Global Courant
With two months to go until the UN COP28 summit, countries are far from bridging the gap between those demanding an agreement to phase out fossil fuel warming and those pushing for a role for coal, oil and natural gas.
The COP28 conference in Dubai, scheduled between November 30 and December 12, is seen as a crucial opportunity for governments to accelerate action to limit global warming, yet countries remain divided over the future of fossil fuels – of which combustion is the main cause of climate change. climate change.
Meetings at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) last week reignited the long-rumbling debate, with climate-sensitive countries such as the Marshall Islands calling on richer countries to ditch polluting fuels and invest in renewable alternatives.
“Humanity has opened the gates to hell” by warming the planet, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a one-day climate summit alongside the General Assembly, where he lamented the “naked greed” of fossil fuel interests .
Other countries that produce or depend on fossil fuels highlighted the potential use of technologies to ‘reduce’ – that is, capture – their emissions, rather than eliminating the use of such fuels entirely.
Incoming COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates said at the summit that “the phase-out of fossil fuels is inevitable”: “As we build an energy system free of all unabated fossil fuels, including coal, we must quickly and comprehensively decarbonize the energies we use today.”
China, the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels, is among those indicating it plans to continue using them for decades.
The United States has said it strongly supports a phase-out of fossil fuels – while acknowledging plans by some developing countries to invest in them in the short term – although US climate envoy John Kerry has questioned whether emissions-capturing technologies could be delivered quickly enough are scaled up.
While a COP28 pact to reduce fossil fuel use would not lead to an immediate exit from oil and gas, the European Union and other advocates say it is crucial to shift national policies and investments away from dirty energy .
“It’s not like this is going to happen tomorrow,” Spanish Climate Minister Teresa Ribera told Reuters. “But we have to make sure we create the conditions to make this possible.”
WAR OF WORDS
Given the division over the future of fossil fuels since more than 80 countries unsuccessfully pushed for an agreement on a phase-out at last year’s COP27 summit, negotiators are turning to new terminologies in search of compromise.
In what appeared to be a possible breakthrough in April, the Group of Seven industrialized nations agreed to accelerate the “phasing out of unabated fossil fuels.”
By inserting “without prejudice” before fossil fuels, the pledge only addressed fuels burned without technology that captures emissions.
But in July, that promise faltered as the larger G20 – which includes oil and gas producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia – failed to reach consensus on the issue.
Ireland’s Climate Minister Eamon Ryan said the issue of phasing out all fossil fuels or just emissions would likely be the most difficult issue at COP28.
“Some people are rightly concerned that this could just be a carte blanche to continue exploration for oil, gas and coal,” Ryan told Reuters of the debate surrounding emissions capture technology.
A group of 17 countries including France, Kenya, Chile, Colombia and the Pacific island states of Tuvalu and Vanuatu last week called for a phase-out of fossil fuels that limits the use of carbon capture technology.
“We cannot use it to greenlight the expansion of fossil fuels,” the countries said in a joint statement.
Oil and gas industry groups such as the American Petroleum Institute have said the world will need emissions reduction technologies to deliver “more energy with fewer emissions.”
Some developing countries also oppose a phase-out, saying they need fossil fuels to expand their electricity capacity for economic development – in the same way countries like Japan and the United States have done.
Within the African Union, some governments have accused the West of hypocrisy for using climate arguments to deny financing for gas projects in developing countries while continuing to burn gas at home.
1.5 KEEP ALIVE
Without a rapid decline in fossil fuel use, the Earth will warm above the global target of 1.5 degrees Celsius – compared to pre-industrial levels – within 10 to 15 years, says climate scientist Peter Cox of the University of Exeter.
“You can’t have it both ways. We can’t say we want to avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius… and say nothing about phasing out fossil fuels,” Cox said.
The head of the International Energy Agency said this month that demand for coal, gas and oil will peak in 2030 as renewable energy capacity grows.
“Ignore the climate risk. There is now a business risk,” Fatih Birol told an event organized by the Rockefeller Foundation. He urged countries to stop making new investments in coal, oil and gas.
The comments angered the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which disputed Birol’s forecasts that there were no options to capture emissions and called his call for an end to new investments “dangerous.”
The Alliance of Small Island States, whose members face climate-induced storms and land loss from rising sea levels, wants to phase out fossil fuels and end the $7 trillion that governments spend annually on subsidizing fossil fuels. fuels. REUTERS
