COP28: A deal at last – “This outcome 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”
By Simon Mundy
13 December 2023
(Financial Times) – Hello from Dubai. After two consecutive nights of intense negotiations that ran into the small hours, COP28 has ended in a deal.
The “global stocktake” agreed here has broken with the shameful inability of previous UN climate conferences to state openly the need to move away from fossil fuels. COP president Sultan al-Jaber — who has received huge criticism over his conflicts of interest as a major oil company chief executive — deserves credit for persuading big oil producers, notably Saudi Arabia to support this deal.
Yet this agreement leaves a vast amount of work to be done. And to some eyes, this COP has been yet another failure, given that we still don’t have a clear path to the end of fossil fuel usage.
This outcome 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.
Madeleine Diouf Sarr, chair of the Least Developed Countries Group
That message was given voice at the closing plenary by Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator for Samoa, who complained that she and other small island state representatives were still in discussion outside the hall when the agreement was approved.
“We see a litany of loopholes,” she said. “We cannot afford to return to our islands with the message that this process has failed us.”
Our key takeaways from COP28
The elephant in the room is named at last
To many observers of COP28, saying that we need to move away from fossil fuels to tackle climate change will seem like a statement of the bleeding obvious. It’s a fair point, which is why the failure to say this in the 27 previous COPs was so egregious — and why the fossil fuel language in this text is significant.
Many countries, including the EU and the Alliance of Small Island States, had pushed at COP28 for a commitment to “phase out” fossil fuels. That term didn’t make it into the text. Instead, it called on nations to contribute to: Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.
Some analysts have expressed severe disappointment with this language, saying that unlike “phase out”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that fossil fuel usage is on the way to zero. Still less does this text give a clear deadline for stopping fossil fuel usage. But “transitioning away from” still seems a tad stronger than “reducing” or “phasing down”, which were other options on offer.
It’s also notable that this clause talks about moving away from fossil fuels in energy systems altogether, not just “unabated” usage. The latter phrasing would have implied no need to transition away from fossil fuels, provided you use carbon capture technology.
But there are lots of loopholes
Carbon capture appears in the very next clause, however, as one of the green technologies that countries are encouraged to “accelerate” — something that will concern those who worry that it will help prop up the fossil fuel industry.
The language agreed at COP26 on “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power” survives unchanged, despite efforts here to strengthen wording around the most polluting fossil fuel.
Another clause that has prompted some queasiness is the statement “that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security”. This is an apparent reference to fossil gas, which is presented by advocates as a less polluting alternative to coal.
The text introduces its language about energy systems by saying that countries can take into account “their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches” — wording that some governments may use to push for flexibility around their obligations. [more]
After 30 years of waiting, COP28 deal addresses the elephant in the room
By Fiona Harvey
13 December 2023
(The Guardian) – As temperatures broke records around the world this summer, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned in September: “Humanity has opened the gates of hell.”
On Wednesday, he hailed delegates at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, as two weeks of fraught talks ended. “For the first time, the outcome recognises the need to transition away from fossil fuels,” he said. “The era of fossil fuels must end, and it must end with justice and equity.”
More than 190 nations accepted a text on Wednesday morning that calls on the world to “transition away” from fossil fuels. But is this a historic deal that will spell the eventual end of gas, oil and coal? Or will it be one more step on the road to hell?
In the world of climate talks, these two are not mutually exclusive. The text that was gavelled on Wednesday morning, known as the “global stocktake”, enjoins countries for the first time to embark on a de facto phase-out of fossil fuels. But it cannot require them to do so and it contains “a litany of loopholes”, according to the small island states that are most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, that will hamper the world from cutting greenhouse gas emissions drastically enough to limit global heating to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels.
The Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, the United Arab Emirates host of the conference, hailed the adoption of the key text on Wednesday morning, and called it the “UAE consensus”. A consensus, but not quite unanimity: Samoa spoke for small island states at the final meeting to say they would not block the deal, but warned that the world was still far off track from the 1.5C limit, and this outcome was not enough to correct that course.
As they and other developing countries pointed out, there are plenty of problems with this deal. Poor nations still need hundreds of billions more in finance, to help them make the transition away from coal, oil and gas. Developed countries and oil producers will not be forced to move as fast as climate science urges.
The US will get away lightly from this Cop, having pledged just over $20m (£16m) in new finance for the poor world, and with its position as the world’s biggest oil and gas producer intact. China will continue to pursue coal production as well as renewable energy, and India’s coal industry will also have little to fear.
But this deal, imperfect as it is, faced colossal opposition from the world’s oil-producing countries. Saudi Arabia tried until the final moments, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, to remove any reference to fossil fuels, and succeeded in inserting some references to carbon capture and storage, a technology it professes to love but strangely fails to invest in.
Russia worked behind the scenes to scupper progress, and will do so far more next year when the Cop is held in Baku, Azerbaijan. This deal, like all multilateral UN deals, is fragile and oil producers may try to backtrack next year.
They worked so hard to scupper the deal because they realise that it is not merely words, as some critics insist. The deal will have an impact on the real world, in the decisions made by investors, banks, financial institutions, by governments and by private companies.
It may seem incredible, but it has taken 30 years of nearly annual climate summits to come up with an agreement that includes clear directions on the future of fossil fuels.
For 30 years, the world has been forced to avoid the elephant in the room: the overwhelming source of the climate breakdown we are experiencing, fossil fuels. Oil-producing countries, abetted by many rich countries, having reluctantly agreed to talk about the climate, refused to allow legally binding treaties to make the link with fossil fuels explicit. [more]
After 30 years of waiting, Cop28 deal addresses the elephant in the room
