When the Stade de France in Paris is filled to capacity, it holds 81,400 people. You would then need another 2,484 to reach the number of badge-wearing participants at last year’s UN COP28 climate change conference in Dubai. This illustrates the sheer size of what was the world’s most important climate-focused event in 2023. 

But it also begs the question, do these annual ‘mega-gatherings’ actually deliver anything? 

One thing is abundantly clear: despite almost three decades of COPs and ballooning attendance, our greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, and the world continues to warm. 

Process hijacking purpose  

My colleagues and I at Clim-Eat – the think-and-do-tank for food and climate that I founded in 2021 – recently published a paper examining the efficacy of COP summits, specifically in relation to food and agriculture. We found several failures. 

Firstly, negotiations on food and agriculture have moved at a snail’s pace over the past 17 years. In spite of numerous meetings, workshops, submissions and decisions, there has been literally no real-world impact as a result.  

Secondly, the trend of COP host countries – known as Presidencies – launching special initiatives on specific issues of interest has achieved little. These initiatives receive plenty of media attention when announced but amount to little more than virtue signalling. 

Rich nations meet $100bn climate finance goal – two years late

For example, at the launch of COP21’s 4p1000 Initiative, France’s then-Minister of Agriculture said it could reconcile aims of food security and the fight against climate change. Today, the initiative has yet to report anything on the positive climate action it sought to create.  

The same goes for Morocco’s COP22 initiative on Adaptation in African Agriculture. It no longer mentions its ambitious target of raising $30 billion to support farmers – presumably because it hasn’t been reached. There are plenty of other examples of special initiatives being quietly ushered out of the spotlight.  

Unwarranted optimism

Let’s remember that COP negotiations first recognised agriculture as the key to solving climate change in 2006. It then took six years to agree on the next steps. Then, only in 2022, 16 years after the initial point, did the negotiations agree that “socioeconomic and food security dimensions are critical when dealing with climate change in agriculture and food systems.” Sixteen years to build a sentence to combat a third of global emissions.  

This suggests there’s little reason to be optimistic about the Emirates Declaration on Food and Agriculture, a special initiative launched at last year’s COP28. Signed by 159 countries, it called for action to adapt food systems to climate change, but the summit’s official negotiations on food and agriculture failed to acknowledge the declaration or reflect its priorities. The declaration itself is a creative collection of various adjectives and adverbs, reaffirmations and goals to ‘strengthen’ commitments. And six months after its launch, it is not clear whether it has led to anything at all; placing faith in its outcomes is utterly fanciful. 

The path forward

This cycle of the UNFCCC and COP Presidencies applauding special initiatives in the short term without holding countries responsible in the long term has to stop. The hamster wheel of inaction continues to spin.  

But we can slow it down and perhaps get off the wheel altogether. To do this, my colleagues and I concluded that the UN needs to: 

• Reform the UNFCCC process to prioritise measurable results and impacts, shifting its role to that of a watchdog ensuring action from all actors rather than merely organising large, costly meetings. 
• Make COPs leaner and less frequent/hold them every other year, reducing participant numbers and focusing on productive meetings. 
• Increase transparency regarding the financial costs of COPs, participation and emissions, to hold the UN accountable. 

Implementing these recommendations will not be easy. It means changing entrenched ways and tackling entrenched interests. There will be push-back.  

But as the UN’s mid-year climate talks begin in Bonn this week, observe the promises made with little follow-through, the unwarranted yet celebratory atmosphere filling the air – largely destined to be forgotten. Notice that when the clapping has stopped, and the initiators are no longer in the spotlight, they will slink back into the shadows, waiting to resurface onto the next grand stage at COP29 in Azerbaijan.  

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Stiell said this month that he personally “would certainly like to see future COPs reduce in size”, telling an audience at London’s Chatham House think-tank that “bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better”.

In Dubai, where the 2023 summit was held from November 30 to December 13, the Expo City site was so large that important delegates were ferried around on golf buggies while electric scooters were available to get around the public area, known as the Green Zone.

“Size does not necessarily translate to the quality of outcomes,” Stiell said in London, noting that the UN climate change secretariat (UNFCCC) is discussing the issue with the hosts of COP29 in Azerbaijan this year and COP30 next year in Brazil.

Last week, Climate Home reporters visited the COP29 host city of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan – on a tour sponsored by the COP29 presidency – and also the location of COP30, the Brazilian Amazon city of Belém, to see how preparations are going for the November 2024 and 2025 gatherings.

Azerbaijan’s government is expecting just 40,000 people to come to the Baku Olympic Stadium for the talks this year, while Belém’s remoteness, congested roads and lack of hotels are likely to substantially limit how many people can attend the “Amazon COP”.

The number of people attending COPs has shot up in recent years. Close to 40,000 people went to COP26 in Glasgow, around 50,000 were in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for COP27 and nearly 84,000 headed to Dubai last year. But most of the 28 COPs held since 1995 have been attended by fewer than 10,000 people.

Just over half of last year’s participants belonged to government delegations, with most of the rest comprising staff working at the conference or activists from non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

In practice, the boundaries of these categories are blurred though, as government delegations often include business representatives, NGO employees, journalists and others.

Baku’s Olympic Stadium

The government of Azerbaijan will host COP29 in the country’s Caspian seaside capital, Baku. A member of the organising committee told Climate Home they are expecting around 40,000 people.

The government has not had much time to prepare, as it was only tasked with the presidency last November at COP28 after Eastern Europe’s geopolitical divisions delayed the decision on which country would host the summit.

But it already has a venue: the Olympic Stadium on the outskirts of Baku. According to state media, COP29 chief operations officer Narmin Jarchalova said temporary structures will be built around the stadium to accommodate the negotiations and side events. These are likely to be in car-park areas.

The city is used to hosting major events. Ten thousand come each year for Formula One’s Baku Grand Prix and the 69,870-capacity Olympic Stadium has hosted the 2015 European Games, big concerts, the 2019 Europa League football final and Euro 2020 matches, although no Olympic Games despite the name.

Climate Home visited the area in April while in Baku, as part of a press trip organised by the COP29 presidency team. The stadium is connected to the city centre, where most hotels are located, by a Soviet-era metro railway with a one-way journey taking around 45 minutes.

A car journey should take about half of that, 20 minutes, but heavy traffic gridlocked the main roads in and out of Baku when Climate Home visited.

The Baku Olympic Stadium (Photo: Matteo Civillini)

Climate Home asked the COP29 team for information on how the temporary COP facilities will be built, powered and heated sustainably during the summit, but had received no response at the time of publication.

In February, Climate Home revealed that the government had told hotels in Baku not to sell rooms for COP29’s November 11-22 dates until further notice.

In London this month, UN climate chief Stiell said, with regard to the number of participants, that “we have an opportunity with Azerbaijan and we’re engaging with them”. He did not give further details.

COPs usually feature one big climate demonstration on the middle Saturday of the two-week talks. The UNFCCC is talking to the COP29 team about how this will be enabled.

Protesters march on the middle Saturday of COP26 in Glasgow, UK, in 2021 (Photos: Insure Our Future)

In a meeting at the energy ministry last week, COP29 CEO and deputy energy minister Elnur Soltanov told journalists, including Climate Home, that these discussions were “fruitful”.

Human rights groups like Freedom House say Azerbaijan does not respect freedom of assembly. Police violently arrested opposition protesters in 2019.

Soltanov was asked if the climate march will be allowed to take place in the city, which is governed by Azerbaijan’s police force, or only in the COP29 venue, which is under the jurisdiction of UN security guards.

He replied that “this is too specific a question” but said that protest is “part and parcel of people expressing their views, their anger, their desperation”.

Brazil’s Amazon COP

On Belém, which is in northern Brazil near the Amazon rainforest, Stiell said he was “actively discussing with the Brazilians how we can reduce the size of the COP so that the logistics of it can be supported at that hosted destination”.

Last June, Brazilian climate ministry official André Corrêa Lago told local media he was expecting 40,000-50,000 people. But there are concerns that the city will struggle to cope with those numbers.

Belém is not a major tourist destination and has less than 6,000 hotel rooms. Even at last year’s Amazon Summit – a smaller event than a COP – participants reported difficulty finding rooms and rates soared.

Construction workers are currently turning a 1.6 km-long disused airport runway into the Parque de Cidade (City Park), which will be the size of about 70 football pitches. The park and its new buildings will be the main COP30 venue.

The government of Pará State says it is almost one-third finished. The federal government, meanwhile, is reportedly considering hosting part of COP30 in bigger cities like Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.

A spokesperson for the federal government told Climate Home that “all possibilities to enable the reception of delegations and visitors are being evaluated”.

As well as the park and its new buildings, some of the conference will be held in an existing conference centre on the park’s southern tip called The Hangar – which hosted last year’s Amazon Summit.

The Hangar convention centre (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

For COP30 delegates though, finding a hotel room and getting to the venue are likely to be challenging. 

A spokesperson for the COP30 organising committee said last week that while 84,000 people went to COP28, the peak daily attendance was just 41,000 at the beginning of the conference when heads of state made their speeches.

An Ibis hotel near the COP30 site (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

The spokesperson told Climate Home the organisers are looking at bringing in cruise ships for COP participants to sleep on, refurbishing schools to serve as hostels and encouraging people to rent out their rooms on Airbnb.

To promote the “modernisation” of the city’s existing hotel rooms, the government has given hotel operators tax exemptions on purchases for new equipment like minibars, televisions and air-conditioning.

The city’s airport, which the government aims to improve before COP30, has few regular international connections and is over three hours by plane from Brazil’s major hubs like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

There are no trains to Belém and getting the bus from Rio or Sao Paulo can take more than two days.

The Belém Bus Rapid Transit system is scheduled to be completed by COP30 (Photo: Alice Martins Morais)

Even inside the city, transport is challenging. The roads are congested, particularly in the centre where most of the hotels are, during rush-hour and when it rains.

The authorities have tried to solve the problem by widening roads and building dedicated bus lanes for a Bus Rapid Transit system.

While these are being constructed, they have made traffic worse – but the body in charge told Climate Home work is progressing according to schedule and should be completed by the second half of 2024 – well before the UN climate summit the following year.

“The new fleet will reinforce the capital’s transport system for COP30,” said a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transport Management Centre, adding that 40 of the 265 new air-conditioned buses will be electric.

Argentinian scientists condemn budget cuts ahead of university protest

Nonetheless, the remoteness of the location is likely to translate into a bigger carbon footprint for delegates travelling from overseas.

While COPs have a sizable carbon footprint, researchers investigating misinformation have found this is often exaggerated on social and traditional media by those trying to undermine climate action.

Examples include pictures of private jets with captions falsely associating them with COP or of biofuel generators with captions erroneously claiming they are diesel.

Questioned about COPs’ carbon footprint by an audience member at London’s Chatham House, UN climate head Stiell replied that “at every COP, we get the reports – how many private planes [and] the CO2 footprint for hosting those COPs”.

But, he added, “taking a very pragmatic view, we need the right people around the table in order for this process to work and there will be a cost to that. How you ensure that those that are present are the ones necessary to contribute positively to the process is also important.”

(Reporting by Matteo Civillini in Baku, Alice Martins Morais in Belém and Joe Lo in London; videos by Fanis Kollias; editing by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)

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The equivalent of ten football pitches of tropical forests – 3.7 million hectares – were lost every minute in 2023 as the result of human activities and natural disasters, according to analysis carried out by Global Forest Watch.

While forest destruction slowed dramatically in Brazil and Colombia, this was offset by sharp increases in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Laos.

“The world took two steps forward, two steps back when it comes to this past year’s forest loss”, said Mikaela Weisse, Global Forest Watch Director at the World Resources Institute (WRI).

Tropical forests are one of the world’s best defenses against global warming, as they absorb greenhouse gases. But they are also where over 96% of human-made deforestation occurs worldwide, according to WRI.

Missing targets

While total tree loss in the tropics decreased slightly last year, analysts estimated human-caused deforestation driven by agriculture, commodities extraction and urban expansion continued rising. 

That’s despite a 10% reduction being needed every year to meet a pledge to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030” signed by 145 countries, including large forest nations like Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Initially introduced as part of a voluntary commitment by governments at Cop26 in Glasgow, the target was mentioned for the first time in a Cop decision at last December’s climate summit in Dubai.

Weisse said the goal “has always been an ambitious one” and “it will certainly be difficult” to ensure enough progress from all countries to meet the target.

“I still find a lot of hope in the fact that Brazil, Colombia, and Indonesia have managed to massively curb their rates of forest loss in recent years”, she added. “Those countries have demonstrated how critical it is to have strong political will to combat deforestation”.

Lula’s deforestation busting

Brazil continued to be the country that lost the most tropical forest in 2023 because of the size of its immense rainforests. But its losses dropped by more than a third last year, reaching the lowest level since 2015.

Progress in Brazil coincided with the return to office of President Luiz Lula da Silva. In his first full year in the post, he strengthened law enforcement against illegal loggers, revoked anti-environmental measures introduced by his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, and extended Indigenous rights.

Brazil is planning to put the protection of forests at the heart of its climate summit in 2025, which is set to take place in Belém, known as the gateway to the Amazon rainforest.

“Holding Cop30 in the heart of the forest is a powerful reminder of our responsibility to keep the planet within our 1.5°C target”, said Marina Silva, Minister for the Environment and Climate Change, last December.

In neighbouring Colombia, the rate of tree loss dropped by half in 2023, primarily as a result of policies introduced by President Gustavo Petro.

Forest protection is among the goals being negotiated by the leftist government with armed groups as part of wider efforts to bring “total peace” and end decades of violence.

Experts have also suggested that criminal groups have taken it upon themselves to rein in illegal logging as a way to strengthen their hand in the discussions.

Progress lost

But positive developments in forest conservation in Brazil and Colombia have been all but cancelled out by tree losses spiralling out of control elsewhere.

In Bolivia, forest losses remained at record-breaking levels for a third year in a row, driven by uncontrolled expansion of soybean and beef production and exacerbated by exceptional wildfires.

The government, which has prioritised development and agricultural exports over forest protection, has not joined the 2030 pledge.

It was at loggerheads with Brazil at the Amazon Summit last year, when it opposed the inclusion of any references to the target in an outcome document signed by the leaders of eight countries.

Dramatic upticks in deforestation were also seen in Nicaragua, in Central America, and Laos, in South-East Asia, last year.

Expectations mount as loss and damage fund staggers to its feet

Nicaragua lost over 4% of its standing forest in 2023 alone, as the authoritarian regime of Daniel Ortega continued to turn a blind eye to illegal logging.

Disregard for the preservation of forests, and the respect of the rights of Indigenous people living there, is also shutting the country’s access to international financial support.

The UN’s Green Climate Fund pulled out of a forest conservation project last month after local community groups complained about a lack of protection in the face of escalating human rights violations in the area.

In Laos, forest loss nearly doubled last year reaching an all-time high. Rapid expansion of farming, primarily driven by Chinese investments, is believed to be the main cause.

Financial incentives

WRI’s Weisse said that, while the cases of Brazil and Colombia demonstrate the importance of political will in reversing deforestation, that alone will not be enough.

“Political winds continuously change”, she added. “In order for progress to endure in any of the above countries will likely take making it more valuable to keep forests standing than to cut them down”.

Carbon credits have long been touted as a primary way to achieve that. But their credibility has come under fire over the last few years as numerous schemes faced allegations of exaggerating climate claims and failing to safeguard local communities. Various efforts to strengthen their rules are underway.

Regulations are also being introduced on the demand side, blocking access to markets for goods produced on deforested land.

In the European Union, firms will soon have to demonstrate that seven commodities, including beef and soy, are not linked to deforestation. Commodities-producing countries, such as Indonesia, have attacked the regulations which they have branded as protectionist.

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Like every year, the quick answer is more than nothing but less than enough. To dissect that in more detail, here are our six takeaways from the year in climate.

1. Oil and gas felt the heat

Phasing out or down fossil fuels? Abated or unabated? Scaling up renewables, carbon capture and storage (CCS) and techno solutions. Energy dilemmas, and their buzzwords animated international talks in 2023.

The headline breakthrough came at the end. The Cop28 agreement included for the first time a goal to move away from all fossil fuels in energy systems.

It was the centrepiece of a bigger package that included a call for the tripling of renewables and doubling energy efficiency by 2030.

