With record-breaking ocean temperatures weakening the world’s largest carbon sink, a group of countries is pushing for the UN COP31 summit to deliver meaningful commitments to protect marine ecosystems. Yet this effort could be hobbled by a shrinking pool of climate finance, experts warn.
While discussions on oceans at UN climate talks have so far been limited to annual informal dialogues on the sidelines, African countries, the European Union, some Latin American nations and small island states have launched a bid for COP31 to incorporate ocean protection measures into “negotiated decisions”.
COP31 co-presidents Türkiye and Australia have responded to this call and are working with interested countries on a voluntary ocean roadmap, described as a “concise action plan” and expected to include regional and international steps to integrate measures to safeguard the planet’s ocean and climate.
-
South Africa’s top court blocks Shell’s offshore oil exploration right
Constitutional Court rules that Shell and its partners failed to consult affected communities and did not properly consider environmental risks -
“Dangerous consequences” – how AI’s climate framing lets Big Tech off the hook
Former Microsoft manager Holly Alpine explains why AI’s climate danger isn’t just data centres but also its unchecked use across the fossil fuel industry
At a meeting in Türkiye in September, which plans to convene more than 25 ministers from Asia-Pacific, Africa, Europe and Latin America, governments will consider how to incorporate the recommendations of the informal UN ocean dialogues into global climate policy, according to the Turkish co-presidency.
Whitney Berry, associate director of climate policy at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, said that even an informal “multi-year” plan, instead of a negotiated roadmap, could help guide the ocean dialogues series in the UN climate process towards more concrete results.
“If this plan informed the following dialogues and made sure they were aligned with the Paris [Agreement] ambition cycle, including opportunities like the Global Stocktake, we’d have such a strengthened opportunity for ocean integration,” she said.
The upcoming stocktake – an international assessment of countries’ climate policies that takes place every five years and will culminate at COP33 in 2028 – presents a “huge opportunity” to turn fragmented actions into a “globally recognised evidence base” that can inform the next round of climate plans, Berry added.
Addressing rocketing ocean temperatures
Influenced by this year’s projected “super El Niño” on top of climate heating, the world’s oceans have experienced the warmest July on record, according to both EU and US monitoring data. Scientists are warning of severe mass die-offs of key species like corals, sponges and macro-algae.
John Bruno, a marine ecologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told journalists in a briefing that some organisms like coral reefs can only tolerate an increase of about 1 degree Celsius before they start experiencing heath declines. In some seas like the Mediterranean, marine heatwaves have caused temperature increases of up to 6C.
As climate pressure mounts on ocean systems, a group of more than 150 top scientists has called on the COP31 Turkish and Australian presidencies to urgently “integrate ocean priorities into negotiation texts on mitigation, adaptation, and finance”.
They also urged world leaders to issue a “clear political declaration and finance outcomes” on ocean-based climate solutions at the World Leaders Summit, a two-day event during COP where heads of states give speeches laying out their climate priorities.
Measures to protect marine ecosystems have gathered more attention in recent years, as 90% of national climate plans submitted last year included at least one ocean-based target, compared to 62% in 2015. But countries have faced challenges implementing these commitments due to finance and governance constraints, according to a paper published in June by the World Resources Institute (WRI).
Most of the current targets focus on protecting marine areas, but have so far lacked commitments to reduce emissions produced at sea, for example through offshore wind or cleaner maritime transport.
Will the world’s drying lands get relief from COP17 in Mongolia?
Rethinking ocean negotiations at COP
At COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, countries agreed to “integrate and strengthen ocean-based action” across climate negotiations, which led to the creation of a yearly informal Ocean and Climate Dialogue. This dialogue does not produce a negotiated agreement like other parts of the COP.
The dialogue’s informal nature is both an advantage and a challenge, said Jonathan Baines, ocean programme manager at WRI. It provides a more flexible space than formal negotiations and has helped raise the ambition of countries’ climate plans, but COP presidencies have not fully incorporated its outcomes into the official climate talks, he said.
