How to decarbonise flying is Cop talking point

Security patrols outside the venue for the Cop29 UN Climate Summit n Baku, Azerbaijan. Picture: AP 

To get from Ballincollig to Baku, where I’m attending Cop29 in Azerbaijan, I took two buses, two planes, a shuttle bus and I walked the last kilometre. The two buses burned diesel, but that could soon change as electric buses are currently being rolled out across Ireland. 

Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) could reduce aviation’s environmental impact, but currently contributes less than 1% to the sector’s global energy demand. How to decarbonise flying is one of the many difficult topics that will be discussed at this year’s Cop.

Cop — Conference of the Parties — is an annual gathering of the countries of the world organised by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Its aim is to limit global warming “to well below 2C" and to pursue efforts “to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C”. That target was agreed in Paris in 2015 and since then the focus has been on devising and implementing plans to achieve those targets.

The annual COP is an opportunity to evaluate progress on climate action. Last year the Global Stocktake concluded that the current set of country-specific climate mitigation plans (NDCs) would put the world on a path to 2.5C warming. 2024 is widely expected to be the warmest year on record, breaching the 1.5C threshold. Rising temperatures and associated extreme events — such as the recent floods in Spain — underscores the urgency for this year’s delegates.

An outcome of last year’s Cop28 in Dubai was an agreement to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy” together with pledges to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030. Cop29 in Azerbaijan has been billed as the finance Cop. Success or failure will be measured on whether or not the countries of the world can agree sufficient levels of climate finance to support the necessary investments in clean energy, the loss and damages fund (to assist developing countries that are particularly vulnerable), climate adaptation, and the technology mechanism (to fund technology transfer).

In 2016, when Donald Trump was first elected to the White House, global investment in clean energy first began to exceed investment in fossil fuels. This year, global investment in clean energy was double the investment in fossil fuels. But there is still a long way to go. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that another doubling of clean energy investment will be required by 2030. The return of Donald Trump to the White House will be keenly watched and discussed at Cop29. Observers will be particularly interested in any action he takes on the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which in just two years has massively accelerated increased clean energy investment in the USA and (in response) in Europe.

Despite the overwhelming benefits of climate action — cleaner air, a safer planet, healthier homes, lower fuel bills — the governments of the world do not share a unanimous view of what to do. The upfront costs of climate action are high and the savings are in the medium and long-term. Not all political systems can see beyond the short-term.

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So why travel to Cop? I’ll be attending as part of the UCC delegation of five staff students. Each year UCC sends a delegation to observe proceedings and to participate via submitting statements, speaking at side-events and contributing during workshops and meetings. Cops are mammoth events. In addition to country delegates and environmental organisations, many fossil fuel lobbyists will also be attending. It is hugely important for scientists and researchers to be on hand to present the facts, to counter disinformation and to remind all negotiators of the urgent need for accelerated and equitable climate action.

Fionn Rogan is a Senior Research Fellow in MaREI and is located in the Environmental Research Institute in UCC