COP28: Reconciling great expectations with reality in a highly polarized world

As COP28 continues to run its course, the clash between those calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels and the ones lobbying to keep oil, gas, and coal firmly entrenched in the energy mix is rising, as all eyes turn to Dubai, the UAE, where the world leaders have gathered to chart a climate-friendly way forward in a bid to make decarbonization inroads in line with the Paris Agreement and set the stage for a greener energy future. Will it be possible to ensure that the final agreement at COP28 comes with a commitment to exit fossil fuels? Is this great feat feasible given the energy crisis that hit the world out of the blue last year and the security of supply concerns, which are still plaguing the globe?

After those who are pushing leaders to end fossil fuels managed to put forward strong language on coal, oil, gas, and renewables that would lead to a very ambitious net zero outcome if it remained, edits were submitted to the text since then. These edits are wreaking havoc on climate campaigners’ plans, spurring concerns that some of the language on carbon capture and storage (CCS) will leave the door wide open for further fossil fuel use.

The climate activists are doing their utmost to convince world leaders that COP28 cannot be considered a success without progress being made on phasing out fossil fuels and unlocking the required financing to help developing countries cope with climate change woes. Ahead of COP28, the UN Environment Programme’s 2023 Production Gap Report pointed to a stark reality on the global energy stage, highlighting that governments were on track to produce 110% more fossil fuels by 2030, undermining efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C. 

While net-zero pledges are springing up left and right, the report emphasizes that countries are failing to align coal, oil, and gas production with climate targets. After profiling 20 major fossil fuel producer countries, the report exposed the tenacity of a global production gap, which was putting the carefully crafted energy transition plans in jeopardy.

Only days before COP28 kicked off, the European Parliament voted to assert its position during these climate talks in a resolution, urging its member states to join in negotiating a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. This resolution called not only for moves to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030 but also a phase-out of fossil fuels to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Pär Holmgren, the MEP behind the original amendment, said at the time: “For the second time, the EU Parliament is calling on member states and the Commission to work with the growing number of countries around the world who formally support the fossil fuel treaty proposal. We need a detailed plan now – with a precise timeline and funding – to end our energy dependence on fossil fuels.” 

Moreover, during the Pacific Island Forum in Cook Islands, leaders included a call for a transition away from coal, oil, and gas, but discussions led to a diluted commitment with qualifiers and loopholes, driven by fossil fuel producers. In spite of the initial aspirations for the global phase-out of fossil fuel production, the final text lacks explicit references to extraction and production. Will COP28 end in the same fashion?

While it is difficult to predict which way the lobbying wind will blow and what this will mean for the final text of COP28, the climate talks have brought some impressive news so far, including a landmark global oil and gas industry decarbonization charter with 50 signatories. Among the signatories of the charter, representing more than 40% of global oil production, over 60% are NOCs and the rest are IOCs. This is said to be the largest-ever number of NOCs to commit to a decarbonization initiative.

The signatories – encompassing five oil majors – agreed to invest in the energy system of the future, such as renewables, low-carbon fuels, and negative emissions technologies along with increasing transparency, covering enhancing measurement, monitoring, reporting, and independent verification of greenhouse gas emissions and their performance and progress in curbing these emissions. In addition, Australia signed up to the agreement made in Glasgow which commits signatories to end overseas fossil fuel funding while Spain, Kenya, and Samoa signed up to the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA).

COP28 also brought the carbon management challenge discussion, which raised integrity concerns around how carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) and CO2 removal were being confused and deployed in ways that would not be in line with the 1.5°C target. For climate campaigners, the utilization part of CCUS represents a lifeline for fossil fuels as it enables a further extraction of coal, oil, and gas.

According to a new analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition, around 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the COP28 summit in Dubai, which indicates a strong presence of representatives from some of the world’s “biggest polluters” at what is perceived to be crucial climate talks.

With this at the forefront, Global Witness claims that instead of fighting to accelerate the Paris Agreement targets, these people will leave no stone unturned in their quest to divert attention onto so-called silver bullet solutions such as CCS that are not yet available at scale. Based on new research, picking a high CCS scenario over a high renewables scenario would cost $30 trillion to implement.

This content is available after accepting the cookies.

Change cookie-settings View on Twitter.

The almost four times uptick in attendance at COP28 from the fossil fuel lobby, compared to last year, comes at a time when high hopes are being placed on COP’s shoulders to tackle fossil fuels and set an expiration date for them. This sparked outrage among environmental activists and led to growing calls from Global South countries, public officials, UN constituencies, and wider civil society to remove fossil fuel lobbyists from climate talks.

