Reuters World News - COP28: The one with all the fossil fuels

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

COP28’s climate deal was historic in its mention of starting to reduce global consumption of fossil fuels. How did we get there? And what happens now?  Join our climate reporters in a discussion about what we learned from the UN Climate Summit. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, it's been the issue at the core of COP28, fossil fuels. Countries went into overtime to strike a historic deal, mentioning reducing use of all fossil fuels for the first time. In this special episode of Reuters World News, our journalists look back at what we've learned, and whether it's enough to avert disastrous consequences for the planet. We also hear from some of the big names on the ground at COP for their views on fossil fuels.

I'm Axel Trowfall in London. I'm Tara Oates in London. I'm Valerie Volkovici in Dubai. And I'm Gloria Dickey in Dubai. Even before the historic wording in the final deal, the focus was already on fossil fuels, partly due to the contentious host. Holding COP28 in the United Arab Emirates,

a major oil producer, was a bono contention with activists, as was the country's decision to name Sultan al-Javar, CEO of state oil firm Adnock as COP president. Javar made a point of including the fossil fuel industry at the summit, insisting that oil and gas companies should be part of the discussions on tackling climate change. Valerie Volkavici has been following in Dubai as a deal was thrashed out. Hi, Valerie.

Hi, Tara. How are you doing after the long slog of negotiations? Well, I am pretty tired and I have caught up on a little bit of sleep. but I think the 15 days have taken a toll. Yeah, 15 days and nearly 200 countries who had to agree, right? How surprising is it that we came to any deal, and especially this deal mentioning fossil fuels? Yeah, well, it's one of those things that when you kind of take a step back,

you realize that it is a big deal. Again, when you're kind of sitting in the negotiating halls, you're kind of walking around the venue, you're focused on language, you're focused on these kind of arguments over certain words. But kind of with a little bit of sleep and a little bit of distance, you realize it's a kind of a big achievement, especially given that the CEO of an oil company is somebody who managed to balance a lot of interests, everyone from OPEC members to some climate vulnerable countries to the EU, US, China, and seems to have gotten an agreement that everyone could live with.

So how did we get to this point? Was it all down to that oil CEO, Sultan al-Jabar? What was going on behind the scenes? Well, behind the scenes, I think, you know, as I was looking through my notes and working backwards, I went all the way backwards to a couple of months before the cop. And then I realized that the UAE had been kind of working with the US and China. The UAE presidency was very quick to put out a state.

when the U.S. and China reached this bilateral agreement on climate cooperation back in November. So looking back, they started their efforts kind of months before. Jabber also tried to get some oil and gas companies to join a partnership to try to agree to reduce their carbon emissions and their methane emissions. And while some kind of criticize that agreement for being weak, I guess, again, stepping back, it's kind of significant to have a climate agreement. and have a climate summit where you had oil companies kind of quite visible. So I think his diplomacy and even his kind of unique, his unique role, his very kind of surprising role as an oil CEO,

could have played a part in getting the agreement. There was one minister who, I think it was a minister from Columbia who said, you know, we might not have gotten an agreement had it not been for his kind of close connections with the oil industry. So how likely is it that we'll see this as a format for COPS to come? There'll be more involvement from the oil and gas industries in future. Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure. I mean, here we had somebody.

He also had the position of being the head of the renewable energy companies. So I think he was quite unique in being able to try to bridge that gap. But I think that oil and gas companies will be involved in future climate summits. next cop will be hosted by another oil producing, oil and gas producing nation. So I think that dam has broken. I was on the ground for the first week of COP producing videos about some of the key issues, including climate financing and tech. You can watch them all now on Reuters.com. Joining me on site was Reuters editor at large Axel Threlfall. Hi, Axel. Hi there, Tara. Have you recovered from the time at COP? Good question. I've been back about a week. And yes, I think,

think I've just about recovered. It was extremely hot there. It was extremely busy, but time well spent. And how did you find it being there on the ground? Well, look, I think like you, we all struggled with the enormity of the site. We had to walk in serious heat, you know, 30, 35 degrees, Celsius from one pavilion to another, miles and miles of walking each day. So it was tiring, but at the same time, very, very impressive. The organisation of the sessions was impressive. Overall, I enjoyed myself. Yeah, my step counter went into overdrive. So, you know, some good calories burnt, but having been there in the thick of it, how surprised or otherwise are you at the wording of this deal? Look, I think surprised and relieved, really. More than a hundred countries had lobbied

really hard for language to phase out fossil fuels. OPEC countries, as we know, led by the Saudis opposed that language. So I think all the way through the two weeks, there was this concern. What is going to come out in that final communique? What is the language going to be like? And as we said at the top, we've got a historic deal to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels. So this is the first time the world has expressed a unified desire to end the oil, age. So that is a very, very big deal. It's not going to happen immediately, but the message is certainly there, and this could well ensure Tara a longer-term transformation of the energy economy. So I think positive. Battle lines, as I said, on fossil fuels were drawn from the very,

