2023-12-06 06:52:02
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Negotiators at a major United Nations climate conference prepared Wednesday to conclude their first week of work with moderate progress on some issues, and little time to gain more ground before ministers arrive. of governments for a final week of talks that will chart the planet’s path in the face of a crisis.
Wednesday’s sessions would focus on transportation, the second-highest carbon dioxide emitting sector warming the planet, with roundtables on building charging networks for electric vehicles and how to reduce emissions from urban freight transportation.
Despite the rapid increase in electric vehicles in some countries, oil still accounts for almost 91% of the energy used in the transportation sector, according to the International Energy Agency. This is a sector with industries that are difficult to transform, such as aviation and maritime transport, where reducing emissions will require greatly increasing the development of sustainable fuel for aviation and alternative fuels such as hydrogen for ships.
The climate conference scored some limited victories in its first week, when countries completed the creation of a “loss and damage” fund to compensate countries affected by climate disasters. Fifty oil companies promised to achieve emissions neutrality by 2030, an industry commitment to reduce greenhouse gases but “below what is necessary,” according to the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres.
However, environmentalists were focused on getting commitments that the world will abandon the consumption of coal, oil and natural gas. Climate negotiators were trying to determine how exactly to manage the fossil fuels that are overheating the planet.
Negotiators on Tuesday presented a new draft of what is expected to be the summit’s main document, called the global stocktake, but there were so many possibilities in its 24 pages that it did not give many clues regarding what will be agreed upon when the session ends next week. What is adopted must be agreed upon by consensus, so it must be almost unanimous.
“It’s quite broad,” COP28 Director General Adnan Amin told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “I think it offers a very good basis to continue moving forward. And we are especially pleased that it is so early in the process.”
That will leave room for quite a bit of negotiation, Amin said, especially on the future of fossil fuels, “where there will be a very intensive participatory process.”
Climate scientist Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, said the central theme of the meeting “is reaching a conclusion on phasing out fossil fuels. And unless we do that, I doubt we’re going to see an improvement in temperature.”
The options in the document ranged from a “phasing down of unmitigated coal power” to a simple but dramatic “orderly and fair phase-out of fossil fuels.”
Amin noted that as some countries, especially poorer ones, might find the concept of phasing out too restrictive, negotiators might look for alternative terms to the much-discussed semantic debate between phasing out or phasing out.
Scientists who closely follow climate measures said it was crucial to monitor the wording to look for loopholes.
“We must abandon fossil fuels completely without a back door,” said Niklas Hohne of the New Climate Institute. “At this conference, many back doors are being proposed at the negotiating tables (…) mainly to prolong the life of fossil fuels, and one of them is to talk regarding ‘unmitigated’ fossil fuels.”
Including the term “unmitigated” means allowing the burning of fossil fuels if their emissions can be captured and stored, a much-discussed technology that has not actually been proven to work well, Hohne and other scientists have noted.
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AP’s climate and environmental coverage is supported by several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for its content.
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