OPEC Urges Members to Reject Any COP28 Deal Targeting Fossil Fuels

By Expert OPINION

OPEC’s boss has the wobbles. For months, OPEC has slagged off the IEA and climate science and argued for a weak outcome. Now it’s panicking. In a letter to 13 members, Haitham Al Ghais asked them to block any deal and “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy” (as opposed to emissions), railing against what he terms “irreversible consequences”.

OPEC members “are taking climate change seriously and have a proven record on climate actions”, the letter states. The IEA firmly disagrees. Al Ghais also says “politically motivated campaigns put our people’s prosperity and future at risk”. Curiously, there’s little in there on extreme weather and climate impact risks, which Lloyd’s of London warn could hit $5 trillion over a five-year-period.

No word yet on how the 13 members – Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Libya, the United Arab Emirates , Algeria, Nigeria, Gabon, Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Congo – responded.

One can only imagine how Dr Sultan Al-Jaber feels having his summit undermined by allies. Still, amid the heat, dust and platoons of power plants and gas flares, perhaps it’s a sign the writing’s on the wall.

GST red flags

Unlike OPEC’s emissions, Al-Ghais may have peaked a little early. The scrap over fossil fuel phaseout is heating up and will require agreement across multiple strands of the talks. The key battleground continues to be the Global Stocktake (GST).

‘Longer but weaker’ is the general take on the 8 Dec draft of the latest text. It’s still fundamentally a long wishlist and four formulations around fossil fuels are currently in play:

– A phaseout in line with the best available science [notably not stating what said science is]

– Phasing out fossil fuels in line with the best available science, the IPCC’s 1.5 pathways, while respecting equity and CBDR

– A phaseout of unabated fossil fuels, consumption peak by 2030, energy sector to be ‘predominantly’ free of fossil fuels well ahead of 2050

– Phasing out unabated fossil fuels so as to achieve net-zero CO2 in energy systems around 2050.

Views are mixed. Power Shift Africa director Mohamed Adow reckons “it shows promise”. Simon Evans at Carbon Brief notes the ‘need for urgent action to keep 1.5C in play’ is gone.

There are definitely some red flags. After all the talk of 1.5C guiding the GST as the “North Star”, reference to the target in the preamble has been axed.

And massively increased renewable energy capacity that “strategically replaces fossil fuel capacity” will ring alarm bells with some developing countries, who have used mere fractions of their fair share of the carbon budget and will expect financial support, and of course for developed countries to lead the way.

And finally, new references to “transitional fuels” raise questions about the continued use of gas.

If these are the red flags, there are a number of amber flags too. The section on finance places the burden of attracting cash on individual countries, stepping away from the Paris deal for finance from developed countries to developing countries.

The proposal for a new fund for capacity building now comes with an added option for funding arrangements through the Green Climate Fund. In other words, ‘pay for it with what you’ve already got’.

Finally, the role of public sector finance in leading private investments and providing policy signals has been cut. Echoes of Amb Kerry’s howler: “If there isn’t money to be made, there is none on the table”.

On a more positive note, the language on L&D has now been supplemented with a recognition of slow onset events, displacement, relocation and migration, while GHG emission reductions now include timelines for other non-carbon-based potent planet warmers, namely N2O and Fluorinated gases.

In a letter leaked to news organizations this week, OPEC Secretary-General Haitham Al Ghais urged member nations to reject any agreement from the U.N. climate summit targeting fossil fuels rather than emissions.

In the letter dated Wednesday referencing a draft agreement on climate change action at the 28th U.N. climate conference — known as COP28 — in Dubai, the OPEC leader said, “It seems that the undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences.”

The letter goes on to say, “I … respectfully urge all esteemed OPEC Member Countries and Non-OPEC Countries participating in the CoC and their distinguished delegations in the COP 28 negotiations to proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions.”

The contents of the letter were reported Friday by multiple news organizations, including Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Bloomburg, which verified the letter’s authenticity. OPEC declined when asked to comment.

Source: Bloomberg, VOA