EU wants more than renewables at Cop 28

Wopke Hoekstra hopes delivering on the bloc's climate targets will strengthen its hand in Dubai, writes Dafydd ab Iago

The EU's newly appointed climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, wants the UN Cop 28 climate talks to achieve more than an agreement on renewables and energy efficiency goals, with any EU wins tied to progress on loss and damage funding and questions over how substantial the EU contribution can be.

Hoekstra said earlier this year that agreeing on a goal of tripling global renewable energy capacity and doubling rates of energy efficiency by 2030 will not be enough to call Cop 28 a success. He suggested a focus on "unabated" progress when it comes to phasing out fossil fuels was not sufficient.

Pressure has been mounting ahead of Cop 28 for parties to agree on language signalling the need to reduce output and demand of all fossil fuels, after India last year suggested broadening the focus from coal. But the EU's position lacks agreement timelines. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said in September that unabated fossil fuels need to be phased out "well before 2050", while the bloc's environment ministers have not agreed on a specific deadline. The EU parliament has called for a "tangible" phase-out of fossil fuels as soon as possible. But Hoekstra has not committed to a deadline. This lack of detail may forebode the same lack of progress towards a phase-out as at last year's Cop 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Yet Hoekstra has been linking progress at Cop 28 on the operationalisation of a loss and damage fund — for compensating irreversible climate change, as agreed in Sharm el-Sheikh last year — to success in climate mitigation, or cutting emissions. "If we make enough progress on mitigation, the fund can be launched in Dubai, with the first pledges too," he said earlier this month. This week he promised a "substantial financial contribution" from the EU, but once again tied to an "ambitious outcome" for mitigation and adaptation.

Money's too tight

But the EU did not say how much it will contribute to the fund, and squeezing out more money from the bloc, the world's largest climate donor, could prove difficult. Aware of those limits, Spain's climate minister Teresa Ribera has re-floated the idea of fossil fuel companies dedicating a share of profits to sustainable development in the most vulnerable countries. This could find support at Cop 28. Hoekstra supports exploring a range of fossil fuel taxes, and using a share of proceeds from the EU emissions trading system for climate finance. EU finance ministers have reaffirmed their "strong" commitment to developed countries collectively mobilising $100bn/yr in climate finance through to 2025.

Another idea pushed by Von der Leyen at a recent climate summit in Nairobi was for global carbon pricing and true carbon credits at Cop 28. She also noted the need to include and reward carbon sinks. Just 23pc of the world's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are covered by either a carbon tax or an emissions trading system, according to World Bank analysis, but this is up from 7pc a decade earlier.

A new EU agreement on methane regulation could strengthen the bloc's hand. The EU and US were behind a Global Methane Pledge, launched at Cop 26 in Glasgow. "The EU has one more law to demonstrate to our international partners that we are delivering on our climate targets," Hoekstra says. The EU has spent recent months adopting legislation to reform its own climate policies in line with its stricter 2030 emissions target to cut GHG emissions by at least 55pc compared with 1990 levels. With finished laws on the statute book now pushing the EU towards a 42.5pc renewables share in final energy consumption, and a projected 57pc GHG emissions cut by 2030, Hoekstra is also airing a new policy with 85-90pc GHG emissions cuts by 2040.