Hwei Mian Lim, Women and Gender Constituency, stated: “If governments had required oil and gas groups to decarbonize from the outset in line with what science says is needed to limit climate change’s worse impacts, we would not be in our current state of all-out emergency. We are where we are because of years of denial, delay and false solutions from the very groups that are responsible for the problem.”

The Kick Big Polluters Out coalition’s analysis of the provisional list of participants at COP28 shows that fossil fuel lobbyists tucked under their belts more passes to the UN climate talks than all the delegates from the ten most climate-vulnerable nations combined (1,509). For climate campaigners, this paints a bleak picture, as it confirms that the fossil fuel industry’s presence is dwarfing those on the frontlines of the crisis, making it more difficult for their voices to be heard and for their climate agenda to get incorporated into the final text.

Furthermore, a considerable number of fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to the COP as part of a trade association, with nine out of the ten biggest groups coming from the Global North. The largest one is said to be the Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), which brought 116 people including representatives from Shell, TotalEnergies, and Equinor. All the oil majors have taken steps to decarbonize their operations, but these efforts are not sufficient to satisfy the climate campaigners, who continue to rant and rave about Big Oil.

Climate activists are also criticizing some European countries, including France, which decided to bring oil and gas giants such as TotalEnergies and EDF as part of its country delegation. Italy is also facing some backlash as it brought a team of Eni representatives, along with the European Union, which brought employees of BP, Eni, and ExxonMobil.

Commenting on this, Alexia Leclercq, Start: Empowerment, Co-founder, remarked: “Do you really think Shell or Chevron or ExxonMobil are sending lobbyists to passively observe these talks? To advance climate solutions for the benefit of communities whose air and water they pollute? To put people and the planet over profit and their greedy dollars?

“Big Polluters’ poisonous presence has bogged us down for years, keeping us from advancing the pathways needed to keep fossil fuels in the ground. They are the reason COP28 is clouded in a fog of climate denial, not climate reality.”

As the number of fossil fuel representatives at COPs grows in size, calls to protect the UN’s climate talks through clear conflict of interest policies and accountability measures are also on the rise, with countries collectively representing almost 70% of the world’s population urging for this to be addressed promptly.

The decision to pass the baton to Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, UAE Minister of Industry and CEO of ADNOC, and appoint him as the COP28 President, stirred up considerable controversy, along with concerns about the possibility of undermining climate action due to the Middle East’s long-standing love affair with the oil and gas industry, which environmentalists accuse of being the main culprit of climate change. 

A new Global Witness analysis, which indicates that ADNOC is on course to become the second-largest oil producer in the world by 2050, does nothing to allay these fears, instead, it serves to inflame them further.  

This content is available after accepting the cookies.

Change cookie-settings View on Twitter.

Patrick Galey, Fossil Fuels Senior Investigator at Global Witness, emphasized: “Sultan al-Jaber’s appointment at the helm of critical UN climate talks has rightly prompted scrutiny of his firm’s business model. These findings show how, irrespective of the outcome of COP28, ADNOC plans to produce more oil than nearly every operator on the planet and plans to vastly increase its output – in direct contravention of the scientific consensus around which Al-Jaber is mandated to build negotiations in Dubai.  

“Al-Jaber may wish to focus on clever accounting, carbon credits and techno fixes, but the principal driver of the climate crisis are the products his company plans to continue to sell in huge volumes for decades to come. If he was serious about climate action he would oversee a rapid and just phase-out of oil and gas, starting with his own business. Sadly, and terrifyingly for those at the frontlines of the climate emergency, he appears to be doing the opposite.”  

This content is available after accepting the cookies.

Change cookie-settings View on Twitter.

Global Witness, using industry data sourced from Rystad Energy, calculates that assets operated by ADNOC are projected to produce 35.9 billion barrels of oil between the start of 2023 and the end of 2050, thus, only Saudi Aramco with 100.5 billion barrels is projected to produce more operated oil than ADNOC by mid-century. As a result, the UAE giant’s estimated production is 49% higher than the projected 24.1 billion barrels output of Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies combined.  

The analysis underlines that only Petrobras (47.5%) is set to increase oil production faster by 2030 than ADNOC (41.5%) of the top 30 largest operators globally. Global Witness underscores that emissions from the UAE player’s operated oil products alone will total more than 14.3 billion tons of CO2e by 2050.

