After the UN meeting, countries are gearing up for the fossil fuel fight at COP28

Sept 25 (Reuters) – With two months to go until the UN COP28 summit, countries are far from bridging the gap between those calling for a deal to phase out planet-warming fossil fuels and those calling for the role of coal, oil and natural gas to be preserved. .

The COP28 conference in Dubai from November 30 to December 12 is seen as an important opportunity for governments to step up action to limit global warming, but countries remain divided over the future of fossil fuels, the burning of which is the main cause. climate change.

Last week’s UN General Assembly (UNGA) meetings reignited a long-running debate in which climate-sensitive nations like the Marshall Islands called on the wealthy to ditch polluting fuels and invest in renewable alternatives.

“Humanity has opened the gates of hell” by warming the planet, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at a one-day climate summit on the sidelines of the General Assembly, where he lamented the “naked greed” of fossil fuel interests.

Other countries that produce or use fossil fuels emphasized the potential use of technologies to reduce their emissions, i.e. to capture them, rather than to completely stop using such fuels.

Sultan Al Jaber, president of the United Arab Emirates COP28, said at the summit that “fossil fuel phasing out is inevitable”: “If we are to build an energy system that does not contain reduced fossil fuels, including coal, we must quickly and comprehensively decarbonize the energy we use today.”

China, the world’s largest consumer of fossil fuels, is one of those signaling that it plans to use them for decades.

The US has said it supports phasing out unreduced fossil fuels – while acknowledging plans by some developing countries to invest in them in the near term – although US climate envoy John Kerry has questioned whether emissions capture technologies can be scaled up quickly enough.

While the COP28 pact to reduce fossil fuel use would not immediately lead to an exit from oil and gas, the European Union and other supporters say it will be crucial in shifting national policies and investments away from polluting energy.

“It doesn’t mean it will happen tomorrow,” Spain’s Climate Minister Teresa Ribera told Reuters. “But we have to make sure we create the conditions to make it possible.”

A WAR OF WORDS

Given the disagreements over the future of fossil fuels, as more than 80 countries tried unsuccessfully to agree on a phase-out at last year’s COP27 summit, negotiators are turning to new terminologies as they seek a compromise.

In what appeared to be a breakthrough in April, the Group of Seven industrialized nations agreed to accelerate the “phasing out of harmless fossil fuels.”

By adding “unabated” to fossil fuels, the pledge targeted only fuels burned without emissions capture technology.

But by July, the promise wavered as the larger G20 – which includes oil and gas producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia – failed to agree on the issue.

Ireland’s climate minister, Eamon Ryan, said phasing out fossil fuels, or just emissions, is likely to be the most difficult issue at COP28.

“Some people rightly fear that this may just be a free bid to continue exploring for oil, gas and coal,” Ryan told Reuters of the emissions-capture technology debate.

A group of 17 countries, including France, Kenya, Chile, Colombia and the Pacific island nations 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 expand fossil fuels,” the countries said in a joint statement.

Oil and gas industry groups such as the American Petroleum Institute have said the world needs emissions-reducing technologies to provide “more energy with fewer emissions.”

Some developing countries are also resisting the phase-out, saying they need fossil fuels to expand their electricity capacity for economic development — as do Japan and the United States.

In the African Union, some governments have accused the West of hypocrisy in using climate arguments to refuse funding for gas projects in developing countries while continuing to flare gas at home.

1.5 KEEPING ALIVE

Without rapid reductions 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, said climate scientist Peter Cox of the University of Exeter.

“You can’t have it both ways. We can’t say we want to avoid 1.5C … and not say anything about phasing out fossil fuels,” Cox said.

Demand for coal, gas and oil will peak by 2030 as renewable energy capacity grows, the head of the International Energy Agency said this month.

“Put climate risk aside. Now there is business risk,” Fatih Birol said at an event organized by the Rockefeller Foundation. He called on countries to stop making new investments in coal, oil and gas.

The comments drew the ire of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which disputed Birol’s predictions of a lack of capacity to capture emissions and described his call for an end to new investment as “dangerous”.

The Alliance of Small Island Nations, whose members face land loss from climate-induced storms and rising seas, wants to phase out fossil fuels and end the $7 trillion annual government spending on fossil fuel subsidies.

(This story has been resubmitted to correct a typo in paragraph 1)

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