A new version of the final text of the climate summit in Dubai, released on Tuesday night, contains for the first time a call for countries to move away from fossil fuels to combat climate change. However, this does not mean 'phasing out' fossil fuels, as the EU, among others, wanted, but about a 'transition'. International news agencies report this.
The new text, which was presented after negotiations well into the night by the presidency of the COP28 climate summit, will be submitted to the final plenary meeting of the summit on Wednesday morning, where representatives of almost two hundred countries will be asked to agree unanimously.
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Dozens of governments have pushed for strong language during two weeks of tough negotiations to promise an end to the age of fossil fuels for the first time. However, their desired call to phase out fossil fuels was missing from an earlier version of the final document; OPEC countries, among others, oppose this.
The new compromise text calls for “moving away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a fair, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, to achieve net zero by 2050 in line with science.”
Tripling
The final text also calls for a tripling of global renewable energy capacity by 2030 to accelerate the reduction of coal consumption. Technologies such as carbon capture and CO2 storage also need to be accelerated to help industries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. However, critics are disappointed by vagueness in the text, which they say will allow countries to continue using fossil fuels.
If the document is adopted, it would nevertheless be the first time in three decades of COP climate summits that countries have agreed on a joint transition from oil, gas and coal. These fuels are responsible for 80 percent of the global energy supply. According to scientists, fossil fuels are the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change.
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The first reactions to the new text were cautiously positive. “It is the first time that the world is uniting around such a clear text on the need to move away from fossil fuels,” Norwegian Climate and Environment Minister Espen Barth Eide told Reuters. “It was the elephant in the room, we are finally addressing it head-on.”
However, there was also skepticism about the prudence of the new document. “This concept is a much-needed improvement over the previous version, which rightly sparked outrage,” said Stephen Cornelius of the World Wildlife Fund. “The language around fossil fuels has improved greatly, but still falls short of calling for the complete phase-out of coal, oil and gas.”
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