Deal to Transition Away from Fossil Fuels Made during COP28 Climate Summit
On Wednesday, government ministers representing nearly 200 countries agreed on a deal calling for a transition away from fossil fuels.
According to NBC News, the deal, which occurred during the COP28 climate change summit, was made following a backlash against a previous proposal.
“With an unprecedented reference to transitioning away from all fossil fuels, The UAE Consensus is delivering a paradigm shift that has the potential to redefine our economies,” the summit’s UAE presidency said on X.
The conference has been taking place in the past two weeks and is hosted by Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
“We delivered world first after world first,” the UAE summit presidency said in a follow-up post on social media.
“A global goal to triple renewables and double energy efficiency. Declarations on agriculture, food, and health. More oil and gas companies are stepping up for the first time on methane and emissions. And we have language on fossil fuels in our final agreement.”
The recent proposal, which the UAE published earlier on Wednesday, called for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”
The proposal also called for “accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power” and “tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.”
However, the text did not include a phase-out commitment, which would have required an absolute shift away from fossil fuels, while a “phase-down” would have suggested a reduction in their use despite it not being an absolute end.
The previous draft sparked criticism for not including language on fossil fuels. On Monday, discussions with the latest proposal took place. Wopke Hoekstra, EU commissioner for climate action, described “various phases of hope, sometimes also of despair” throughout the talks.
“One of the things that truly made a difference, I feel, is the tremendous amount of diplomacy we have deployed and the bridge building we did with our friends in the Pacific and the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and Asia and, of course, also North America to make sure that that supermajority … would show what it needs in terms of mitigation of human products,” he added.
On Tuesday, Alok Sharma, the U.K.’s COP26 president, contended that only a deal including “very clear” language on the phase-out of fossil fuels and an effective plan to deliver that would be sufficient to maintain the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
As stated in the 2015 Paris Agreement, reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius is the end goal regarding the global temperature limit.
“If we don’t agree on that language, I think the consequences will be grave,” Sharma told CNBC’s “Street Signs Europe.”
Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/Fadel Dawod / Stringer
Video Courtesy: Associated Press via YouTube
Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for Christian Headlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
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