But it also gave a platform to “transitional fuels” (read gas) and CCS, which some politicians and campaigners regard as “dangerous loopholes” for continued fossil fuel use.

Cop hosts the UAE and most developed countries welcomed the deal as “historic”. For small island states and other vulnerable nations it did not go far enough.

Like most Cop agreements, it was the result of a hard-won compromise struck in overtime – after Saudi-led opposition threatened to leave oil and gas out of the text altogether.

Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber applauds in the closing plenary (Photo: Flickr/Cop28/Christopher Pike)

The road to Dubai had been equally bumpy. The G7 saw fights over gas and coal with hosts Japan attempting to push controversial strategies like ammonia co-firing.

The G20 in Delhi offered a dress rehearsal of what was to expect at Cop with broad agreement over renewables and bitter disputes over fossil fuels.

In the background, Sultan Al Jaber, oil executive turned Cop president, garnered constant curiosity and scrutiny. He was initially adamant that the focus should be on emissions and not on the fuels themselves, raising more than an eyebrow. But, amid a series of controversies and apparent slip-ups, his position gradually shifted.

Al Jaber contended the Dubai deal would be enough to keep the 1.5C goal in sight. A day later he told the Guardian that Adnoc, the oil firm he runs, would press ahead with a massive oil and gas expansion.

Other rich nations, like the US, keep him company on that front. Such chasms between words and actions will continue to be closely watched.

2. Slow progress on climate cash

The other side of the coin from the fossil fuels debate is finance. When rich countries ask their developing counterparts to sign on to ambitious energy transition plans, many reply: ‘who is going to be paying for that?’

When governments wrangled over targets for adapting to climate change, similar questions were asked.

A clear answer was never forthcoming. We might get more clarity in 2024, with governments set to discuss, and hopefully agree on, a new collective goal at Cop29 in Baku in November.

But a lack of trust has taken root. Rich countries have so far not respected the previous commitment to provide $100 billion a year in climate finance to vulnerable countries.

That was “likely” met in 2022, two years after the original deadline, according to the OECD. We will be looking out for the receipts for confirmation.

Countries were also invited to refill the coffers of the Green Climate Fund. The four-yearly replenishment round got off to a decent start, but an underwhelming pledging summit in October put ambition at risk.

Then the US landed in Dubai in December with a $3 billion funding promise. It brought total pledges to $12.8 billion – setting the GCF on course for a “middling” level of ambition.

But that comes with a gigantic caveat. To deliver the dollars, the Biden administration will have to persuade Republicans in Congress or take control of it by winning elections. Both are tall orders.

Graphic: Joe Thwaites/NRDC

Money talked outside UN diplomacy too. Lots of attention centred on the much-touted reforms of multilateral development banks inspired by the Bridgetown Agenda.

Progress has been slower than many were hoping for. The World Bank lowered its equity-to-loan ratio, freeing up $4 billion a year.

It also installed a new more climate-aware president, officially changed its mission statement and promised pauses in debt repayments for disaster-hit countries. Encouraging steps, but far short of the trillions of dollars developing countries have been calling for.

3.US-China climate talks thawed

Formal diplomatic relations between the world’s biggest polluters suffered an ice-age-like deep freeze in the latter part of 2022 after US Congressional leader Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. Climate talks were collateral damage.

But 2023 saw a slow but steady thawing. It culminated in a momentous bilateral meeting held in Califonia’s Sunnylands resort a few weeks before Cop28.

The countries’ respective climate envoys, John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua, agreed to revive a climate working group and sketched out the outline of a potential alignment in the upcoming negotiations.

It proved decisive. In particular, their joint support to “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation” helped find the right formula to unstick the thorny energy language in Dubai.

U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua before a meeting in Beijing, China July 17, 2023. (Reuters/Valerie Volcovici/ File Photo)

The special personal relationship between Kerry and Xie was a big factor in these improved relations.

When formal diplomacy was on hold, the two kept talking. Xie even brought his grandson to Dubai because the 8-year-old wanted to say “happy birthday to my good friend Mr. Kerry”, who turned 80 during the summit.

But Cop28 was most likely their last hurrah together. Xie is set to retire soon ending a 16-years on-and-off stint. He is likely to be replaced by Liu Zhenmin, a former vice foreign minister.

Kerry has been vague about his future with US elections looming large on the horizon. He recently told Reuters that he would “continue as long as God gives me the breath and work on it [climate] one way or the other”.

4. Carbon credits terrible year

To say 2023 won’t be remembered as carbon credits’ finest year is an understatement. It began with a now-infamous report pouring cold water on forestry-based offsets and ended with talks over Article 6 falling apart spectacularly in Dubai.

In between, scandal after scandal dented the reputation of carbon markets. From the collapse of the world’s second largest project to the suspension of dozens of schemes over exaggerated claims or alleged human rights violations. The blowback prompted even some of the most enthusiastic corporate credits buyers to cool on the idea.

Co-chairs of negotiations at Cop28 on carbon trading rules
(Photo: Flickr/Cop28/Kiara Worth)

Many carbon market supporters had pinned hopes on Cop28 for a spot of good news. Ahead of the talks, it looked like governments could finally fire the starting gun on the creation of a long-awaited global carbon market under the Paris Agreement.

But those hopes were misplaced. Negotiations ended without an outcome following a bitter disagreement over integrity rules between the US and the EU.

Leaping on the string of failures, some critics have been pushing for the whole concept of carbon offsetting to be chucked into the dustbin of history.

But others claim carbon markets provide an essential source of finance for developing nations, love it or loathe it. They are trying to build them back up from the nadir with more stringent climate provisions and better social safeguards.

5. Coal-to-clean deals reality check

As  promises turned into proper plans, Just energy transition partnerships (Jetp) hit the cold wall of reality in 2023. The three initial deals – with South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam – have all been beset by issues.

The type of money put on the table by rich nations has been a source of common grievance. Grants make up a very small percentage of the funding packages, fuelling fears over debt. As a result, recipient countries revised climate targets downwards.

The energy transition deal aims to wean Indonesia off coal, which now takes up nearly half of the country’s electricity mix. Photo: Kemal Jufri / Greenpeace

Indonesia has watered down coal retirement plans. It now aims to start shutting down on-grid plants before their scheduled closure no earlier than 2035 – five years later than originally planned.

So-called captive plants, that power specific industries, have also caused a massive headache. Wrong assumptions meant a much lower number of them were baked in the original modelling. Struggling to find a way out, the Indonesian government has so far excluded them – and their emissions – wholesale from the Jetp blueprint.

Vietnam’s investment plan, unveiled during Cop28, has no timeline at all for retiring coal. It expects instead to operate plants “flexibly” and to rely on the controversial co-firing of biomass and ammonia with coal.

The authoritarian Vietnamese government has also all but buried the ‘just’ aspect of the partnership. It has jailed five environmentalists on tax evasion charges, which human rights groups say are trumped-up accusations.

Vietnamese campaigner Hoang Thi Minh Hong was sentenced to three years in prison. Photo: CHANGE/350Vietnam

In South Africa, the transition is meant to be reasonably easier as its Apartheid-era coal plants are nearing retirement. But crippling blackouts prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to say the timetable “must be relooked at” earlier this year.

The plan is also facing fierce opposition from the powerful coal lobby. Our investigation with Oxpeckers discovered the sector partnered with politicians and even managed to water down or delay key policies in a bid to sink the scheme.

6. Loss and damage fund’s good start

As the Cop27 president gavelled the landmark decision on a loss and damage fund in Sharm-el-Sheik, a question loomed large: will countries manage to agree on how it should work within the following 12 months?

‘Yes, definitely’ was the answer.

Governments adopted the decision on operationalising the fund on the very first day of Cop28. It gave the summit’s president Al Jaber an early win and prevented loss and damage from being used as a bargaining chip in the ensuing negotiations.

The success is down to the painstaking work of a 24-member transitional committee that hashed out the details over five gruelling meetings. At the outset, developed and developing countries were at odds on just about everything: who should benefit from the fund, who is expected to pay into it, where it’s meant to be hosted.

Distances gradually narrowed and a compromise deal was eventually struck a month before the climate summit. The World Bank will initially host the fund for four years, despite strong resistance to its involvement from developing nations.

Campaigners at Cop27 call for a loss and damage fund to be set up (Photo credit: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

All developing countries “particularly vulnerable” to the effects of climate change will be eligible to benefit from the mechanism. However, the definition of vulnerability – one of the thorniest issues – has not yet been defined.

The decision “urges” developed countries to provide financial resources to the fund, while other nations are only “encouraged” to do so “on a voluntary basis”. Rich nations have been strongly pushing to broaden the donor pool and will likely keep up their efforts.

Pledges from a slew of countries should inject over $700 million for the start-up of the fund. The UAE won plaudits by committing $100 million. The US was lambasted for offering a paltry $17.5m, despite being the world’s largest economy and biggest historical emitter.

The post Six takeaways from 2023’s climate change news appeared first on Climate Home News.

Countries failed to agree on key rules to trade offsets bilaterally and to kickstart a long-awaited global UN-sanctioned market.

Two opposing, and ultimately irreconcilable, forces fueled tense marathon negotiations regularly stretching into the early hours. Getting the system up and running as quickly as possible, on one hand, while ensuring integrity and transparency on the other.

The US championed what observers described as a “light-touch, no-frills” approach to regulations. That would hand a prominent role to private sector players from the much-criticised voluntary market.

A bloc led by the EU along with African and Latin American states pushed back. They wanted stronger checks and balances and a loosening of confidentiality clauses that could have prevented scrutiny.

The risk many highlighted is that, with a weak framework, the new mechanism could become a dumping ground for junk credits.

After late-night informal negotiations tried to salvage a deal, the presidency put “take it or leave it” text on the table. It contained confidentiality provisions many found unacceptable and was roundly rejected. Negotiators will try again to land a deal at Cop29 next year.

Markets in limbo

The collapse leaves bilateral deals in limbo. Several countries have struck preliminary deals to buy carbon credits from others to meet their emissions targets. Switzerland signed its first such agreement with Peru back in 2020, while Singapore inked a deal with Papua New Guinea on Friday.

Controversial Emirati startup Blue Carbon is also aiming to trade credits under the mechanism from several African and Caribbean nations.

The breakdown in talks also sends rule-makers for a new global carbon market back to the drawing board.

Over 12 months and several meetings, a technical body had drafted rules on methodologies underpinning projects and on the eligibility of removal activities. But countries did not adopt the body’s recommendations.

“Trading carbon credits requires strong environmental and human rights guardrails,” said Gilles Dufrasne, policy lead at Carbon Market Watch. “The text on the table just didn’t provide this. It would have risked reproducing the mistakes of voluntary carbon markets, and by rejecting it, negotiators made the best out of a bad situation.”

Mark Kenber, executive director of the Voluntary Carbon Market Integrity initiative, said the lack of agreement would make it harder to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“For the market to fully develop in the next two years as the UN and governments have called for, policymakers can draw on the foundational work of the VCMI and IC-VCM to accelerate the transparency and integrity agenda, developing high-integrity VCM and Article 6 markets that deliver the finance that makes ambitious global action possible,” he said in an emailed statement.

Non-market tussle

Nor was significant progress made on non-market approaches to cross-border cooperation that don’t involve an exchange of carbon credits.

Bolivia lamented the lack of attention given to these tools and threatened to impose a moratorium on market mechanisms if that was not rebalanced. Developing countries also fought back against attempts by the European Union to include carbon taxes and levies among non-market activities, observers said.

On this item, there was a procedural outcome “encouraging” countries to continue work on identifying non-market approaches.

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The final text for the first time mentions all fossil fuels, “calling on” parties to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner”.

Most delegates were satisfied with the result, with no country opposing the text in the final plenary. Vulnerable nations and some observers had mixed feelings.

No ‘phase-out’, but Dubai deal puts oil and gas sector on notice

EU: Beginning of the end of fossil fuels

EU chief negotiator Wopke Hoekstra told a press huddle outside the plenary that the global stocktake text, the main outcome from Cop28, was “truly consequential” and the “beginning of the end of fossil fuels”.

The EU’s Wopke Hoekstra describes this text as “truly consequential” and “the beginning of the end of fossil fuels” #Cop28 pic.twitter.com/aZxYYubcsO

— Joe Lo is @joeloclimate@bsky.social (@joeloyo) December 13, 2023

Aosis: Litany of loopholes

Anne Rasmussen, representing the alliance of small island states (Aosis), told the plenary:

“In terms of safeguarding 1.5C in a meaningful way, the language is certainly a step forward, it speaks to transitioning away from fossil fuels in a way the process has not done before. But we must note the text does not speak specifically to fossil fuel phase-out and mitigation in a way that is in fact the step change that is needed. It is incremental and not transformational.

“We see a litany of loopholes in this text that are a major concern to us.”

Tears flowed and a lengthy rousing ovation during final plenary just now for AOSIS Chair #AnneRasmussen, as she delivered an emotional response filled with unsparing observations about the final outcomes from #COP28UAE pic.twitter.com/YEt4sgIvB0

— AOSIS (@AOSISChair) December 13, 2023

US: Strong messages

US climate envoy John Kerry told the plenary:

“While nobody here will see their views completely reflected in a consensus document of so many nations, the fact is that this document sends very strong messages to the world.

“First, the document highlights that we have to adhere to keep 1.5C within reach. That is the North star. We therefore must do those things necessary to keep 1.5C. Everything we can to achieve this goal.

“In particular it states that our next [national climate plans] will be aligned with limiting warming to 1.5C. I think everyone has to agree this is much stronger and clearer as a call on 1.5C than we have ever heard before.”

Saudi Arabia: Silence

The Saudi delegation does not join in the applause as #Cop28 president says “We have language on fossil fuel for the first time ever” pic.twitter.com/wv2qa7zqje

— Joe Lo is @joeloclimate@bsky.social (@joeloyo) December 13, 2023

UAE: Different sort of Cop

Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber told the final plenary in Dubai:

“It is an enhanced, balanced, but make no mistake historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the ‘UAE Consensus’. Many said this could not be done.

“But when I spoke to you at the very start of Cop, I promised a different sort of Cop. A Cop that brought everyone together, private and public sectors, civil society and faith leaders, youth and indigenous peoples. Everyone came together from day one. Everyone united, acted and delivered.”

France: Still work ahead

French minister for energy transition Agnès Pannier-Runacher told reporters outside the plenary:

“We need to be very cautious and to report and make sure that every country improves their [national climate plans] and that, at the same time, we are going to put the money on the field so that developing countries can do their own transitions and adaptations. That is what is at stake today — how will the finance come to the most vulnerable countries?”

India: Outcomes backed by finance

Indian minister for environment, forest and climate change Bhupender Yadav said in a statement:

“India urges that the determination shown at Cop is also substantiated with means to bring it to fruition. This must be based on the principles of equity and climate justice, which is respectful of national circumstances, and where the developed countries take the lead based on their historical contributions.”

Today, the world came together at #COP28 in Dubai, UAE to display positive collaboration and camaraderie for an action-oriented approach towards a greener and healthier planet.

Through its G20 Presidency steered by PM Shri @narendramodi ji, India displayed the resolve to make… pic.twitter.com/eC07BAr4Fy

— Bhupender Yadav (@byadavbjp) December 13, 2023

Least developed countries: We expected more

Madeleine Diouf Sarr, head of climate change at the ministry of environment of Senegal and chair of the least developed countries group, said in a statement:

“This outcome is not perfect, we expected more. It reflects the very lowest possible ambition that we could accept rather than what we know, according to the best available science, is necessary to urgently address the climate crisis.”

“Next year will be critical in deciding the new climate finance goal, which must be informed by this global stocktake, and must close the vast gaps that have been identified. To respond to the global stocktake, the new goal must reflect the full needs of our countries to address climate change, including the costs to mitigate, to adapt, and to address loss and damage.”

Colombia: Gas colonising decarbonisation

Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad told the plenary:

“Loopholes (in the final text) have risks and the risks can undermine the political will. The transition fuels could end up colonising the space of decarbonisation. Right now, in the financial segment of the text, we don’t have still the economic structure required for this deep transition — which is not only an energy transition but is fundamentally a whole-of-society economic transition.”

La transición para dejar los combustibles fósiles, debe complementarse con un Tratado que entregue reglas claras de financiamiento para los países, pero además respetando los bosques y las comunidades. ¡Nuestra lucha por la justicia climática y equidad, sigue! #COP28 pic.twitter.com/37rn1AzHFa

— Susana Muhamad (@susanamuhamad) December 13, 2023

Germany: Multilateralism delivers

German state secretary and special envoy for international climate action Jennifer Morgan said in a statement:

“Today the world adopted a historic decision that is strongly guided by the 1.5C limit. There is an unmistakable signal that the future is renewables and not fossil fuels. For the first time, countries made the decision to transition away from fossil fuels, accelerating action in this critical decade.

“Today we showed that multilateralism delivers. Tomorrow we drive these decisions forward. We must be fast. We must be deliberate, with ambition and solidarity for climate justice.”

Bolivia: Rich nations must step up

Bolivian chief negotiator Diego Pacheco told the plenary:

“We cannot support outcomes that mean that the world will enter a new era of implementation of the Paris Agreement without equity, without common but differentiated responsibilities, without a differentiation between developed and developing countries and without means of implementation and concrete financing for developing countries.

Developed countries have not decided to take the initiative of leading the fight against the climate crisis and this is jeopardising the lives of people in our part of the world. We say a great deal about 1.5C and science, but developed countries that have plans to expand their fossil fuels going up to 2050 are running counter to science itself, the very science they talk about.”

UN chief: Progress gathering pace

UN secretary general Antonio Guterres told the Cop28 plenary:

“For the first time, the outcome recognizes the need to transition away from fossil fuels – after many years in which the discussion of this issue was blocked. ”

“To those who opposed a clear reference to a phase out of fossil fuels in the COP28 text, I want to say that a fossil fuel phase out is inevitable whether they like it or not. Let’s hope it doesn’t come too late.

Of course, timelines, pathways and targets will differ for countries at different levels of development. But all efforts must be consistent with achieving global net zero by 2050 and preserving the 1.5 degree goal. And developing countries must be supported every step of the way.”

John Kerry says that the US and China “both intend – based on many initiatives set out in Global Stocktake – we will again update our long term strategies and we invite other parties to join us in doing so” #Cop28

— Joe Lo is @joeloclimate@bsky.social (@joeloyo) December 13, 2023

WRI: More finance needed

Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO, World Resources Institute said in a statement:

“Fossil fuels finally faced a reckoning at the UN climate negotiations after three decades of dodging the spotlight. This historic outcome marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. Despite immense pressure from oil and gas interests, high ambition countries courageously stood their ground and sealed the fate of fossil fuels.

“Now a critical test is whether far more finance is mobilized for developing countries to help make the energy transition possible.”

The #COP28 #GlobalStocktake text was gaveled through without any comments allowed from Parties. The text is severely lacking in assurances for climate finance, and equity – indications that developed countries must take the lead – is almost entirely missing.

— Brandon Wu (@brandoncwu) December 13, 2023

Climate Action Network: Marred by loopholes

Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International said in a statement:

“After decades of evasion, Cop28 finally cast a glaring spotlight on the real culprits of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. A long-overdue direction to move away from coal, oil, and gas has been set. Yet, the resolution is marred by loopholes that offer the fossil fuel industry numerous escape routes, relying on unproven, unsafe technologies.

The hypocrisy of wealthy nations, particularly the USA, as they continue to expand fossil fuel operations massively while merely paying lip service to the green transition, stands exposed.”

OPEC: oil and gas have critical role

Mohamed Hamel, Secretary General for the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), and Haitham Al Ghais, Secretary General for OPEC said in a statement:

“The oil and gas industry will play a constructive and critical role in sustainable development and poverty eradication, while contributing to a just, orderly and inclusive energy transitions, in particular through enhancing efficiencies and developing and deploying advanced technologies, such as carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS). They stressed that continued investment in oil and natural gas is essential to meet future demand and ensure global market stability.”

Power Shift Africa: Genie is out of the bottle

Mohamed Adow, Director of Power Shift Africa, said in a statement:

“For the first time in three decades of climate negotiations, the words ‘fossil fuels’ have made it into a Cop outcome. We are finally naming the elephant in the room. The genie is never going back into the bottle. Future Cops will only turn the screw even more on dirty energy.”

“Finance is where the whole energy transition plan will stand or fall. We also need much more financial support to help vulnerable people in some of the poorest countries to adapt to the impacts of climate breakdown.”

CEEW: Disappointed on all fronts

Dr Arunabha Ghosh, CEO of the Delhi-based Council on Energy, Environment and Water, said in a statement:

“This Cop has largely disappointed on all fronts. It hasn’t sufficiently raised climate ambition, held historical polluters accountable, or established effective mechanisms to finance climate resilience and a just low-carbon transition for the global south.

“While the operationalisation of the loss and damage fund on the first day marked a noteworthy success, subsequent developments revealed a discordant trajectory. The global stocktake’s final text lacked the candid acknowledgment of problems and the teeth required to fight them.”

350: Partial win for people power

May Boeve, executive director of activist network 350.org, said in a statement:

“People power has propelled us to the doorstep of history but leaders have stopped short of entering the future we need.

“It is frustrating that thirty years of campaigning managed to get ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ in the Cop text, but it is surrounded by so many loopholes that it has been rendered weak and ineffectual.”

Climate Analytics: Weak energy package

Bill Hare, climate scientist and CEO of Climate Analytics, said in a statement:

“The energy section is weak and simply doesn’t have enough hard commitments to bring the 1.5C warming limit within reach this decade, and there’s no commitment to peak emissions by 2025. The goal of tripling renewables and doubling of efficiency is very welcome, but will need hard work to implement.

“The agreement opens the doors to false solutions like carbon capture and storage at scale, and the reference to transition fuels is code for gas, which is absolutely not a transitional fuel. This has been promoted by LNG and fossil gas exporters.”

The post Dubai deal: Ministers and observers react to the UAE consensus appeared first on Climate Home News.

The “UAE consensus” did not go so far as to call for a “phase-out” as more than a hundred countries wanted. It settled on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems”.

Still, after coal was targeted for a “phase-down” two years ago in Glasgow, it extended that scrutiny to the oil and gas sector.

Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber brought down the gavel on a deal late Wednesday morning, one day into overtime. “We have language on fossil fuel for the first time ever,” he said, to applause.

One delegation not joining in the ovation was Saudi Arabia. Oil-exporting states fought hard against the phase-out language that appeared in earlier drafts.

Many emerging economies were also wary of signing up to quit fossil fuels, given limited finance on the table to support cleaner development paths.

Dubai deal: Ministers and observers react to the UAE consensus

Samoa complained they were not yet in the room when the deal was adopted. Small island states had pleaded for a rapid fossil fuel phase-out to hold global warming to 1.5C, seen as critical for their survival.

Excerpt from the global stocktake text agreed at Cop28 addressing fossil fuels

The energy package included a push to triple renewable capacity and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. It called for accelerating the implementation of technologies like carbon capture, utilization and storage, “particularly in hard-to-abate sectors”.

Controversially, it cited a role for “transitional fuels”, which can be taken to mean fossil gas.

Attention now turns to the next round of national climate plans which, the deal says, should align with limiting global warming to 1.5C. But the pathway to do so is vanishingly small.

The post No ‘phase-out’, but Dubai deal puts oil and gas sector on notice appeared first on Climate Home News.

But, as vague ambitions now turn into concrete plans, the reality looks rather different.

A timeline for the early closure of coal power plants is absent from the investment blueprint for the Just Energy Transition Partnership (Jetp) unveiled at a Cop28 side event on Friday. The government expects instead to operate plants “flexibly” and to rely on the controversial co-firing of biomass and ammonia with coal.

Rich countries have also largely backtracked on their initial promise to offer financial support on more attractive terms than Vietnam could already secure from investors. Nearly 60% of the money will be provided as commercial loans, while the tiny share of grants available is primarily earmarked for technical support, the 223-page document shows.

Leo Roberts, a coal transition expert at E3G, said there are “major reasons” to be concerned.

“The investment plan is no longer the pathway to replacing coal power with clean alternatives the Jetp originally promised. Instead, it focuses on expensive or unproven technologies,” he added. “Those directly undermine the pace and scale of the energy transition.”

Hydropower push

Nearly a year after the initial announcement, Vietnam’s prime minister Pham Minh Chinh has mapped out how Vietnam aims to spend the $15.5 billion pledged by G7 nations to boost the deployment of renewables and cut dependence on coal.

Under the agreement, Vietnam aims to peak its emissions by 2030 – five years earlier than planned – and source close to half of its power from renewable energy within the same timeframe.

The development of dozens of hydropower projects across the country forms the backbone of the government’s strategy to hit the targets. A significant proportion of the donors’ money is already directly allocated to those projects. While the plants are a source of low-emission energy, the construction of dams and reservoirs has caused social and environmental issues in the country, including displacement and water scarcity.

The Vietnamese government also plans to expand its power grid, bolster battery storage, and invest in offshore wind and solar.

Contested coal conversion

New coal plants will continue to be built until 2030, while the government drafts a more detailed plan to deal with existing ones.

A phase-out of coal power plants at a large scale “is not feasible in the near-term” – the investment plan states – “but some older plants may be able to transition to alternative energy sources and uses”. In particular, those that have operating for at least 20 years will begin a phased conversion to biomass and ammonia “provided the price is right”.

NGOs have criticised the use of biomass co-firing, on the basis it prolongs the life of coal plants, emits more CO2 than is commonly accounted for and harms forest ecosystems. Ammonia co-firing is “very costly and has limited feasibility for deployment at scale”, according to E3G.

Loans not grants

A major issue is rich countries are reluctant to commit public money as grants. None have directly allocated finance to retire coal plants early. The plan refers to a need for social security and retraining of workers affected by the transition, but it is unclear who will pay for this.

Contributors prefer to invest in renewable energy projects, which bring a return through electricity sales.

Over half of the $8 billion in public finance will be “commercial” loans disbursed by development banks. Cheaper loans on concessional terms represent roughly a third of the package. Grants make up less than 4% of the money offered by governments, with guarantees and equity contributing to the total.

Commercial banks, part of the GFANZ coalition, are expected to invest the remaining $7.5 billion of the package.

At the launch event, the Vietnamese prime minister was flanked by the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and the UK net zero minister Claire Coutinho.

Von der Leyen called the partnership “a success story”. It is “a good example of everything we want to achieve here at Cop28,” she said. “We want to bring emissions down while driving economic growth up.”

She was echoed by Coutinho, who told Minh Chinh “we are uniting all our efforts behind you”. The Jetp model is “powerful”, she added, “because it is just”.

Silence over environmentalists’ crackdown

Neither of them raised concerns about human rights. The Vietnamese government has brutally cracked down on the civil society representatives that would normally have been key stakeholders in the programme.

Five environmentalists have been jailed in the last two years on tax evasion charges, which human rights groups say are trumped-up accusations. In the most recent case, Hoang Thi Minh Hong, director of the campaign group CHANGE, was handed a three-year prison sentence and a 100 million Vietnamese dong ($4,100) fine last September.

Vietnamese campaigner Hoang Thi Minh Hong was sentenced to three years in prison last September. Photo: CHANGE/350Vietnam

Two weeks earlier Ngo Thi To Nhien, director of an independent energy policy think-tank, had been arrested on a charge of “appropriating documents of agencies and organizations”. Nhien worked for the EU, the UN, and the World Bank and, before her detention, had reportedly provided technical advice for the development of the Jetp.

At the time, the EU, Germany, the US, and UK said they were deeply concerned about the imprisonment of environmentalists.

Campaigners decried the silence over the crackdown at the investment plan launch.

“We urge multilateral development banks and donor governments not to bulldoze ahead with the Jetp,” said Tanya Lee Roberts Davis, NGO Forum on ADB’s Just Transitions Advocacy Coordinator. “Doing so would mean acting as complicit bystanders in the silencing and reprisals faced by community rights, workers’, environmental, and climate advocates.”

The post Vietnam charts uncertain coal path as finance falls short appeared first on Climate Home News.

There were a few complaints from negotiators. But the hard-fought compromise struck in Abu Dhabi three weeks ago held, with the World Bank the interim host of the yet-to-be-named fund.

The UAE set an example by contributing $100 million of a little over $400m in pledges.

With that potentially contentious matter out of the way – and the agenda agreed – public attention will now focus squarely on the issue of fossil fuels and their phase out.

Al Jaber addressed the issue in his opening speech. Negotiators, he said, “must look for ways and ensure the inclusion of the role of fossil fuels”.

He acknowledged “strong views” on having fossil fuels in the text and added that “we collectively have the power to do something unprecedented – in fact, we have no choice but to go the very unconventional way”.

He got some applause for saying he is laser-focused on the “north star” of limiting global warming to 1.5C. He did not mention the International Energy Agency’s verdict that that means no new fossil fuel production.

He added that his presidency “made a bold choice to engage with oil and gas companies”, having difficult discussions with them and now “many” are committed to “near zero” methane emissions by 2030 and have adopted net zero by 2050 targets.

This is a reference to the Cop28 oil and gas decarbonisation accelerator, which is supposed to launch next week. Most publicly-listed oil majors already have net zero targets – but most of those do not include the emissions from burning their products.

Both as Cop28 boss and oil company CEO, Al Jaber’s focus is on producing oil and gas in a cleaner way not producing less.

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Reality check

Before Al Jaber’s speech, Cop28 began on a personal note. Cop27 president Sameh Shoukry called the room to its feet for a moment’s silence for Saleemul Huq, Pete Betts and “all civilians who have perished during the current conflict in Gaza”. The UK, EU and Bangladeshi delegations then gave touching tributes to their former colleagues.

After reflecting on the successes of his presidency, Shoukry issued a “reality check” aimed at rich nations. “Most of what we bring forward as tangible solutions and actionable commitments is based on speculation or well wishes,” he said.

He gave examples of these “mere assumptions”: that rich countries will provide $100 billion in climate finance, that the loss and damage fund will raise billions of dollars and that international financial institutions will be reformed.

In fact, he said climate finance is decreasing in relation to developing countries’ growing needs. Weak replenishment rounds for the Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund “are but two examples of this worrying trend”.

He finished by criticising countries that are expanding fossil fuel production despite saying they would phase coal out. He didn’t name names but the UK’s proposed coal mine springs to mind or the US, Canada and Australia planning to increase oil and gas production.

The post Cop28 bulletin: A loss and damage fund is born appeared first on Climate Home News.

On day one of UN climate talks in Dubai, negotiators rubber-stamped plans to get the fund up and running. The arrangements had been hashed out by a transitional committee over five fraught meetings in the past year.

The Cop28 president Sultan Al Jaber hailed the decision as “historic”, with a broad smile, after watching delegates burst into a round of applause.

“This sends a positive signal of momentum to the world and to our work here in Dubai,” he added.

Initial pledges

Following the text’s adoption, a handful of countries promised contributions to the start-up phase of the fund. Germany and Cop28 hosts the United Arab Emirates committed $100 million each, followed by the United Kingdom (£40m or $50.5m), the United States ($17.5m) and Japan ($10m).

EU member states, including Germany, are expected to collectively deliver at least €225m ($245m).

The relatively paltry contribution from the US – the world’s largest economy – attracted immediate criticism. Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, called it “embarrassing.

Avinash Persaud, special envoy to Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley and a member of the transitional committee, welcomed the “hard-fought historic agreement”. But he said the pledges were unlikely to represent new and additional resources.

“Because the fund was only approved today, we can’t expect [them] to open up new budgets… so this initial money will be coming from existing budgets,” he told a press huddle, as reported by Carbon Brief’s Josh Gabbatiss.

How the fund will work

Significantly more money will be needed to help vulnerable communities benefit from the new mechanism once it gets up and running. The fund is designed to receive contributions “from a wide variety of sources”, including grants and cheap loans from the public and private sectors, and “innovative sources”.

The World Bank is set to initially host the fund for four years, despite strong resistance to its involvement from developing countries.

All developing countries “particularly vulnerable” to the effects of climate change will be eligible to benefit from the mechanism. However, the definition of vulnerability – one of the thorniest issues – is not detailed in the text.

The agreement is an “early win” for the Cop28 hosts, as it sets the start of the conference on a positive collaborative tone, Ana Mulio Alvarez, a loss and damage expert at E3G, told Climate Home.

Speaking at the plenary session, several negotiators underlined the difficult compromises needed to strike a deal.

