COP29 DeBriefed 15 November 2024: Azerbaijan’s shaky start; Finance and fossil fuels dominate negotiations; Free webinar today

Carbon Brief Staff

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.

§ This week

COP29 kicks off

AGENDA FIGHT: The UN’s COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan got off to a shaky start on Monday. The host nation attempted to repeat the UAE’s COP28 day-one “win” by pushing through a deal on Article 6.4, which governs international carbon trading, in a move described by one party as a “horrible precedent”. But, instead of adulation, the COP29 presidency landed in a lengthy “agenda fight”, resolved in classic COP fashion with a footnote. This fight reflected the key battlelines at the summit: the new climate finance goal; and how, where – or even whether – to carry forward COP28’s deal on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”. Carbon Brief journalists will host a free webinar to answer questions about COP29 later today. Sign up.

COUNTRY CLIMATE PLANS: Three nations – UAE, Brazil and the UK – have come forward with new UN climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), ahead of the February 2025 deadline. Climate Home News reported that the UAE’s plan was criticised for failing to include measures to restrain oil and gas production, which is projected to rise by a third by 2035. Meanwhile, the Brazilian climate NGO Climate Observatory said the emissions cut planned by the nation falls far short of its fair share towards limiting global warming to 1.5C. The UK’s emissions aim has broadly been welcomed by climate experts.

‘PAY UP’: With a new climate-finance goal seen as the main COP29 objective, UN secretary general António Guterres told leaders to “pay up, or humanity will pay the price”, Reuters reported. Early disputes over the goal produced a draft text with “pretty much every option…on the table”, showing “polarised views” between countries, explained the Hindustan Times. (For more on the negotiations, see Spotlight below.) Meanwhile, multilateral development banks announced that their climate-finance contributions will reach $120bn annually by 2030, according to Azernews. 

World leaders summit

‘GIFT OF GOD’: The president of Azerbaijan, the country hosting COP29, caused a media firestorm by describing oil and gas a “gift of god” during his address at the opening of the conference’s World Leaders Climate Action summit. BBC News reported that Ilham Aliyev criticised “western fake news” about the country’s emissions and said nations “should not be blamed” for exploiting their fossil fuels. On Friday, senior figures including former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres wrote in a letter that the COP process is “no longer fit for purpose”. 

UNITED MESSAGES: Aliyev’s address at the summit was followed by interventions from 80 heads of state on Tuesday and Wednesday. Carbon Brief was in the room for the summit’s first day and summarised what each leader chose to focus on. Developing countries put on a united front calling for “climate justice” to be at the heart of climate-finance discussions, while European leaders implored all countries to release new plans to keep the 1.5C temperature goal in sight.

LEADERSHIP SCRAMBLE: After Donald Trump’s US election win, debate is swirling over which party might take over as a “leader” at the talks. The UK government told the Observer it intended to step up to “save COP29”. At its first press conference, the European Union said it will lead from the front at the negotiations – despite France’s environment minister deciding to skip the summit following a diplomatic spat with Azerbaijan. At the sidelines, a senior Chinese official told delegates that “China is willing to take a more active role in global climate governance”, according to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.

§ Around the world

  • SHELL COURT WIN: Oil giant Shell has won a “landmark case” in the Dutch courts, reported BBC News, overturning a ruling requiring the company to cut its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels. 
  • EMISSIONS RISE: A new Global Carbon Budget report has found there is “no sign” of the transition away from burning fossil fuels pledged at COP28, with emissions from coal, oil and gas rising by 0.8% in 2024, the Guardian reported. Carbon Brief has an in-depth write-up of the report. 
  • ‘THREE-YEAR STANDSTILL’: Current policies would put the world on track for 2.7C of warming by 2100 – following a “three-year standstill” in significant climate progress, according to a Climate Action Tracker report covered by the New York Times.
  • TRUMP MOVES: Donald Trump is expected to nominate former Republican congressman Lee Zeldin as head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a federal body responsible for enforcing climate rules, according to the New York Times. The Hill reported that, in a recent interview, Zeldin said that the Trump administration would “roll back regulations that are forcing businesses to struggle”.
  • VALENCIA PROTESTS: Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Valencia, Spain last weekend, calling on the local leaders to resign after more than 200 people were killed in recent flooding, according to the Guardian.

