COP28: 116 countries plan to triple renewable energy – 12/02/2023 – Environment

The president of COP28, the UN climate conference, Sultan al-Jaber, announced this Saturday (2) a set of promises for investments in renewable energy. The main commitment, supported by 116 countries, is the forecast of tripling the installed capacity of renewable energy in the world by 2030, reaching around 11 thousand gigawatts.

Furthermore, countries promise to double energy efficiency in the same period, with improvements of 2% to 4% per year.

The articulation was made by the United Arab Emirates together with the European Union and the United States. Brazil, China, India, Canada, Japan and Chile are among the signatories. Brazilian participation in the proposal had already been announced by the government before the summit.

The two goals correspond to the recommendations of the IEA (International Energy Agency) for the world to maintain average global warming close to 1.5°C. However, a fundamental pillar of the agency’s recommendation was left out of the commitments: the elimination of new investments in fossil fuels.

Without making a commitment, the letter says it recognizes the need to eliminate unoffset fossil fuels by 2050.

For the director of public policy at the Global Wind Energy Council, Joyce Lee, the initiative has a historic consensus, which she hopes to see grow next week to possibly enter the final decision at COP28.

“With a quantifiable target of 11,000 GW by 2030, we have progress on vague zero-carbon commitments in the future,” he said.

The document also recognizes a place for nuclear energy, cited alongside renewables as a technology ready on the market and available for the decarbonization of the energy sector.

At a press conference, French President Emmanuel Macron reinforced the defense of nuclear energy, which accounts for around 70% of the French electrical matrix. Macron argued that the stability of nuclear supply complements renewables.

A group of 50 oil companies, including Petrobras and 27 other state-owned companies, have signed the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter. The intention is to increase investment in renewable energy, but the declaration is vague and does not mention quantifiable objectives.

According to the AIE, companies in the sector maintain only 2.5% of their investments in renewables. The number should rise to 50% by 2030 to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The oil companies’ commitment also foresees reducing the carbon footprint of fossil fuel extraction and production processes — the sector’s emissions, however, are concentrated in consumption, during the burning of the fuel.

The letter states that signatory companies will become zero carbon by around 2050, which would be possible through emissions offsetting. They also plan to bring methane emissions to zero by 2030.

However, an analysis produced by the Zero Carbon Analytics group concluded that part of the promises contained in the announcement were already made in previous years or, in other cases, do not reflect progress in relation to the companies’ current policies.

Twelve of the 50 oil companies were already part of a similar initiative, which existed ten years ago,
the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), which planned to bring the sector’s methane emissions to zero by 2025, five years before the current initiative. The deadline of 2025 is also foreseen in the policies of some of the signatory companies.

“Companies do not commit to reducing oil and gas activities within the scope of the
Paris Agreement”, concluded the analysis.

The package of pledges also has 27 countries in the Hydrogen Declaration of Intent, which advocates a global certification standard for low-carbon hydrogen — here, the term “low carbon” instead of “green” makes room for the use of fossil fuels such as gas in hydrogen production, but the COP28 organization did not disclose details of what was agreed by the signatories.

Another letter, bringing together 52 countries, plans to reduce, by 2050, 68% of emissions from refrigeration systems, mainly linked to the use of air conditioning.

_{Reporter Ana Carolina Amaral traveled at the invitation of Avaaz, Instituto Arapyaú and Internews.}