Cop: Fossil fuels key issue of global stocktake

The phasing out of fossil fuels will remain one of the "important" remaining issues when technical negotiations on the global stocktake move to ministerial level in the second week of the Cop 28 UN climate summit, EU negotiator Jacob Werksman said today.

He said that, from a negotiator perspective, the global stocktake is "the one big deliverable for this Cop" and that it needed to cover all aspects of the Paris Agreement.

The global stocktake is a five-yearly undertaking to measure progress towards the Paris accord, and is intended to inform the next round of emissions reductions plans, due in 2025. It should provide all parties with a chance to reflect on past achievements and find common ground on key issues such as finance and mitigation — cutting emissions. It will also act as an anchor for finance and fossil fuel discussions during Cop 28.

Pressure has been mounting ahead of Cop 28 for parties to agree on language signalling the need to reduce output of and demand for all fossil fuels. The EU position is for a global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels and peaking of consumption this decade. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra gave no timeline for the phase-out of fossil fuels.

Werksman said that it was too early to be speculating publicly about where the text could land, but that the EU was going to try to build consensus around its position. "We feel we have a lot of support from a big diversity of parties," he said.

Finance will be a key issue to get some countries on board with backing language on fossil fuels, as some emerging and developing economies are heavily reliant on these resources. Colombia, for example, which has joined the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty during Cop 28, has signalled that the country will need help from developed countries to finance its shift to clean energies. "We have to make sure that the resources are there to support countries in achieving both the emissions cuts as well as preparing for the impacts," Werksman said.

Capturing the statements of the leaders, who descended on Cop 28 in the first two days of the conference and making sure that their "most positive messages end up in that text" will be key for the outcomes of the global stocktake, Werksman said.

The summary of a high-level event on the stocktake released today pointed to the "urgent need to set the world on appropriate pathways to deliver the deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, as reflected by science". It also mentioned the need to reduce methane emissions and phase out unabated fossil fuels as well as inefficient fossil fuel subsidies "with developing countries taking the lead". It also had the focus on tripling global renewable energy capacity and doubling energy efficiency, all by 2030, and called for covering all greenhouse emissions and sectors.

Negotiators have spent the first day of the summit working on a draft of the global stocktake text, with one produced by the co-chairs of the global stocktake discussions, "under their own authority" as a starting point. Some parties and observers said that progress had been slow at first, but expect momentum to pick up now that global leaders have left the summit and the attention returns fully to negotiations.

By Caroline Varin