BloombergNEF’s annual summit in London runs this week, gathering policy makers, financiers and industry executives.

Key speakers include Spain’s Vice President Teresa Ribera, former BP Plc Chief Executive Office Bob Dudley, European Climate Foundation CEO Laurence Tubiana, Poland’s Climate Minister Michal Kurtyka and EON AG CEO Johannes Teyssen.

They’re discussing the pace of the global transition toward cleaner energy, the fight against climate change and how major oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SA are adapting to a world aiming to use less fossil fuels.

Key Developments:

  • Spain and Poland vow to step up action on climate change
  • A ‘Grand Coalition’ on carbon border adjustment could emerge if Biden wins in U.S.
  • Wind and solar become the cheapest form of power generation in most of the world

Here are the latest developments, updated throughout the day. (Timestamps are for local time in London on Monday.)

Ex-BP Chief Sees Definitional Issue on Scope 3 (11:10 a.m.)

Members of the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative are working to create a common language on technical terms when it comes to the energy transition, said Bob Dudley, the former BP Plc CEO and chairman of OGCI.

The bulk of carbon emissions from oil and gas companies come from so-called Scope 3, which broadly come from the use of products by customers. “There’s a definitional issue that needs to be worked out on scope 3,” Dudley said, adding that the term gets thrown around too easily. The OGCI, a group of 12 big oil companies collaborating on ways to respond to climate change, are working together to create a common definition.

Power Purchase Agreement Market Needs to Grow (10:15 a.m.)

The market for power purchase agreements for renewables projects isn’t deep enough to support the amount of capacity that is forecast in future, said Tom Glover, chief commercial officer at RWE Renewables, which plans to grow its portfolio to 13 gigawatts by 2040. The market needs continued support from policy makers to drive investment.

“Although we all know that renewables are the cheapest power generation in most markets it doesn’t mean we don’t need price support,” Glover said.

New geographies are opening up for renewable investment, according to Miguel Stilwell de Andrade, interim chief executive of EDP Energias de Portugal SA. In the U.S., 150 gigawatts of coal is expected to close, to make room for renewables and in Latin America which has been hydro-dependent in the past, is turning more to wind and solar technologies.

Poland and Spain Step Up Focus on Clean Energy (9:32 a.m.)

The clean shift in Poland is gaining momentum with pressure form the population to go greener, the nation’s Climate Minister Michal Kurtyka said. A coal powerhouse in the past decades, Poland could see the share of the most polluting fuel drop from the current around 75% to as low as 11% over the next 20 years, he said.

China’s pledge to reach greenhouse gas neutrality by 2060 brings “a completely new momentum” to global climate talks, Kurtyka said.

Spain wants to go “far beyond” the European Commission’s target for emissions reductions by 2030, Spain’s Minister for the Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera said. The government wants to boost the presence of renewable energy in the grid, and use solar and wind projects to set up industrial value chains across the country.

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities that point toward stronger climate action, Ribera said. “We are witnessing that everything we had already identified are happening faster,” she said. “Think about oil and mobility patterns. They’re cultural patterns that are there to stay.”

Wind and Solar Become Cheapest Form of Electricity (9 a.m.)

Wind and solar power are the cheapest form of new electricity in most of the world today, according to BNEF’s Chief Economist Seb Henbest. He predicts a tipping point in five years when it will be more expensive to operate an existing coal or natural gas power plant than to build new solar or wind farms.

But there is an economic limit to the spread of those sources of clean energy. There will come a point in every country that saturation point is reached because the technology no longer reduces generation costs compared with running the existing thermal generation fleet.

Those constraints suggest renewables will gain no more than 70% and 80% of the market for electricity generation, depending on local conditions. Even in Europe, which has some of the toughest policies encouraging renewables and discouraging fossil fuels, wind and solar are unlikely to surpass 80% of supply.

“There’s quite possibly a rebasing of shipping demand and rail demand, that might mean less energy consumption and lower emissions,” Henbest said.

Carbon Border Levy Could Include EU, U.S., China (8:20 a.m.)

If Joe Biden were to win next month’s U.S. election, it could trigger a “grand coalition” of countries with carbon border taxes, said Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transition Commission. He said the European Union may join with China and the U.S. on its plans for a so-called carbon border adjustment that would tax goods imported from countries without tough climate change policies.

“If you could get that club of China, the EU, U.K., and U.S. together, you have such a dominant part of the global economy that I think you would end up essentially with a global system,” he said.

Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation, said she’s optimistic about the prospects of a green recovery from the pandemic since the EU and China both announced tough decarbonization targets in the last month.

Paddy Padmanathan, CEO of Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power International, urged governments to take advantage of low energy prices to bring in carbon pricing.

Three Key Technologies for Energy Transition (8 a.m.)

There is no silver bullet to decarbonize the economy, but there are three key technologies, according to Thomas Bohner, chief executive officer of Mitsubishi Power Europe GmbH. Those are hydrogen for energy storage and fuel, carbon capture and waste heat recovery and heat pump technologies. These will have the greatest impact when used together, rather than in isolation, Bohner said.