“Phase out” or “reduce” fossil energy. That is the question. Or one of the questions. The UN climate conference has made the dilemma between “phasing out” or “reducing” fossil fuels a central issue in the negotiations. And the final wording of this article of the agreement will mark the assessment made of the success or failure of this climate summit. At first glance it might seem like a minor issue, but it is a very relevant issue because it has a great political depth: it can define the future of an energy that has accompanied this civilization.
Many voices, such as that of Teresa Ribera, the minister of Spain (now in the European presidency) ask for “clear signals” from Dubai. And an agreement on the “phasing out” of fossil energy would give the world a very powerful signal that the way out is being shown to coal, oil and gas, whose gas emissions are mainly responsible for warming. It would be the direct way of saying that we must stop burning fossil energy if we want to maintain the hope of stopping warming to less than 1.5º (compared to pre-industrial times. “If we want to keep 1.5°C alive, we will have to talk of a phase-out of fossil fuels. And that will need to be accompanied by a credible implementation plan,” said Alok Sharma, who was president of COP26 in Glasgow. Naturally many oil-producing and exporting countries reject the idea of ??ending to your extraction plans
But it is not entirely clear what difference an agreement that talks about “elimination” or “reduction” would make. In a generic sense, talking about “elimination” suggests a radical cut in the burning of these fossil fuels, with the aim of reaching a goal to get closer to a balance of zero emissions by mid-century. On the contrary, if the weaker expression “reduce” is used, it would actually indicate that this decline has no concreteness, since it does not say how, how much or where, and the temporal calendar completely disappears.
The scientists have been very clear. The gases generated by fossil fuels are mainly responsible for warming and their emissions must decrease by almost half (43%) by 2030 to be able to hope to achieve the 1.5% goal, and begin a path that will sink these emissions to zero by 2050.
But the scientists themselves have admitted that today there are many emissions that technically cannot be stopped, they are inevitable; They are those referring to industry that is very intensive in the use of energy (steel, cement, fertilizers…) or aviation. On this basis, proposals are born to develop technologies to capture and store CO2 or to absorb it from the air. For this reason, many voices believe that the solution would inevitably be for the agreement to speak of a “progressive elimination or reduction.”
The various drafts of the main discussion document, the so-called Global Stocktake (the review that has been carried out so far in application of the Paris Agreement) have raised five drafting proposals, including that there be no text; or one of maxims: “an exit from fossil energies aligned with the best scientific knowledge.”
The third option speaks of “accelerating efforts to progressively eliminate fossil fuels” that do not have gas mitigation technologies (that is, they lack systems to capture and store CO2 and prevent it from being released into the atmosphere). The fourth option expresses the same idea but focused only on coal. And a fifth speaks very diplomatically of “a phase-out of fossil fuels in an orderly and fair manner.”
One of the key issues in the negotiations is the attempt to exclude from this “phasing out” of fossil fuels in those cases in which systems are used to reduce emissions (abated, in English); that is, the measure is intended not to affects technologies whose emissions can be sequestered (and which, therefore, are prevented from being released into the atmosphere).
These systems are tested in thermal plants and other hydrocarbon facilities (they capture the gases before expelling them, bury them and neutralize them), but they are not applied on a large scale and their effectiveness has been discussed. On the other hand, there is no definition of the proportions of gases that can be trapped to qualify for this consideration. This issue is crucial because one of the clear options for agreement would be to agree on the “phasing out” focused on those fossil fuels without these technologies that reduce emissions.
The planet is at a crossroads. On the one hand, emissions continue to increase while the deadline to cut them and begin a path to put them on track towards a zero balance by mid-century has been suffocatingly narrowed. Therefore, agreeing on a gradual elimination allows us to highlight this critical point
Instead, a gradual “taper” could lead to further delays in climate action and carbon capture being used as a smokescreen by suggesting that future emissions from burning fossil fuels can be absorbed. For technology. For many this is a “fantasy”. Carbon capture has failed to achieve significant scale to date and is likely to be much more expensive than clean energy technologies.
Science says that most existing fossil fuel reserves should remain underground. The historical net emissions accumulated between 1850 and 2019 total four fifths of the existing carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5ºC, and represent two thirds of the carbon budget to stop global warming to 2ºC, according to the draft Global Balance sheet. (with certainty probabilities of 50 and 67% respectively)
However, the fossil fuel industry is planning to double the amount of production that a path compatible with the 1.5°C goal would allow. Agreeing to phase out fossil fuels will help push countries and companies to end that expansion.
Until now, throughout 30 years of negotiations of the Climate Change Agreement, this thorny issue had been ignored. There was talk of “reducing emissions” or “decarbonizing” the economy. Mentioning “fossil energies” was taboo. On the other hand, at the Glasgow conference (COP26), two years ago, a small step was taken in this direction, when a modest agreement was reached to reduce the use of coal: but without “touching” gas or oil.
The latest draft of the Global Balance being discussed considers that there has been “considerable collective progress” to achieve the temperature goal established in the Paris Agreement. Before this pact, global temperatures were expected to rise to 3.7-4.8ºC by 2100, it is said, while the most recently approved national climate action plans by countries, under this agreement, put the planet on track. towards a rise of between 2.5 and 2.9ºC.
The EU27, Norway, the United States and Canada promote the position in favor of a “phasing out,” while small islands of vulnerable countries, some African nations, such as Kenya or Somalia, and Latin American countries (Chile or Colombia) also support it. .
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia, through its Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, has made it abundantly clear that his country did not “at all” agree with these ideas.
For its part, China has been a country traditionally opposed to this idea, but it remains to be seen if its position has changed since it gave a clue when it spoke for the first time of reducing its emissions in the electricity sector, which occurred in the recent conversations between its president, Xi, and the American president, Joe Biden, in California.
India is another tough nut to crack, as is Arabia, which has purely and simply asked for the entire paragraph referring to energy to be deleted from the draft agreement. His Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, has made it abundantly clear that his country did not “at all” agree with these ideas. Russia, which has historically been reluctant to support climate action, has called for gas to be considered a “transitional energy.”
The president of the conference, Sultan Ahmed al Jaber, has expressed himself ambiguously on the matter. “The elimination or reduction of fossil fuels is inevitable. It is essential,” he has said on several occasions, who is also the main director of Adnoc, the national oil company of the United Arab Emirates. Sultan al Jaber is the main mediator to ensure that the 198 countries reach an agreement. But his credibility was questioned after statements before the summit in which he said that “there is no science that says that the phasing out of fossil fuels is what is going to achieve 1.5°C” and that a phase-out phasing out fossil fuels would mean taking “the world back into the caves.”
