Countries scramble to find meaningful agreement on future of fossil fuels

Climate activists attend a protest against fossil fuels during Cop 28 in Dubai. Picture: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images

Negotiations went long into the Dubai night as countries desperately scrambled to find meaningful consensus on the future of fossil fuels at the UN's Cop28 climate change summit.

An impasse over how oil, gas, and coal will be "phased out" remained the key sticking point as 198 countries tried to agree a deal that would save the UN's flagship climate event from being deemed a failure.

Environment Minister Eamon Ryan, who is a lead negotiator for the EU, had threatened on Monday to walk away from negotiations unless the first draft of the text agreement was made stronger in relation to fossil fuels.

Mr Ryan and the Irish delegation said they expected to be locked in negotiations until at least the middle of the night on Wednesday, long after Cop28 was supposed to have wrapped up on Tuesday morning local time.

The likes of Saudi Arabia, whose economy was built on vast reserves of oil, refused to countenance any mention of phasing down of fossil fuels, let alone a phasing out, showing just how difficult a consensus agreement is likely to be.

However, countries like Iraq, Sudan, and Guyana have also voiced their concerns about phasing out fossil fuels. 

Iraq and Sudan have pointed out that their developing economies cannot tackle the ravages of climate change unless they have vast funds to do so — which would come from fossil fuels unless they are provided with alternative sources of funding by richer countries, something Western powerhouses have been slow to do in the past.

Meanwhile, Guyana is on the cusp of transforming from South America's poorest country into one of the richest nations per head in the world after the recent discovery of around 11bn barrels of oil off its coast. 

Not being allowed to exploit its own resources or at least being compensated for not doing so is "colonialism" by another name, its president Irfaan Ali has said.

Meanwhile, small-island countries say they will not sign any agreement that does not have phasing out of fossil fuel in the text as it would be "signing our own death certificate", according to Samoan environment minister Cedric Shuster.

Protesters at Cop28. Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Smaller island nations and developing countries are by far the most vulnerable to climate change such as sea level rise and extreme weather events, despite evidence showing they are the least responsible for human-induced global warming.

According to the Paris Agreement of 2015, reached at Cop21, a 1.5C rise in temperatures was set as the limit for the rise globally compared to 1850-1900, in order to stave off the very worst fallout from climate change.

Cop28 has to consider the so-called "global stocktake", an examination of all the climate plans for countries across the world. It is expected to show that 1.5C is way off trajectory and that a massive ramping up of decarbonisation needs to take place between now and 2030.

While fossil fuels cannot be shut down overnight, nor is any country demanding such, some 80 countries and blocs such as the EU, US, and small-island states at least want the agreement to reflect a phasing out eventually in favour of renewable energy and cleaner technology.

The Cop28 agreement must be a consensus of the 198 rather than a majority rule.

The dependence on fossil fuels domestically has been laid bare by new figures from the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI).

Ireland imported 81.6% of its energy in 2022, and 85.8% of its energy came from fossil fuels, according to the SEAI Energy in Ireland report.

While greenhouse gas emissions in 2022 were the lowest of any year in the last quarter century, except Covid-hit 2020, the pace of reduction is not sufficient to meet our national climate obligations, the SEAI warned.

In 2022, transport energy demand rebounded to 95% of pre-Covid 2019 levels, and data from January to September 2023 indicates continuing rebounds in petrol, diesel, and jet kerosene demand, the SEAI said. 

Transport emissions this year will likely be higher than last year, at odds with the obligations of our legally binding carbon budgets, it warned.

"Despite all the evidence, we are not yet acting in line with what climate science tells us, that we are living through a climate emergency," SEAI director of research and policy insights Margie McCarthy said.

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