After landmark moves, climate talks hit again over coal, fossil fuel action

Deep fissures have emerged between developing countries still highly dependent on coal to power their economies and rich nations that have pledged to move away from new coal but are silent on abandoning other fossil fuels such as oil and gas that run their economies, threatening to further delay consensus on core aspects of the world’s efforts to fight the climate crisis.

Observers and experts aware of discussions said that while this year’s UN Climate Conference (COP28) being held in Dubai began with big ticket announcements, negotiators are now back to contentious issues around phasing out coal and other fossil fuels, and climate finance.

“Overall on the narrative on the forward-looking aspects of the GST (global stocktake), the Global North sees it heavily focusing on mitigation while the Global South sees more mandates for scaled up finance as necessary. There is little clarity on what the final text will incorporate at this stage,” said Tamanna Sengupta, programme officer, Climate Change, Centre for Science and Environment.

COP28 began on November 30 with a landmark operationalising of the Loss and Damage Fund, which will help nations most vulnerable to climate calamities cope with the consequences of the crisis. On Saturday, 118 countries signed a pledge to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

But negotiators from around the world, including those representing nations with varied interests and obligations, are now working on developing consensus, including on the global stocktake — a process that will assess the progress made by countries on slashing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience to climate impacts, securing finance, and identifying areas where further action is needed.

A second expert said that “despite numerous declarations and statements from world leaders, we remain starkly distant from the crucial hundreds of billions in funding needed for climate action”. “This includes assisting developing countries in reducing emissions and strengthening adaptation efforts through a robust global framework. The push by rich countries to rely on the private sector, which has demonstrated insufficient commitment to mitigation and scant interest in adaptation, is not a viable solution,” said Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International.

“Public finance is paramount; it is the cornerstone that enables and catalyses the trillions necessary to address the pressing climate crisis effectively,” Singh added.

Climate financing is meant to cover efforts to address the climate crisis, both in terms of mitigating its impact (reducing emissions) and adapting to its effects (building resilience). Such financing is meant to help developing countries transition to a low-carbon economy and includes the Loss and Damage Fund.

The Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA) which was launched by UK and Canada at COP23 in 2017, posted on X on Sunday that the US and nine other countries have joined the PPCA and France has launched a new initiative to support the global move from coal to renewables. “Alongside the announcement of new members of the PPCA, there were two other important developments on coal phase-out: the launch of a new initiative called the “Coal Transition Accelerator” by France and the adoption of the Global Pledge on Renewables and Energy Efficiency by 118 countries, which committed them to tripling renewables and doubling energy efficiency, as well as emphasised the need to stop investments in new coal power plants,” the PPCA said in a statement.

These moves are adding to the growing momentum toward a global agreement on no new coal exploration and a coal phase-out in Dubai, the negotiators said.

But such moves made countries like India and Indonesia wary. This is also one of the reasons India did not sign the pledge on tripling renewable global energy capacity on Saturday.

“We have to first gather what this means before endorsing. That is what we are doing. We will see how these issues are addressed in the negotiations. These pledges are outside the UN process of negotiations. India has led the way with the tripling of renewable energy pledge under its G20 Presidency in September,” said a senior official aware of the position India has taken at the talks.

The divisions became starkly clear when on Sunday, COP28 host United Arab Emirates’ climate envoy, Sultan Al Jaber, who also heads state oil joint ADNOC, said there was no science to show that phasing out fossil fuels would achieve the world’s climate goals, reports by The Guardian and Centre for Climate Reporting said.

The 50-year-old added that removing fossil fuels would take the world “back into caves”. “I am factual and I respect the science, and there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuels is what’s going to achieve 1.5.”

The issue captures how oil economies such as the UAE and its neighbours, as well as developing countries like India and China, have a different position from Western nations. Negotiators from the US and EU have said they are agreeable to phase-out of “unabated” fossil fuels — with the words phase-out and unabated being key.

Petro-rich states are expectedly not agreeable to language on fossil fuels, the observers added, referring to language first agreed upon by the G7, a grouping of wealthy nations, earlier this year.

A key reason for this divide is that wealthier nations have largely been able to adopt renewables and non-fossil sources at an easier pace and lower cost to their economies than poorer nations, which have repeatedly sought to draw on the historical responsibility of rich nations to urge them to do more.

The Third World Network, a non-profit international research and advocacy group said in their briefing on December 1 that developing countries led by the G77 and China called on developed countries “who bear the greatest responsibility for the modification of the global climate system” to reverse course, “in their accelerated consumption of the remaining carbon space”.

The BASIC group (Brazil, China, India and South Africa) expressed concern that “there has been a significant increase in the production and consumption of fossil fuels by developed countries in recent years and encouraged developed countries to take the lead in phasing-out their own fossil fuel production and consumption, in an accelerated manner”.

COP28 is scheduled to go on till December 12, by when negotiators must agree on final text of the outcome.