, day in day out: as another COP ends, the hard work continues now across governments, across business and across borders, taking people with us and building the coalitions we need for the future.
