COP28 ended this Wednesday, December 13 with an agreement on a “transition” of the global energy system. With four decades of experience in the environmental field behind him, this former advisor to the American Secretary of State for Energy, co-founder of the International Climate Action Network, participated very closely in 27 COPs out of 28. Crossed at the end of the plenary session, he spoke into our microphone.
5 mins
Collected by our special correspondent in Dubai
What was the role of the United States and China in these negotiations? They seemed overshadowed by the role of the European Union and the Gulf countries?
It’s always useful when the United States and China, the two largest economies and the two largest emitters in the world, talk to each other, coordinate. The Sunnylands Declaration on Methane signed before the COP was an important sign. China has made progress on several important issues, notably with its methane reduction plan announced before the COP.
Here too they coordinated on the text, while on certain issues they were very far apart, such as on coal: the United States was lobbying against new power plants. Obviously, China and India were not satisfied and blocked this option. But on others, they found common ground and used it to convince other countries to use other wording. They have both been very active behind the scenes, perhaps not as visible as Europe, the islands, or the Africa group, but they are two very influential actors, the United States within the industrialized countries and China in the G77+China group.
There was something of a shift during this COP, we now place them in the “exit” camp, even if conditioned…
The United States knows it must meet its obligation to cut its emissions in half starting in 2030, and thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, it has made progress in this direction. China has committed to peak emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality in 2060. But at the same time they are building new coal-fired power plants, which is completely incompatible. So, it represents a gesture from China to have accepted this language [de transition hors des énergies fossiles, NDLR] and it will be interesting to see what China proposes in 2025 for these new commitments: will it commit to actually reducing its emissions and not just to reaching its peak? Will it have targets to reduce its methane emissions? I learned that its methane and other non-carbon greenhouse gas emissions alone would make it 3e transmitter in the world. Just to tell you the scale we are talking about regarding this country.
What assessment do you draw from the Al-Jaber presidency?
I give him credit for achieving this result. These were complicated negotiations. They managed to bring it together. Nobody got everything they wanted, but in the end everyone admitted it was an acceptable deal.
A problematic procedural point in my eyes: why did he not wait until the Small Island States were in the room to start the plenary? It’s a pretty big mistake that 38 states from this major group, which is very concerned about many things, are not in the room. I don’t know who decided this, but it’s unfortunate that the Samoan representative from these islands arrives and has to complain about a decision that had just been adopted without her and the other countries. It was a tactical error. But overall it was a well organized COP, the process was well run in many respects.
Now, the whole question is what the Emirates will do with all this for their economic model: will they continue their plans to almost double their oil production in the coming decades? This would show that they are not really respecting what they and other countries have committed to here in terms of moving away from fossil fuels.
Are the Gulf countries losers or winners at the end of this COP?
For thirty years, Saudi Arabia and its allies have built the wall of denial that has prevented us from naming fossil fuels as the primary source of the problem. It started to take a different turn two years ago in Glasgow, when there was a decision to reduce emissions from coal. This has greatly accelerated here with this decision to eject fossil fuels from the energy system, triple renewables and double its efficiency. They did not win, they slowed down the transition by resisting the language of “exit”. So we’re not going as fast as we should because of their tactics.
But they lost and this is clearly the beginning of the end for the oil industry. There’s a bit of panic among them, as we saw with this letter from Opec last week which encouraged its members to lobby against any mention of fossil fuels. They did not succeed. Fossil fuels were at the heart of these two weeks of negotiations and it is everywhere in the decision. Not as we would have liked, we wanted to see the “exit” explicitly written, but they failed to avoid it, which has been their goal for thirty years. The question now is how fast are we going to go?