Compromise deal

Developing countries had initially opposed a role for the World Bank, airing concerns over high costs, slow procedures and the US influence on the institution. But they eventually relented and accepted a compromise, with certain conditions attached to World Bank involvement and an out after four years.

Rich nations attempted to broaden the pool of donors expected to contribute, but made limited headway. The text “urges” developed countries to provide financial resources to the fund, while other nations are only “encouraged” to do so “on a voluntary basis”.

The EU climate chief, Wopke Hoekstra, has said China and petrostates like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar should pay into the fund. Others want to broaden the donor base to countries with high-emitting economies categorised by the UN as developing nations like South Korea and Russia.

“The UAE’s contribution of $100 million is welcome, both for its solid cash and for the pressure it puts on the world’s biggest polluters to also step up and recognise their responsibility for decades of pollution,” said Teresa Anderson, climate justice campaigner with ActionAid International.

“Innovative sources” of finance could mean carbon taxes on international aviation or shipping, financial transactions or fossil fuels. France and Kenya are set to launch a coalition at Cop28 to develop these options.

Civil society experts have said much more work lies ahead and, ultimately, the success of the fund will depend on how much money it is equipped with.

The cost of loss and damage for developing countries is projected to reach $400 billion per year by 2030.

“Although rules have been agreed regarding how the fund will operate there are no hard deadlines, no targets and countries are not obligated to pay into it,” said Adow. “The most pressing issue now is to get money flowing into the fund and to the people that need it.”

The post Countries pledge $400m to set up loss and damage fund appeared first on Climate Home News.

Their Uber rides are taking them along highways flanked by banners from Saudi Arabia’s Green Initiative, urging them to visit their pavilion. 

Many are popping in their complimentary sim cards, handed over with your passport by immigration officials. 

But others are suspicious of this free gift. With the UAE’s reputation for cyber-spying, there’s talk of VPNs, burner phones and not using the venue’s wifi, QR codes or app (after last year’s controversy). 

Whether its paranoia or they’re really out to get us, many are taking precautions. 

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On the defensive 

And Sultan Al Jaber thinks they’re out to get him too. The Center for Climate Reporting revealed that talking points were drawn up for him for Cop28 meetings with foreign governments, which included lobbying for fossil fuel deals for the oil and gas company he heads. 

Asked about it in a press conference yesterday, Al Jaber laughed and said the reporting was “an attempt to undermine the work of the Cop28 presidency”. 

While he did not dispute the authenticity of the talking points prepared for him, he claimed he had not seen them and did not use them. He added that he and the UAE didn’t need the Cop28 presidency to make business deals.

Sultan Al Jaber addresses questions at a press conference yesterday (Photo credit: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

Agenda agreed 

Al Jaber’s diplomats appear to have passed their first test with flying colours, as they persuaded negotiators not to add new items to the Cop28 agenda. 

Groups of developing countries put a series of issues forward as agenda items including developed countries scaling up finance and opposition to trade measures like the EU’s carbon border tax. 

But they appear to have been persuaded that these priorities will be discussed elsewhere on the agenda. 

So the opening ceremony should begin this morning as planned and adopting the agenda should now be just a formality – in contrast with the nine-day debate in Bonn earlier this year. 

Compared to the leaders’ speeches tomorrow, the ceremony will be a relatively low-key affair but it is the moment Sultan Al Jaber turns from Cop28 president-designate to Cop28 president. 

He will make a speech which is his moment to lay out what he wants from the summit. After the latest revelations, any language on fossil fuels will be watched carefully. 

The post Cop28 bulletin: Welcome to Dubai appeared first on Climate Home News.

It’s a measure of how far the discourse has moved since the Paris Agreement that Sultan Al Jaber has taken that line in the run-up to Cop28.

As president of the UN climate summit starting in Dubai on 30 November, Al Jaber could not ignore mounting calls to quit coal, oil and gas.

“We cannot address climate catastrophe without addressing its root cause: fossil fuel dependence,” said UN chief Antonio Guterres last week. “Cop28 must send a clear signal that the fossil fuel age is out of gas – that its end is inevitable.”

But Al Jaber has not quit the day job as chief of Emirati state-owned oil company Adnoc, which is increasing production. The conflict of interest is writ large.

And despite the longstanding scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is the main driver of the climate crisis, there was no political consensus to name them in UN climate decisions until very recently.

At the 2021 climate summit in Glasgow, UK, countries made a breakthrough agreement to phase down coal power generation. A group of around 80 countries pushed to extend that to oil and gas in Sharm-el-Sheik last year, but were stonewalled. Will Al Jaber’s rhetoric translate into an international agreement?

Phasing down or cashing in?

The science is clear: we need to substantially reduce the use of fossil fuels to stand a realistic chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. There is no room for new oil and gas fields, the International Energy Agency agreed.

While there is money to be made, though, mining and drilling continue. Buoyant oil prices since Russia invaded Ukraine last year have spurred development.

The top 20 fossil fuel-producing nations plan to extract twice as much by 2030 as the level consistent with meeting the Paris Agreement goals, according to the UN’s 2023 Production Gap report.

The difference between governments’ fossil fuel plans and projections and levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C and 2°C remains wide. Credit: UN Production Gap Report

The first global stocktake of the Paris Agreement is due to conclude at Cop28 – a prime opportunity for a course correction. Two elements of the energy package under negotiation have broad support: a tripling of renewable energy capacity and a doubling of energy efficiency by 2030. But on a third plank – the fossil fuel phase-out – divisions remain stark.

“We are not going to solve the problem by scaling up renewables alone,” says Ploy Achakulwisut, a research fellow at SEI and one of the UN report’s authors. “Governments need to step up and commit to stronger language on fossil fuels now. Accepting a phase-out is the first step towards coordinating and implementing a well-managed and equitable transition.”

A fractured field

On one end of the spectrum, fifteen countries under the banner “high ambition coalition” are calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels production and use: no ifs, no buts. The group includes rich Western countries like France and Spain, African states, including Kenya and Ethiopia, and Pacific island nations.

Oil, carbon and loss: navigating Cop28 with Climate Home News

On the opposite end, Russia says nyet to any proposal of cutting the oil and gas production that makes up most of its revenues. “We oppose any provisions or outcomes that somehow discriminate or call for phase-out of any specific energy source or fossil fuel type,” the country’s recent submission to the UNFCCC said.

In between are developed countries justifying continued oil and gas development on energy security grounds and emerging economies resistant to any check on their growth.

One word is likely to dominate discussions: unabated.

Abatement fight

A universally-recognised definition of “unabated” does not exist – and that is a big part of the problem. Fossil fuel abatement generally refers to efforts to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emitted throughout their life cycle, chiefly by using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies.

But what percentage of emissions needs to be captured and how countries ensure this is not a delaying tactic are open questions.

“Differing views on abatement are causing hostages to fortune and allowing fractures to appear that are not helpful in terms of actually achieving fossil fuel phaseout,” Camilla Fenning, a fossil fuel transition expert at E3G, told Climate Home. “A clear definition is something that would be very useful.”

Chevron’s Gorgon gas project in Australia has one of the largest carbon capture and storage plants in the world. Photo: Chevron Australia

Rich countries all call for some form of phase-out of unabated fossil fuels, in line with what was agreed at a G7 meeting in Hiroshima last May.

Their interpretation is not univocal, however.

The EU wants to designate some clear boundaries around the use of technofixes. “Exaggerated expectations from CCS should not be a pretext to delay climate action now,” an EU negotiator told Climate Home. “It will not deliver what we need before 2030. In the longer term, we will need it in hard-to-abate sectors, but we need to see what is possible.”

Meanwhile, the US is betting big on CCS and curbs on methane leakage to limit the climate damage of oil and gas operations. It is a position that brings it closer to petrostates like Saudi Arabia and Cop28 hosts UAE.

EU law pushes foreign oil and gas producers to cut methane

China’s climate envoy Xie Zhenhua has also come out in favour of CCS while calling a global fossil fuel phase-out “unrealistic”.

The country, which is expanding both coal power capacity and renewables, risks being a major blocker to an agreement. Highlighting “the significant role of fossil fuels in ensuring energy supply security”, its latest submission said the transition needs to be achieved by “establishing the new before abolishing the old”.

For Cuban Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, chair of the G77 group of developing countries, development needs take priority over a fossil fuel phase-out. “The most important thing for developing countries is eradicating poverty and guaranteeing a right to development within a sustainability framework,” he told Climate Home.

Equity and money questions

For many developing countries, equity concerns will need to be addressed before signing on to any deal.

Negotiators from Africa and India are planning to push rich nations to commit to phasing out fossil fuels faster than the rest of the world. Their position is based on the “common but differentiated responsibilities” principle, where the wealthy countries who are most responsible for causing climate change take the lead in tackling it.

They will highlight the contradictions between what some developed countries advocate for in climate talks and what they do at home. For example, the US is responsible for more than one-third of the expansion of global oil and gas production planned by mid-century, followed by Canada and Russia, according to Oil Change International.

Cuba’s Pedroso Cuesta called this a “severe contradiction”. “Those who are proposing these initiatives [fossil fuel phase out] should lead by example. I don’t think they are currently,” he added.

France, Kenya set to launch Cop28 coalition for global taxes to fund climate action

Another sticking point is money. A huge amount of it will be required for developing countries to wean themselves off fossil fuels while investing heavily in renewables and energy efficiency, the other elements of the COP28 energy package. “Developing countries need to be given assurances about more financial support to encourage confidence in signing up for those commitments”, says E3G’s Fenning

It is not yet clear who is going to provide finance and on what terms. Energy transition partnerships between rich countries and South Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam have stuttered over the last year. Promises of significantly higher levels of support from development banks and the private sector still need to materialize.

Activists gearing up

While country delegates refine their rhetoric, activists are also gearing up their campaigning firepower to make sure a fossil fuel phase-out remains top of the agenda in Dubai.

Demonstrations and protests are expected to be limited to the UN-designated zones, given the harsh rules clamping down on dissent in the UAE, campaigners told Climate Home. But more creativity and better coordination will ensure impact, they promise.

Campaigners are planning to target anyone blocking a deal on fossil fuels. Not only governments but also industry lobbyists expected to descend onto the petrostate in vast numbers.

“The fact that we’re closer than ever to a decision on fossil fuel phase-out in a UN space means that the industry is mobilising more strongly to oppose this,” says Collin Rees, an activist at Oil Change International. “The industry has been forced to come out and show its face. Having that fight in full public view will be very important”.

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The governments are in advanced discussions with a handful of European and Global South countries that could join the coalition in Dubai, according to a source with knowledge of the talks.

The taskforce is planning to consider a broad range of options, including levies on international shipping, aviation, financial transactions and fossil fuels, Climate Home understands.

Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, France’s development minister, said the goal is to agree on specific proposals by Cop30, in two years’ time. Those could then be negotiated in relevant international institutions, like the OECD, the UN or the G20, she added.

Barbados’s climate envoy Avinash Persaud told Climate Home the country is “happy to participate” in the initiative.

What can be taxed

Many country leaders and climate experts see taxes as among the most promising so-called innovative sources of finance that could help plug the large gap in the provision of climate funding to vulnerable countries.

“The need for additional resources internationally is paramount”, said Persaud. “The Green Climate Fund, the new loss and damage fund, these all need real resources in the billions of dollars and they can’t come from existing tax-revenues so easily, so we need additional revenues.”

Taxes on fossil fuel extraction and the emissions of the shipping industry could raise up to $210 billion and $60 billion a year respectively, according to a recent study by Climate Action Network and the European Commission.

Sources of taxation and potential revenues, according to the CAN study.

However, reaching an agreement over those measures is politically challenging and would require several years.

French-Kenyan alliance

Political momentum has gathered pace since the global financial summit in Paris last June, when 40 countries agreed to look into new avenues for international taxation, focussing initially on large greenhouse gas-emitting sectors.

Speaking at the end of the event, France President Emmanuel Macron stressed the importance of global coordination. “It doesn’t work when you do it alone, the financial flows go elsewhere”, he said.

Shades of green hydrogen: EU demand set to transform Namibia

Macron found a crucial ally in Kenya’s President William Ruto, who put the issue on the agenda at the African climate summit in Nairobi in September.

That summit’s final statement floated the idea of a global carbon taxation regime, formed by levies on fossil fuel trade, maritime transport and aviation, and potentially “augmented” by a global financial transaction tax (FTT).

Broad framework

The French and Kenyan governments have accelerated efforts over the last couple of months to form a broad coalition, receiving interest from countries, a source with knowledge of the matter told Climate Home.

Those pushing the plan have not yet finalised a detailed framework or specific targets because they don’t want to put any country off at this early stage, they added.

Farmers’ Protest in Gerona, Philippines. Basilio Sepe / Greenpeace

France’s Zacharopoulou said during last week’s Paris Peace Forum that the coalition will both provide a detailed analysis of each taxation option and gauge how acceptable they are to  different governments.

“It is a sensitive conversation that needs to be led with a cool head”, she added.

Developing countries sensitivity

Many large developing countries have opposed climate-related international taxation. They claim they would distort markets, hamper development and shift responsibility for reducing emissions.

Brazil led resistance from a group of governments to a tax on the global emissions of the shipping sector at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) earlier this year.

They argued that such a tax would disproportionately hit developing countries and particularly Brazil, whose economy relies on shipping heavy low-value things long distances.

Countries eventually decided to study new ‘technical’ and ‘economic’ measures to tackle the climate impacts of shipping, pushing a decision into the future.

UK aid cuts leave Malawi vulnerable to droughts and cyclones

Persaud said the taskforce will need to pay close attention to these considerations. “We need to rethink shipping and aviation emissions levies so they’re not a tax on remoteness which is a concern today,” he added.

Rachel Owens from the European Climate Foundation, which is involved in setting up the taskforce, said countries will drive forward discussions “in an equitable way”.

“This means not putting the burden on developing countries and ensuring that any adverse impacts are mitigated”, she added.

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The Global Stocktake report, the latest warning from the U.N. about environmental perils, will form the basis of the COP28 talks in Dubai at the end of the year and follows months of terrifying wildfires and soaring temperatures.

The UN report, culminating a two-year evaluation of the 2015 Paris climate agreement goals, distils thousands of submissions from experts, governments and campaigners.

“The Paris Agreement has driven near-universal climate action by setting goals and sending signals to the world regarding the urgency of responding to the climate crisis,” it said. “While action is proceeding, much more is needed now on all fronts.”

The UN report also calls on governments to scale up renewable energy and phase out all “unabated” fossil fuels, adding both are “indispensible” for a clean energy transition.

Nearly 200 countries agreed in 2015 Paris to limit warming to no more than 2 Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to strive to keep the increase to 1.5 C.

While each country is responsible for deciding its own climate actions, they also agreed to submit to a progress report by 2023 to see what more should be done. More than 130 countries sent their submissions.

The U.N. said existing national pledges to cut emissions were insufficient to keep temperatures within the 1.5 C threshold. More than 20 gigatonnes of further CO2 reductions were needed this decade – and global net zero by 2050 – in order to meet the goals, the U.N. assessment said.

Bold to-do list

The report urged countries to cut the use of “unabated” coal power by 67-92% by 2030, compared to 2019, and to virtually eliminate it as a source of electricity by 2050.

Low and zero-carbon electricity should account for as much as 99% of the global total by mid-century, and technological challenges holding back carbon capture must be resolved.

The report also called for funding to be unlocked to support low-carbon development, noting that billions of dollars were still being invested in fossil fuels.

“It serves up a bold to-do list for governments to limit warming to 1.5C and protect people everywhere from climate devastation,” said Tom Evans, policy advisor on climate diplomacy at British climate think tank E3G.

Commitment was needed to phase out fossil fuels, set 2030 targets for renewable energy expansion, ensure the financial system funds climate action, and raise funds for adaptation and damage, he said.

“Anything less will fall short on the necessary steps laid out in this report.”

Real commitments

Sultan Al Jaber, who will preside over the Nov. 30-Dec. 12 summit in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), told Reuters the stocktake gave good direction, and urged states and private sector leader to come to COP28 with real commitments.

“To keep 1.5 within reach we must act with ‘ambition and urgency’ to reduce emissions by 43% by 2030,” Al Jaber said in a statement.

