The EU enters the COP28 negotiations in Dubai in late November with a change of course on a key detail: The Europeans are pushing for the expansion of renewables, energy efficiency and rapid decarbonization of the economy. To achieve this, they refuse to use the controversial CCS technology in the energy sector in general – something they still had called for in the spring. Read the full article here:
https://go.table.media/Odn3S
The EU environment ministers defined, among other things, the following negotiating positions for COP28:
- Tripling renewables to 11 TW by 2030
- Doubling the pace of energy efficiency improvements by 2030
- A global phase-out of the use of unabated fossil fuels in this decade
- Peaking fossil fuel consumption this decade
- Abolishing fossil fuel subsidies as quickly as possible
- Increased mobilization of funding from all sources to support climate action, including for loss & damage
The word “unabated” caused the biggest dispute in the internal EU negotiations. It is about the role of CO2 capture technologies (CCS) in decarbonization. On the one hand, the EU wants to accept them when it comes to a global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels. This is because the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also suggest that it is necessary to use CCS in sectors that are otherwise difficult to decarbonize in order to achieve climate targets.
The picture is different in the energy sector. Here, the EU now wants to focus globally on a “largely fossil-free energy system well before 2050,″ explicitly without the use of carbon capture. However, large-scale use of CCS in the energy sector is the position of the COP host United Arab Emirates and other oil states. And the EU had agreed on a similar position in the spring. At that time, the Europeans only called for an “energy system free of unabated fossil fuels.” The new position vis-à-vis the oil states is now stricter again, because it reverses the EU position from March, when CCS was also considered for the energy sector.
Read the full article here:
https://go.table.media/Odn3S
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74 w
This will be interesting to follow during COP28! I wonder if the EU will manage to get its agenda all the way through
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73 w
@sarah_chabane Looking forward to it too, to see how it will unwrap. I hope hypocrisy will not play a big role.
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74 w
We must work concurrently to develop solutions that will result in full economy-wide decarbonization.
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74 w
EU's commitment to tripling renewables, doubling energy efficiency, and phasing out unabated fossil fuels is commendable