UN Refused To Use Solar-Powered Villages During Climate Change Conference, Opted For Diesel Generators…

Touching down in their ministerial jets or disembarking from their battered buses, the delegates and activists converging on the Peruvian capital knew that reaching an agreement would not be easy.

As representatives from 190 countries, accompanied by over 4,000 representatives from NGOs, sat down inside the stiflingly hot tents inside the grounds of “El Pentagonito”, or little Pentagon – the brutalist concrete military base in Lima – the difficulty was clear.

Could the delegates agree to keep the world on track for a deal next year in Paris? Who would take the hit? And what should each country promise to do?

The United Nations says that to avoid “dangerous” climate change, the global temperature must not rise more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. […]

Ironically, the conference has remained overtly reliant on fossil fuels, in the form of diesel generators. The talks are taking place in a vast temporary village constructed on the site of the Peruvian military headquarters.

Organisers rejected powering the village with solar panels on the grounds they were too unreliable, while efforts to hook the site up to the national grid – which is half-fed by renewable energy – failed due to technical problems.