After the EU has been under pressure for a day for not speaking with one voice in the demand for fossil fuel phase-out in the agreement at the COP30 climate summit, the EU Commission has now rallied the troops.
Late Wednesday evening Brazilian time, the EU was able to propose a solution on how the climate summit can provide a path to transition the world away from fossil fuels. The EU's climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, and the Danish climate minister, Lars Aagaard, stepped forward and announced this.
- Mitigating measures (CO2 reductions, ed.) and clarity about the way forward are crucial for a success at this COP, says Wopke Hoekstra.
The overall theme of the COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belém was that the world's countries should deliver new climate targets for 2035. The submissions have shown that the world's climate targets will not limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, as the Paris Agreement otherwise requires.
Therefore, the EU has made the need for further CO2 reductions a main demand in the negotiations, even though it is not on the official agenda.
In this light, it has caused great international concern that the EU could not speak with a single voice when a coalition of over 80 countries announced demands for CO2 reductions in the climate summit agreement text. It was called a "sign of weakness" for the EU by NGOs that only individual European countries participated in that demand.
Lars Aagaard has rejected that characterization, explaining that such initiatives are happening so quickly and spontaneously that not all countries have time to get on board.
Calls for a plan for transitioning away from fossil fuels
The EU Commission has now had time to get this under control a day later, and the union is therefore now ready to speak with one clear voice again. In the proposed solution, the EU will try to convince the world's countries that they must agree on a roadmap to transition the world away from fossil fuels.
The decision to move the world away from fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas was already adopted at COP28 two years ago in Dubai. But according to the EU and the Brazilian host, a concrete plan for how this will actually happen is missing.
The EU will now insist that this be agreed upon in the negotiations. If that does not happen, Lars Aagaard warns that the summit could be abandoned without an agreement.
- We want the world to come together to reduce emissions. And if we cannot be pressured into doing so, there will be no agreement, he says.
The climate summit has an official deadline on Friday.
/ritzau/
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