Cop28 draft agreement drops call for fossil fuel phase out

The US says the lanuage needs to be ‘substantially strengthened’ while one of the most vulnerable nations to the climate crisis, the Marshall Islands, said they had not come to the summit to ‘sign our death warrant’

In the final 24 hours before Cop28 is due to officially end, the reference to a “phase-out” of fossil fuels has been removed from the latest draft of the final agreement.

Calling time on fossil fuels, the root cause of the climate crisis, has emerged as the central battle of the Dubai negotiations.

The European Union and vulnerable, developing countries have called for fossil fuels to be phased out while oil-rich nations, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, have strongly opposed. “Phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels had been included as an option in an earlier draft agreement but has now been deleted.

Countries including the United States, Germany and France all said that the draft did not go far enough. The US State Department called for the text to be “substantially strengthened”. EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra called the text “disappointing”, while Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock called key elements “unacceptable”.

“The need for urgency to replace and reduce fossil fuels in the power sector in this critical decade is completely missing,” she said.

Climate-vulnerable nations were much more stark. “We did not come here to sign our death warrant. We came here to fight for 1.5C and for the only way to achieve that: a fossil fuel phase-out … We will not go silently to our watery graves,” said John M Silk, the Marshall Islands minister of natural resources and commerce.

The latest version of the Global Stocktake under the Paris Agreement, now calls for:

• Reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a “just, orderly and equitable manner” so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science.
• A second statement called for “accelerating zero and low emissions technologies ... renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies, including such as carbon capture and utilisation and storage, and low carbon hydrogen production, so as to enhance efforts towards substitution of unabated fossil fuels in energy systems”.

An earlier draft had a range of options, the strongest of which was: “A phase-out of fossil fuels in line with best available science.” But it also offered the possibility of no mention of fossil fuels as an option.

Cop28 is the first time that fossil fuels have been mentioned in a global climate crisis agreement, but it is the wording around their future that is key.

The Cop28 presidency, held by host nation UAE, said that the text was a “huge step forward” and was now “in the hands of the parties, who we trust to do what is best for humanity and the planet”.

Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the United Arab Emirates Cop28 president, told the summit that progress had been made but that “we still have a lot to do”.

“You know what remains to be agreed. And you know that I want you to deliver the highest ambition on all items including on fossil fuel language,” he said.

Saudi Arabia and Iraq were named as among those who had blocked a “phase-out” and “phase-down” by those close to the talks.

Many elements of the agreement are still under fierce debate, with many countries arguing about the future of sustainable energy.

“This text is a nightmare of weak proposals and internal contradictions,” said Tom Evans of the European think tank E3G. “The next 17 hours must see the champions of ambition rally hard.”

For now, the draft only states that countries “could” take action. The words “oil and gas” also do not appear in the text.

The UN climate summit is due to end at 11am local time on Tuesday.

Alok Sharma, the UK’s Cop26 president who broke down in tears over the fractious final debate in Glasgow, said that it was “difficult” to see how the text “will help to achieve the deep and rapid cut in emissions we need by 2030 to keep 1.5C alive”.

He wrote on Twitter: “With so many countries backing clear language on fossil-fuel-phase-out, who does this text actually serve?”