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unabated fossil fuels
Global South Decries 'Weak' Progress on Climate Adaptation at COP28
"There are countries here with the capacity to ensure the outcome of this summit is historic for the right reasons," said Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders. "They need to lean in now with ambition and urgency."
Dec 10, 2023
With just two days left until the conclusion of the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai, climate justice advocates from the Global South on Sunday expressed alarm over the latest draft of the Global Goal on Adaptation, a document being negotiated at the summit as policymakers finalize an agreement on further progress that must be made to limit planetary heating.
African countries proposed a Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) a decade ago, and a number of advocates warned Sunday that the document so far appears "vague," with insufficient financial pledges from fossil fuel-producing nations to help the Global South to adapt various sectors—including agriculture, water, and transportation—to the climate emergency.
"Across the world millions of people, most of whom are least responsible for carbon emissions, are attempting to adapt their lives and livelihoods to a distorted climate," wrote Mohamed Adow, founder and director of Power Shift Africa, at Climate Change News. "Although it isn't just about money, funding is important and severely lacking. The goal for 2023 was to raise $300 million for the Adaptation Fund, but at COP28 we've only seen $169 million in pledges, a mere 56% of the intended amount."
On social media, Simon Evans, deputy editor of Carbon Brief, provided an analysis of Sunday's draft, which he said was "very heavily qualitative, not quantitative" and includes only a "vague link to finance."
"Qualitative targets" in the text include "significantly reducing climate induced water scarcity" and "strengthening resilience"—phrases that "could mean almost anything," said Evans.
The draft reiterates an earlier call for wealthy nations to double adaptation finance by 2025, but only "urges" and "invites" governments to provide resources for developing countries that are disproportionately affected by climate-linked sea level rise, drought, and flooding—despite the fact that the entire continent of Africa is behind just 4% of planet-heating global greenhouse gas emissions.
The call to "urge" powerful countries to contribute meaningfully to a climate adaptation fund "is code for 'only if you feel like it, but no worries if you don't'," said Teresa Anderson, global climate justice lead for ActionAid.
"Overall, the text is weak and doesn't sufficiently address the aspiration for setting the required adaptation measures and indicators and mobilizing adaptation financing," said Adow.
The U.N. Environment Program said in November that between $215 billion and $387 billion is needed annually to help the Global South adapt their infrastructure to the climate crisis. In 2021, just $21 billion was provided.
While developed countries "have committed to at least double adaptation finance by 2025," said Obed Koringo of CARE Denmark, "a detailed roadmap is the only way to achieve this. This must set out what individual developed countries plan to provide by 2025 and how this adds up to $40 billion annually."
"It is disappointing to see that negotiations on adaptation are hurtling towards a damaging global failure," said Koringo. "We are afraid that it will have catastrophic consequences for communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis, especially in Africa... Failure to invest in adaptation, including early warning systems, flood defenses, and drought-resistant crops, will only increase the costs of loss and damage in the long run."
African policymakers this weekend also continued to sound alarms over the language being negotiated for the Global Stocktake (GST), the document that's expected to direct countries on how to proceed to limit planetary heating. Climate campaigners have joined experts in demanding a phaseout of fossil fuels, but European and American negotiators have pushed for language that would call only for a "phasedown," and fossil fuel-producing countries are demanding that the agreement address only "unabated" emissions—allowing for failed technical fixes like carbon capture instead of moving to reduce emissions altogether.
"Allowing 'abated' fossil fuels will mean developed countries which can afford expensive carbon capture technologies can keep expanding," chief Egyptian negotiator Mohamed Nasr told The Guardian.
Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders, called on governments including Saudi Arabia, the U.S., and the E.U to "abandon their subterfuge" and stop "obstructing a livable future."
"I fear COP28 is falling short of what is required to stay within the 1.5°C warming threshold. The science tells us we are in grave danger of bequeathing our children a completely unlivable world," said Robinson. "There are countries here with the capacity to ensure the outcome of this summit is historic for the right reasons. They need to lean in now with ambition and urgency. COP28 presents an opportunity for leaders to be on the right side of history."
"Governments must not leave this summit without an agreement to phase out all fossil fuels," she said, "and this agreement must not be at the expense of other critical workstreams here."
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Relying on Carbon Capture and Storage Could Unleash 'Carbon Bomb'
"We need to cut through the smoke and mirrors of 'abated' fossil and keep our eyes fixed on the goal of 1.5°C," said a co-author of a new analysis.
