COP28: Fossil fuels drama

As we enter the final day of COP28, the UN climate summit in Dubai, as expected, discussions are becoming heated, revolving around the wording for fossil fuels in the final COP28 agreement.

Negotiations dragged to the early hours of Tuesday morning, but agreement was still far away. Tuesday will be crucial. 

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The COP28 Director-General, Ambassador Majid Al Suwaidi, summed it up when he said “We are facing the most demanding COP agenda of all time.” 

The latest version of the draft agreement dropped references to the phase-out of fossil fuels. That caused a backlash from countries, such as the EU and small islands, that are expecting stronger wording.

But resistance to phase-out of fossil fuels is also strong, and it is not just from Saudi Arabia and OPEC countries. Even though India and China have not made their position clear, they are not endorsing fossil fuel phase-out.

The latest version of the COP28 draft agreement “recognises the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in GHG emissions and calls upon the Parties to take action that could include, inter-alia: 

• Triple renewable energy capacity globally and double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. 

• Rapid phasedown of unabated coal and limits on permitting new and unabated coal power generation. 

• Accelerated efforts globally towards net zero emissions energy systems, using zero and low carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century.

• Accelerating zero and low emissions technologies, including renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies, including such as carbon capture and utilisation and storage, and low carbon hydrogen production, to enhance efforts in substitution of unabated fossil fuels. 

• Reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science. 

• Accelerating and substantially reducing non-CO₂ emissions, including, in particular, methane emissions globally by 2030. 

• Accelerating emissions reductions from road transport through a range of pathways, including development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero and low-emission vehicles. 

• Phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible.”

Despite the heated reactions it caused, if agreed, the text would nevertheless mark the first time ever that a COP agreement includes reference to shifting away from all fossil fuels, not just unabated coal.

Those with a more positive outlook welcomed the new text, in that it “lays the ground for change.” Some even see it, perhaps prematurely, as “the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.”

Another stumbling block is that there is no agreement yet on finance for the transition to a greener economy. 

On the positive side, the draft includes all key elements: “mitigation, adaptation, means of implementation, loss and damage and for the first time a reference to fossil fuels.” It also puts the phase-down of unabated coal and fossil fuel subsidies back in the spotlight. It is a compromise, but it takes the fight against global warming forward. 

Even the IEA estimates that the new measures, if implemented, could bring the currently estimated 2.8oC global warming down. It gives the tools for future COPs to bring it further down, closer to 2oC, the original limit in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Such negotiations have always been fraught, but every COP so far arrived at a ‘consensual end’. We should remind ourselves that the final document will need to be agreed by consensus by the almost 200 countries participating at COP28 – everybody has to agree. So, the final day is expected to bring more changes. What matters more, though, is putting into action what has been agreed.