Hello from Dubai. After two consecutive nights of intense negotiations that ran into the small hours, COP28 has ended in a deal.

The “global stocktake” text agreed here has broken with the shameful inability of previous UN climate conferences to state openly the need to move away from fossil fuels. COP president Sultan al-Jaber — who has received huge criticism over his conflicts of interest as a major oil company chief executive — deserves credit for persuading big oil producers, notably Saudi Arabia, to support this deal.

Yet this agreement leaves a vast amount of work to be done, notably on finance. And to some eyes, this COP has been yet another failure, given that we still don’t have a clear path to the end of fossil fuel usage.

That message was given voice at the closing plenary by Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator for Samoa, who complained that she and other small island state representatives were still in discussion outside the hall when the agreement was approved. “We see a litany of loopholes,” she said. “We cannot afford to return to our islands with the message that this process has failed us.”

The elephant in the room is named at last

To many observers of COP28, saying that we need to move away from fossil fuels to tackle climate change will seem like a statement of the bleeding obvious. It’s a fair point, which is why the failure to say this in the 27 previous COPs was so egregious — and why the fossil fuel language in this text is significant.

Many countries, including EU nations and the Alliance of Small Island States, had pushed at COP28 for a commitment to “phase out” fossil fuels. That term didn’t make it into the text. Instead, it called on nations to contribute to:

Some analysts have expressed severe disappointment with this language, saying that unlike “phase out”, it doesn’t necessarily mean that fossil fuel usage is on the way to zero. Still less does this text give a clear deadline for stopping fossil fuel usage. But “transitioning away from” still seems a tad stronger than “reducing” or “phasing down”, which were other options on offer.

It’s also notable that this clause talks about moving away from fossil fuels in energy systems altogether, not just “unabated” usage. The latter phrasing would have implied no need to transition away from fossil fuels, provided you use carbon capture technology.

But there are lots of loopholes

Carbon capture appears in the very next clause, however, as one of the green technologies that countries are encouraged to “accelerate” — something that will concern those who worry that it will help prop up the fossil fuel industry.

The language agreed at COP26 on “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power” survives unchanged, despite efforts here to strengthen wording around the most polluting fossil fuel.

Another clause that has prompted some queasiness is the statement “that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security”. This is an apparent reference to fossil gas, which is presented by advocates as a less polluting alternative to coal.

The text introduces its language about energy systems by saying that countries can take into account “their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches” — wording that some governments may use to push for flexibility around their obligations.

Developed countries have far to go on climate finance

At the plenary discussion where the deal was approved, a succession of developing nations stressed the urgent need for rich countries to provide more support on climate finance.

The global stocktake had some decent language on the scale of this challenge. It warned of the “growing gap” between the finance that developing countries need to fund their climate-related obligations, and the support that they have so far secured. Their adaptation finance needs are estimated at $215-387bn a year this decade, it warned.

Yet even as it acknowledged that adaptation finance “will have to be significantly scaled up” beyond the doubling (from 2019 levels, by 2025) that has already been agreed, the text was short on detail of how this will be achieved.

Similarly, while the text welcomed the first funding provided for the new climate loss and damage fund, these commitments — amounting to less than $1bn — amount to “an initial downpayment”, as Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told reporters today.

A massive increase in funding for low-carbon energy is also needed. One of the key wins for COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber was the agreement here to triple renewable energy capacity globally, and double the average rate of energy efficiency improvements, by 2030.

The text made clear that climate finance — both to restrain climate change, and to respond to its impacts — will “need to increase manyfold”.

It noted that the capital is there to close the investment gap, but noted “barriers to redirecting capital to climate action”. Interestingly, it named taxation as one of the “new and innovative sources of finance” for governments to explore — a promising area, as we highlighted last week.

Filling in these climate finance gaps will be at the top of the agenda at next year’s COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The preparations for that event should begin today. (Simon Mundy)

“This outcome reflects the very lowest possible ambition that we could accept rather than what we know, according to the best available science, is necessary to urgently address the climate crisis.”

— Madeleine Diouf Sarr, chair of the Least Developed Countries Group

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