UN Climate Change chief, Simon Stiell, urged governments to “carefully study the findings of the report and ultimately understand what it means for them and the ambitious action they must take next.”

On Friday, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres told G20 bloc leaders that they have the power to reset a climate crisis that is “spinning out of control”.

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The document signed by heads of state at the inaugural Africa Climate Summit underscores a missing consensus between countries championing renewable energy and those arguing fossil fuels – and gas especially – are needed for economic development.

The leaders united behind an appeal for financial reforms, including new global taxes and debt relief, to fund climate action on the continent.

Old pledge

The eight-page declaration mentions fossil fuels only in calling on the global community to “uphold commitments to a fair and accelerated process of phasing down coal and abolishment of all fossil fuel subsidies”.

That is a reference to the key pledge the governments agreed upon at Cop26 in 2021. Since then, however, campaigners and a number of nations have been pushing for the extension of that commitment to all fossil fuels.

Draft UN plastics treaty threatens Big Oil’s plan B

An attempt to achieve that at last year’s Cop27 was backed by a broad coalition including India, the EU, US, UK, Chile and Colombia. But it ultimately flopped following opposition from oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia. Africa’s negotiating group did not take a public stance on the issue in Sharm el-Sheik.

The battle is likely to resurface at this year’s climate summit. Its hosts, the United Arab Emirates, have put the phase-down of fossil fuels on the agenda, with president-designate Sultan al-Jaber saying this is “essential” and “inevitable”.

Decarbonisation vs development

At the three-day gathering in Nairobi, talk of fossil fuels was notable for its absence. Kenya’s president William Ruto led calls for fast-tracking green growth, saying the continent has “untapped renewable energy potential”. Ninety percent of Kenya’s electricity is delivered by renewables.

Other African nations have significant fossil fuel interests. Nigeria and Angola are major oil producers, while Senegal and Mozambique have been expanding their gas industries. South Africa is implementing a clean energy transition plan, but it still relies on coal for the vast majority of its power generation.

UAE pitches itself as Africa’s carbon credits leader

Fossil fuels are at the heart of the tension between decarbonisation and development. Around 592 million people lack access to electricity across Africa and the continent’s historical contribution to the climate crisis is a fraction of that from rich nations.

To grow their economies African countries must be able to use gas power, alongside renewable energy, African Development Bank (AfDB) president Akinwumi Adesina said during a fiery speech on Monday.

“People think it is controversial, but for me, it is not,” he said. “We are going to use all the renewable energy sources we have, but they are variable resources. Africa needs stable grids to industrialise. Gas is a very critical part of the energy mix.”

The AfDB has supported the construction of gas infrastructure across Africa, including a controversial LNG terminal in Ghana.

Climate finance demands

With a clear focus on finance, the Nairobi Declaration is heavy on demands that polluters major polluters channel more money toward poorer countries bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

African leaders urged the introduction of global taxes on financial transactions and carbon emissions to fund investment in climate actions. The declaration also advocates for reforms to the multilateral financial system, an increase in financing with favourable terms and debt pauses following climate disasters.

The heads of state have also repeated pleas that rich countries “honor the commitment” to provide $100 billion in annual climate finance – a target that has been missed repeatedly.

Lily Odarno, a director at the Clean Air Task Force, told Climate Home the summit had a “narrow focus on finance” and did not sufficiently explore broader trends facing Africans. “There are lots of targets without an actionable framework to achieving them, so we expect to see a lot more detail in Dubai.”

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Energy and climate ministers from the highly-influential G20 group took part in back-to-back meetings in India, in what was seen as a crucial stepping stone on the road to Cop28 in Dubai.

High hopes for a broad consensus on ambitious targets have been dashed first in Goa where energy ministers met, and then again in Chennai where climate ministers wrapped up talks just hours ago.

The meetings replayed familiar fights over fossil fuel phase-down and climate finance but also revealed new ones over a target of tripling renewable energy capacity.

That’s despite increasingly desperate appeals from Sultan al Jaber, the Cop28 chief, and Simon Stiell, the UN climate boss, who urged the world’s largest economies to show a sense of leadership. But that’s come to nought.

Nearly 10,000 miles away from India, tensions have also been running high in Kingston, Jamaica, where the little-known International Seabed Authority holds its annual meetings.

Four days into the week-long talks, governments have not yet been able to agree on an agenda.

At the heart of the conflict is the future of deep-sea mining, the controversial proposition to extract minerals from the bottom of the oceans.

A dozen of countries headed by Costa Rica, France and Chile want to officially discuss for the first time the possibility to pause any deep-sea mining projects while China and the island nation of Nauru have blocked the motion.

This week’s news:

• G20 divisions over key climate goals pile pressure on Cop28 hosts
• Germany plans to keep funding new gas projects overseas despite pledge
• Pressure grows on governments and banks to stop supporting Amazon oil and gas
• UN climate fund suspends project in Nicaragua over human rights concerns
• UN deep-sea mining talks deadlocked over agenda clash
• G20 climate talks fail to deliver emission cuts despite leadership pleas

The UN climate fund suspended payments to a $117 million forest protection project in Nicaragua over human rights concerns.

An independent review found the project could “cause or exacerbate” violent conflict between indigenous people and settlers. Worryingly, investigators also pointed out that the project had been approved even though it did not comply with the fund’s policies.

The Green Climate Fund said new evidence came to light subsequently and it will now make sure issues are resolved to its satisfaction.

But, as the fund continues to take information submitted from third parties in good faith, this may cause more headaches in the future.

Making decisions in this way leaves the fund “extremely vulnerable to policy and safeguards non-compliance that can result in huge reputational risks”, the investigators wrote in a damning report.

The post A rocky path to Cop28 – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

At a summit in Chennai, India, on Friday developed countries pushed for a commitment to peak emissions by 2025 and to cut them by 60% by 2035 (from 2019 levels) to limit global warming. This is what needs to happen to limit global warming to the critical figure of 1.5°C, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But developing nations opposed the demands, wanting to stick to the Paris Agreement that allowed different countries to tackle global warming in different ways depending on their circumstances, Reuters reported.

The outcome conflicts with a joint plea by the Cop28 boss Sultan al Jaber and the head of the UN climate body Simon Stiell urging G20 ministers to “leave Chennai on the right path and with a clear signal that the political will to tackle the climate crisis is there”.

G20 climate talks

The G20 is seen as a key forum to reach a consensus on targets ahead of UN climate summits. The group of nations is responsible for 85% of the world’s GDP and 80% of the world’s emissions. “The world needs its leaders to unite, act and deliver; and that must start with the G20”, said al Jaber and Stiell.

But, after days of intense discussions, the talks ended with the same outcome as the meeting of G20 energy ministers’ last week: no agreement and fractured relations.

Some European officials accused a “small group of countries” of trying to walk back previous climate pledges.

As fires rage around the world and temperatures break records, the #G20 has unfortunately failed to act as a group with the necessary urgency and clarity. In the face of an acute climate crisis, such a signal from the world's biggest emitters is unacceptable. 1/2

— Jennifer Morgan (@climatemorgan) July 28, 2023

“We were asked to make bold choices, to demonstrate courage, commitment and leadership. But we, collectively, failed to achieve that. We cannot be driven by the lowest common denominator, or by narrow national interests. We cannot allow the pace of change to be set by the slowest movers in the room”, the EU’s Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius said.

UN climate fund suspends project in Nicaragua over human rights concerns

Disagreements also resulted in the failure to produce a joint text at the end of the meeting. Instead, officials issued an outcome statement and a chair’s summary of the debate.

The summary said countries had “divergent views on the issues of energy transitions and how to reflect them in this document”.

Division ahead of Cop28

The talks in Chennai are a replay of the divisions on display last Saturday when G20 energy ministers sparred over commitments to cut the use of fossil fuels and set renewable energy targets.

Phasing down unabated fossil fuels by mid-century and tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030 are among the pillars of the plan outlined by Cop28 chief Sultan al Jaber.

Observers told Climate Home News they were surprised by the divisions over the renewables goal that had until then appeared to attract broad consensus.

G20 divisions over key climate goals pile pressure on Cop28 hosts

At last week’s meeting governments split into three camps, according to two sources with knowledge of the talks.

The Indian G20 presidency, supported by the EU and Germany, championed the higher-achieving target of tripling renewable energy capacity.

UN deep-sea mining talks deadlocked over agenda clash

A group of nations, including France, the US and South Korea, pushed to water down the commitment and broaden the language away from a specific focus on renewables and towards the inclusion of “low-carbon” solutions, including nuclear power and carbon capture technologies.

Hardliners like Russia, Saudi Arabia, China and South Africa opposed the inclusion of any renewable energy targets at all.

Last call

The spotlight is now on the Cop28 team headed by al Jaber. He has been under mounting pressure to bridge divisions and engineer some consensus ahead of the Dubai summit in November.

“The Cop28 Presidency will continue to call on all parties to make a clear commitment to this ambitious but achievable target at every opportunity in the lead-up to COP28″, a spokesperson for the team told Climate Home News.

The meeting of the G20 leaders in September will be one of the last opportunities on the calendar to show some progress toward achieving that goal.

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Making up around 80% of global emissions and also 80% of global GDP, the G20 has the responsibility and the capabilities to alter the course of our planet’s destiny.

The G20 ministers must demonstrate their leadership in placing the earth on track for a future within the 1.5°C temperature limit, which is resilient to the climate shocks already affecting the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Keeping 1.5°C in reach

We cannot afford an overshoot of 1.5°C

Accelerating our efforts to achieve a just transition and keep the temperature limit in reach is critical. We know that effective adaptation can save lives, contribute to sustainable development and support efforts to eradicate poverty and inequality.

However, there are limits to our ability to adapt that are already being reached, so we must step up our actions urgently. Loss and damage is occurring today in every region of the planet.

The findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I Contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report confirm that we must urgently and drastically scale up action and support to address climate change in this decade, accelerate efforts to respond to the impacts that are already happening, and prepare for them to get much worse.

We, as members of the High Ambition Coalition, are committed to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, including keeping alive the 1.5°C temperature limit. The scale and speed of the shifts that our world requires will be unprecedented. The outcome of the first Global Stocktake is an opportunity to course correct onto a path of a just and equitable transition and a much more resilient world.

Phasing out fossil fuels

We must work together to accelerate climate action now and to also set and meet higher targets. We must put an end to the narrative that climate action is the enemy of development. It is the only sustainable development pathway. We look to the G20 to lead the way.

Remaining within 1.5°C will require us to peak greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 at the latest and reduce them by 43% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. Revised 2030 Nationally Determined Contributions that align with the 1.5°C limit, and new 2035 NDCs that keep nations on that pathway, are crucial.

We will not stay within 1.5°C without reducing fossil fuel production. Further fossil fuel expansion risks rendering the eventual transition more expensive and disruptive to economies and societies.

Phasing out fossil fuels will not be easy, but humankind cannot afford to delay. We must bring the fossil fuel era to an end together, and agree a plan to do this at COP28.

We urge you, as leaders of the G20, to accelerate your efforts to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions, to expand your cooperation and lead the way in phasing out all fossil fuels and in transitioning to a green sustainable energy future where access to energy is guaranteed for all.

Key climate actions

Renewable energy has the potential to replace fossil fuels, and to improve access to clean energy across the world, particularly the developing world. We also need a step change in energy efficiency, and to redirect fossil fuel subsidies as part of a just and equitable transition.

We must agree and deliver global goals on renewable energy and energy efficiency, as part of a 1.5°C-aligned global energy strategy. And we must ensure that all sectors, including international transport, reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.

Life saving adaptation is needed worldwide. Enabling national adaptation planning and implementation, and removing the barriers we see today, is key, and will require international cooperation and support, including the delivery of the COP26 call to double adaptation finance.

The climate crisis is causing loss and damage to occur today, and it will worsen. We must all support the swift operationalization and capitalization of loss and damage funding arrangements, and a fund for responding to loss and damage.

Boosting climate finance

Current climate finance flows fall far short of what is needed to meet our climate goals. Accelerated implementation, ambition, and support need to be mutually reinforcing processes to deliver the global transformations that are needed.

As the costs of the climate crisis continue to rise, a new financial system that meets the needs of the vulnerable is needed. We welcome the efforts at the Summit for a New Finance Pact to respond to interrelated climate, energy, health and economic crises and the need for finance to overcome them.

We support efforts to reform the international financial architecture to ensure that financial flows reach the trillions required for low carbon resilient development, and to ensure climate finance is accessible, and avoids trapping countries in further debt.

At the same time, each country should play its part to strengthen efforts to meet their Paris Agreement commitment to align all financial flows with low greenhouse gas climate resilient development.

We welcome the UN Secretary General’s efforts to accelerate ambition. G20 members should support this agenda, and join the ‘Climate Solidarity Pact’ that the Secretary General has called for.

All G20 members should demonstrate their commitment to living up to the Paris Agreement, Glasgow Climate Pact, and Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan, and to protecting the lives of us all. This is the most critical decade, and an opportunity for us to chart a path to a more sustainable, safe, and liveable future for all.

Signatories

H.E. Lenore Gewessler, Federal Minister for Climate Action, Environment, Energy,
Mobility, Innovation and Technology, Austria
H.E. Maria Heloisa Rojas Corradi, Environment Minister, Chile
H.E. Susana Muhamad, Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development,
Colombia
H.E. Dan Jørgensen, Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy,
Denmark
H.E. Ms. Cynthia Ehmes, Acting Secretary of the Department of Environment, Climate
Change and Emergency Management (DECEM), Federated States of Micronesia
H.E. Agnès Pannier-Runacher, Minister for the Energy Transition, France
H.E. Eamon Ryan, Minister for Environment, Climate and Communications,Ireland
H.E. Rob Jetten, Minister Climate and Energy Policy, the Netherlands
H.E. James Shaw, Minister of Climate Change, New Zealand
H.E. Steven Victor, Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Environment, Palau
H.E. John Silk, Minister of Natural Resources and Commerce, Republic of the Marshall
Islands
H.E. Toeolesulusulu Cedric P S Schuster, Minister for Natural Resources and
Environment and Samoa Tourism Authority, Samoa
H.E. Romina Pourmokhtari, Minister for Climate and the Environment, Sweden
H.E. Ralph Regenvanu, Minister of Climate Change Adaptation, Meteorology, Geo
Hazards, Environment, Energy & National Disaster Management Office of the Republic
of Vanuatu

The post Open letter from 14 countries to G20: Safeguard a liveable future appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a speech laying out the country’s plan for the COP28 summit, to be held in Dubai in November, Sultan al-Jaber said the event should also yield international goals to triple renewable energy, double energy savings and hydrogen production by 2030.

“We must be brutally honest about the gaps that need to be filled, the root causes and how we got to this place here today,” Jaber told a meeting in Brussels of climate ministers and officials from countries including Brazil, China, the United States and European Union members.

“Then we must apply a far-reaching, forward-looking, action-oriented and comprehensive response to address these gaps practically,” he said.

EU to push for fossil fuel phaseout ‘well ahead of 2050’ at Cop28

The Cop28 summit will be the first formal assessment of countries’ progress towards the Paris Agreement’s target to limit climate change to 1.5 Celsius of warming. Countries’ current policies and pledges would fail to meet that goal.

“We can’t afford a meaningless stocktake. This is about accountability of our previous, present and future updates,” Canadian Climate Minister Steven Guilbeault told Thursday’s meeting.

The assessment at Cop28 – known as the Global Stocktake – will increase pressure on major emitters to update their actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

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Al-Jaber appointed Denmark’s climate minister Dan Joergensen and South Africa’s climate minister Barbara Creecy to co-ordinate discussions on the response to the stocktake.

Jaber said all governments should update their emissions-cutting targets by September, which the UAE did last month.

Climate finance

The UAE, a major oil exporter, has been under pressure to lay out its vision for the Cop28 summit and guide preparations among the nearly 200 countries expected to attend.

A round of preparatory United Nations climate negotiations in Bonn in June yielded little progress. Countries spent days wrangling over issues including whether to even discuss urgent CO2-cutting action – known in U.N. jargon as the “mitigation work programme”.

After “sleepless nights”, governments strike deal on Green Climate Fund strategy

Jaber, who is also the head of UAE state-owned oil company Adnoc, said the Cop28 summit also aims to establish a promised fund to compensate poorer countries where climate change is inflicting irreparable damage.

