Azerbaijan has appointed fossil fuel executives and controversial government officials to the committee tasked with organizing the Cop29 climate summit.
The 28 members of the all-male group include senior executives from state-owned oil and gas giant Socar and electricity producer Azerenerji, the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev has announced.
The government had earlier selected its environmental minister Mukhtar Babayev as the Cop29 president. Babayev spent 26 years at Socar before joining the government.
Collin Rees, a campaign manager at Oil Change International, said Azerbaijan’s personnel decisions are “pushing us closer to the abyss”.
“The climate movement demands a process free of fossil influence, including real conflict of interest policies to keep fossil interests from co-opting the talks”, he added.
The oil and gas executives will sit on the committee alongside government ministers and officials whose families have been accused of participating in controversial offshore financial schemes.
Women absent
Azerbaijan gets roughly two-thirds of its income from oil and gas. European states are its biggest customers. It is one of the countries most economically reliant on fossil fuels in the world and has plans to increase its fossil fuel production by a third over the next decade, according to Rystad data.
As the country gears up to host Cop29 in November, Aliyev has put the organising committee in charge of drafting an “action plan” for the summit. The group will also be tasked with setting up an operational company responsible for the logistics of the event.
The committee comprises 28 men and no women in a move slammed as “regressive” by the She Changes Climate campaign group. Men dominate Azerbaijan’s government and state-owned enterprises.
Oil and gas represented
Balababa Rzayev is the head of Azerenergy, the country’s biggest utility company, which produces the vast majority of its electricity in oil and gas power plants, alongside some hydropower stations.
AzerEnergy is building over a dozen power stations in the southwestern Karabakh region, which Azerbaijan regained control of last year following a deadly conflict with neighboring Armenia.
The company has allegedly handed out contracts for the construction of the energy facilities to firms linked to members of Rzayev’s family, according to a report by the Azeri think-tank Economic Research Center.
The other fossil fuel executive around the organising committee table will be Ruslan Aliyev, general director of Azerigas. This is the gas distribution division of oil and gas giant Socar, the company where Cop29 president Babayev spent 26 years.
Socar ranked 91st out of 99 companies recently profiled by the Oil and Gas Benchmark, which assessed companies on their alignment to a low-carbon world. “Socar has no evidence of supporting a just transition”, the report said.
“The company’s strategy includes limited measures to reduce emissions such as increased energy efficiency, addressing methane leaks and reducing flaring.” Socar has recently announced the creation of a renewable energy division.
Secretive payments
Members of the Azerbaijan Cabinet make up nearly half of the Cop29 organising committee.
Among them is Ali Naghiyev, the head of the state security service, the main domestic intelligence agency. Azerbaijan has been repeatedly been accused of using controversial spyware to target opposition leaders, journalists and civil society both at home and in neighboring Armenia.
Naghiyev’s family were also embroiled in the Azerbaijani Laundromat scandal, a complex money laundering scheme and slush fund that siphoned billions out of the country.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) alleged that a Czech real estate company controlled by Naghiyev’s sons received over a suspected $1.25 million payment from a firm at the center of the scheme. He declined to comment for that article.
Ali Naghiyev has been serving as Azerbaijan’s security chief since 2019. Photo: Interfase
At the time Naghiyev was the deputy chief of the country’s anti-corruption office tasked with investigating state officials for conflicts of interest, nepotism, and other abuses.
Kamaladdin Heydarov, the minister of emergency situations, will also be sitting on the committee.
Regarded as one of the richest and most powerful figures of the governing elite, Heydarov acquired “massive wealth” during his tenure as chairman of the state customs agency — “an agency that is notoriously corrupt, even by Azerbaijani standards”, US diplomat Donald Lu said in 2010.
His children were implicated in a scheme using offshore companies as cover for investments in luxury properties, businesses, and high-end hotels across Europe and the Middle East, according to OCCRP. A lawyer for the family said at the time that it was an “entirely legitimate and lawful business” and denied Lu’s characterization of the family, calling him “not a reliable source.”
A spokesperson for the government of Azerbaijan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Azerbaijan appoints fossil fuel execs and scandal-hit officials to all-male Cop29 committee appeared first on Climate Home News.
Azerbaijan appoints fossil fuel execs and scandal-hit officials to all-male Cop29 committee
The case shows that climate change is a fundamental human rights violation—and the victory of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, could open the door for similar lawsuits globally.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Greenpeace Netherlands campaigner Eefje de Kroon.
