The climate summit has now entered the final stretch and what seemed clear from the start is more evident: the toughest battle is how to call for countries to eliminate or reduce fossil fuels, the main responsible for the crisis. climate. COP28, which is being held this year in Dubai, should close on December 12, but this requires that countries agree on this controversial point that points directly to coal, oil and gas, those primarily responsible for emissions that overheat the planet but remain essential for much of the world economy.
Generic decisions made by consensus at such summits then have important cascading repercussions on national norms. And there is a whole climate jargon in which the introduction of a word can imply a regulatory tsunami in each country. These are some of the terms that help to understand what the representatives of the almost 200 nations participating in these climate change negotiations are discussing in Dubai. The president of COP28, Sultan al Jaber, urged them this Friday to have an attitude of “flexibility” in the coming days.
Balance. The Paris Agreement, the international framework that governs the fight against climate change since it was approved in 2015, establishes that all signatory countries must present voluntary emissions cutting plans to achieve a common objective: that gases are reduced to practically be eliminated in the second half of the century and thus ensure that warming remains between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels. We are already close to that limit, because the average global temperature is about 1.2 degrees warmer than before the Industrial Revolution.
The Paris Agreement also established that in 2023, that is, at this COP28, a joint assessment of national plans must be made to see if they are on the right track. It is already known that they are not, that they lead in the best of cases to a warming of between 2.1 and 2.8 degrees. That is why the important thing is not the balance, but the call that is included in that document for the next round of national cutback plans, which all countries must present in 2025. This is where they try to introduce the complicated reference to the end of the fossil fuels, something that has not been achieved so far and that, in its most ambitious wording, arouses the suspicion of countries such as China, India and Saudi Arabia.
The representative of this last oil-producing country, which maintains a tough position at the summit, clearly explained his position this Friday when he recalled that the Paris Agreement focuses on greenhouse emissions, not on sources. He did so during the plenary session that opened this last phase of negotiation at COP28, where many other countries have stressed the need to end the production and consumption of fossil fuels.
Technological neutrality. In the climate negotiations, objectives are set to cut greenhouse gas emissions, which are causing this climate crisis. But, alluding to the need to maintain technological neutrality in this fight against climate change, official documents always avoid setting specific objectives on productive sectors and on the main origin of these gases: coal, oil and gas. But, as emissions from this fossil sector continue to grow and the plans of producing countries do not seem to include curbing extractions, the pressure on these fuels grows.
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Triple. To end emissions, ways of generating energy that do not expel these gases are needed. It is increasingly clear that renewables, starting with solar and wind, are that alternative. Following this reasoning, this COP28 is expected to close with the global objective of tripling renewable power between now and 2030, which means going from the current 3,400 gigawatts (GW) to 11,000 GW. At this time, without additional efforts, the countries’ energy strategies would already lead to this power doubling by the end of this decade, so setting the goal of multiplying it by three arouses consensus at this summit. That phase in (progressively introducing English, the language used in negotiations) is the easy part. The problem is what has to come out of the system.
Reduce or eliminate progressively. The discussion focuses on how to make the call for the exit of fuels. First, if it should be a progressive reduction (phase down in English) or a progressive elimination (phase out). Choosing one term or another implies leaving more or less room for oil, gas and coal to continue burning. Hence, the most dependent countries, either because they are producers or consumers without affordable alternatives, are the ones that try to lower the ambition of the final text.
At the Glasgow summit, held in 2021 in this Scottish city, an attempt was already made to include a mention of fossil fuels, which was considerably lowered by India. A progressive phase-out of coal alone was advocated in the final declaration.
Without decreasing. Another term was included in that Glasgow declaration: unabated, which has a difficult translation because its definition and implications are not even clear in English. It literally means “without decreasing” or “without ceasing” and refers to the greenhouse emissions that are generated when producing energy. The progressive elimination of coal without decreasing means that it could be allowed to continue using coal plants that have a system for capturing and storing their emissions so that they do not end up in the atmosphere. Even investing in new ones if they have that technology.
The problem with this term is that there is not even a clear definition of what “unabated” entails in climate negotiations. There is only one reference in one of the reports of the IPCC, the panel of international experts that lays the foundations for the knowledge of climate change, which points out the following: “undepleted fossil fuels refer to fossil fuels produced and used without interventions that reduce substantially the amount of greenhouse gases emitted over the life cycle; for example, capture 90% or more [de las emisiones] from power plants, or between 50% and 80% of fugitive methane emissions from the energy supply.” However, climate activists fear that, being so diffuse, this term could be used to open the door to continuing to burn fuels without actually eliminating all the emissions they generate.
Around a hundred countries have already shown their support for including a call for the progressive elimination of all fossil fuels. The European Union and the countries most vulnerable to climate change, such as the small Pacific islands threatened by rising sea levels, are those that are pushing harder in this direction. The Twenty-seven members of the EU, which negotiate as a bloc at the COP, agreed a few weeks before the summit on a somewhat complex common position when addressing the issue of whether or not to reduce emissions.
In general terms, a progressive and unqualified elimination of energy generation with fossil fuels is advocated. But the door is left open for capture and storage to be used in some very intensive industrial processes in which there is no viable and competitive alternative now, explain sources from the Spanish delegation, which was in charge of weaving this common position in this complicated matter and that he is negotiating on behalf of the Twenty-Seven in Dubai.
Public aid. A clear way to get the world off fossil fuels is by eliminating the huge amounts of public money that governments allocate to this sector directly and indirectly. Although it is already a historic demand, only 4% of the national plans that countries have presented in the context of the Paris Agreement contain direct references to the gradual elimination of public aid for fossil fuels, according to a recent report of the UN that will serve to take stock at this summit. The Glasgow summit already included the need to progressively eliminate “inefficient” public aid, another term that adds uncertainty to that mandate. The question now at COP28 is how it is urged, if it comes to that, to eliminate this aid and whether it is demanded that this be within the new climate plans that must be presented in 2025.
All the options, those that contain the most ambitious terms and the least, are now in the draft agreements that have been released by the presidency of this summit, which maintains the commitment to finish this summit on the scheduled day, something quite unusual in this type of meetings. international.
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