Countries finally agreed at last year’s UN climate talks to form the “loss and damage” fund – but left the toughest decisions for later, including which countries should pay into it.

Finance has dominated recent climate negotiations, as poorer nations demand greater support to both invest in low-carbon energy and cope with spiralling costs from droughts, floods and rising sea levels.

Jaber called for a “comprehensive transformation” of international financial institutions to unlock more capital to tackle climate change – echoing ideas put forward by climate-vulnerable nations including the Barbados-led “Bridgetown Initiative” to reform multilateral finance institutions.

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The commitment would mean stopping coal power and eliminating emissions from the oil and gas sector, but with only a minimal role for carbon capture, he added.

The EU unveiled its common goals ahead of the climate summit in Dubai this week, at a meeting of the bloc’s environment and energy ministers in Spain.

Speaking at the gathering, attended by Cop28 chief Sultan Al Jaber, Timmermans said the EU wants governments to sign up to a pledge with three main elements: tripling renewables rollout by 2030, better energy efficiency, and an accelerated phase-out of fossil fuels with a “residual” role for carbon abating technologies.

Divisions over carbon capture

The last point refers to the use of carbon capture and storage (CCS), an umbrella term for a range of processes that aim to trap CO2 emissions caused by burning fossil fuels.

CCS is at the centre of a deeply-divided debate. Oil and gas-producing countries and the industry argue it is necessary to extract climate-damaging gases while the world keeps powering activities with fossil fuels.

Campaigners and a host of progressive nations claim it is a loophole for the fossil fuel industry that will prolong the climate crisis.

What does “unabated” fossil fuels mean?

The Cop28 hosts, the United Arab Emirates, are a big proponent of CCS. In May Al Jaber angered many climate politics watchers when he called for a phase-out of “fossil fuel emissions”, saying that oil and gas will continue to play a role in the foreseeable future.

The Cop28 chief has since softened his stance slightly, calling for an accelerated energy transition that “phases down the use of fossil fuels”.

‘Residual’ role

The EU’s position outlined by Timmermans shows a similar focus on eliminating ’emissions’ but signposts clearer limits to the use of CCS.

“It is important to have a precise understanding of the role of ‘abated fossils’ in a net-zero economy,” the EU climate chief said. “These need to be residual and only in hard-to-abate sectors. And the sector carries the burden of proof in demonstrating this is achievable and proposing credible investment strategies in carbon-abating technologies”.

Agreeing on a definition for ‘unabated’ and on a role for CCS is likely to be one of the defining battles at the climate summit in Dubai.

IEA celebrates energy transition minerals investment, as fears of shortage lessen

Lisa Fischer from the think tank E3G said Timmermans “rightly shifts the focus on the need to define ‘abated fossil fuels’ to avoid countries hiding behind a so far little progressed pipedream of carbon capture”. But she also added that the focus should be on “phasing down fossil fuel use, with some clear pre-2050 milestones”.

According to forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal, oil and gas must drop respectively by 90%, 80% and 70% between 2021 and 2050, in order to reach net zero by mid-century.

Tripling renewables

The EU’s other big pledge ahead of Cop28 is on tripling the annual rate of deployment of renewable energy between now and 2030.

Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said the proposal is for a “voluntary, non-binding pledge” for other countries to sign up to.

The target is based on an IEA assessment. The organization said that the world currently has about 3,300 GW of renewable energy capacity. In order to be in with a shot of limiting global warming to 1.5C, about 1,000 GW should be added every year to 2030, roughly tripling the total amount to 10,350 GW.

The renewables pledge is expected to cause less friction in Dubai. Sultan Al Jaber is strongly backing the proposal, which has already attracted support from the US, Chile, Colombia and representatives of small island states.

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From G7 statements to IPCC reports, mentions of the need to phase out the use of fossil fuels frequently come accompanied by this qualifier.

But what does it actually mean? The answer is not straightforward and agreeing on a shared understanding will be one of the defining battles of future climate commitments.

Katrine Petersen, a senior policy advisor at E3G, says there is currently no international definition of what constitutes carbon dioxide (CO2) abatement.

Commitments without clarity

Naturally, unabated is the opposite of abated, which means reducing the intensity of something.

When it comes to the use of coal, oil and gas for power generation, this refers to the attempts to bring the release of polluting substances down to an acceptable level.

What this level is and how to get there is hotly debated.

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Despite the current lack of clarity, the word ‘unabated’ features prominently in climate commitments.

The call to speed up efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal power was the big breakthrough at Cop26. Now that the attention has shifted also to oil and gas, the emphasis on ‘unabated’ remains the common denominator.

Comment: G7 leaders must fulfil their promise to stop funding fossil fuels

At April’s G7 summit leaders mentioned the word seven times in their final statement. Most prominently in a commitment to accelerate the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels with the goal to achieve net zero in the power sector by 2050.

But nowhere do these governments provide a clear explanation of what they mean.

IPCC definition

The closest we can get to an universally-accepted definition comes in a footnote to the IPCC synthesis report. Written by scientists and approved by governments, the document summarises the latest scientific knowledge on climate change.

The report says the abatement of fossil fuel production and use comes through interventions that substantially reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emitted throughout their life cycle. As an example – it says in a footnote – this could involve capturing 90% or more carbon dioxide from power plants.

Here, the IPCC refers to the technology most people associate with the concept of abatement: carbon capture and storage (CCS). The process aims to trap CO2 emissions generated by a power plant at source and store them deep underground.

Carbon capture divisions

CCS is at the centre of an increasingly deeply-divided debate.

Oil and gas-producing countries and the industry argue that the technology will be necessary to extract climate-damaging gases while the world keeps burning fossil fuels.

The head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Fatih Birol thinks CCS is “critical for ensuring our transitions to clean energy are secure and sustainable”.

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Another big proponent of the technology is UAE’s Cop28 boss Sultan Al-Jaber. He has called for a phase-out of “fossil fuel emissions”, saying that oil and gas will continue to play a role in the foreseeable future.

His words have angered many climate politics watchers. Former United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres recently argued CCS is not the solution. “We do not have carbon capture commercially available and viable over the next five to seven years,” she said on her podcast recently.

‘Gigantic loophole’

Campaigners claim CCS has already failed and describe it as the “first line of defense” for a fossil fuel economy that does not want to change.

Lili Fuhr, from the Center for International Environmental Law, told Climate Home its association with CCS means the inclusion of unabated in pledges is a “gigantic loophole” for the fossil fuel industry.

The Kemper coal power plant failed to deliver on its promise to use CCS to capture emissions. Photo: XTUV0010

She also argued capture rates of existing plants are much lowers than what the industry advertises.

The IEA says power plants with CCS in operation are designed to capture around 90% of emissions. This rate would be in line with the definition used by the IPCC.

But an analysis by a think tank of 13 flagship CCS projects worldwide found they have either underperformed or failed entirely.

Need for high standards

E3G’s Petersen thinks policymakers and regulators have a vital role in defining and implementing appropriate abatement standards, including CCS capture rates.

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“It’s important that high standards for these emissions reduction requirements are set,” says Petersen. “Fossil fuel power plant operators would then either have to meet this standard or shut down the plant.”

Some countries, however, are heading in the opposite direction and pushing for a wider interpretation of abatement as possible.

Watering down

Japan, for example, has used its G7 presidency to promote its controversial strategy to cut emissions from coal power plants by co-firing ammonia.

Analysts say this is costly and won’t make a significant dent in CO2 emissions.

“Japan is claiming that any reduction of emissions counts as abatement,” says Petersen. “That is a ludicrously low level of emissions reduction and should not be considered adequate abatement for a fossil fuel power plant.”

The post What does “unabated” fossil fuels mean? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Talks on issues like reducing emissions and adapting to climate change have continued but the Pakistani co-chair of the talks Nabeel Munir warned that all their work could be wasted if the agenda is not officially adopted.

Towards the end of a two-hour open meeting, Munir told negotiators they were like “a class of primary school” and urged them to “please wake up, what is happening around you is unbelievable”. The room of negotiators and campaigners applauded his words.

Munir said 33 million people had been impacted by floods in Pakistan last year, worsened by the climate crisis. “A third of the country [is] under water and I go back and tell my people that we were fighting for agenda for 2 weeks. Come on, is it worth it?” he said.

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Urging agreement, Zambia’s lead negotiator Ephraim Mwepya Shitima warned there was a “danger” of losing progress, affecting “the credibility of the process” and “even disrupting some of the critical functions of the [UN climate change agency] if we leave this places without adopting the agenda”.

The Bonn talks happen every June and allow negotiators to progress technical talks and prepare the ground for the following Cop summit each November. A failure to agree an agenda in Bonn would make constructive talks at Cop28 difficult.

The last time they collapsed without an agenda being agreed was in 2013, when Russia objected to being ignored at the previous Cop meeting in Qatar and insisted on discussing that in Bonn.

Finance split

Developed countries and some developing nations are split on how prominent to make climate finance on the agenda.

A group of developing countries want an agenda item on “urgently scaling up financial support from developed country parties” to be added.

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But developed countries and some more climate vulnerable developing ones oppose this, arguing that the agenda item was proposed too late and that finance is discussed elsewhere in climate talks.

This second group wants an agenda item on talks, known as the mitigation work programme, to reduce emissions to give the world a better chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C. But the first group opposes this, without their agenda item being included.

The push

Bolivian negotiator Diego Pacheco, who represents the Like-Minded Developing Country coalition, made the first group’s arguments most prominently yesterday.

“In our hunger for action, discussions have centred exclusively on scaling up ambition against the backdrop of broken promises, failed commitments and low delivery of means of implementation and support from developed countries,” Pacheco said.

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Speaking on behalf of the G77+China group, which includes all developing countries, Cuba’s negotiator Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta said an agenda item on finance was “long overdue” as the “promised finance hasn’t been there since 2009”.

It is clear that there is no intention to talk about financing… Muy despite the fact that on a day like today in 1992 in Rio, this United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was opened for signature, @UNFCCC, let’s live up to it and stop talking nonsense.#CubaqG77 pic.twitter.com/mdbFmkOXtZ

— Pedro Luis Pedroso C (@PedroPedrosoC) June 12, 2023

In 2009, developed countries collectively promised to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries to help them reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. They failed to do so and have yet to reach this target, although they expect to this year.

Cuesta yesterday said the $100 billion promise was a “fraud” and that developing countries need somewhere between $6,000 billion and $100,000 billion.

At Cop28, countries will renew discussions on a new climate finance target set to be adopted by 2024, which is expected to supersede the previous $100 billion finance goal. But negotiations at last year’s Cop27 did not resolve substantive matters yet, such as the exact amount of the new goal.

The Arab group proposed a new goal of $1.1 trillion per year by 2030, while a report commissioned by the UK presidency of Cop26 estimated a similar amount of $1 trillion needed for developing countries (excluding China) to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

Tom Evans, policy advisor at E3G said developed countries were keen to see other major emitters like China playing a much bigger role when it comes to financing the climate transition.

The resistance

Developed countries like the European Union, USA and the United Kingdom opposed this agenda item on finance. They said they accepted that finance was important but argued that the agenda item was proposed too late and that finance is being discussed in other parts of the climate talks including the mitigation work programme that Bolivia and others are blocking.

The EU’s negotiator said she was “confused as to why we now have new proposals on the table now after having already launched the work for the session last Monday”, adding that “we have already ample places that we are negotiating on finance”.

China’s negotiator said that the proposal was new because other countries had added items too. When they got to Bonn, he said, a reference to the mitigation work programme had been added, which “motivated” them to add other items as well.

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The US’s negotiator Trigg Talley said that adding a new agenda item in response to an agenda item is “unprecedented” and the precedent of doing this should not be set.

China’s representative said that the other places finance is discussed, which the EU had mentioned, are just “dialogues” rather than “negotiations”. Negotiations involve more decision-making than dialogues, which are just an exchange of views.

CAN International campaigner Harjeet Singh said developed nations were “side-stepping critical finance discussions, thereby evading their obligations and historical accountability for the climate crisis”.

The other nations

Bolivia’s proposal was supported by Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, on behalf of the Arab Group and Senegal, on behalf of the world’s poorest countries.

But both the Aosis group of small island nations and Costa Rica, on behalf of the Ailac group of Latin American states, opposed finance having its own agenda item, proposing to include it in the mitigation work programme discussions instead.

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Developed nations like Norway, New Zealand, Australia and Canada backed the EU and US’s position. They were supported by Switzerland’s negotiator Franz Perez.

He said that the split was not between developed and developing nations, as he was speaking on behalf of the environmental integrity group which includes Mexico and South Korea, which are considered developing nations under the United Nations classification.

While resisting an agenda item on finance, developed countries did agree to developing nations proposal for an agenda item on governments plans to adapt to climate change.

The post Bonn climate talks at risk of collapse, after 7-day agenda debate appeared first on Climate Home News.

Purporting to be genuine people based in the UAE, scores of individual Twitter accounts publish similar positive content and defend the UAE in replies to posts by campaigners or journalists.

At least a hundred profiles engaged in such behaviour have been identified by Marc Owen Jones, a digital disinformation expert at the Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar.

Twitter suspended a handful of those accounts after Jones publicly exposed them last week. But many others remain active having now transitioned to different personas overnight.

Climate Home News has independently analysed the activities of some of the most active profiles. They were all created in February 2022, using fake profile pictures and unlikely biographies, and display a suspicious pattern of activities.

‘Coordinated network’

When taken together, they appear to be engaged in an orchestrated attempt to promote the UAE.

“This is definitely organised”, Marc Owen Jones told Climate Home News. ” The accounts are part of a coordinated network, using the same modus operandi.”

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He says the accounts appear to carry out a strategic communication campaign promoting the Cop28, among other UAE policy matters.

“A lot of their efforts go towards damage limitation. Whenever there is negative content about Cop28, they swing into action to try and balance the narrative, muddy the waters,” he added.

1/There is a large, multilingual astroturfing effort around #Cop28 on Twitter right now involving at least 100 fake accounts. The accounts in question are promoting UAE foreign policy, bashing UAE's enemies, and burnishing the UAE's environmental record #deception #greenwashing pic.twitter.com/84uz5X8W81

— Marc Owen Jones (@marcowenjones) June 2, 2023

Proving who is behind these accounts is difficult and neither Jones or Climate Home News has evidence the Cop28 team or any UAE government agency is running them.

A Cop28 UAE spokesperson told Climate Home News that such engagement is “unacceptable” and goes against their commitment to authenticity and transparency.

“The Cop28 team is already aware of fake accounts and bots coordinating in manipulation on the platform and violating Twitter’s manipulation and spam policy,” they added. “We have written to Twitter directly requesting assistance to take immediate action to stop this activity and to remove all fake accounts and bots.”

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But Marc Owen Jones believes that, given the scale and content type, the “most likely explanation” is that this operation is run by a PR firm working for an entity in the UAE.

Identical messages

The tweets are generally responses or quote-tweets to tweets by the UAE government. But some are exactly the same as the UAE government’s tweets.

Jones said whoever was running these accounts were either copying the government’s language or “the same social media company manages the accounts of government officials and the fake accounts.”

One example is ‘Viyan Mahmud’. Like most of the accounts, it was created in February 2022.

“Mahmud” purported to be a human rights advocate in the UAE. As its profile picture, it displayed a computer-generated image with the line ‘this person does not exist” still emblazoned on top.

Initially its feed alternated propaganda messages about the UAE with pictures of luxury handbags and collectible sneakers.

Amplifying the government message

But on March 27th ‘Viyan Mahmud’ wrote: “We welcome the activation of the Transitional Committee on the #LossAndDamage Fund and funding arrangements…”. The same tweet and the same picture had been posted 30 minutes earlier by the official Cop28 account.

The pattern repeated itself at the beginning of May when the UAE’s Cop28 team unveiled its agenda at the Petersberg Climate Summit. Following a bilateral meeting with world leaders, the official account of UAE’s Climate Minister Mariam Almheiri published the following tweet:

During the Global Response to Climate Impacts session, on the sidelines of #PetersbergClimateDialogue I discussed the significance of the Global Goal on Adaptation outcome at #COP28 & how it can support national policy measures to enhance adaptive capacity & reduce vulnerability. pic.twitter.com/9SchVA3wMi

— Mariam Almheiri | مريم المهيري (@mariammalmheiri) May 3, 2023

Afterward, ‘Viyan Mahmud’ posted the same picture of Almheiri and US Special Envoy John Kerry saying “shared my views on the crucial role of Global Goal on Adaptation at COP28…”. The message is remarkably similar to Almheiri’s and, like that one, it appears to be conveying the Climate Minister’s personal thoughts.

