COP28: the new climate commitments that really count

Every UN climate COP ends with a mix of relief, exhaustion and bafflement. The two-week COP28 conference in Dubai was no exception. 

It ran nearly 24 hours over schedule and headlines centred on 34 agonisingly crafted words in the final text that called on countries to shift away from fossil fuels in energy systems.

Markets do not move and change does not magically happen with such words, even though these were the first of their kind in nearly 30 years of COPs. The power of these meetings lies instead in their ability to normalise the once unthinkable, which is why exhausted delegates haggle so fiercely over a final outcome.

But COPs are changing too. Behind the fraught diplomatic negotiations, countries and companies have begun to forge less visible agreements to take more immediate and concrete climate action that could cut demand for fossil fuels and eliminate potent emissions.

Three pledges made at COP28 are worth looking at in detail.

Big oil’s clean-up charter

While oil and gas companies have not yet committed to producing less fossil fuels, their pledge to cut emissions from their own operations is noteworthy.

Saudi Aramco, ExxonMobil and BP were among 50 of the world’s top fossil fuel producers to sign the “oil and gas decarbonisation charter”, a voluntary agreement to stop routine flaring of excess gas by 2030 and eliminate almost all leaks of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. 

Most of the initial signatories were national oil companies, such as Saudi Aramco and Brazil’s Petrobras, which account for more than half of global production but typically face less pressure to decarbonise than their publicly traded counterparts. 

The one thing they all have in common is methane, the odourless gas produced by virtually every oil and gas project worldwide. When it is not cost effective to capture it, companies often release methane into the atmosphere via venting or burn it through flaring, which converts it into carbon dioxide. 

The gas also leaks into the atmosphere from facilities via innumerable small, undetected or unreported leaks in pipelines or other equipment, or through large-scale releases called “super-emitter” events.

Scientists say methane has been responsible for up to 30 per cent of global warming since the industrial era began, so the Dubai charter offers a win for the climate, even if the 50 signatories account for less than a third of the industry’s total operational emissions.  

So can the charter’s aims be met? “It’ll be different for different companies,” says Adam Pollard of the Wood Mackenzie research firm. 

Some of the biggest oil companies have already promised zero routine flaring and near-zero methane, he says, and a number have shown that big progress can be made on the latter. “With ongoing monitoring, detection and mitigation, near-zero methane feels quite achievable,” he says.

But zero routine flaring may be trickier. In an ideal world, excess gas would be piped off and sold for extra revenue. But that can be hard in offshore sites, where most flaring happens, because it’s costly to build the necessary gas export facilities. 

Companies will have to assess the future of these sites, says Atul Arya, chief energy strategist at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “They may decide that they have to shut some production because that’s the most cost effective answer to flaring.”

Government regulation will also dictate the charter’s success. Tough new US and EU methane regulations should ensure that companies operating in these jurisdictions live up to their charter pledges, says Kevin Book, managing director of Clearview Energy Partners, a Washington consultancy.

But for companies operating elsewhere, it will depend on their willingness to invest in the equipment needed to detect and quantify leaks, and monitoring by outside agencies.

Any company trying to dodge its methane pledges faces censure, thanks to more widely available satellite detection. 

New tracing and tracking technologies are making it much easier for the UN and NGOs to pinpoint methane leaks and carbon dioxide footprints around the clock. “So you can run but you can’t hide,” US climate envoy, John Kerry, told reporters in Dubai on Wednesday. “People are going to be held accountable for what their footprints are and what the progress is.”

Multiplying renewables

A second COP28 commitment could affect demand for fossil fuels by tripling the world’s renewable energy generation capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts by 2030.

More than 120 countries signed up to this pledge, which will require a big leap in effort from what has been done before. It took 12 years from 2010 to 2022 to achieve the last tripling of renewable capacity. This one has to be done in the space of eight.

Meeting the goal will be “hard, but achievable,” according to analysts at the BloombergNEF research group who have assessed the commitment. 

