The agreement finalised on 13 December at COP28 is the world’s strongest statement to date about the need to transition away from fossil fuels, the primary source of our greenhouse gas emissions. But it has weaknesses that raise questions about whether this will push the world to cut emissions fast enough to meet climate targets.
“The final agreement at the Dubai climate talks is a mixed bag,” says at Climate Analytics, an international think tank. “For the first time, the move away from fossil fuels is explicitly stated in a COP outcome, a first nail in the coffin for the fossil fuel industry. Yet oil and gas producers squeezed in unhelpful language, pretending gas can be a transition fuel, or that carbon capture can clean up after them.”
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology – which aims to collect CO2 emissions directly from a source before they reach the atmosphere – spurred controversy at the summit. Campaigners around the conference venue in Dubai pointed out that the technology remains unproven, doesn’t capture all emissions and is expensive. Yet the COP28 agreement includes a reference to CCS as a possible way countries might go about cutting emissions.
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Attendees also battled over the issue of whether natural gas could help in the switch from higher-emitting energy sources and clean energy. Though natural gas produces fewer emissions than coal or oil when burned, its production is a major source of methane emissions, and its use could slow the adoption of clean renewable sources, such as wind and solar. The agreement at COP28 recognises “transition fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security”, which was widely interpreted as an opening for more gas.
In concluding remarks at the summit, at the department of the environment for Antigua and Barbuda called reliance on natural gas a “dangerous loophole” that risked leaving low-income countries with debt from gas infrastructure they couldn’t use if there are future restrictions on emissions.
The Alliance of Small Island States highlighted another weak point of the agreement: the lack of a commitment to reach a peak in global greenhouse gas emissions before 2025, which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found is needed to keep global warming below the Paris agreement target of 1.5°C.
“It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do,” said , a negotiator for the alliance, during the plenary session.
Asked about several of these issues in a press conference after the agreement was adopted, US climate envoy John Kerry acknowledged there were weaknesses, but said the COP28 outcome was the strongest call yet for countries to pull together to limit warming to 1.5°C. “The whole world is going to be working harder to make this happen,” he said.
The COP28 agreement is voluntary for countries, but it is expected to shape new pledges on climate action, expected in early 2025. Called the Global Stocktake, it is largely a response to the IPPC’s stark assessment that the world is currently far off track to stay within the Paris agreement target of 1.5°C of warming. Those findings demonstrate that a steep reduction in emissions of at least 43 per cent below 2019 levels by 2030 is needed, but that the world is now set to cut emissions by just over 5 per cent, leading to warming of around 3°C.
More recent assessments of the changes needed to limit warming to 1.5°C are more restrictive, finding the world would have to reach net zero by 2034 – effectively an impossible task.
Alongside reducing fossil fuels, the agreement also calls on countries to make emissions cuts by tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling rates of energy efficiency gains by 2030, as well as adopting low-emission vehicles and phasing out most fossil fuel subsidies. It also makes reference to nuclear energy, hydrogen and carbon dioxide removal technology as ways to reduce emissions.
“I am convinced we will move to a low-carbon, no-carbon economy globally over time,” said Kerry. “I am not convinced yet that we will do so at the pace the scientists are telling us so we avoid the worst consequences of the crisis.”
Addressing countries at the summit, John Silk, a minister from the Marshall Islands, one of the places most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, likened the agreement to a “canoe with a weak and leaky hull”, though he encouraged countries to nonetheless “put it in the water” as the best option for the moment of keeping 1.5°C in sight.