After five years of holding this dialogue at the mid-year climate negotiations in Bonn, countries called for more tangible outcomes in their submissions to this year’s Ocean and Climate Change Dialogue in June. Some proposed the creation of a roadmap to guide discussions on specific topics and feed them into the formal COP negotiations.
In their submission, the African Group of Negotiators called for a “structured, multi-year roadmap” aligned with the next Global Stocktake. The EU also backed this roadmap proposal, while Pacific islands and some Latin American countries supported incorporating the dialogue outcomes into the negotiations without specifically endorsing the roadmap initiative.
As part of a preparatory event before COP31 focused on oceans, Türkiye has confirmed to Climate Home News plans for a Blue COP31 roadmap, which will be discussed by the ministers attending the gathering in September.
“In essence, this programme is designed to ensure that the ocean is no longer the missing link in climate action, but rather the driving force behind a more resilient, sustainable, and prosperous future for all coastal communities,” Türkiye’s COP31 presidency said in a written comment.
Opposition emerges to “additional burdens”
Some regional groups have already started presenting their priorities publicly, with small island nations calling for more finance, ocean-based renewable energy and bolstering regional research institutes.
African diplomats said “the core problem remains translating these paper commitments into real-world, on-the-ground implementation” and noted that while countries in the region have strengthened their climate plans, “the support required to implement these commitments has not kept pace”.
“The truth is that ambition without implementation is an illusion,” the African submission reads, adding that nearly half of all ocean-related commitments in national climate plans are “strictly conditional on external support”.
This year’s Ocean and Climate Dialogue, chaired by Fiji and Belgium, urged countries to discuss ways of “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, which generated pushback from big fossil fuel-producing and consuming countries who said they would not accept this as a negotiated agreement.
Both the group of Arab nations and India, meanwhile, warned against “imposing additional burdens” on developing countries and rejected a dialogue with “prescriptive expectations”.
The Arab group submission said its members oppose “any report that explicitly or implicitly targets specific energy sources, advocates sectoral restrictions, or fails to adequately reflect different national circumstances, development priorities, and energy security considerations”. This is a thinly veiled reference to singling out fossil fuels within the discussions.
Climate finance constraints
While developing countries are already seeking more funding to implement ocean-based conservation, carbon storage and clean energy measures, experts said this will be a “difficult discussion” at COP31, as developed countries will arrive in Antalya with shrinking aid budgets.
Historically, ocean-related finance has accounted for only a small share of overseas development assistance (ODA), fluctuating between 0.8% and 1.4% of the total, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Berry of the Ocean Conservancy said one opportunity to “grow the pie” of available climate funds will come at a meeting of the UN climate convention’s Standing Committee on Finance, which this year will be held in September in Sydney and will concentrate on financing water systems and the ocean.
“We haven’t had a focused conversation on ocean climate finance before from the UN climate process,” she said. “If they can clarify those financing pathways specific to ocean climate action and help provide the necessary support for countries to translate commitments into projects, that will be a real benefit.”
The post As marine heat breaks records, countries seek ocean roadmap at COP31 appeared first on Climate Home News.
As marine heat breaks records, countries seek ocean roadmap at COP31
When oil and gas shipments stopped flowing through the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the Iran war, Southeast Asian nations were left reeling as the supply crunch laid bare their acute reliance on fossil fuel imports.
As prices soared, governments in the region scrambled to introduce emergency energy-saving measures – from a four-day working week to curbs on air conditioning. Thailand revived decommissioned coal plants while the Philippines, which imports nearly all of its oil, declared a “national energy emergency”.
But the crisis has also prompted renewed resolve to find a long-term solution to their vulnerability at a time when electricity demand is booming to power the region’s growing industry, cooling needs and the mushrooming of energy-hungry data centres.
