By Andrew Hammond
The high profile COP28 climate summit is entering its first full week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Yet key leaders like U.S. and Chinese Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will not be attending.
A key world power that will help fill this vacuum is Europe which sees the Middle Eastern event as critical for delivering the goals of the 2015 Paris deal. EU leaders have been out in force at the big event, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
This reflects the fact that Europe has a huge stake in the summit. Firstly, the EU has become one of the big three players in climate negotiations, partly through the power of example by slashing the bloc’s own greenhouse gas emissions by around one third compared with 1990.
Secondly, the EU has been an early, influential mover on green innovation, including developing the world's first carbon market in 2005, and this continues today. One of the key announcements that Europe has made at COP28 is a new, international "Critical Minerals Club."
Thirdly, Europe has also been at the forefront of climate trends. The continent has warmed more than twice as much as the rest of the world over the past three decades and experienced the greatest temperature increase of any continent, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.
While Europe has long been a leader on tackling climate change, many had speculated that its ambition might be tempered by ‘twin shocks’ since 2020. That is, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the coronavirus pandemic. The impact of these has been huge, elevating the urgency of energy security.
This has seen a big European effort put into agreement of around 120 energy deals with other powers, mainly in the Middle East. These agreements have mainly focused on new gas and liquefied natural gas supplies as a transitional source in the movement toward clean energies.
Given this new investment in gas, Europe’s decarbonization pathway will be complicated in coming years. However, the EU has nonetheless ‘doubled down’ on its hugely ambitious Green Deal, and is still cutting its emissions overall.
The EU’s "State of the Energy Union Report 2023" highlights how the REPowerEU plan and emergency legislative measures have also helped promote renewable energies. Moreover, EU-wide greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to have fallen 3% last year.
At COP28, the EU is encouraging all parties to agree on global energy goals to deliver on three objectives. Firstly, phasing out unabated fossil fuels globally, making sure that fossil fuel consumption peaks ahead of 2030, and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies that do not help achieve a just transition.
Secondly, moving toward a fully or predominantly decarbonised global power system in the 2030s, leaving no room for new coal power. Thirdly, tripling global installed renewable energy capacity by 2030 and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
Europe is encouraging such high ambition because of the current challenges facing climate diplomacy. This includes the dark geopolitical context following the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Plus also the strains between the Global North and South on climate issues . This has shifted mindsets, at least temporarily, in much of the world, making it much more difficult to see the kind of international agreement made prior to the Paris summit in 2015.
And this despite the warnings from the U.N .in a major report in September that the world is way off track to tackle climate change. This study asserted that the globe remains headed for a temperature rise of up to 2.6 Celsius and must take urgent action.
In this context, Dubai is unfortunately unlikely to see a wide series of big new national climate pledges being made. In what may therefore be a challenging COP, a key goal is creating a "roadmap" to the second half of the 2020s which Biden has called the “decisive decade” for humanity to tackle global warming.
For while there are many short term challenges, there is some room for longer term optimism. For instance, a September’s IEA report found that a small "window of opportunity" remains for keeping the landmark Paris climate agreement alive because of remarkable growth in clean power.
Positive as this potentially is, however, the IEA highlights that even stronger measures will be required in the second half of the 2020s to have any chance to deliver on the 1.5 Celsius target. If the world fails to expand clean energy fast enough, the world body warns that measures such as carbon capture and storage technology will be required at scale, despite it being unproven yet in this vast way.
Key climate stakeholders are therefore seeking to develop a post-COP28 "roadmap" into the second half of the 2020s, including stronger climate deal implementation through national laws to make delivery most effective. As Europe has shown, these frameworks could then be replicated in more countries, and progressively ratcheted up, as climate ambition increases, helping create what could yet be a key foundation for sustainable development in future decades.
Andrew Hammond is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
Europe doubles down on COP28 while Xi and Biden sit it out
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05.12.2023
By Andrew Hammond The high profile COP28 climate summit is entering its first full week in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Yet key leaders like U.S. and Chinese Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping will not be attending.
A key world power that will help fill this vacuum is Europe which sees the Middle Eastern event as critical for delivering the goals of the 2015 Paris deal. EU leaders have been out in force at the big event, including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
This reflects the fact that Europe has a huge stake in the summit. Firstly, the EU has become one of the big three players in climate negotiations, partly through the power of example by slashing the bloc’s own greenhouse gas emissions by around one third compared with 1990.
Secondly, the EU has been an early, influential mover on green innovation, including developing the world's first carbon market in 2005, and this continues today. One of the key announcements that Europe has made at COP28 is a new, international "Critical Minerals Club."
Thirdly, Europe has also been at the forefront of climate trends. The continent has warmed more than twice as much as the rest of the world over the past three decades and experienced the greatest temperature increase of any continent, according to the World........
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