Call for fossil fuel phase-out on global stocktake agenda: UN report

Calls to phase out fossil fuels, reform fossil fuel subsidies and triple global renewable energy capacity may find a place in the outcome of the first-ever global inventory, a periodic assessment of collective efforts to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Launched in Glasgow in 2021, the first global review will conclude at the annual climate talks (COP28) in Dubai in December.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) recently published a report summarizing views made by countries and non-party stakeholders on the policy response to the global stocktake.

“They will inform the negotiations, but there is no guarantee that any particular element will make it into the final text.” That being said, phasing out fossil fuels features prominently in this long list of possible solution elements,” Natalie Jones, climate policy adviser at policy think tank the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), said.

According to the UNFCCC report, possible elements of the global inventory outcome could include calling on countries to “phase out fossil fuels, support a global commitment to accelerate the phase-out of non-depleted fossil fuels, and efforts to phase out subsidies for inefficient fuels by 2025, supported by an enabling environment and increased investment in renewable energy’.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in September that global demand for oil, natural gas and coal was likely to peak by 2030. The IEA described this as an encouraging development but “not enough” to limit the rise in global averages temperatures up to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Countries pledged to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 and COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh in 2022, but they reached record levels in 2022.

A report, which was released ahead of the G20 leaders’ summit in New Delhi in September, said the bloc’s countries had committed a staggering US$1.4 trillion in public funds to support fossil fuels in 2022, with the aim to counter the impact of rising prices due to the Ukraine war and strengthening energy reserves.

The Earth’s global surface temperature has risen by about 1.15 degrees Celsius. CO2, emitted mostly by developed countries into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution, is closely related to it.

In the business-as-usual scenario, the world is headed for a temperature rise of about 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

Climate science says the world needs to halve emissions by 2030 from 2009 levels to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to avoid extreme, destructive and possibly irreversible effects of climate change.

According to global agencies, the last four months (June, July, August and September) were the hottest on record, with 2023 on track to be the hottest year on record.

Developing countries argue that richer nations should take greater responsibility for reducing emissions, given their huge historical emissions, and provide the necessary means of implementation, including finance and technology, to help developing and vulnerable nations in the transition to clean energy and adaptation to climate change.

The outcome of the global inventory may also include a call for a “global phase-out of coal power generation by 2040 in an equitable manner” and a tripling of renewable and clean energy deployment capacity by 2030.

Doubling the rate of energy efficiency improvements from 2.2 percent to over 4 percent per year across sectors by 2030 is also among the possible items listed in the UN’s COP28 discussion report.

Recent discussions could also include a call to support the doubling of low-carbon hydrogen production across sectors by 2030 and recognition of the role of natural gas as an effective transition fuel.

The UNFCCC report highlights the possible element that the Global North cannot demand an end to fossil fuel funding in the Global South “without taking appropriate action” in their own countries.

India also highlighted this issue in its submission to the UNFCCC on its expectations from the results of the global inventory.