New COP28 draft deal stops short of fossil fuel ‘phase out’

DUBAI: A draft of a potential climate deal at the COP28 summit suggested a range of measures countries could take to slash greenhouse gas emissions, but omitted the “phase out” of fossil fuels many nations have demanded – drawing criticism from the US, EU and climate-vulnerable countries.

The draft has set the stage for contentious last-minute negotiations in the two-week summit in Dubai, which has laid bare deep international divisions over whether oil, gas and coal should have a place in a climate-friendly future.

A coalition of more than 100 countries have been pushing for an agreement would for the first time promise an eventual end to the oil age – but are up against opposition from members of the oil producer group OPEC.

COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber urged the nearly 200 countries at the talks to redouble their efforts to finalize a deal ahead of the scheduled close of the conference, saying they “still have a lot to do”.

“You know what remains to be agreed. And you know that I want you to deliver the highest ambition on all items including on fossil fuel language,” he said.

The new draft of a COP28 agreement, published by the United Arab Emirates’ presidency of the summit, proposed various options but did not refer to a “phase out” of fossil fuels.

Instead, it listed eight options that countries could use to cut emissions, including: “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050”.

Other actions listed included tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, “rapidly phasing down unabated coal” and scaling up technologies including those to capture CO2 emissions to keep them from the atmosphere.

Despite the fact emissions from burning fossil fuels are by far the main driver of climate change, 30 years’ worth of international climate negotiations have never resulted in a global agreement to cut their use.

The text triggered a protest from dozens of delegates who stood in near silence, holding hands and lining the long route into a room where negotiators gathered, forcing them to run an eerie gauntlet before getting back to work.

US Special Climate Envoy John Kerry told the meeting, which ran for around three hours, that the draft agreement had to be strengthened.

“We’re not where we’re meant to be in terms of the text,” Kerry said. “Many of us have called for the world to largely phase out fossil fuels, and that starts with a critical reduction this decade.” He said the outcome of COP28 was existential: “This is a war for survival”.

EU chief negotiator Wopke Hoekstra told reporters the draft was “clearly insufficient and not adequate to addressing the problem we are here to address.”

Representatives from Pacific Island nations Samoa and the Marshall Islands, already suffering the impacts of rising seas, said the draft was a death sentence. Dan Jorgensen, the Danish climate minister, said he believed many countries opposed the current text.

A new draft document is expected early on Tuesday, which would leave little time for further disagreement ahead of the conference’s scheduled close. COP summits rarely finish on schedule.

Sources familiar with the discussions said the UAE had come under pressure from Saudi Arabia, de facto leader of the OPEC oil producers’ group of which UAE is a member, to drop any mention of fossil fuels from the text.

Speaking to ministers and negotiators on Sunday, a representative for Saudi Arabia’s delegation said a COP28 deal should not pick and choose energy sources but should instead focus on cutting emissions.

That position echoes a call made by OPEC in a letter to its members earlier in the summit, seen by Reuters, which asked them to oppose any language targeting fossil fuels directly.

Deals at UN climate summits must be passed by consensus among the nearly 200 countries present. Developing nations have said any COP28 deal to overhaul the world’s energy system must be matched with sufficient financial support to help them do this.

Despite the rapid growth of renewable energy, fossil fuels still produce around 80% of the world’s energy. Negotiators said other OPEC members including Russia, Iraq and Iran, have also resisted attempts to insert a fossil fuel phase-out into the COP28 deal.