The tweet was originally published when the account was still named ‘Viyan Mahmud’. It has since been rebranded into ‘Amina Mahi’, the name that appears on this screenshot.

After being exposed by Dr. Jones, the ‘Viyan Mahmud’ account has undergone a complete makeover.

It is now called ‘Amina Mahi’ and claims to be a tech enthusiast. The profile picture has been changed to a portrait photo of the Indian TikToker Arishfa Khan. It continues to share professionally-crafted pro-UAE content.

Climate Home News has seen several more examples of fake Twitter profiles acting in unison to rebut criticism.

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Below the post of a Financial Times article headlined ‘Is Cop28 destined to be a flop?’, a user then named ‘Hannah Yousef’ urged others to give the UAE a chance and “work together towards a sustainable future”.

When someone branded her comment as “attempted greenwashing”, the fake profile shot back: “Excuse me!!! Instead of attacking the country’s host, fostering cooperation and giving leaders like Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber a chance to make a positive impact is crucial…”, she wrote.

‘Hannah Yousef’ claimed to be a humanitarian aid advocate from Syria based in the UAE. After being exposed by Marc Owen Jones, the profile has now turned into ‘Avery Cohen’.

Rebutting criticism

The Cop28 hosts have repeatedly come under criticism from climate campaigners since the start of the year.

First, questions were raised over the appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, an oil executive, as the climate summit’s head. The invitation to Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad brought another outpouring of condemnation from human rights groups and western governments.

Finally, the UAE’s promotion of phasing out “fossil fuel emissions” rather than fossil fuels was labelled an attempt to use the promise of carbon capture and storage technology to prolong the country’s oil exports.

The Cop28 hosts have been previously accused of trying to “control the narrative” online. Last week the Guardian said members of the Cop28 president’s team edited Wikipedia pages that highlighted Sultan Al Jaber’s role as an oil executive.

Note: The headline was amended after publication on 6th June 2023. 

The post Fake social media profiles wage “organised” propaganda campaign on Cop28 appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UAE has been discussing an initiative, provisionally named the Global Decarbonization Alliance, alongside a group of company executives.

The alliance is expected to set a goal to reach net zero emissions from extracting oil and gas by 2050, according to a leaked letter from Cop28’s energy transition lead reported by the Financial Times.

But Romain Ioualalen, a campaigner at Oil Change International, told Climate Home the initiative was just a “recycling” of similar programmes which he says have not amounted to much action.

Most emissions ignored

Campaigners have also criticised the focus on just the emissions from producing oil and gas rather than the much larger emissions from the use of fossil fuels.

Roughly 80-95% of the oil and gas sector’s emissions are from the use of their products but the initiative would only target those from extracting them.

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Producing fossil fuels damages the atmosphere as gas leaks into the atmosphere or is burned as a waste product. Many of the vehicles and machinery used in the industry are polluting too.

Similar existing alliances have the same focus. These include the US-led net zero producers forum (NZPF), the energy importers and exporters on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and the industry-run oil and gas climate initiative.

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Ioualalen said the proposed alliance is another example of a “tried and true tactic” of the fossil fuel industry to carry on business as usual.

“They are talking about everything but the one thing that really matters in driving down emissions, which is reducing oil and gas production,” he said. “As long as these are not the terms of discussion, it can’t be described as a legitimate effort”.

The International Energy Agency has found that fossil fuel production should drop by a factor of nearly four between 2020 and 2050 if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5C.

Denmark and Costa Rica have led an effort to get governments to end oil and gas production but only a handful of fossil fuel-producing nations have signed up.

No announcement

The Financial Times reported the alliance would be discussed in a workshop taking place this week in the UAE.

On Wednesday the Cop28 president-designate Sultan Al Jaber hosted a meeting with executives from fossil fuels, financial and tech companies in the UAE.

Al Jaber called on the oil and gas industry to work collectively to reach net zero by 2050 and net zero methane emissions by 2030.

On the sidelines of #UAEClimateTech, #DrSultanAlJaber chaired a decarbonization roundtable.

The President-Designate highlighted the importance of collaboration on the decarbonization pathways and discussed tangible solutions to address the urgent need for emissions reduction. pic.twitter.com/lk4wG7jhIW

— COP28 UAE (@COP28_UAE) May 11, 2023

He also remarked on the importance of “building up an integrated creative partnership”, but stopped short of launching a formal alliance.

According to a source with knowledge of discussions, the plans are still being developed with no clear timeline for an announcement.

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The Cop28 chief has repeated several times that the oil and gas industry should be invited to the negotiating table.

Launching his agenda last week, Al Jaber said that he sees a role for fossil fuels “in the foreseeable future”, calling for a phase-out of “fossil fuel emissions” rather than “fossil fuels”.

That opens the door to the continued use of fossil fuels as long as their emissions are captured by carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

Industry’s involvement

The Cop28 team has been developing plans for the initiative with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), a group of over 200 companies including some of the largest oil and gas producers.

Peter Bakker, the group’s CEO, wrote last week that “WBCSD has been in close contact with the UAE Cop28 team to help shape the agenda”.

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He added the organisation’s efforts focused on a “big push for decarbonization action in the oil and gas and hard-to-abate sectors through the Global Decarbonization Alliance”.

The WBCSD told Climate Home the Cop28 team is currently in the process of developing plans to ensure a comprehensive approach.

The Cop28 team said it would not comment on leaked reports.

Deja-vu

The leaked outline of the proposed Cop28 alliance bears many similarities to existing net zero initiatives for the fossil fuels industry.

In April 2021 the United States launched the Net-Zero Producers Forum, alongside major fossil fuels-producing nations Canada, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The initiative aimed to “develop pragmatic net-zero emission strategies”. This could include stopping methane leaks and flaring, deployment of carbon capture and storage technologies, and diversification from reliance on hydrocarbon revenues, according to the original statement.

Underwhelming outcomes

After the initial announcement, the initiative went quiet for nearly a year. Energy ministers from the five participating countries re-launched the forum again in March 2022, when they held an inaugural meeting in Houston, the USA’s oil and gas capital.

Fossil fuel executives from Chevron, Saudi Aramco and Equinor also attended the meeting. The main outcome was the creation of a working group to find solutions to phase out unabated fossil fuel emissions.

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Two months later the United Arab Emirates joined as the sixth member of the initiative. There has been no public mention of the activities of the Forum since then and its lead, the US Energy Department, did not respond to a request for comment.

Another country-led coalition took shape at Cop27 last November. The US, European Union, Japan, Canada, Norway, Singapore, and the United Kingdom committed again to reducing emissions associated with fossil energy production, with a particular focus on methane.

Industry’s own alliance

The fossil fuel industry has separately been working on its own alliance. In 2014 twelve major oil and gas companies set up the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative.

Like the Cop28 initiative, it sets signatories a target of reaching net zero emissions “from operations under their control”. But it does not set a target date.

Gas flaring in an oil extraction plant. Photo: (blake.thornberry)

The emissions from producing oil and gas can be significant. Recent satellite data reported by the Guardian revealed that Turkmenistan’s oil and gas infrastructure leaked more greenhouse gas than the whole of the United Kingdom in 2022.

While some campaigners dismiss it as a distraction, others like Clean Air Task Force’s methane director Jonathan Banks, support action to reduce oil and gas’s direct emissions.

He told Climate Home News last April: “Reducing oil and gas methane is by far the simplest and biggest thing we could do in the next few years to dramatically reduce global warming. It’s not rocket science. We don’t have to build any fancy new technology. It’s basically plumbing.”

The post Cop28 moots oil and gas initiative despite greenwash accusations appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ministers from around 40 countries gathered in Berlin this week to kick-start negotiations ahead of this year’s climate summit.

The head of Cop28, the UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber, set the tone of the discussions by backing the phase-out of “fossil fuel emissions”. The wording has been interpreted as creating a loophole. The inclusion of “emissions” leaves the door open to the continuing use of fossil fuels if their emissions are kept out of the atmosphere with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.

During the ensuing talks, several countries underlined the need to “phase out fossil fuels as a major source of emissions”, according to an official summary. The document does not name specific representatives, but two sources with knowledge of the talks said these included the European Union, Chile, Colombia and small island nations.

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They faced opposition from other governments claiming that “fossil fuels currently are the most affordable form of energy”, the summary said.

Oil-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia showed the biggest resistance to an outright phase out of fossil fuels, the two sources said.

While taking a more moderate position, sources said the United States also failed to come out in support of that pledge, underscoring Al Jaber’s focus on “fossil fuel emissions” rather than fossil fuels.

These governments argued this is especially true in developing countries, where the rollout of renewable energy has a “high up-front cost”.

The International Energy Agency says utility-scale solar and onshore wind are the cheapest options for new electricity generation in a significant majority of countries worldwide.

Phase out battle

A broad coalition of nations has been pushing for an agreement to “phase out fossil fuels” at Cop28. They are keen to avoid a repeat of last year’s climate summit in Egypt.

An alliance of more than 80 countries wanted that commitment to be included in the final joint declaration. But a small group of fossil fuel-producing states like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia opposed the motion.

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Saudi Arabia’s lead negotiator Albara Tawfiq told the plenary that the UN climate convention “needs to address emissions and not the origins of the emissions”.

Agreements need to be signed off by every country so the language did not appear in the final text.

Al Jaber’s agenda

This week, the UAE’s Cop28 head used the platform of the Petersberg Climate Dialogues to set out his agenda for the summit at the end of November.

In the closing press conference, Sultan Al Jaber said that he sees a role for fossil fuels “in the foreseeable future in helping meet global energy requirements”.

His remarks have added to some observers’ concerns over the appointment of Al Jaber, who heads the UAE’s state fossil fuels giant Adnoc, alongside his Cop28 gig. Adnoc plans to boost investment in oil and gas capacity over the next five years.

CCS loophole

The debate in Berlin also revolved around the role of “technical solutions” for reducing carbon emissions.

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“Some representatives saw the need to support broader deployment of carbon management technologies for existing fossil fuel facilities”, the chair’s summary of the talks said.

But other governments urged caution “due to concerns about the cost, unclear timescales, potential to delay the transition, and environmental impacts”.

International divisions

Last week, one European official told Climate Home that the “strongest voices” in favour of CCS “are currently coming from fossil exporting countries”.

The official said that CCS “will play a key role” in some sectors that are hard to clean up. “But for now, it’s an expensive option, a luxury technology”, they said, and renewables and energy efficiency “are the most affordable and readily available mitigation technologies”.

CCS debate

CCS remains expensive and unproven at large scale.

According to the IPCC’s scientists, stopping a tonne of carbon dioxide with CCUS costs between $50 and $200. Replacing fossil fuels with renewables usually saves money.

Many climate campaigners have called it a “distraction” that gives fossil fuel companies a licence to keep extracting more climate-harming coal, oil and gas.

But the IEA’s head Fatih Birol disagrees, calling it “critical for ensuring our transitions to clean energy are secure and sustainable”.

The post Nations split over fossil fuels and carbon capture appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UAE’s climate envoy Sultan Al Jaber has requested donor countries to provide a definitive assessment on the overdue delivery of the commitment before the climate summit in Dubai at the end of November.

“Expectations are very high. Trust is very low,” he told attendees of the Petersberg Climate Dialogues in Berlin.

In 2009 wealthy nations committed to collectively mobilise $100bn a year by 2020 to help developing countries cut their emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

Broken promise

But they have so far failed to respect that pledge. In 2020 rich nations mobilised $83.3 billion of climate finance, according to data published last year by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

At the annual Petersberg Climate Dialogues in Berlin today, Al-Jaber contrasted rich countries’ failure to provide $100bn of climate finance with this year’s $100bn in military expenditure and pledges for the war in Ukraine and the $9,000bn that were mobilised to respond to Covid-19.

Speaking before Al-Jaber, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said that a meeting of rich countries in Berlin yesterday suggested they are “on a good track to finally make good on the promise” this year.

A plan drawn up by Germany and Canada ahead of Cop26 in 2021 indicated that the pledge would be met this year, three years later than the original deadline.

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For Jule Könneke, a policy advisor at E3G, meeting the pledge is one of the keys to changing course at Cop28.

“For donor countries, it is about proving to be a credible partner by delivering on commitments and ensuring that poorer countries have the means to meet climate and development goals,” she said.

US biggest culprit

The bulk of the climate finance gap can be attributed to just a handful of developed countries, according to analysis by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).

The United States shoulders the biggest responsibility providing only 5% of its “fair share” under a calculation done by the ODI  that includes the size of its economy and historical emissions.

The US should have provided $43bn but sent just $2bn, the ODI said, making it “overwhelmingly responsibile for the climate finance gap.

Australia, Canada, Italy and Spain have also been singled out as laggards.

Underlying several times the importance of "trust", Sultan Al Jaber said meeting this obligation is "vital" to the political credibility of the UN's climate process.

Alpha Kaloga from the Africa Group of Negotiators told Climate Home the delay has been eroding trust. "Which credibility do developed countries have in requesting us for more climate action, while not providing the resources promised," he asked.

"Sowing division"

Sarah Colenbrander, climate programme leader at ODI, is critical of Al Jaber's statements. She told Climate Home that Al-Jaber should work with the biggest donors, like France, Germany and Japan, to raise ambition rather than sowing division.

"There are also important questions to be asked about when newly wealthy countries should assume responsibility for providing climate finance," said Colebrander. "The Cop28 presidency is shirking such questions."

Countries like the Cop28 host United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Singapore have per capita incomes that exceed those of some developed nations obliged to provide climate finance.

Just a "symbol"

Fourteen years after its inception, the $100 billion pledge may not even be enough for developing nations.

Avantika Goswami from the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment told Climate Home it is "more of a symbol" at this point. "Meeting the pledge this year might assuage wealthy countries' guilt, but the needs have now escalated and so must the financial reparations", she added.

Developing countries may need up to one trillion dollars every year for climate action, according to an estimate by the Cop27 and 26 hosts. That's ten times more than $100 billion.

Developing and vulnerable countries also want to see more grants and lower interest rates on loans so that climate finance does not add to debt piles.

The post Cop28 boss slams rich nations “dismal” $100bn finance failure appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a speech setting out his agenda for the talks in Dubai in December, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) climate envoy Sultan Al-Jaber told a gathering of climate ministers in Berlin: “In a pragmatic, just and well-managed energy transition, we must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions while phasing and scaling up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives.”

A broad coalition of nations have been pushing for an agreement to “phase out fossil fuels” at Cop28, so the addition of the word “emissions” is likely to be seen as a loophole for continuing to use such fuels if their emissions are kept out of the atmosphere with CCS.

#Info: starting at +/- 10.30 am CEST you can follow the opening session of the 14th Petersberg Climate Dialogue #Petersberg2023 and remarks by Foreign Minister @ABaerbock and designated #COP28 president & co-host Dr. Sultan Al Jaber here live. https://t.co/nLiyfUt4Dx

— GermanForeignOffice (@GermanyDiplo) May 2, 2023

Cops and fossil fuels

Although the burning of fossil fuels is the key driver of climate change, they were for decades not mentioned in joint agreements put out by governments at international climate talks.

But at Cop26 in the UK in 2021, countries agreed to “phase down” the most polluting fossil fuel coal, after India and China objected to the term “phase out”.

At Cop27 in Egypt the next year, a broad coalition of nations pushed for a commitment to “phase out” fossil fuels.

What is the global stocktake of climate action and why does it matter?

But Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia opposed that language and the host Egypt did not include it in the final text.

While they accepted that agreement, the governments of countries like Germany, Chile and Tuvalu said they were dissapointed.

UAE strikes balance

In February, UAE environment minister Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri told the Munich Security Conference that the oil and gas sector should decarbonise and “then phase out oil and gas in a just way”. But she also said “we need the oil and gas sector to be with us”.

As well as calling for the targeting of “fossil fuel emissions”, Al Jaber today called for “smart government regulation to…make carbon capture commercially viable”.

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Al Jaber leads the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and, in November 2021, called for increased global investment in oil and gas.

