UN Cop 30 Summit To Consider Just Transition Demand By Fossil Fuel Dependent Economies

An expected balanced approach towards transitioning away from fossil fuels is being proposed at the UN Cop 30 climate summit’s presidency which is expected to take into account demands of fossil dependent countries.

The roadmap for the transition away from fossil fuels being drafted by the UN Cop 30 climate summit’s presidency will “reflect diverse national circumstances”, the Cop 30 presidency said on Friday during the Bonn climate talks.

The roadmap which was first proposed by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during Cop 30 held in Brazil last November will consider “different levels of socioeconomic development, energy access, fossil fuel dependency and capacity to transition”, among other factors, the Cop 30 presidency said.

The roadmap has so far received input from 115 countries and 247 non-state actors, the presidency said.

The Cop 30 presidency has so far identified four main levers to accelerate the roadmap’s implementation.

They include reforming the international financial architecture, which would include linking debt-relief mechanisms to the transition away from fossil fuels and increasing access to concessional finance and global carbon markets; strengthening capacity-building, enabling technology sharing, in particular in transportation, supporting innovation in hard-to-abate sectors and increasing energy efficiency and electrification rates; and implementing regional and global cooperation mechanisms to reform international trade and legal framework for investments, and foster producer-consumer dialogue as well as prioritizing the just transition, particularly for fossil fuel-dependent economies, by addressing competing development priorities, with information integrity and building trust across countries at different stages of development.

During the meeting, a representative from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IEA) agreed that electrification will be key to the global transition away from fossil fuels.

The topic is set to take center stage during Cop 31, which will be held in Turkey in November, as that country has proposed a global goal for electricity to reach 35 per cent of global final energy consumption by 2035 as part of its action agenda.

Some of the main barriers encountered so far for the transition away from fossil fuels are “structural imbalances in the global financial architecture, insufficient de-risking mechanisms and continued international finance flows towards fossil projects”, the Cop 30 presidency added.

The presidency has also found that the concentration of clean energy supply chains, the high-cost nature of nascent, hard-to-abate solutions, and limited technology sharing, as well as the absence of dedicated transition coordination mechanisms, also hinder the transition.

Other factors such as insufficient political leadership, geopolitical uncertainty and armed conflicts such as the Iran war and outdated legal and trade frameworks are also hurdles for the transition.

“The recent geopolitical crisis has shown very clearly how fossil fuels are linked to vulnerabilities, and we need to address this in the roadmap,” Cop 30 president Andre Correa do Lago said.

But the roadmap’s implementation will be much easier than other climate negotiations, he added.

“The great advantage of implementation is that we have much more freedom to implement than to negotiate,” he said. “Negotiation requires consensus; implementation does not.”

The Cop 30 presidency expects to unveil the roadmap during Cop 31. It is also working on a roadmap to address deforestation, which it will also unveil at Cop 31.