Update from our original story on the UN Climate Summit Published on Nov. 18. The original article is repeated below the update.

The battle over commitments from developed countries to developing ones for cash transfers supposedly to help the poorer nations cope with the effects of global warming took a new turn Wednesday in Warsaw, as the war of words heated up and the negotiator for the poorer countries walked out of a key meeting.

In 2009, a group of developed nations pledged to provide $100 billion a year by 2020 for developing countries seeking to reduce their own pollution and cope with more intense storms and higher sea levels that would be expected to come with higher temperatures - though what would really happen to those dollars might be considered a question.

From 2010 through 2012, a fund of about $10 billion annually was raised, $2.5 billion or so of that from the US, but details about where that money is going and by what criteria remains shrouded in mystery. The US says it is committing about $2.7 billion in 2013. The entire EU block said it will commit 1.7 billion euros for the year 2014-2015.

Now, the developing countries are demanding a firm plan as to how that fund is going to ramp-up between the $10 billion level now and the $100 billion in 2020.

Juan Hoffmeister, lead negotiator for the group, walked out of a closed-door meeting when delegations from the industrial block refused to agree that the mechanism for such compensation is needed now and not after 2015, when a new climate change agreement is expected to be signed in Paris.

Among the 133 nations in the developing block demanding the funding plan is China, the world's second largest economy, as well as fast-growing Brazil and India, which are all clamoring for cash transfers for themselves.

Developing nations say they need a predictable funding schedule to take actions over the years between now and 2020 to reduce their own carbon emissions.

"How can you ask a developing country to show high ambition of their actions if there is no support?," said Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu, a Congolese diplomat who negotiates for the 54-member Africa Group. "If you don’t turn the key of the finance, the key of the mitigation won't follow."

Many developing countries are now saying that even the $100 billion level will be grossly insufficient to meet their needs.

This funding issue is tied to another major one related to developing nations seeking to create a UN body charged with compensating countries for environmental damage and which would assign "historical responsibility" to individual nations for climate damage stemming from CO2 emissions now and in the past.

Under such framework, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would be tasked with creating a methodology to calculate a country's total output of greenhouse gases since 1850 in determining each nation's historical responsibility for global warming.  Wow.

Last month, US Special Envoy on Climate Change Todd Stern said that "no step change in overall levels of public funding from developed countries is likely to come anytime soon."

Original Story

UN Climate Summit Full of Interesting News, even if Not Many are Paying Attention

Japan, Australia Let Many Attendees Down, While Coal Takes a Pounding; Where will the $100 Billion Annual Climate Fund for Developing Countries Come from?

The annual UN Climate Summit, held this year in Warsaw, Poland, is winding down to the last few days of its two-week run, and this year there is actually quite a bit of interesting news coming from the meeting, even as media coverage of the conclave is down dramatically from a few years ago.

It appears highly unlikely the meeting will produce any sort of global agreement for reduction of carbon emissions. That should not in a sense be surprising, as last year the group agreed to develop such a pact by 2015, giving countries a couple more years to reach such an agreement, with those plans theoretically being put into place by 2020.

But that doesn't mean there weren't some interesting developments.

First, Japan shocked the meeting by announcing that it is dramatically pulling back from its previous carbon emissions goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 25% from 2005 levels by 2020. Now, Japan said, the goal for reduction is just 3.8%.

The reason? The country's decision to shut down its wide network of nuclear power plants after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the Fukushima reactors northeast of Tokyo.

The replacement of that power using plants burning coal and natural gas makes it impossible to reach the earlier targets, the country said in Warsaw.

Meanwhile, Australia also disappointed many attendees when its new prime minster, as promised in his election campaign, announced that he was introducing legislation that would repeal the carbon tax that was put in place in the country just some 15 months ago by the previous administration. Rising energy and other prices and concerns about a lack of competitiveness made the law very unpopular in the country.

Many believe that if the repeal goes through, Australia cannot achieve its voluntary target of reducing emissions by 5% by 2020.

Coal on the Hot Seat

More so than perhaps ever before, coal took a drubbing at the UN summit, with UN climate chief Christiana Figueres saying Monday at a related Warsaw conference that most of the world's coal reserves "will have to stay in the ground" and that further investment in mines and coal-fired power stations could go ahead only if it did not jeopardize the goal of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius.

Addressing the chief executives of coal companies, she added that "my joining you today is neither a tacit approval of coal use, nor is it a call for the immediate disappearance of coal. But I am here to say that coal must change rapidly and dramatically for everyone's sake."

A group of 27 scientists from Germany, Japan, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the US at the conference issued a statement saying that "unabated coal combustion" was incompatible with the two-degree target and nearly three-quarters of coal reserves would have to be left underground to achieve it.

In the US, the EPA is in the process of putting in place regulations that may put coal-powered electric plants out of business over some period of time, and already the hurdles for new coal-based plants are so high that in in practice they are banned.

But that is not the case across the globe. Europe's use of coal is actually expanding, as the decline in US consumption in recent years has driven global coal costs down, making it the low cost solution in many areas. After the Fukushima reactor problems in Japan, Germany decided to shut down its existing nuclear power plants that provide a substantial amount of its current power requirements, replacing them with some renewables (wind, solar) but also coal-powered plants. China is said to be adding about three new coal-powered plants every each month, though it is also investing heavily in cleaner energy as well, especially hydro power.

And then there is the money question. Developing nations want to know how the developed world plans to make good on a pledge to "mobilize" $100 billion annually by 2020 to help them cope with the effects of climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Between 2010 and 2012, major developed countries contributed $30 billion to what was called the Fast-Start Finance fund, including $2.5 billion annually from the United States. But many say most of that money came from other foreign aid funds, robbing Peter to pay Paul.

"Now the hard reality," Todd Stern, the US State Department's special envoy for climate change, said in a speech last month. "No step change in overall levels of public funding from developed countries is likely to come anytime soon. The fiscal reality of the United States and other developed countries is not going to allow it."

There is some notion that a solid framework for the $100 billion fund, which has some developing country leaders salivating if not always for climate-related reasons, could be agreed to in Warsaw, but TheGreenSupplyChain.com thinks that is unlikely to happen this year - if ever.

We suspect the 2014 UN conference in Lima, Peru will end without much really getting done either, setting the stage for some real fireworks in Paris in 2015, at which the global agreement is supposed to be hammered out, as well as details on the funding for developed countries.

What's your take on the action at this year's UN climate summit? Will the $100 billion fund ever happen? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback button below.