Dec 05, 2023
While the United Nations climate summit continued in the Middle East, researchers in Germany warned Tuesday that depending on technology to trap and sequester planet-heating pollution could unleash a "carbon bomb" in the decades ahead.
Specifically, the new briefing from the Berlin-based think thank Climate Analytics states that reliance on carbon capture and storage (CCS) could release an extra 86 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere between 2020 and 2050.
"The climate talks at COP28 have centered around the need for a fossil fuel phaseout," the publication notes, referring to the United Arab Emirates-hosted U.N. conference. "But some are calling for this to be limited to 'unabated' fossil fuels."
"The term 'abated' is being used as a Trojan horse to allow fossil fuels with dismal capture rates to count as climate action."
Over 100 countries at COP28 support calling for "accelerating efforts toward phasing out unabated fossil fuels," or operations that don't involve technological interventions such as CCS," as Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday.
The new briefing highlights the risks of targeting only unabated fossil fuels. Contrary to claims that significant oil and gas consumption can continue thanks to new tech, it says, "pathways that achieve the Paris agreement's 1.5°C limit in a sustainable manner show a near complete phaseout of fossil fuels by around 2050 and rely to a very limited degree, if at all, on fossil CCS."
Additionally, "there is no agreed definition of the concept of abatement," and "a weak definition of 'abated'—or even no definition at all—could allow poorly performing fossil CCS projects to be classed as abated," the document explains. The report's authors suggest that the focus on unabated fossil fuels is driven by polluters who want to keep cashing in on wrecking the planet.
"The term 'abated' is being used as a Trojan horse to allow fossil fuels with dismal capture rates to count as climate action," declared report co-author Claire Fyson. "'Abated' may sound like harmless jargon, but it's actually language deliberately engineered and heavily promoted by the oil and gas industry to create the illusion we can keep expanding fossil fuels."
Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare, who also contributed to the document, said that "the false promises of 'abated' fossil fuels risks climate finance being funneled to fossil projects, particularly oil and gas, and will greenwash the 'unabatable' emissions from their final use, which account for 90% of fossil oil and gas emissions."
Report co-author Neil Grant stressed that "we need to cut through the smoke and mirrors of 'abated' fossil and keep our eyes fixed on the goal of 1.5°C. That means slashing fossil fuel production by around 40% this decade, and a near complete phaseout of fossil fuels by around 2050."
As a Tuesday analysis from the Civil Society Equity Review details, a "fair" phaseout by mid-century would involve rich nations ditching oil and gas faster than poor countries, and the former pouring billions of dollars into helping the latter. The United States, for example, should end fossil fuel use by 2031 and contribute $97.1 billion per year toward the global energy transition.
The United States is putting money toward what critics call "false solutions" like carbon capture, and it is not alone. An Oil Change International (OCI) report from last week notes that "governments have spent over $20 billion—and have legislated or announced policies that could spend up to $200 billion more—of public money on CCS, providing a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry."
OCI found that rather than permanently sequestering carbon dioxide, 79% of the global CCS capacity sends captured CO2 to stimulate oil production in aging wells, which is called "enhanced oil recovery." The group also reviewed six leading plants in the United States, Australia, and the Middle East, and concluded that they "overpromise and underdeliver, operating far below capacity."
Lorne Stockman, OCI's research director, asserted last week that "governments need to stop pretending that fossil fuels aren't the problem. Instead of throwing a multibillion-dollar lifeline to the fossil fuel industry with our tax dollars, they should fund real climate solutions, including renewable energy and energy efficiency. Fossil fuel phaseout must be the central theme of COP28, not dangerous distractions like CCS propped up with public money."
Underscoring Stockman's point that such projects are incredibly expensive, the University of Oxford's Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment on Monday published research showing that a high carbon capture and storage pathway to net-zero emissions in 2050 could cost at least $30 trillion more than a low CCS pathway.
"Relying on mass deployment of CCS to facilitate high ongoing use of fossil fuels would cost society around a trillion dollars extra each year—it would be highly economically damaging," said Rupert Way, an honorary research associate at the school.
"Any hopes that the cost of CCS will decline in a similar way to renewable technologies like solar and batteries appear misplaced," he added. "Our findings indicate a lack of technological learning in any part of the process, from CO2 capture to burial, even though all elements of the chain have been in use for decades."
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COP28 Stocktake Draft Reveals Vital Battle Over 'Unabated' Fossil Fuels
The draft offers "the fossil fuel industry a lifeline with dangerous distractions, like carbon capture and storage, and other abatement technologies," said one campaigner.
