Jump to navigation

Coal and oil producers want more flexibility on climate targets as energy crisis deepens

Faced with rising food and fuel prices, developing economies call for more climate aid to help them adjust to the green transition

Africa, specifically Egypt's Sharm el Sheikh conference centre, is hosting the next UN Climate summit COP27 in November but the set piece arguments over finance and burden-sharing have started already (AC Vol 62 No 25, Adding up the real costs of the energy transition).

Some of those disputes held up the release on 4 April of the latest research of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its text is to form the basis of the next round of climate negotiations in Egypt.

The IPCC's research shows what has to be done to meet the targets agreed at last year's Edinburgh summit. It calls for 'immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors'.

It sets out clear policy conclusions from its research to which the 195 participating countries agreed, in principle but the timetable for implementation will be contested. They are:

  • that coal must be effectively phased out globally;
  • new fossil fuel infrastructure is unsustainable;
  • methane emissions must be cut by a third;
  •  investment in green energy projects should increase at least sixfold;
  • vast increases in tree-planting will be necessary but not sufficient to balance the damage of carbon emissions;
  • technological fixes such as carbon capture and hydrogen-based full will help manage emissions but will not be decisive

The negotiations in Edinburgh went down to the wire last year but many countries signed up to new pledges to cut carbon emissions to hit the established 'Net Zero by 2050' target.

It has become harder since then. Some of the wider efforts to rein in emissions and help countries adjust to a green transition have been derailed by the energy and economic crisis triggered by Moscow's war on Ukraine.

As European economies scramble to cut their dependence on Russia's oil and gas, some climate targets are being sidelined. After two years of pandemic pressures, economies around the world are being hit by food and fuel price inflation.

India and Saudi Arabia were pushing hard for revisions to the IPCC's conclusions. India, which is dependent on coal like many African states, wants the relatively low contribution of developing economies to carbon emissions to be reflected in greater flexibility in demands for steep global emissions cuts.

Saudi Arabia, in line with Algeria, Angola, Nigeria, want greater flexibility on timetables for phasing out oil and gas arguing that too fast a transition would hurt smaller economies (AC Vol 62 No 16, The oil economy breaks up).

UN Secretary General António Guterres expects tough negotiations over targets and monitoring at the climate summit in Egypt. At the launch of the IPCC's latest report, he abandoned traditional diplomacy to accuse some governments and business of 'lying' when they claimed to on track to meet the target of keeping global warming below 1.5C. 'The results will be catastrophic,' he said.



Related Articles

Adding up the real costs of the energy transition

To achieve net zero emissions by 2050 will mean clean energy investments of $1-2 trillion a year in developing economies

After a frustrating lack of progress on finance and mapping out a 'just transition' to renewable energy at the COP26 climate summit last month, African officials are preparing...

READ FOR FREE

The oil economy breaks up

The architects of industry reform bid a long goodbye to oil and welcome the brave new world of gas for all

Energy companies, trades unions and politicians are beginning to get to grips with the prospect of wide-ranging reform of the oil and gas industry, the foundation of the...


Making multilateralism work by other means

UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s Summit of the Future boosted reforms and delivered some wins for Africa

It bears the hallmarks of a grandiosity guaranteed to rile isolationists gearing up for the fight of their lives in the United States presidential election on 5 November....

READ FOR FREE

Bush, the farewell tour

President George Bush's five-country African tour on 16-21 February met with varied reactions. He was burned in effigy in Dar es Salaam and praised in Kigali by Irish singer and activist Bob Geldof, who said that Bush has 'done more (for Africa) than any other president so far...This is the triumph of American policy really. It was expected of the nation, but not of the man, but both rose to the occasion.'

Responding to their President's call, Tanzanians turned out massively on 18 February, day two of President George Walker Bush's Tanzania visit, following an anti-climax the previous night...