COP28 draft agreement stops short of fossil fuel ‘phaseout’

Dubai, December 11

A draft of a potential climate deal at the COP28 summit on Monday suggested a range of options that countries could take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but omitted the “phase out” of fossil fuels that many nations have demanded.

The draft will set the stage for a final round of contentious 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.

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 on Tuesday, 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.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said a central benchmark of success for COP28 will be whether it yields a deal to phase out fossil fuels fast enough to avert disastrous climate change.

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 all fossil fuels, which had been included in a previous draft.

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.

A coalition of more than 100 countries including big oil and gas producers the United States, Canada and Norway, as well as the European Union and island nations, wanted an agreement that included language to phase out fossil fuels, a feat not achieved in 30 years of the U.N. summits. The emissions from burning fossil fuels are by far the main driver of climate change. — Reuters

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