Dec 05, 2023
With a week left until the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference wraps up with a long-awaited "Global Stocktake" that will measure countries' progress towards the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, a draft of the document released Tuesday revealed a strong push to include a major loophole for the biggest fossil fuel producers—in the form of language that would allow so-called "abated" emissions.
More than 100 countries reportedly support a clause in the Global Stocktake that would call for "accelerating efforts toward phasing out unabated fossil fuels"—emissions that are not "captured" through technological fixes like carbon capture and storage (CCS) before they reach the atmosphere. That option in the text also calls on countries to "rapidly" reduce unabated fossil fuels "so as to achieve net zero CO2 in energy systems by or around mid-century."
The Biden administration, among other wealthy governments, has backed an expansion of CCS, offering $1.2 billion in grants for two projects this year. Analysts warn the technology would actually increase energy consumption by 20%, ultimately increasing the carbon emissions that CCS proponents claim are "abated" by the technology, as well as worsening environmental injustice by ramping up smog, benzene, and formaldehyde emissions in fenceline communities.
Other options in the draft text include a call for "an orderly and just phaseout of fossil fuels," which more than 25 countries support, according to BusinessGreen, and no mention at all of a phaseout.
Another paragraph in the draft included an agreement that countries will rapidly phase out "unabated coal power this decade" and ban the building of new coal power plants, and a second option would omit any mention of phasing out coal.
Romain Ioualalen, global policy manager for Oil Change International, acknowledged that just "three years ago, it would have been unimaginable to see governments consider an inclusion of fossil fuel phaseout in any [Conference of the Parties] agreement," which organizers and governments in the Global South have aggressively campaigned for in recent years.
The ultimate goal for the Global Stocktake, however, said Ioualalen, is "an agreement to immediately decline fossil fuel production and use... as well as a full, fast, fair, and funded fossil fuel phaseout."
The draft released on Wednesday goes in the opposite direction, he said, giving "the fossil fuel industry a lifeline with dangerous distractions, like carbon capture and storage, and other abatement technologies."
"We urge parties to hold a strong line against these failed technologies and refuse any language that allows fossil fuel companies to justify continued oil and gas extraction," said Ioualalen.
Pivoting to technologies like carbon capture and storage instead of focusing on sharply dialing down all carbon emissions, he added, would "blow us well past 1.5°C [in planetary heating], and lead to catastrophic climate consequences."
As author and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben wrote in a column earlier this week, countries that are embracing technologies like CCS are playing into the hands of fossil fuel giants.
"It's abundantly clear that coal, oil, and gas are breaking the climate system; it's also abundantly clear that the people who own coal, oil, and gas reserves don't care," wrote McKibben. "In an effort to keep burning them, so they can continue to collect the returns, they propose building vast engineering projects alongside fossil-fuel generating plants, to capture the carbon dioxide from the exhaust stream. That is, they want to 'abate' the damage of their product."
Scientists have warned that eight years after the Paris climate agreement was finalized with a goal of limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C—or as far below 2°C as possible—the world is currently on track to warm by 3°C this century.
Global carbon emissions have continued to rise in recent years as countries including the U.S. and the U.K. have approved major fossil fuel projects despite warnings from energy and climate experts that oil, gas, and coal extraction have no place on a pathway to 1.5°C.
The final Global Stocktake, said Shirley Matheson, the World Wildlife Fund's global nationally-determined contribution enhancement coordinator, must force governments to "face up to the consequences of their collective inaction, and commit to strengthen climate ambition and action in line with limiting global warming to 1.5°C."
Matheson called the current draft "bloated" and expressed hope that countries in attendance at the conference (COP28) will adopt a Global Stocktake with the best options included in the draft.
"Good language on phasing out fossil fuels is included as an option, and new text options have been added that call for stronger ambition in the national climate plans, and a new collective goal for 60% emissions cuts by 2035," she said. "These signals are essential to create the conditions for more ambitious commitments and more international cooperation to achieve them."
"Time is running out for negotiators to agree on a draft text with clear political options for ministers later in the week," she added. "Countries must work together to achieve science-aligned guidance and ways forward for a dramatic course correction of climate action. This will give us the best chance of securing a livable planet."
As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, a record number of fossil fuel industry lobbyists are also attending COP28, leaving campaigners concerned that the final agreements out of the summit will include significant loopholes for the industry.
“Global leaders have to deliver a full package," said Ioualalen. "We will not accept weak outcomes only on coal or renewables, and without addressing the primary driver of the climate crisis, fossil fuels."
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Why 'Abated' Is Now the Most Dangerous Word in the World
The point of climate negotiations should not be to produce a deal, it’s to stop the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And that means a full phaseout of fossil fuels.