very start of the conference. In fact, I caught up with the executive director of the UN's environment program, Inga Anderson, on the very first day. I mean, the Secretary General of the United Nations, it's very, very clear. We cannot do any new coal power plants, we need to scale out and step out and phase down whichever preferred proposition you want from fossil fuels. There is no other option. Activists also took issue with the fossil fuel heavy guest list. Data compiled by kick big polluters out showed that lobbyists for oil and gas increased fourfold since COP last year. Total Energy CEO Patrick Puyen took to the stage to say the continued use of oil and gas was in

inevitable. The transition, oil gas will remain for quite a long time. And so we need absolutely to produce oil gas in a different way by slashing down emissions. And we can do it. Presence of big fossil fuel lobbyists was anathema to some. Vanessa Nakate is a Ugandan activist. My message is mostly to the fossil fuel industries, but also to the governments that give them these new licenses.

The IEA has made it very clear that if we want to have a fighting trade, of 1.5 degrees, we cannot have any new fossil fuel investments. So my message goes to the fossil fuel industry, which I know is heavily represented in this place. The earlier we understand the sabotage of the fossil fuel industry in this place, the earlier we will mobilize and organize ourselves as citizens of the planet to say enough is enough. We need an equitable, fair, fast and just phase out

of fossil fuels and a phasing of renewables. of renewables. It wasn't just climate activists. IKEA CEO, Jesper Broden, told me he's backing a reduction in fossil fuel use. The president said he's grateful that national oil companies have stepped up, but it's not enough. What more do you want to see on the fossil fuel bit? Yeah, but I think we need to see, we together with 130 other organizations, it's time

for us to say we need to face out fossil fuel. It is the main cause. There are great alternatives. We see the transition is not ahead of us. happening as we speak. And it's not only a climate benefit, it's also economic benefits with it. So it's time for us to take a step. Jeffo, realistically, though, when do you think that phase out can happen?

Well, there are two ways to approach it, right? One is to be practical and look at the data and the review mirror. The other approach that we need to take is the must for us to get to 1.5 degree. And that means we are in a hurry. We need to get to 50% reduction of carbon by 2013. The agreed deal avoided the contentious language calling for a phase out of fossil fuels. Oil producers have argued that fossil fuels can be cleansed of their climate impact by using technology that can capture and store carbon dioxide emissions.

Negotiators told Reuters that although Saudi Arabia was the strongest opponent of anti-fossil language in the text, other OPEC and OPEC plus members, including Iran, Iraq and Russia, also resisted. was a form of carbon capture really the solution? I spoke to Dr. Christoph Gierbal, co-CEOO of Climborks. Let's start very quickly for the uninitiated. What is direct air capture? Because it's not CCS, it's not carbon capture and storage. Direct air capture is not CCS, exactly.

Direct air capture is building machines. Think of it as boxes, 40-foot shipping containers with ventilators, pulling in air from the atmosphere, and filtering the CO2, contained an atmospheric air from it. So essentially we stream air through our boxes, the CO2 sticks inside the boxes, and then we remove it again as a pure gas,

pump it in the ground and store it there. That's direct air capture. As an idea, I get that. But again, for the layperson, let's talk about scaling something like this to solve the problem that we have. How many of these boxes do you need to suck all the car and out of the air above

the state of Louisiana, where I know one of the facilities is? We're talking about roughly 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 of such facilities. We're building a facility with a capacity of pulling 1 million tons of CO2 from the year per year in the state of Louisiana and the United States. And scaling that and achieving climate targets would mean we need roughly 1,000 or 2,000 of them spread around the globe to achieve climate targets or the removal target of pulling 2, 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per year.

So 2,000 of these, 1 to 2,000 you need around the globe. How much does one of them cost? One is in the range of $1 to $2 billion of investment. So 1 to 2 trillion would be the cost if we were going to get all of these 1,000 to 2,000 in place. How likely is that? That's highly likely. The energy transition will cost us like a 5 to 8 trillion per annum. So there's room for a technology like direct air capture in there to finance this journey

and get to the billion tons required. What do you say to those people who say that this sort of technology is being used by those companies as a figly foremost? Much as a company might offset as well? Economically, there is no such thing as a fig leaf. We are currently operating in the high hundreds dollars per ton of carbon removal. We'll go down to 500 by end of this decade, in a nutshell, and maybe we'll reach $200 in the long run.

Now, at $400 per ton, you're asking, adding roughly like a barrel of oil would cost you $120 more, right, than it's today. So there is no such thing as a fig leaf. You only want to use direct air capture and instances where you absolutely have no other chance to decarbonize, right? And this is what our technology is meant to to address unavoidable emissions where you have like technically no other chance and where it's also economically feasible, right? We're pulling several thousand tons today, we're pulling a million tons by end of this decade.

