Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

The Paragraph that Could Make or Break COP28

Here’s the biggest point of contention in the all-important global stocktake.

Paragraph being edited
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s day seven of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, and while today’s official talks and panels will focus on green solutions for cities, a debate about the future of fossil fuels is raging on the sidelines.

Delegates argued well into the night Tuesday over the wording that will appear in the final draft of the all-important global stocktake (GST), which will be presented at the end of the conference. The GST is the “heart” of COP, Politico says. It summarizes how nations are performing on the climate pledges made in Paris in 2015, and sets an agenda for the next five years and beyond.

The biggest point of contention is the document’s 35th paragraph, which will lay out the plans for fossil fuels. Will they be phased out? If so, how? One option put forward calls for a full phase out, which would mean shifting away from oil, gas, and coal as sources of energy, with the goal of eventually eliminating their use. "The goal is an energy system that has no emissions," Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barthe Eide told Reuters. The second option calls for phasing out “unabated” fossil fuels, which is slightly murkier since a standard definition of “unabated” doesn’t exist. But the term generally refers to the burning of fossil fuels without attempts to capture and store the related emissions. Carbon Brief points out that carbon capture and storage technologies “barely exists and relying on a major scale-up is considered ‘risky.’” A third option is to include no text on the subject at all. Seeing as how fossil fuels are the main driver of climate change, the world’s plan to wean itself off them is paramount.

Screenshot

But according to climate policy advocate and lawyer Natalie Jones, China, India, and the Arab Coordination Group of countries have proposed deleting paragraph 35 entirely. That means no mention of a phase out whatsoever. But paragraph 35 contains other important commitments, too, including tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, scaling up low-emissions technologies like green hydrogen, and ending permits for new unabated coal power plants. So scrapping this paragraph altogether could well and truly torpedo the potential for this COP to produce bold, ambitious, and unambiguous climate action.

All is not lost, though. Other countries including Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, the EU, and Norway are reportedly trying to keep the prospect of a fossil fuel phase out alive by floating language tweaks to make the paragraph more palatable. This might work. As former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, who is seen as one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, said recently: “The only way to get to agreed text very often relies on creative ambiguity.”

And “quiet progress” is being made in other areas: BusinessGreen reports Spain, Kenya, and Samoa have joined a coalition to phase out domestic oil and gas production. Plus a group of 63 nations including the U.S. and Canada pledged to reduce their cooling-related emissions dramatically by 2050.

When stocktake negotiations came to a close Tuesday night, there was no new consensus on the phase-out language. The existing December 5 draft, with paragraph 35 still intact, heads to country ministers for consideration.

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Spotlight

The Moss Landing Battery Backlash Has Spread Nationwide

New York City may very well be the epicenter of this particular fight.

Moss Landing.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Library of Congress

It’s official: the Moss Landing battery fire has galvanized a gigantic pipeline of opposition to energy storage systems across the country.

As I’ve chronicled extensively throughout this year, Moss Landing was a technological outlier that used outdated battery technology. But the January incident played into existing fears and anxieties across the U.S. about the dangers of large battery fires generally, latent from years of e-scooters and cellphones ablaze from faulty lithium-ion tech. Concerned residents fighting projects in their backyards have successfully seized upon the fact that there’s no known way to quickly extinguish big fires at energy storage sites, and are winning particularly in wildfire-prone areas.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Hotspots

The Race to Qualify for Renewable Tax Credits Is on in Wisconsin

And more on the biggest conflicts around renewable energy projects in Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland.

The United States.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. St. Croix County, Wisconsin - Solar opponents in this county see themselves as the front line in the fight over Trump’s “Big Beautiful” law and its repeal of Inflation Reduction Act tax credits.

  • Xcel’s Ten Mile Creek solar project doesn’t appear to have begun construction yet, and like many facilities it must begin that process by about this time next year or it will lose out on the renewable energy tax credits cut short by the new law. Ten Mile Creek has essentially become a proxy for the larger fight to build before time runs out to get these credits.
  • Xcel told county regulators last month that it hoped to file an application to the Wisconsin Public Services Commission by the end of this year. But critics of the project are now telling their allies they anticipate action sooner in order to make the new deadline for the tax credit — and are campaigning for the county to intervene if that occurs.
  • “Be on the lookout for Xcel to accelerate the PSC submittal,” Ryan Sherley, a member of the St. Croix Board of Supervisors, wrote on Facebook. “St. Croix County needs to legally intervene in the process to ensure the PSC properly hears the citizens and does not rush this along in order to obtain tax credits.”

2. Barren County, Kentucky - How much wood could a Wood Duck solar farm chuck if it didn’t get approved in the first place? We may be about to find out.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Q&A

All the Renewables Restrictions Fit to Print

Talking local development moratoria with Heatmap’s own Charlie Clynes.

The Q&A subject.
Heatmap Illustration

This week’s conversation is special: I chatted with Charlie Clynes, Heatmap Pro®’s very own in-house researcher. Charlie just released a herculean project tracking all of the nation’s county-level moratoria and restrictive ordinances attacking renewable energy. The conclusion? Essentially a fifth of the country is now either closed off to solar and wind entirely or much harder to build. I decided to chat with him about the work so you could hear about why it’s an important report you should most definitely read.

The following chat was lightly edited for clarity. Let’s dive in.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow