As nations make historic pledge to ‘transition’ energy systems away from fossil fuels — some scientists are disappointed by the softened wording.

By Katherine Sanderson

Delegates applauding at the end of COP28 in Dubai.Credit: Fadel Dawod/Getty

Scientists have voiced mixed reactions to a pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels” made by the world’s governments at the end of the United Nations COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

“It’s major,” says Lisa Schipper a developmental geographer at the University of Bonn, Germany. Previous end-of-COP declarations have failed to mention fossil fuels in this way. At COP26 in Glasgow, delegates pledged to “phase down” coal use without carbon capture and storage, which was regarded as a first at the time.

COP28 is the first ‘global stocktake’ of progress towards meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement (COP21), in which representatives of more than 190 countries pledged to limit global warming to within 1.5 ºC of pre-industrial levels.

The final COP28 text calls on parties to be “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

The text, which was agreed on the morning of 13 December after several all-night negotiating sessions, “shows that they are actually listening to the science”, Schipper says. But she adds that “transitioning away”, rather than “phasing out”, fossil fuels is nevertheless disappointing, because ‘transition’ could be interpreted in different ways. “It doesn’t mean eliminating, whereas ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels, is about ‘the end’,” she says.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the agency that organizes COP meetings, stated at the top of its press release that the COP28 agreement “signals the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era”. However, hours after the agreement, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, Abdulaziz bin Salman, was reported in Al Arabiya, as saying that it would not affect the country’s exports of crude oil.

Mizan Khan, an environmental scientist at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh, says that most climate-vulnerable countries, including Bangladesh, wanted, at a minimum, to see in the agreement language on phasing out fossil fuels. But he adds that COP meetings rarely produce strong outcomes, because decisions are made through a consensus of more than 190 countries.

The requirement under UN rules that countries agree unanimously on text is a “fatal flaw” in the COP process, says Charles Fletcher, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa who studies sea-level rise. At COP28, former US vice-president Al Gore, a long-time environmental campaigner, urged member states to consider taking decisions agreed on by only 75% of nations. “It’s almost ludicrous that we are asking the leaders of fossil-fuel production to shepherd humanity into a safe climate future,” Fletcher adds.

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