Big fossil-fuel countries back Brazil-led transition roadmap

Some big fossil fuel-producing countries – among them India, Nigeria and Germany – have swung behind the Brazil-led roadmap to phase out coal, oil and gas, while the UN chief said on Tuesday that all countries should start to make progress on cutting fossil fuels by 2028.

COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago presented the newly published global roadmap on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels (TAFF) to a packed plenary room in Antalya, cheered on by rounds of applause from delegates and civil society.

Nigeria – an OPEC oil producer that participated in the Santa Marta conference on phasing out fossil fuels earlier this year – welcomed the roadmap and said its recognition that countries have different starting points is “fundamental”.

“As a developing country with significant energy resources, energy access challenges and growing industrial ambitions, we must industrialise and decarbonise simultaneously,” the Nigerian delegate told the event.

She welcomed the roadmap’s proposed system for nations to self-identify their fossil fuel demand, supply and exposure of their wider economies, but said the “real test of this roadmap” will be translating transition pathways into “investable opportunities”.

India – the world’s third-largest oil consumer and its second coal user – also praised Brazil’s efforts to make the roadmap inclusive, saying it “strikes a delicate balance” and that the energy transition “must be co-created”.

Its representative added that cheap renewables are what makes the transition away from fossil fuels possible, and energy security can support the case as long as countries avoid swapping “one dependency with another”.

The new TAFF roadmap invites countries to draw up national plans to build clean energy systems by 2028, while envisaging the main push to cut coal, oil and gas supply and demand after 2031. Some European countries, including Germany, France and the Netherlands, have published their own national roadmaps this year, while Brazil is also working on one.

Germany, Netherlands, UK and Australia are among the countries that have publicly backed the COP30 roadmap. 

Africa calls for talks on TAFF to focus on justice

The chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN), Ghana’s Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, told journalists in Antalya that “we need to transition, bearing in mind that it must be a just one”. That means fossil fuel-dependent African nations would be supported and have flexibility on the phase-out timeline.

“Big emitters have already developed and we have the right to develop, so we cannot allow those [fossil fuel] assets to be stranded. If you want us to be able to go the way you want us to, then give us the finance and technology for a just transition,” he said.

Comment: COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels 

COP30 president Corrêa do Lago told Climate Home News at a press conference that countries “that have some concerns about this debate recognise the effort that we made” so that it’s not “one group against another”.

“Normally in these discussions, it’s extremes on the two sides and we don’t advance so much. So I believe the structure proposed here allows us to start the debate from another basis in a much more constructive way,” he said.

Speaking at the plenary event, former US climate envoy John Kerry said the debate on roadmaps away from fossil fuels “is the prime discussion that we need to engage in”, given that current policies are leading the planet to warming of 2.8C.

Roadmap as key input for global stocktake

Several countries that spoke, including the Netherlands and Germany, urged Australia and Türkiye as COP31 co-presidents, and Ethiopia as COP32 president, to carry the debate forward into the next Global Stocktake in late 2028.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said countries should use the new roadmap to build their own concrete national plans including clear timelines, responsibilities and financing needs.

By the 2028 Global Stocktake, “every country should be able to show what it has done to cut fossil fuel use or production, what it will do next, and how it will measure progress,” he said, in a challenge to governments. 

He added that it is “long past time to stop treating the transition away from fossil fuels as taboo or intractable” and called on COP31 to “move from discussing the transition to organising it, financing it, and delivering it”.

France’s COP21 president and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, Laurent Fabius, stressed that 2028 is approaching fast, adding that “agreed commitments are agreed commitments” which have to be fulfilled.

COP presidencies keep extracting fossil fuels

Despite Türkiye’s COP31 co-presidency sending a representative to the roadmap event, the country’s leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, praised in a post on X the start of production at two new oilfields in his country last month as “good news” coming from the mountains of Gabar.

He added that with further development, daily production from 230 wells in the region will increase by 30% to reach more than 100,000 barrels a day in the second half of 2027, contributing billions of dollars a year to the Turkish economy.

Turkish giant sponsoring COP31 cut climate goals then cashed in on oil boom

COP31 co-president Australia has also been the target of criticism by environmental groups in Antalya over a recent expansion of coal and gas infrastructure, while former COP host Brazil will continue its oil extraction plans, including in the Amazon region, despite the re-election of left-leaning President Lula da Silva.

At the international level the TAFF process remains a pick and choose effort. Some fossil fuel-producing nations are adamant it will stay that way and are likely to resist any attempt to anchor the roadmap in the cover decision or other negotiated outcomes at COP31. 

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