§ 12%

The proportion of heads of state speaking at COP29 that were female, based on the official running order.

§ Latest climate research

  • Human-induced climate change has driven a 1.49C temperature increase compared to a pre-1700 baseline, according to a new Nature Geoscience study using Antarctic ice-core data.
  • Air temperatures inside caves in the European Alps have increased by around 0.2C per decade over the past 20 years, a new Scientific Reports study found.
  • A new research paper in Nature Ecology and Evolution found that the capacity of land to store carbon has weakened during warm extremes over the past 40 years – mainly in tropical regions.

(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)

§ Captured

Image (note)

More than 65,000 delegates have registered to attend COP29 in Baku, potentially making it the second-largest COP on record. This total is more than 15,000 lower than the record-breaking COP in Dubai last year – and marks the first time in seven years that a COP is not larger than its predecessor. According to Carbon Brief analysis, host country Azerbaijan has the largest delegation at the summit, with 2,229 people registered. This is followed by Brazil (1,914), Turkey (1,862), the UAE (1,011) and China (969).

§ Spotlight

§ Finance and fossil-fuel fights at COP29

This week, Carbon Brief outlines what to expect from the two biggest topics being negotiated at COP29.

Climate finance

Nations gathered at COP29 must agree on a global target to channel finance into climate action, known as the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG). 

There are major rifts between parties over virtually every aspect of the NCQG. As a result, negotiations got off to a shaky start. 

Broadly, developing countries want developed countries to provide or “mobilise” at least $1tn a year to them, largely as grants. Developed country parties, such as the US and the EU, want a goal that does not rely entirely on them, including lots of private investment and input from the wealthier developing countries. Parties have diverging views on when the goal should be delivered, but dates broadly range between 2025 and 2035.

At the first opportunity, developing countries unanimously rejected the nine-page text meant as the starting point for negotiations and requested a rewrite.

Ali Mohamed, chair of the African Group of Negotiators, told journalists that the “biggest obstacle” was language that shifted responsibility away from developed countries’ obligation to provide funds to developing countries. 

Having incorporated the views of all countries, the co-chairs facilitating the talks released a new version that had ballooned to 34 pages and was widely viewed as unworkable. There were more delays as parties only allowed the chairs to slightly streamline this text, producing one that was just a page shorter. 

By this point, talks were entering the second half of the week and delegates expressed concerns that so little progress had been made. EU lead negotiator Jacob Werksman told a press briefing that they were “very worried”, lamenting that “more than a year of preparation” had gone into the initial text that had been rejected.

Negotiators are engaging in informal talks to hash out some of the less divisive elements, such as how easy it is for countries to access funds. Next week will see government ministers take over, with the goal of steering them through more controversial territories into a final conclusion.

Fossil fuels

Apart from climate finance, the other key battleground at COP29 is around how – or even whether – to carry forward the outcome of last year’s “global stocktake”, in which all parties agreed to help with “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

This question was a major part of the “agenda fight” at the start of the summit. Disagreement centred on which part of the agenda would include the “UAE dialogue”, which was created to discuss “implementing the global stocktake outcomes”.

The Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs), including China and India, want this dialogue to focus exclusively on finance, as do the Arab Group and the African Group. Many others want a broader focus, taking in all stocktake outcomes, including fossil-fuel transition.

Supporters, including the EU, US, UK, small island states (AOSIS) and Latin American countries (AILAC), are pushing for text on ambitious climate action in several venues.

Ultimately, fossil-fuel transition could end up in a so-called “cover text” at COP29. This has become a space to include more political language that does not have a “home” elsewhere.

On Thursday evening, the Azerbaijan presidency began talks with parties on where to put text on climate ambition – including fossil-fuel transition – but it has yet to give more details on its plans.

§ Watch, read, listen

TRUMP FAILSAFE: Politico’s Power Play podcast spoke to Ali Zaidi, the White House’s national climate advisor, on whether Biden’s climate policies were built to outlast the incoming Trump administration.

EXXON SAYS STAY: In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods said Donald Trump “shouldn’t pull” the US from the Paris Agreement.
PARTISAN OVERFLOW: New DeSmog analysis found that industrial agriculture and biotechnology representatives “enjoyed privileged access” to the COP16 biodiversity summit negotiations, brought in on country badges.

§ Coming up

§ Pick of the jobs

DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to [email protected].
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