Bowen calls for end to fossil fuels with just days to break COP28 deadlock

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Dubai: Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has told the COP28 climate talks in Dubai that fossil fuels have no future in world energy systems if the Paris climate targets are to be met.

“We have to face this fact head on,” he said at a crisis meeting. “If we are to keep 1.5 degrees alive, fossil fuels have no ongoing role to play in our energy systems.”

Keeping 1.5 degrees alive refers to a Paris target of preventing the world’s average temperature from exceeding pre-industrial standards by that much.

Chris Bowen is understood to have proposed that COP28 agree fossil fuels should peak by 2025.Credit: AP

COP president Dr Sultan Al Jaberto called the crisis meeting to break a deadlock between a growing supermajority of nations seeking to rapidly phase out fossil fuels and a handful of petrostates seeking to prolong their use.

“I speak as the climate and energy minister of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters,” Bowen said. “We embrace that fact and acknowledge it because we also live in the Pacific and we are not going to see our brothers and sisters inundated and their countries swallowed by the seas. We are not going to do that.”

Seeking to help forge a compromise, he told the so-called majlis, an Arabic term describing a meeting of elders, that abatement of fossil fuel emissions could be used a backstop.

Abatement, which refers to capturing greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes or energy production, has become a contentious issue at the COP because many scientists and activists fear it could be used as an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels.

Joseph Sikulu, Pacific director for the climate activist group 350.org, said abatement is not a solution but an “excuse to continue to expand the use of oil and gas in Australia”.

Bill Hare, a climate scientist and director of the think tank Climate Analytics, welcomed Bowen’s strong language on ending the use of fossil fuels but said there were concerns about the use of abatement in the text of the agreement being negotiated at the COP.

But he said it was broadly accepted that abatement used to capture emissions from some industrial processes like making cement and fertiliser, rather than in energy production, would be necessary as the world decarbonised.

Bowen, who is chairing one of the negotiating blocs at the COP that includes Australia, Canada, Norway and the US, met with Pacific ministers on Saturday to discuss the negotiations and lay out his efforts to arrive at an outcome rather than allow the talks to collapse.

Leaving the majlis meeting, Bowen said he had been working closely with the Pacific ministers and that they had “a high degree of alignment”.

Jennifer Morgan, the former head of Greenpeace who is now serving as Germany’s climate envoy was asked about her view of the role Saudi Arabia and Iran were playing in blocking an agreement on phasing out fossil fuels.

She said: “I hope that they were able to listen to other exporting countries of fossil fuels, like Australia, like Colombia, and also be actively looking at how they can diversify and also support the phase out of fossil fuels”.

The fight over fossil fuel language has been brewing for months, if not years.

At last year’s COP more than 80 nations backed a call for a “phase down” that was torpedoed by a group led by Saudi Arabia. Others pushed for a tougher “phase out”.

As temperature records have shattered and a global stocktake has shown the world off track to meet targets, a renewed push for the measure picked up pace this year.

In April, G7 nations agreed to push for an accelerated phase out of “unabated fossil fuels”. A later G20 meeting failed to come to consensus, with Saudi Arabia and Russia again raising objections.

On Friday news broke that OPEC, the cartel of oil producing nations, had written to member states urging them not to agree to a phase out.

“I think they’re panicking,” Alden Meyer, an analyst with climate think tank E3G told AP. “Maybe the Saudis can’t do on their own what they’ve been doing for 30 years and block the process.”

The talks began with a burst of optimism after a quick agreement was forged to create a loss and damage fund to provide financial assistance to climate vulnerable nations.

But with the talks at risk of stalling just 48 hours before they are due to end, Al Jaber, has been driving negotiators to find breakthroughs.

“Work faster, smarter, harder,” he said in a plenary session on Saturday. “Work with a different mindset … that will allow flexibility, compromise, openness and a true understanding of the urgency of the task at hand.

“Put aside self-interest for the common interest,” she said.

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