The Green Transition: Is Cop29 futile?
Weekly analysis of the shift towards a new economy.
Dear Readers,
Welcome to your Monday addition of the GT.
Megan Kenyon is here again this week – with expert analysis of goings-on at Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
But first, allow me to draw your attention to this week’s New Statesman print supplement on sustainability, on newsstands and subcriber doormats now. No subscription? No problem. You can actually find all of our report content online, including comment from the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, interviews with the Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer and the new Climate Change Committee head Emma Pinchbeck, and an opinion piece from Rhian-Mari Thomas from the Green Finance Institute.
You can even download a PDF of the whole print version here. You’re welcome.
Anyway, over to Megan on Cop29.
Let’s get right into it.
***The “Champions of Change” - a group of progressive and ambitious businesses from around the world, have signed an open letter calling on the world’s governments to negotiate an ambitious Global Plastic Treaty that will cut plastic production for good - and make it easier for companies to do the right thing. These are companies who are aiming to operate without contributing to the plastic crisis.***
With its big players absent, is Cop29 futile?
The national symbol of Azerbaijan is a flame. It has come to be known as the “land of fire” owing to the abundant oil and gas resources in the adjacent Caspian Sea. This nickname is apt. 90 per cent of Azerbaijan’s exports are of fossil fuels; it remains one of the top ten most oil and gas dependent economies in the world.
On 11 November, tens of thousands of delegates will descend upon the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, for Cop29. They will be greeted by the city’s imposing Flame Towers – a collection of three skyscrapers which faintly curve upwards and, when lit up a night, supposedly emulate the glow and flicker of a flame.
Azerbaijan’s genesis as a petrostate dates back to the nineteenth century. Its first oil wells were dug in the 1840s and their presence has endured. BP – the British multinational oil and gas company – is the largest foreign investor in Azerbaijan. It is a partnership which began in 1992, when Margaret Thatcher, then in the House of Lords, was flown over to deliver a deal on behalf of BP, to the then Azerbaijani president Abulfaz Elchibey. Like the UK, in 2024 Azerbaijan is – according to its current president, Ilham Aliyev – “in the active phase of green transition”. The country has set a target for 30 per cent of its electricity generation to be produced by renewable sources by 2030 (only 7 per cent currently comes from renewables).
Despite this Azerbaijan’s fossil fuel exports continue to grow. Over the next decade, the country is set to increase its production of natural gas by a third. Shortly prior to the start of Cop29, reports surfaced that the country has been using its presidency of Cop29 to strike up fossil fuel deals with potential investors. A secret recording of the Cop29 chief executive, Elnur Soltanov (who is also the Azerbaijani energy minister, and on the board of the state energy company, Socar) appears to show him discussing “investment opportunities” in Azerbaijani oil and gas. This positioning does not make the central Asian country an auspicious host of Cop’s increasingly urgent global climate negotiations.
That a country so immediately reliant on fossil fuels is hosting this year’s conference is not uniquely shocking. The host of Cop28 – the United Arab Emirates – holds the world’s seventh largest natural gas reserve and also attempted to strike fossil fuel deals during its presidency. It chose the chief executive of Adnoc – the UAE’s national oil company – as Cop28’s president. Next year’s hosts, Brazil, recently joined OPEC+, a consortium of oil exporting countries which also includes Saudia Arabia, Russia, and Iraq among others.
The weight of recent international events is likely to bear down heavily on this year’s discussions, following the re-election of Donald Trump. The president-elect’s climate denialism and unwavering intention to once again pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement is likely to affect the tenor of discussion. It may also hold sway on the rapid progress towards renewables currently being made by major polluters: namely China. Still, though it plunges the future of global temperatures into disastrous flux, one upshot of Trump 2.0 may be that it reminds countries committed to the green transition of their efforts’ importance. Energy secretary, Ed Miliband has said the UK will lead efforts at Cop29 to ensure the upkeep of a global consensus on the green transition.
This has been a year in which the empirical effects of global warming have been wrought upon communities across the globe. Earlier this month, the King and Queen of Spain were pelted with mud by victims of the deadly floods which engulfed Valencia, killing at least 222 people. On 8 November, Hurricane Rafael triggered a nationwide blackout in Cuba and in October, Florida was devastated by Hurricane Helene. It’s certain that leaders will use Cop29 to reiterate their 2015 pledge to keep the extent of warming below 1.5˚ C.
But as Harry Camilleri, researcher in climate and geopolitics at E3G told the New Statesman, “the current set of plans puts the world on track for 2.5-2.9˚ C of warming.” With average temperatures already breaching the 1.5˚ C threshold, and people already suffering the effects of climate change, a limp reaffirmation feels like a bit of a waste of time. It would certainly be better to use these two weeks of negotiations to redouble efforts to reduce emissions, instead of obsessing over the semantics of 1.5˚ C.
Each Cop congregates around a theme. This year it is finance. Discussions will be contingent on the agreement of a “new collective quantified goal” for money to flow from rich to poor nations, in order to assist developing countries (often who will bear the biggest burden of climate change) in cutting carbon emissions and adapting to the impact of rising global temperatures.
Since Cop15, which took place in Copenhagen in 2009, this target has been $100bn a year by 2020 – though it was achieved two years past this deadline in 2022. The fund expires in 2025 and Cop29 will see a new target set. Meeting this is essential: developing nations are still lagging behind on renewables deployment. For example: data from the International Energy Agency in 2023 revealed that the whole of the African continent – with its abundance of sun and wind – has far fewer solar panels than Belgium. Much of this flows on from how difficult African nations have found it to secure reliable investment.
The success and longevity of Cop negotiations are largely difficult to measure. It often cannot be put down to the agreement of an arbitrary target (and nothing at Cop is agreed until everyone is agreed). But the absence of several world leaders – including those of the top three largest emitters, China, the USA, and India – suggests this Cop could get off to a vacillating start. In 2024, Cop29 is the principal forum for consolidating climate action, and plenty is riding on its success. With such light attendance, negotiations may appear futile.
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