“The future is clean but it is not here yet. We must make progress with pragmatism,” he told an Abu Dhabi oil conference.

International divisions

A focus on “fossil fuel emissions” rather than fossil fuels is likely to anger some nations. Last week, one European official told Climate Home that the “strongest voices” in favour of CCS “are currently coming from fossil exporting countries”.

The official said that CCS “will play a key role” in some sectors that are hard to clean up. “But for now, it’s an expensive option, a luxury technology”, they said, and renewables and energy efficiency “are the most affordable and readily available mitigation technologies”.

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The US, which is the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, takes a different stance. In a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine, the US’s climate envoy John Kerry spoke about the damage fossil fuels cause, then corrected himself.

“Unabated fossil fuels,” he said. “Let me be clear on this. Unabated is a critical component of this. If you can capture 100% and do something useful with this and build the infrastructure and its cost-competitive, go for it!”

Other major oil and gas producers, such as Saudi Arabia and Russia, have also talked up CCS. Russia’s deputy prime minister Alexey Overchuk told a recent World Bank meeting that carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) was “of utmost importance to the green agenda” while a Saudi minister said it had “great potential to serve the climate mitigation agenda”.

The debate

CCS remains expensive and unproven at large scale.

According to the IPCC’s scientists, stopping a tonne of carbon dioxide with CCUS costs between $50 and $200. Replacing fossil fuels with renewables usually saves money.

There are currently only 35 commercial facilities applying CCUS with a total annual capture capacity of 45 Mt CO2, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Most are in North America and in the gas processing industry.

Many climate campaigners have called it a “distraction” that gives fossil fuel companies a licence to keep extracting more climate-harming coal, oil and gas.

But the IEA’s head Fatih Birol disagrees, calling it “critical for ensuring our transitions to clean energy are secure and sustainable”.

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This health check is known as the global stocktake and work toward it began at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021.

After a lot of hard work, it now entering the home stretch before taking centre stage when governments gather at the Cop28 climate talks in Dubai.

It will tell us whether enough is being done on cutting emissions, adapting to climate change, funding climate action and rolling-out technology.

The answer is widely expected to be a resounding ‘no’. But observers hope the latest wake-up call will prompt countries to correct course and raise their efforts.

For Simon Stiell, the head of the UN’s climate change arm, the stocktake will be a moment of truth. “It must tell us where we are, where we need to go, and how we’ll get there”, he said.

A two-year process

Its final report will be the culmination of an extensive two-year process. Thousands of documents have been analysed and distilled through hundreds of hours of discussions.

Analysts don’t expect the stocktake to  say anything particularly new. Report after report has already said the world is falling short.

But its findings will form the basis of the discussions at Cop28. Political leaders will reflect on them and may come up with a plan to fix their shortcomings.

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Tom Evans, climate diplomacy analyst at E3G, hopes the stocktake will be “a launchpad for action going forward”.

The Stockholm Environment Institue’s Richard Klein, who is involved in the process, says there is lots of curiosity about how countries will react. “Are they going to commit to greater ambition or simply express concern once again?” he asked

Why a stocktake?

The stocktake is the central tool of the Paris Agreement to hold countries accountable for their collective efforts to achieve the targets they set themselves in 2015.

It tracks progress made on the pact’s three pillars: cut greenhouse gas emissions enough to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and ideally 1.5°C; strengthen resilience to climate impacts; and provide the necessary financial and technological means to make this happen.

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The stocktake is a core component of the so-called ‘ratchet mechanism’ built into the agreement.

It was clear from the outset that initial climate pledges would not be sufficient to meet the goals set in Paris. So the agreement encourages countries to raise their ambitions over time.

A virtuous circle

Carried out every five years from 2023, the stocktake is meant to guide countries as they update and enhance their pledges to bring them in line with the agreement.

At the heart of the exercise are the Nationally determined contributions (NDCs): each country’s individual strategy to reduce emissions and adapt to climate impacts.

The process should create a virtuous circle. The collective analysis of all NDCs submitted by the 193 countries which signed the Paris agreement forms the basis for the stocktake’s findings. These will in turn inform the drafting of new and more robust NDCs.

The two-year stocktake is divided into three phases: the collection of source material; the technical assessment; the consideration of its output at a political level.

The first two phases – which overlap – are soon drawing to a close.

Information gathering

The volume of the material inputted into the exercise is massive. Countries and non-state actors have submitted thousands of documents.

The bulk of it is made up of the signatories’ NDCs, national adaptation plans, finance reports and technology needs assessments.

Add to this the IPCC scientific reports, technical analysis prepared by the UN climate change Secretariat and a long list of disparate contributions by NGOs.

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“Just considering the adaptation chapter, if we put together what countries have written over the past few years it adds up to 18,000 pages,” says Richard Klein. “No one is going to be able to read all of that.”

The UN climate change secretariat has a coordinating role in sifting through the vast mass of information and preparing briefings and synthesis reports.

Technical analysis

This material is then analysed and discussed during the technical assessment. This second phase of the stocktake will have lasted for one year when it formally ends at the annual Bonn climate talks in June.

The assessment culminates in a series of in-person meetings of country delegates and experts in an ‘open and transparent’ process. After reviewing the inputs, they are expected to come up with the key takeaways on the collective efforts to uphold the Paris Agreement.

Contributions to a Global Stocktake discussion are recorded on a flip chart. Photo: IISD/ENB | Kiara Worth

Each meeting produces a summary report which captures the nature of the discussions and gives hints on what the final stocktake will feature.

E3G’s Tom Evans says the assessment is already clear. “We’re not making progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement fast enough. We’re way off track across almost everything”, he added.

“Inadequate progress”

The latest summary report – published last month – does indeed say there has been “significant yet inadequate collective progress”. On both the cutting emissions and adaptating fronts, it says not only that the current plans are insufficient. But there are even problems in translating this inadequate ambition into real action, the so-called implementation gap.

After the final technical dialogue in June, the stocktake will enter its final, and most crucial, phase.

The recommendations featured in the final synthesis report will take center stage at Cop28 in Dubai. Here the technicians will hand the baton to the politicians. The goal is to ensure this lengthy exercise has a tangible real-world impact.

Enter the politicians

Leaders will kick off negotiations which should lead to a series of key political messages being featured in the Cop’s declaration. These will provide the guidance countries should follow to update their national plans.

“Every group and every country will have its own priorities and pet issues they would like to see reflected in the decision,” says Richard Klein. “They will all have their red lines.”

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Tom Evans says ultimately some “champions” will need to step forward and broker an ambitious deal.

This could be the UAE Presidency, which is keen to have a breakthrough moment in Dubai. Despite its reliance on fossil fuels, the country seems to be warming to the idea of a fossil fuel phase out.

Governments failed to agree on that wording at last year’s summit, as fossil fuel producers Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran were opposed.

That language’s inclusion at Cop28 will give a strong sense of direction, particularly if the words “unabated”, which means without carbon capture technology, are not added.

But, ultimately, the success or failure of the stocktake will become evident in 2025 by which time governments are supposed to have released their next batch of NDCs.

Only then we will be able to see if countries have raised their game to finally deliver the Paris Agreement.

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According to four sources in the room, the UAE was one of around a dozen countries which argued against more ambitious climate targets at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) last week.

Their representative to the IMO Mohamed Khamis Saeed AlKaabi joined nations like China, India and Brazil in opposing a 2050 zero emissions target and pushing for the target to be to “aim for net zero, preferably by mid-century, and to phase-out emissions before the end of the century”. He also opposed setting interim targets for 2030 and 2040.

A spokesperson for the UAE’s Cop28 presidency told Climate Home that IMO negotiations were outside of their scope but “the Cop28 UAE presidency sees a substantial and important role for industries, including shipping, to deliver action to keep 1.5 alive”.

In a seeming rebuke to their negotiator’s oppostion to a 2030 target, the spokesperson added that the Cop28 presidency echoes the IPCC scientists’ finding that carbon emissions must fall 43% between 2019 and 2030.

A big emitter

The ships that carry goods and people around the world burn large amounts of dirty fuel. The industry is responsible for 3% of global emissions. If it was a nation, it would be the fifth most polluting in the world, ahead of Japan.

Like international air travel, international shipping is not mentioned in the Paris Agreement and is not covered by most countries’ climate plans.

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A broad group of countries, led by climate vulnerable Pacific nations, has called for the industry to set a zero emissions by 2050 target at its next marine environment protection committee meeting in July.

But a group, mainly made up of big emerging economies opposed this at the last meeting in December, arguing that clean fuels are technologically unproven and are likely to cost more and those costs will be passed on to consumers.

Leading the opposition

Last week, intersessional talks were held at the headquarters of the IMO, the UN’s shipping arm, on the banks of the river Thames in London. Journalists were unable to watch proceedings but campaigners and other observers were allowed in the room.

John Maggs, president of the Clean Shipping Coalition, was among them. He said the UAE repeatedly emphasised the “end of the century” part of their proposed net zero target. “It was ‘their baby'”, he said, “they took the floor early on to state this and when the languaage disappeared form the draft they took the floor to support it going back in.”

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Three other observers said the UAE was among the group opposing zero emissions by 2050 and pushing for a weaker target. One was Faig Abbasov, shipping lead at the Transport and Environment NGO, who added that the UAE also opposed adding new 2030 and 2040 targets.

Abbasov said the UAE’s stance was “baffling given the country hosts Cop28 later this year”. He added: “If the UAE does not align itself with this goal, including for shipping, then COP28 risks being an official “climate oilwashing” event.”

Aoife O’Leary, CEO of Opportunity Green, also watched proceedings. She told Climate Home: “It is alarming to witness the upcoming Cop President, UAE, being one of the leading voices for lower ambition at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) meetings”.

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UAE command respect

Another observer, who did not want to be named, said that, while the UAE has “excellent potential” to bring climate leadership into the IMO, “there were no signs of that at [the intersessional talks last week], instead they were working against those calling for progress.”

O’Leary and the Clean Shipping Coalition both compiled lists of which countries opposed the net zero by 2050 target. Since there was no voting, they judged on comments and formal submissions, so the lists differ slightly. But both feature China, India, Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.

The Clean Shipping Coalition’s list of countries which voiced support for zero emissions by 2050 last week includes several Pacific island nations, most European governments, the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Japan and the Bahamas. Most also voiced support for 2030 and 2040 targets.

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Governments failed to agree on this wording at previous climate talks and this phrase is likely to divide nations at the Cop28 summit in Dubai in November.

The UAE’s environment minister Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri told the Munich Security Conference: “We need the oil and gas sector to be with us. We need to shift the way they are doing business and we need to decarbonise what they are doing. We need to then phase out oil and gas in a just way.”

A Cop battle line

At the Cop26 climate talks in 2021, all governments agreed to commit to a “phase down” of coal. This was the first time a fossil fuel had been mentioned in a Cop decision.

At the next year’s talks in Egypt, a broad coalition of nations including India, rich nations and vulnerable islands pushed for an agreement to phase out fossil fuels, which would include oil and gas as well as coal.

But a handful of oil and gas producers opposed that language, the hosts Egypt did not include it in the final text and the coalition pushing for it eventually decided not to block the agreement over the issue.

The battle is set to continue at Cop28. While hosts are supposed to be neutral, they have a lot of power over which requests from governments make it into the Cop draft decisions.

Breaking cover?

At Cop27, the UAE was quiet on the fossil fuel issue. The resistance to criticism of fossil fuels was led by Saudi Arabia whose lead negotiator Albara Tawfiq told the plenary that the UN climate convention “needs to address emissions and not the origins of the emissions”.

Saudi Arabia officially spoke on behalf of the Arab Group at the talks – a coalition of 22 nations across the Middle East and North Africa which includes the UAE. But the extent to which each member of the group supports the Saudi position is unclear.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told Climate Home in December that Cop28 “might force them to break cover”.

Cop president

The UAE’s hosting of this year’s climate talks has come under heavy criticism following the appointment as its boss of Sultan al-Jaber, the head of state oil giant Adnoc.

Campaigners said his appointment sent the wrong signal and that the fossil fuel industry was hijacking the world’s response to the global warming crisis.

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Responding to the criticism, minister Almheiri said al-Jaber had been placed in Adnoc to change the company and guide it throughout the energy transition.

“We’re always going to be an energy exporter, but the type of energy we export is changing already and will change in the future,” she said.

Experts around table

Sultan al-Jaber himself took to the stage at the Munich Security Conference on a panel discussion with US Climate envoy John Kerry.

The Cop28 boss said the UAE would focus on promoting an “inclusive” climate agenda, which does not exclude fossil fuel players.

“When you talk about energy transition please include the energy experts,” said al-Jaber. “Don’t think you are going to come up with solutions without the experts around the table.”

Al-Jaber was keen to highlight the UAE’s push for renewable energy happening under his watch. On top of his Cop28 and fossil fuel jobs, al-Jaber is the chairman of Masdar, the UAE’s renewable energy company.

Thanks to its abundance of sunshine, the UAE boasts some of the world’s cheapest solar power. The government expects to have installed more than 9GW of solar capacity by 2030, tripling current levels.

The UAE was the first country in the region to set a 2050 net zero goal. And at Cop27, it became the first to announce absolute emission cuts, instead of from a hypothetical business-as-usual baseline.

Pragmatism and balance

But, in an address sprinkled with repeated appeals for “pragmatism” and “balance”, Al-Jaber also reiterated the UAE’s resolve on the need for continued investment in oil and gas in the short term.

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“Transitions usually take time. Any successful transitional is built on a practical, not emotional roadmap,” he told the audience in Munich. “We need to adopt a diversified energy mix approach.”

Adnoc, the oil and gas company presided over by al-Jaber, plans to boost investment by $150 billion over the next five years. The funding will also speed up an increase in oil and gas production capacity.  

The International Energy Agency said in 2021 that new fossil fuel investments are incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

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“We already know that we are way off track,” Sultan al-Jaber told the World Government Summit in Dubai.

“The world is playing catch-up when it comes to holding global temperatures down to 1.5 degrees and the hard reality is that global emissions must fall 43% by 2030,” he said, referring to the goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“We need a major course correction,” he added.

In spite of this, the UAE, a major oil exporter, has also called for a slower transition away from fossil fuels in the past. “The future is clean but it is not here yet,” Jaber told an oil conference in Abu Dhabi in 2021.

The country is expanding oil and gas production, which the International Energy Agency has said is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C.

“Inclusive” energy transition

Jaber also heads the state oil giant Adnoc and his appointment to lead the climate summit this year fuelled activists’ worries that the fossil fuel industry was hijacking the world’s response to the global warming crisis.

But Jaber said on Tuesday his presidency would bring a much needed fresh approach to tackle climate change challenges.

“As Cop28 president, I will lay out a roadmap for Cop28 that is inclusive, results-oriented and far from business as usual,” he said.

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“It is in our common interest to have the energy industry working hand in hand and alongside everyone on the solutions the world needs. This is just logical and makes sense,” Jaber said.

“We are in the UAE not shying away from the energy transition,” he claimed, “we are running towards it.”

He quoted UAE president Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan who said in 2015: “If we make the right investments today, there will come a time when the UAE would celebrate the last barrel of oil”.

Jaber told the summit: “That was a bold call to action which resonated deeply around the world and it certainly resonated with me”.

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International agenda

On Loss and Damage, one of the critical issues of Cop27, Jaber said “capital is critical to make the loss and damage fund real and operational and it is the key to a fair deal on climate finance for the Global South”, referring to developing nations.

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The loss and damage fund, agreed to at the Cop27 conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt last year, was hailed as a breakthrough for developing countries, which could access new funding to rebuild after extreme climate change impacts.

Although it is a wealthy nation which has contributed more than most to climate change, the UAE will likely not be asked to pay into the fund as it is classified by the UN as a developing country.

Jaber also supported a push led by the primer minister of Barbados Mia Mottley to reform financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to dedicate more money to fighting climate change.

“We need real reform of international financial institutions and multilateral banks to unleash more concessional dollars, lower risk and attract more private finance to vulnerable communities,” Jaber said.

This initiative was included in the COP27 final text, which called on countries to “reform multilateral development bank practices and priorities” so they can start “adequately addressing the global climate emergency”.

Two of the World Bank’s biggest shareholders, the US and Germany, have supported some of her proposals and they will be discussed at the two institution’s annual spring meetings in April.

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