With less than two months to go until the UN climate conference in Dubai (COP28), the countries staged yesterday in Madrid the different positions on the desirability of accelerating the rate of elimination of fossil fuels, main responsible for climate change. It was a meeting with representatives of energy and the environment, held within the framework of the Spanish presidency of the EU and in collaboration with the International Energy Agency (IEA). In this meeting, the Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, defended that the big banks stop financing oil, gas and coal extraction operations.
In order to move us towards the decarbonisation of the economy, Ribera called on the large financial conglomerates to be "congruent" with the energy transition and incorporate the needs of the climate into their decisions.
The debate is on the table. A consensus is emerging to triple the power of renewable sources by 2030, double energy efficiency and promote the "decline" of fossil fuels. IEA Director General Faith Birol used this term while Ribera spoke of "pointing the way out" of fossil fuels.
But there is still a way to go and there is some progress. Yesterday, the president of the COP28, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, also the executive director of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), announced in a recorded video that more than twenty oil and gas companies, including state-owned companies , have responded positively to calls to align around a goal of net zero emissions by 2050, in order to eliminate methane emissions and thereby end such routine burning by 2030. The organizer of the climate summit did not name the companies that accept the commitment, but he did warn that countries are not on track to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. "The figures are clear", he said.
The Director General of the IEA also called for a reduction in the use of fossil fuels and defended a mechanism to support the financing of the installation of clean energy in developing countries.
The preparatory meeting in Madrid served, therefore, to confirm that the countries are not "aligned with the objectives of the Paris Agreement (...) but we cannot stop there", claimed Teresa Ribera. "Anticipating this conversation has been an opportunity to identify meeting points, problems and concerns", he explained. The participants did not agree on a statement, although many of them wanted to leave it clearly established "that there should be no new exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels, and especially of coal; and even less if they do not have [carbon] capture systems to eliminate emissions”.
The meeting took place after the recent presentation of the results of the technical dialogue to prepare the first draft of a major global balance sheet on compliance with the Paris Agreement. The document, published by the secretariat of the UN Climate Change Convention, warns that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees requires a cut in global emissions of 43% by 2030 and 60 % for 2035 compared to 2019. That is why "all fossil fuels must be phased out", the UN defends, although delimiting the suppression to those that lack methods to reduce emissions.
The fossil fuel industry is promoting active campaigns in order to defend that they could continue to produce when their emissions are prevented from entering the atmosphere, using carbon capture technologies. Many scientists, experts and countries reject this position.