While pointing out that the analysis is “inaccurate as it does not make any distinction between production capacity and actual production, nor does it reflect the difference between ADNOC’s production, partner production and UAE total production,” an ADNOC spokesperson highlighted:

“The hard truth is that all credible energy outlooks, including those by the IEA and Rystad, show that both renewable and conventional energy will be required to ensure a just and responsible energy transition. Inaccurate speculation is divisive and unhelpful, and our focus should be on working collaboratively to accelerate the transition to net zero.” 

Even though many have found grounds to complain, COP28 has still set in motion many new developments, including the mobilization of over $83 billion so far to support priorities across the global climate agenda, setting the pace for a new climate era. During these climate talks, eight new declarations came to light to assist in transforming all major systems of the global economy while new declarations on renewable energy and efficiency saw the light of day, alongside initiatives to decarbonize heavy emitting sectors. These initiatives encompass hydrogen and CCS along with other low-carbon tools.

Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, took a somewhat unexpected step during COP28 when he backed a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Although fossil fuels make up about half of the country’s exports, Petro was rather adamant when he insisted that there was no alternative to a fossil fuel phase-out: “Today we face an immense confrontation between fossil capital and human life. And we must choose a side. Any human being knows that we must choose life. I have no doubt which position to take.”

During the second Ministerial Meeting on Urbanization and Climate Change, held on Wednesday, December 6, the COP28 Presidency, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28, and Bloomberg Philanthropies urged housing, urban development, environment, and finance ministers to back the ‘Joint Outcome Statement on Urbanization and Climate Change,’ which was supported by over 40 Ministers of Environment, Urban Development and Housing. 

This content is available after accepting the cookies.

Change cookie-settings View on Twitter.

Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, COP28 President, noted: “COP28 is a paradigm shift to action. We are empowering and supporting cities on the frontlines of climate change to seize the initiative. We have brought over 450 mayors and governors to COP28 and their hyperlocal knowledge is crucial in informing our global solutions. When we talk about inclusivity this is what we mean, we need all voices at the table. I thank and commend those involved for their leadership.

“Each city has individual needs and solutions but fundamentally this is a global problem, which this statement shows. We have brought over 1,000 mayors and governors to COP28 as, when we talk about full inclusivity this is what we mean. We know we can need to learn from and support those on the frontlines. I thank and commend those involved for their leadership.”

This statement sets out a ten-point plan to ramp up the inclusion of cities in the decision-making process on climate change, drive multilevel climate action, and accelerate the deployment of urban climate finance so that cities are prepared and supported to respond to the climate crisis. The meeting was attended by 1,000 attendees and over 200 subnational leaders.

This content is available after accepting the cookies.

Change cookie-settings View on Twitter.

Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), explained: “The Ministerial Meeting was a key moment in our work toward inclusive and climate-resilient cities and communities. A diverse range of stakeholders gathered including leaders from the national and local level, underscoring the shared priority of supporting urban environments to withstand climate challenges.”

Meanwhile, the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of leading global shipping lines issued a joint declaration at COP28, which calls for the establishment of an end date for fossil-only powered newbuilds and urges the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to create the regulatory conditions to accelerate the transition to green fuels. Additionally, the Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the Danish Government decided to pool resources to execute pre-feasibility studies for green corridors in five countries in the Global South.

While these signs indicate that COP28 is heading towards a showdown on the question of phasing out fossil fuels, some are convinced that recent comments made by the COP28 President about there being “no science” that says a fossil fuel phase-out is necessary show that climate activists lobbying for an end to coal, oil, and gas have their work cut out for them.

There is no doubt that throwing a commitment to exit the fossil fuels age into the final agreement at COP28 is no small feat, especially in the light of Sultan Al-Jaber’s claims that limiting warming to 1.5°C does not necessarily require phasing out fossil fuels and that doing so would send humanity back to the Stone Age.

However, no matter how the chips fall, more climate action is bound to be cleared for take-off following COP28, enabling the world to get at least a little closer to a more sustainable and cleaner energy future.

ADVERTISE ON OFFSHORE ENERGY

Do you want to grab the attention of your target audience in one move? Look no further than Offshore Energy! Our content is read by thousands of professionals engaged in oil & gas, maritime, offshore wind, green marine, hydrogen, subsea, marine energy, alternative fuels, shipping, and other industries on a daily basis.

ADVERTISING OPTIONS

Follow Offshore Energy’s Fossil Energy market on social media channels: