Oil producers water down provision on fossil fuel phase-out

“I cannot hide the fact from you that the text is disappointing,” EU climate commissioner said. “There are good things, but overall it is clearly insufficient and not adequate to addressing the problem we are here to address,” he said.

The main disappointment was over the dilution of a provision regarding the use of fossil fuels. The new draft called upon countries to “reduce both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner”.

Fossil fuels, which account for nearly 80 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, have never been mentioned in any COP decision earlier.

These decisions would only talk about the need to reduce emissions, but kept away from saying what needed to be done to reduce these emissions.

But with current efforts to reduce emissions proving to be extremely inadequate, pressure had been mounting on the countries to bite the bullet. COP28 is the first time that a fossil fuel phase-out was discussed in formal negotiations, but efforts to include a strong provision on this in the agreement has been meeting stiff resistance from oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia. In fact, a letter from the secretary general of Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC), addressed to its members and a few others, asking them to reject any such provision had created quite a storm here a few days ago. But their position seemed to have prevailed in getting the provision diluted in the latest draft agreement.

“Our red line is a strong commitment to keeping the 1.5 degree Celsius warming limit. Any text that compromises it will be rejected,” Cedric Schuster, a minister of Samoa who is the current chair of Alliance of Small Island States, said. But while the provision on fossil fuels was watered down, another one on phase-down of coal was retained, with a new requirement that placed restrictions on setting up of new coal-fired power plants and seemed to cross India’s red lines.

India did not react to Monday’s draft agreement, but has been making it clear that attempts to single out coal for accelerated reduction was discriminatory.