Ffrom the beginning Police 28 appear beyond the reach of satire. Some 100,000 politicians, diplomats, lobbyists, business people, investors, activists, scientists, policy wonks and journalists from around the world have registered for a two-week climate summit hosted by an authoritarian oil state in a city, Dubai, known for skyscrapers and extravagant. , energy-hungry consumerism.
The president of the summit, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, is the chief executive of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, which plans a $150 billion oil and gas expansion. The United Arab Emirates is also investing in renewable energy – it Noor Energy 1 concentrated solar thermal plant is larger than 6,000 football pitches – but a more prominent attraction in central Dubai is the world’s largest gas-fired power plant.
With this setup, what could possibly go wrong? A few things, as it turned out. A few also ran straight. Whether you rate the result as more good or bad depends partly on incoming expectations.
The event was held on a site built to host a recent World Expo. It was geared up for a massive trade show, which has become the annual climate conference for most delegates. More than 150 world leaders arrived at the start, some arriving on private jets and staying just a few hours. Anthony Albanese, under pressure at home on several fronts, was not among them. Neither was Joe Biden or Xi Jinping. But it was mostly not a leadership event.
Beyond the hoopla, Cop had an important focus: negotiations between delegates from nearly 200 countries on how to strengthen the global response to a deepening climate crisis. The outcome – landed, in the time-honoured tradition of climate summits, after a few almost sleepless nights and well past the scheduled deadline – is a mixed bag.
The good news was that, for the first time, the summit accepted fossil fuels were the biggest climate problem. There was a “supermajority” of countries supporting a phase-out of fossil fuels, but no consensus as required in the UN process. Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Opul oil cartel were the most obvious opponentsbut other great emitters were happy to hide in the shadows behind them.
Instead, the final text called on countries to contribute to a transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, to reach net zero by 2050 in line with science “. Australia’s climate change minister, Chris Bowen, had a hand in the compromise, having proposed it in a tense plenary session.
The final words will read to some as a statement of the blindingly obvious, but just a few years ago it seemed impossible that a climate summit agreement would name and shame fossil fuels, including oil and gas. This is a moment of some progress.
It doesn’t require anything, but it should help build momentum for more action from governments and big institutional investors looking for a signal about where and when to spend trillions of dollars. The Paris climate agreement’s commitment that countries will pursue efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, a version of this did in 2015. It told investors the market for green energy would need to grow. This should be another step in that direction.
The bad news is that the agreement does not go far enough to capture the urgency needed to avoid worsening climate destruction, and that it includes language that provides assistance to those who want to delay or avoid action.
This year was the hottest on record. It has brought extreme weather and heat-related disasters that have destroyed lives and livelihoods across most continents. Investment in renewable energy has grown dramatically, but has too often been added on top of, not replaced, fossil fuels. Global greenhouse gas emissions from coal, oil and gas keep rising. Petrostate is still planning massive fossil fuel expansion. Inger Andersen, the executive director of the UN Environment Programme, was correct when she accused governments of saying one thing and doing another.
At the center of debate in Dubai was a global stocktaking of progress that found the world was not on track to keep 1.5C within reach. The so-called “UAE Consensus” agreement recognizes this and refers to what is needed to address it. But there is a long way to go if that possibility is to become a reality.
Anne Rasmussen, the Samoan chief negotiator for the 39-member Alliance of Small Island States, summed up the situation in the final plenary on Wednesday: “We’ve made incremental progress over business as usual when what we really needed was an exponential step change is. in our actions and support.”
She is right and the truth is that is how the Cops process works. Multilateralism is a blow, demanding consensus where it does not exist. A large country that pushes for a lowest common denominator position usually prevails. From one perspective, this makes the UAE agreement on fossil fuels a more remarkable achievement – no one stood up at the final plenary to undermine it.
They probably thought they didn’t have to because the agreement contained enough get-out clauses for polluters to lean on. This includes a mention of carbon capture, utilization and storage – a struggling niche technology used in Australia and elsewhere to justify fossil fuel expansions that will pump large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere – and “transition fuels”, a phrase used by Russia is promoted. and fossil fuel industries as code for more gas.
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This reference is included despite gas the largest source of global emissions growth last decade.
These harmful sections sit alongside genuinely good things, such as a call to triple global renewable energy by 2030 (a UAE proposal, it should be noted). This gives the deal a choose-your-own-adventure flavor within a long-term move towards cleaner practice. The problem is that we don’t have time for that.
What does this all mean for Australia? Bowen has been an active player in Dubai, taking on the umbrella group of countries that includes the US, the UK, Canada and Japan, raising concerns about the Pacific and winning private praise from some mainstream critics of the Albanian government’s climate policy. Vanuatu’s climate change minister, Ralph Regenvanu, told the Guardian he was “happy with what Australia said”. describe it as a “real change”.
Bowen was clear about what he believed the summit had decided: “All nations of the world have recognized the reality that our future is in clean energy and the era of fossil fuels will end.”
The shift to renewable energy replacing fossil fuels in the national electricity grid is already on an irreversible path and must happen quickly just to keep the lights on while old coal plants are closed. Gas peak plants will only have a back-up role to play and, unlike in other countries, there has been no compelling case that nuclear energy can help. Managing this historic shift is now the challenge.
The bigger question is what this means for the country’s massive fossil fuel exports – Australia’s biggest contribution to the climate crisis. Pressure on the government to explain how the country can quickly go from supplying Asia with coal and gas to exporting clean energy will only grow.
This will be politically challenging at home, but Australia will also be expected to do much more on climate finance. For years, rich nations have pledged to help developing countries take a clean path out of poverty and build resilience against the climate crisis. An agreement in Dubai to operate a loss and damage fund means that the wealthy have also committed to covering the costs as the most vulnerable recover from emissions-driven catastrophic events.
All this will cost trillions. Some will have to come from private sources, but Australia will be expected to go well beyond the $150 million it pledged in the UAE.
A final point to make is about emissions targets. New obligations for 2035 are due by 2025. The Cop28 agreement spells out what is needed: a global 60% reduction compared to 2019 levels.
For Australia, which uses a 2005 baseline, this equates to a 67% reduction – and the country will face calls to go further given developed countries’ historical responsibility to take the lead. Bowen argued publicly on behalf of the umbrella group for the inclusion of the 2035 goal.
The test of this will come over the next 18 months. The country’s three largest states now each promise at least a 70% emissions reduction by 2035. Western Australia, on the other hand, is a problem. The question for the Albanian government will be whether it will make the case for a target and the policies needed, and look down on parts of the political and media ecosystem trapped by fossil fuels.
Where it lands, many will say whether Australia is serious about keeping 1.5C in play, helping its friends in the Pacific and making the most of the economic opportunities we hear so much about.