The good news is that solar and wind are now the cheapest sources of new energy generation in most countries, according to the BloombergNEF, and direct subsidies are no longer the main ingredient needed to accelerate deployment in many places.

The less good news is that the growth of renewables is being held back by a range of bottlenecks that many authorities are struggling to unblock.

Two chief culprits: permitting rules that can hold up projects for years, and a lack of the investment needed to allow power grids built for fossil fuels to absorb renewables.

Only 50 cents is currently spent on transmission and distribution grids globally for every dollar of renewable energy investment, say the BloombergNEF analysts.

As a result, it can take up to eight years to get a grid connection permit in Europe, meaning a wind farm project proposed in 2023 would not be hooked up in time to meet the COP28 target.

It is estimated nearly 600GW of renewables were queueing for connection in five European countries at the end of 2022 — enough to double the region’s capacity.

The problem is also bad in the US where, despite generous clean energy support in the Inflation Reduction Act, projects that might triple the country’s renewable capacity by 2030 are snarled up in grid queues.

One country that is expected to reach the 2030 tripling goal is China, already a wind and solar juggernaut, where billions have been invested in ultra high voltage power lines. But that will not be enough on its own.

“I’m more worried about what happens in the rest of the world,” says Adair Turner, chair of the Energy Transitions Commission coalition of experts.

The US government is trying to fix the problem by fast-tracking permits for transmission lines, as are countries elsewhere. But BloombergNEF forecasts suggest that as things stand today, the US, Europe, Japan, India and Indonesia are not on track to meet the 2030 tripling target.

More efficient energy

The third COP28 commitment with implications for hydrocarbons is aimed at boosting energy efficiency.

More efficient and smart use of energy is widely referred to as the “first fuel” in clean energy transitions because it offers some of the quickest and most cost-effective options for cutting emissions, lowering energy bills and bolstering energy security. 

The technology and policies required are already well established, from heat pumps and greener lightbulbs to low-carbon building codes and transport.

Electric cars also matter: these vehicles can convert more than 77 per cent of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels while conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 12 per cent to 30 per cent of the energy stored in gasoline.

The countries that signed up to the 2030 renewables pledge agreed to collectively double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements from around 2 per cent to more than 4 per cent every year until 2030.

Can this be done? “It’s highly ambitious, but achievable,” says James Newcomb, a senior expert at the Rocky Mountain Institute research group that was founded to improve US energy practices.

The soaring price of energy spurred by the war in Ukraine has seen record global investment in energy efficiency. Even before then, dozens of countries analysed by the International Energy Agency have been able to improve their energy intensity by 4 per cent or more at least one year in the past 10.

But meeting the COP28 pledge on a sustained basis will require more active policymaking, which could invite political opposition and public backlash. The agency reckons global efficiency rates would be doubled if every government adopted policies that matched:

• Lighting standards in South Africa

• Building codes in Turkey

• Car fuel economy standards in the US

• Electric motor regulations in the EU

• Policies for heavy industry in India

• Air conditioner regulations in China

On the issue of air-conditioning: in recognition of the growing risk it poses in a warming world, 63 countries also signed a global cooling pledge at COP28. It aims to cut cooling-related emissions across all sectors by at least 68 per cent globally, though not until 2050.

Given that timeframe, it is no surprise that experts expect this goal to be met. “We have the solutions,” says Jürgen Fischer, president of climate solutions at Danish industrial group, Danfoss. “It’s a combination of high energy efficiency, environmentally friendly refrigerants and renewable energy for a decarbonised grid that will get us there. Now governments need to turn words into action by creating plans for implementation.”

Meeting the three big energy pledges on oil and gas emissions, renewables, and energy efficiency will require government action, of course. Yet this will not be enough.

Even if all three commitments are met, the IEA has made the dismal calculation that this would only amount to about 30 per cent of the emissions cuts needed to put the world on track for the Paris agreement goal to limit warming to 1.5C.

In other words, as with so much else in global climate policy, COP28 has taken an important step forward, but it is still not close to the giant strides the world needs.