A Tiny Caribbean Island Sued the Netherlands Over Climate Change, and Won
Climate Change
Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
SYDNEY, Saturday 28 February 2026 — Greenpeace International and Greenpeace organisations in the US announce they will seek a new trial and, if necessary, appeal the decision with the North Dakota Supreme Court following a North Dakota District Court judgment today awarding Energy Transfer (ET) USD $345 million.
ET’s SLAPP suit remains a blatant attempt to silence free speech, erase Indigenous leadership of the Standing Rock movement, and punish solidarity with peaceful resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Greenpeace International will also continue to seek damages for ET’s bullying lawsuits under EU anti-SLAPP legislation in the Netherlands.
Mads Christensen, Greenpeace International Executive Director said: “Energy Transfer’s attempts to silence us are failing. Greenpeace International will continue to resist intimidation tactics. We will not be silenced. We will only get louder, joining our voices to those of our allies all around the world against the corporate polluters and billionaire oligarchs who prioritise profits over people and the planet.
“With hard-won freedoms under threat and the climate crisis accelerating, the stakes of this legal fight couldn’t be higher. Through appeals in the US and Greenpeace International’s groundbreaking anti-SLAPP case in the Netherlands, we are exploring every option to hold Energy Transfer accountable for multiple abusive lawsuits and show all power-hungry bullies that their attacks will only result in a stronger people-powered movement.”
The Court’s final judgment today rejects some of the jury verdict delivered in March 2025, but still awards hundreds of millions of dollars to ET without a sound basis in law. The Greenpeace defendants will continue to press their arguments that the US Constitution does not allow liability here, that ET did not present evidence to support its claims, that the Court admitted inflammatory and irrelevant evidence at trial and excluded other evidence supporting the defense, and that the jury pool in Mandan could not be impartial.[1][2]
ET’s back-to-back lawsuits against Greenpeace International and the US organisations Greenpeace USA (Greenpeace Inc.) and Greenpeace Fund are clear-cut examples of SLAPPs — lawsuits attempting to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy and ultimately silence dissent.[3] Greenpeace International, which is based in the Netherlands, is pursuing justice in Europe, with a suit against ET under Dutch law and the European Union’s new anti-SLAPP directive, a landmark test of the new legislation which could help set a powerful precedent against corporate bullying.[4]
Kate Smolski, Program Director at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “This is part of a worrying trend globally: fossil fuel corporations are increasingly using litigation to attack and silence ordinary people and groups using the law to challenge their polluting operations — and we’re not immune to these tactics here in Australia.
“Rulings like this have a chilling effect on democracy and public interest litigation — we must unite against these silencing tactics as bad for Australians and bad for our democracy. Our movement is stronger than any corporate bully, and grows even stronger when under attack.”
Energy Transfer’s SLAPPs are part of a wave of abusive lawsuits filed by Big Oil companies like Shell, Total, and ENI against Greenpeace entities in recent years.[3] A couple of these cases have been successfully stopped in their tracks. This includes Greenpeace France successfully defeating TotalEnergies’ SLAPP on 28 March 2024, and Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International forcing Shell to back down from its SLAPP on 10 December 2024.
-ENDS-
Images available in Greenpeace Media Library
Notes:
[1] The judgment entered by North Dakota District Court Judge Gion follows a jury verdict finding Greenpeace entities liable for more than US$660 million on March 19, 2025. Judge Gion subsequently threw out several items from the jury’s verdict, reducing the total damages to approximately US$345 million.
[2] Public statements from the independent Trial Monitoring Committee
[3] Energy Transfer’s first lawsuit was filed in federal court in 2017 under the RICO Act – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a US federal statute designed to prosecute mob activity. The case was dismissed in 2019, with the judge stating the evidence fell “far short” of what was needed to establish a RICO enterprise. The federal court did not decide on Energy Transfer’s claims based on state law, so Energy Transfer promptly filed a new case in a North Dakota state court with these and other state law claims.
[4] Greenpeace International sent a Notice of Liability to Energy Transfer on 23 July 2024, informing the pipeline giant of Greenpeace International’s intention to bring an anti-SLAPP lawsuit against the company in a Dutch Court. After Energy Transfer declined to accept liability on multiple occasions (September 2024, December 2024), Greenpeace International initiated the first test of the European Union’s anti-SLAPP Directive on 11 February 2025 by filing a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer. The case was officially registered in the docket of the Court of Amsterdam on 2 July, 2025. Greenpeace International seeks to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of Energy Transfers’s back-to-back, abusive lawsuits demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace organisations in the US. The next hearing in the Court of Amsterdam is scheduled for 16 April, 2026.
Media contact:
Kate O’Callaghan on 0406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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Greenpeace organisations to appeal USD $345 million court judgment in Energy Transfer’s intimidation lawsuit
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