Dec 03, 2023
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has been, for several years now, tied with Greta Thunberg as the most outspoken global leader in his attacks on the fossil fuel industry. (He memorably told oil industry executives, for instance, that “your core product is our core problem.”) And his introductory remarks at COP 28 this week were no exception.
“Earth’s vital signs are failing,” said the man with the best mandate to actually speak for the Earth. “Record emissions, ferocious fires, deadly droughts and the hottest year ever.”
But when he got to specifics, Guterres was even more on point. “The science is clear,” he said. “We must accelerate a just, equitable transition to renewables.”
“The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels.
Not reduce.
Not abate.
Phaseout – with a clear timeframe aligned with 1.5 degrees”
I want to focus on one word in that litany: “abate.”
What Guterres is trying to head off is the fossil fuel industry scam de jour decade. It’s abundantly clear that coal, oil and gas are breaking the climate system; it’s also abundantly clear that the people who own coal, oil and gas reserves don’t care. In an effort to keep burning them, so they can continue to collect the returns, they propose building vast engineering projects alongside fossil-fuel generating plants, to capture the carbon dioxide from the exhaust stream. That is, they want to “abate” the damage of their product.
Activists have been demanding a fossil fuel phase out, but the power brokers—U.S. climate envoy John Kerry chief among them—have been offering instead a phaseout of “unabated” fossil fuel.
It doesn’t really work—one attempt after another has been abandoned, and Stanford’s Mark Jacobson has shown why in a series of seminal papers. As the New York Times explained earlier this year, “after taking into account the energy used to capture and isolate CO2 from flue gas at a fossil fuel-burning industrial plant, the carbon capture system would reduce the plant’s net emissions by only 10 to 11 percent, not the estimated 80 to 90 percent cited by proponents.”
But even if you could physically make it work it would still be absurd, at least on our planet, which in 2023 has figured out how to cheaply capture the power of the sun to produce energy. If coal or gas-fired power is already considerably more expensive than solar energy, imagine what happens to that cost differential if you add an enormous complex of pipes and pumps to take the co2 and pump it off to some abandoned salt mine for storage.
In fact, the cost of doing this is so prohibitive that no coal or oil or gas company or utility wants to pay for it themselves—instead, they use their political power to make taxpayers foot the bill, so they can keep selling their product. In order to secure Joe Manchin’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden had to lard it with billions of dollars in funding for this particular boondoggle.
And now the industry is using COP28 to try and enshrine this escape hatch permanently. Activists have been demanding a fossil fuel phase out, but the power brokers—U.S. climate envoy John Kerry chief among them—have been offering instead a phaseout of “unabated” fossil fuel. In April, as Reuters reported, “the Group of Seven industrialized nations, which includes the United States, agreed to speed up the "phase-out of unabated fossil fuels," and four days ago he repeated the phrase, saying this time he had China on board with the plan. Yesterday he took to X (the '“go fuck yourself” platform) to boast about joining an alliance to phase out “unabated coal use.”
In a rational world—one where political power was not determinative—we’d be spending every penny we had on solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries.
Jeremy Symons, the veteran energy analyst, has an important short essay this week pointing out that this endless sucking up to fossil fuel is enshrined in the whole climate negotiation process, ever since its first iteration at Rio in 1992 when delegates “described ‘fossil fuel production, use and exportation’ as an economic necessity. That unworkable deal has mapped the course of ineffectual climate talks for the past three decades. Lofty climate ambitions could be announced as long as the agreements do not interfere with the fossil fuel industries at the heart of the problem.” As Politico makes clear in a recent essay, Sultan Al-Jaber’s “leadership” of the talks has had no more important backer than Kerry.
One sympathizes with the former Secretary of State, at least to a degree. He’s trying to swing a deal that can include powers like the UAE, the Saudis, and the United States, all places where Big Oil is immensely politically powerful. But the deal’s not worth it if it sets us on a path of pretending we can economically capture the emissions from these fossil fuels. In a rational world—one where political power was not determinative—we’d be spending every penny we had on solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries. Because they’re cheap, and because they don’t produce emissions that you then have to pretend you’re capturing.
The point of the COP—the point of all climate efforts—should not be to produce a deal. Let me repeat myself. The point of climate negotiations should not be to produce a deal, no matter how many pixels are spilled about that prospect over the next two weeks. It’s to stop the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And Guterres is right: there’s one way to do that, and it’s renewable energy. Phase out fossil fuels period, and stat.
Everything else is just smoke.
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