Cop28 landmark deal agreed to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels

Nearly 200 countries at the Cop28 climate summit have agreed to a deal that, for the first time, calls on all nations to transition away from fossil fuels to avert the worst effects of climate change.

After two weeks of at-times fractious negotiations in the United Arab Emirates, the agreement was quickly gavelled through by the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, on Wednesday morning, receiving an ovation from delegates and a hug from UN climate chief, Simon Stiell.

The agreement did not include an explicit commitment to phase out or phase down fossil fuels, as many countries, civil society groups and scientists had urged.

Instead, it reached a compromise that called on countries to contribute to global efforts to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems “in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

Al Jaber said the deal delivered a comprehensive response to a global stocktake of whether countries were living up to the landmark Paris climate agreement reached in 2015.

“We have delivered a robust action plan to keep 1.5C (2.7F) [of global heating above preindustrial levels] in reach,” he said. “It is a plan that is led by the science. It is an enhanced, balanced, but make no mistake, a historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the UAE consensus. We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever.”

There was confusion in the plenary hall shortly after the agreement was passed as many parties had assumed there would be a debate over the text, which was released to countries for consideration only four hours before it was passed.

The Alliance of Small Island States, representing 39 countries, said it had not been in the room when the deal was adopted as it was still coordinating its response. Its lead negotiator, Anne Rasmussen from Samoa, did not formally object to that decision and believed the deal had “many good elements”, but she said “the process has failed us” and did not go far enough. She said the deal had a “litany of loopholes”

“We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support,” she said.

António Guterres, the UN secretary general, tweeted after the deal was agreed: “Whether you like it or not, fossil fuel phase-out is inevitable. Let’s hope it doesn’t come too late.”

John Kerry, the US climate envoy, said: “While nobody here will see their views completely reflected, the fact is that this document sends a very strong signal to the world. We have to adhere to keeping 1.5C [of heating about [preindustrial levels] in reach. In particular, it states that our next [nationally determined commitments] will be aligned with 1.5C.”

Kerry announced that the US and China – the world’s two biggest emitters – had agreed “that we both intend to update our long term strategies and we invite other parties in joining us”.

The deal said countries recognised “the need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5C pathways”, and called for a tripling of global renewable energy capacity by 2030. It repeated language agreed at previous summits calling on nations to accelerate efforts “towards the phase-down of unabated coal power”.

It also called for the development of a list of “zero- and low-emission technologies” including “renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilisation and storage, particularly in hard-to-abate sectors, and low-carbon hydrogen production”.

Climate justice advocates said the text fell far short of what was needed for a fair transition. It was missing a path to collecting the hundreds of billions in finance needed for developing countries to help transition away from coal, oil and gas.

The draft is meant to reflect the consensus view of the nearly 200 countries gathered at the conference in Dubai, where scores of governments have insisted on strong language to signal an eventual end to the fossil fuel era against protests from Saudi Arabia and members of the oil cartel Opec.

Mohamed Adow, from the thinktank Power Shift Africa, said it was the “first time in three decades of climate negotiations the words fossil fuels have ever made it into a Cop outcome”.

“The genie is never going back into the bottle and future Cops will only turn the screws even more on dirty energy,” he said.

But while this sent a strong signal, he said there were still too many loopholes “on unproven and expensive technologies like carbon capture and storage, which fossil fuel interests will try and use to keep dirty energy on life support”.

“Some people may have had their expectations for this meeting raised too high, but this result would have been unheard of two years ago, especially at a Cop meeting in a petrostate. It shows that even oil and gas producers can see we’re heading for a fossil-free world,” he said.

Jaber had earlier engaged in an intense round of shuttle diplomacy throughout Tuesday and had meetings with heads of delegations singly and in groups until 3am on Wednesday. It followed widespread unhappiness with an earlier draft that was roundly rejected as “grossly insufficient”, “incoherent” and a “death certificate” for low-lying and vulnerable nations.