At the heart of Southeast Asian nations’ response is a longstanding infrastructure project to connect the region’s power grids by 2045 and enable cross-border trading of clean electricity through a network of underground and subsea interconnectors.
-
Southeast Asia’s fragile grids threaten billions in clean energy investment
Renewables developers need reliable electricity infrastructure and stable policies to help the region meet climate goals and surging demand for power -
UN backs push to upgrade grids slowing clean power uptake in Africa and SE Asia
The Global Grids Accelerator will help turn national and regional plans to expand electricity infrastructure into viable projects on the ground -
China keeps Indonesia’s battery dream afloat but future less certain
Chinese capital and technology turned Indonesia into the world’s top nickel supplier, but its dependence on China and the rise of nickel-free batteries could upset its battery ecosystem plans
The plans will allow nations with high renewable energy generation potential to trade surplus power to their neighbours and major demand centres like Singapore, helping to integrate more renewables into the power mix and reduce reliance on fossil fuel imports.
“[It] will give us more energy security,” the Philippines’ energy secretary, Sharon Garin, told a press conference after a meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) energy ministers last week, when they discussed accelerating the delivery of the regional grid as part of measures to respond to the energy crisis.
“The Philippines is rich in solar power, Malaysia is rich in hydropower and Indonesia has geothermal: different countries have different resources. [The ASEAN Power Grid] will optimise the utilisation of renewables to the benefits of each member state,” said Garin.
But turning this decade-old political vision into a reality has been slow, held up by painstaking work to harmonise a patchwork of regulatory and legal frameworks and mobilise the private capital needed to build cross-border infrastructure.
More than $300 billion is needed to expand and modernise the region’s fragile grids to support the projected energy demand increase by 2050. This includes $27 billion required to deliver the cross-border interconnections by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Every year of delay could cost the region billions of dollars in additional fuel costs and lock in new gas infrastructure for decades to come, according to analysis by global energy think-tank Ember.
The building block for energy security
With electrification high on the agenda of the COP31 climate talks in Türkiye next month, there is growing attention on the need to modernise and expand grid infrastructure to cope with growing electricity use and more renewables in the power mix.
Clean electrification and energy efficiency could deliver about a third of cumulative carbon emission reductions between 2026 and 2050, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook. But delivering that would require doubling annual global grid investment to $1 trillion between now and 2035.
Last month, the UN launched an initiative to accelerate investment into expanding and modernising grids in Southeast Asia and Africa.
First conceptualised in 1997, the ASEAN Power Grid has gained fresh impetus in recent years as countries turn to renewables to cut their emissions and move away from volatile fossil fuel markets.
Energy supply disruption caused by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East has strengthened the case for regional grid connections. Before this year’s conflict began, the Middle East accounted for 60% of Southeast Asia’s crude oil imports. Competition for fewer, more expensive oil and gas shipments has left Southeast Asia facing a $160 billion energy import bill this year. Based on current policies, this could rise to $400 billion by mid-century.
In the Philippines last week, energy ministers agreed on an enhanced planning framework to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid and made progress on regulatory guidelines.
Garin said ministers were considering accelerating the project’s delivery. “The first study was to connect [by] 2045 – that’s too far,” she said.
A strong business case
The economic benefits of the plan have “captured the political imagination” of leaders in the region, Robert Cooke, grids advocacy lead at the Global Renewables Alliance, told Climate Home News. “The business case is stronger than ever,” he said.
“If countries were to go about building their own separate grids, of course that would be an expensive endeavour. But the discussion around the ASEAN Power Grid includes what costs could we share in building out this grid,” added Tiza Mafira, director of the Indonesia office for the Climate Policy Initiative.
Stronger grids would help the region meet collective targets to increase the share of renewable energy in total primary energy supply from 14% to 30% and in installed power capacity from 34% to 45% by 2030.
