No consensus: A worker at a wind turbine in China. While the country has signalled support for tripling renewable energy by 2030, it didn’t back the overall pledge last Saturday. — China Daily
DUBAI: Governments have launched new initiatives to bolster clean energy and to wean themselves off fossil fuels at the United Nations (UN) climate summit in Dubai, where countries are grappling with how to halt the non-stop rise in planet-warming emissions.
In one of the most widely supported initiatives, 118 governments pledged to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity by 2030 at the UN’s COP28 climate summit on Saturday, as a route to cut the share of fossil fuels in the world’s energy production.
The pledge was among a slew of COP28 announcements aimed at decarbonising the energy sector – a source of around three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions – that included expanding nuclear power, cutting methane emissions and choking off private finance for coal power.
“This can and will help transition the world away from unabated coal,” said Sultan al-Jaber, the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) COP28 summit president.
Led by the European Union (EU), United States and UAE, the pledge also said tripling renewable energy would help remove CO2-emitting fossil fuels from the world’s energy system by 2050 at the latest.
Backers included Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, Japan, Canada, Chile and Barbados.
While China and India have signalled support for tripling renewable energy by 2030, neither backed the overall pledge last Saturday – which pairs the ramp-up in clean power with a reduction in fossil fuel use.
Backers including the EU and UAE want the renewable energy pledge included in the final UN climate summit decision, to make it a global goal. That would require consensus among the nearly 200 countries present.
The pledge, a draft of which was first reported by Reuters last month, also called for “the phase down of unabated coal power” and an end to the financing of new coal-fired power plants. It also included a target to double the global rate of energy efficiency by 2030.
Climate vulnerable countries insisted that the goals must be paired with a deal among countries at COP28 to phase out the world’s use of fossil fuels.
“It is only half the solution. The pledge can’t greenwash countries that are simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production,” said Tina Stege, Climate Envoy for the Marshall Islands.
While deployment of renewables like solar and wind has been surging globally for years, rising costs, labour constraints and supply chain issues have forced project delays and cancellations in recent months, costing developers like Orsted and BP billions of dollars in writedowns.
Hitting the target for 10,000 gigawatts of global installed renewable energy by 2030 will also require governments and financial institutions to hike investments and address the high cost of capital that has stymied renewable energy projects in developing nations.
“The mismatch still exists between our potentiality and our limitations to attract investment,” said Najib Ahmed, a consultant at Somalia’s climate ministry.
Africa has received just 2% of global investments in renewable energy over the last two decades, the International Renewable Energy Agency said.
More than 20 nations also signed a declaration last Saturday aiming to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050, with US climate envoy John Kerry saying the world cannot achieve “net-zero” emissions without building new reactors.
“We are not making the argument that this is absolutely going to be the sweeping alternative to every other energy source,” Kerry said during a launch ceremony at COP28.
“But you can’t get to net-zero 2050 without some nuclear, just as you can’t get there without some use of carbon capture, utilisation and storage.”
Other pledges took aim at coal, the most CO2-emitting fossil fuel. — Reuters