And again, a couple of thousand tons saves one person life, and that's meaningful. So is there a place in future for both cutting down fossil fuel usage and using technology to abate it? Nordaer-Dair Turner is the chair of the Energy Transitions Commission. So we have done a recent report, came out two weeks ago, saying what is the best way and what is the only way to get to the net zero emissions that we need by mid-century? And what we're arguing is 85% of getting there has to be an actual reduction in fossil fuel use. And only 15% can be continuing to use fossil fuels, but offsetting their use with carbon capture and storage in removals. There is a vital role for carbon capture and storage, but it has to be limited. And I think it is a delusion to believe that carbon capture and storage can be on a scale sufficient to allow us to keep using fossil fuel.

at anything like the current level. And how is the fossil fuel industry reacting to this report? Well, two major members of the fossil fuel industry, Shell and BP, who are members of the ETC, have put their signature to the report as a very important contribution to it. We hope, and we've deliberately launched this before COP, that it will create a big debate here. What you have at the moment is organisations like OPEC

continuing to say that we can continue to use 80 million barrels of oil a day right out to mid-century, but we can use direct air capture and carbon capture and storage to offset it. We, like the International Energy Agency, believe that if we're serious about dealing with the climate, we have to be below 20 million barrels of oil a day by 2050, and that that is technologically and economically possible. So the development of climate tech could help in the long term, but with a hefty price tag,

it all still depends on the political will. Is that and the deal enough to rain in climate change? Gloria Dickey has been keeping an eye on the prospects for the planet. Hi, Gloria. Hi, Tara. How are you? How have the last couple of weeks been? I'm good. They have been chaotic. I think we're all catching up on some much-needed sleep today. And it looks like it's a big win geopolitically.

But really, when you zoom out, how significant is the deal for the planet? It is a big win geopolitically. I think most scientists would say, that this agreement doesn't go far enough to keep this North Star, as the presidency has referred to, of 1.5 alive. And, I mean, that's true for many of the climate talks that have taken place since Paris. But in terms of reducing emissions significantly and fast enough to keep 1.5 alive, this agreement doesn't quite do it. So what could we see in the near term in terms of country's actions on fossil fuels? I think that's the tricky thing with this final agreement, which they're calling the UAE consensus, which is that it doesn't give a lot of near-term kind of benchmarks by which to slash the use of fossil fuels. It's, you know, it mentions transitioning away from fossil fuels in line with reaching net zero by 2050. But I think what you would really be looking for is clear concrete action that can be taken and that's missing. So will it just be up to countries then to sort of budget as best they can? I mean, that's the tricky thing with all of these. agreements. It's kind of, as a journalist, we're watching not so much what happens here, but what

happens after they leave the cop as the rest of the world is, and that's kind of where things start to fall apart. Whether or not countries move forward on this agreement with the best intentions, or they look for what some countries have called a litany of loopholes in this agreement and they try to take their own pathway, however OPEC countries might interpret this, that kind of remains to be seen. And what's at stake for the planet if this deal isn't kept? I mean, that comes down to the 1.5C benchmark of kind of that being the point where and we start to see really disastrous climate effects take hold. We're already kind of paying the price for climate change.

So if we're not just scoring past 1.5, but we're reaching 2, we're reaching 3 degrees Celsius, I mean, expect those impacts to just really ramp up in the decades to come. So Valerie, what in the end have we learned from this cop? Two things. Both things can happen very slowly and very quick. You know, it took 28 cups to get a climate agreement that really explicitly mentions fossil fuels. It wasn't until two cops ago that we had the kind of first mention of phasing out coal and fossil fuels. I guess there was a mention to inefficient fossil fuel subsidies.

So people are paying more attention. The cops have been getting bigger. So I think given the public attention and now given businesses, you know, in the oil industry's attention, I think things have changed. I think things have also become more dire, and, you know, the scientists are trying to speak loud and clear. A lot more has to be done. So I think that is really a stark takeaway as well. Things are moving in the right direction.

They've moved slowly. Maybe they'll move a little more quickly, but they have to because if we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the transformation away from fossil fuels has to happen a lot faster. And with that in mind, how will countries be held to account over this deal? Yeah, I mean, I think countries will be held to account because there's public scrutiny and because young people are by and large extremely concerned about their own future. And I think that companies now are, you know, they're making commitments. And I think there's a lot more calls for scrutiny.

So I think that these cops are a good way to focus attention on that. That's it for this special edition of Reuters World News. Check out our other two cop special editions on your favourite podcast player and watch our videos from on the ground at the summit on Reuters.com. And don't forget to tune in to our daily headline show every weekday.