Connecting and pooling dispersed renewable resources would also help smooth local power shortages caused by daily and seasonal variations, reducing the need for backup gas plants and battery storage.
The IEA found the ASEAN Power Grid could help unlock some of the 20 terawatts of untapped solar and wind potential across Southeast Asia – an amount around 55 times the region’s current total power capacity.
From lines on a map to shovels in the ground
Rather than building a single unified network, the ASEAN Power Grid is developing cross-border links between neighbouring countries and smaller groups of nations.
As of 2025, nine of 18 priority interconnection projects are operational – accounting for around 10 GW of capacity with an additional 13.7 GW planned by 2040.
Source: Ember
A power line channelling up to 200 MW of clean electricity generated from hydropower in Laos to Singapore via Thailand and Malaysia has emerged as a key building block for grid-to-grid trading.
Progress on technical discussions will also help provide the clarity the private sector needs to invest in bankable projects, said Cooke.
In 2025, the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank announced a dedicated funding initiative to support the project.
“The enabling pieces are emerging,” said Monalisa Dimalanta, former chair of the Philippine Energy Regulatory Commission and the National Renewable Energy Board. “But the timelines remain unclear and a 2045 vision cannot answer today’s emergency,” she said.
“A power grid… that exists only on paper will not keep the lights on.”
Singapore: the delivery test
The implications of failing to deliver the ASEAN Power Grid are most acute in Singapore.
Constrained by space, with few renewable energy resources and dependent on gas for more than 90% of its electricity mix, Singapore has emerged as a leading proponent of a regional power grid as it seeks to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
To meet its power needs, the city-state aims to import 6 GW of low-carbon electricity by 2035, around one-third of its energy demand – a target which it is set to miss, however.
The plans heavily rely on building interconnectors to import solar power from Indonesia across the South China Sea. Around 40% of the ASEAN Power Grid’s planned interconnections are directed towards Singapore.
Ember’s analysis found that delivering the planned interconnectors by 2035 could enable renewables to meet nearly half of Singapore’s electricity demand. Delays could drop this to only a fraction of the country’s needs, and risk locking in new gas capacity until the 2050s. Without the ASEAN Power Grid, Singapore would need to install an additional 300 MW of gas-fired power capacity to bridge the gap by 2035.
Already home to the largest data centre capacity in Southeast Asia, Singapore’s electricity demand keeps rising, driven by the boom in AI infrastructure. “At one point, [it] either has to build a new gas plant, or it has to get the interconnection to supply that demand,” Lam Pham, an Ember energy analyst and the report’s author, told Climate Home News.
A region at a crossroads
With capital increasingly available, political will is now the biggest risk standing in the way of timely execution, said Pham.
But there are other challenges too, including the lack of frameworks on transmission tariffs and how to share the benefits of clean power trading. “It’s really hard to justify projects without that,” he said.
In addition, climate-fuelled weather events, including extreme heat and tropical storms, pose major threats to the region’s grid infrastructure. Experts say stronger grid interconnection can isolate damage and build the system’s resilience.
Efforts to deliver on the ASEAN Power Grid also come as ministers stressed the “continued importance of oil and gas” for economic development and seek to secure fossil fuel supplies and stockpile oil to prepare for the next crisis.
Despite an acceleration of renewable deployment, particularly solar, coal still generates nearly half the electricity supply in ASEAN member states and dominates the power mix in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam, while Singapore and Thailand rely on gas.
While these measures might help the region with the immediate crisis, “the long-term answer is more domestic renewable energy, electrification, storage, efficiency and regional power trade”, Dimalanta said.
Main image: An aerial view of the MTerra solar project in the Philippines, set to become one of the world’s largest solar-and-battery developments (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)
The post SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock appeared first on Climate Home News.
SE Asia speeds up plan for connected clean power grid after oil shock
Climate Change
“Sink or swim”: WA Gov hugely underestimating decline in regional gas demand while sleeping on green exports, new report finds