Climate Change
COP28: Key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Dubai
Nearly every country in the world has agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” – the main driver of climate change – at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.
It is the first time such an agreement has been reached in 28 years of international climate negotiations.
The commitment is included in the first “global stocktake” of how countries can accelerate action to meet the goals of the landmark Paris Agreement.
However, many countries walked away from the talks frustrated at the lack of a clear call for a fossil-fuel “phase-out” this decade – and at a “litany of loopholes” in the text that might enable the production and consumption of coal, oil and gas to continue.
Despite an early breakthrough on launching a fund to pay for “loss and damage” from climate change, developing countries were left disappointed by a lack of new financial commitments for transitioning away from fossil fuels and adapting to climate impacts.
COP28 president and oil executive Dr Sultan Al Jaber hailed the “world-first” achievement of getting “fossil fuels” in a UN climate change agreement.
However, his presidency was overshadowed by allegations the UAE intended to use COP28 to make oil-and-gas deals.
Away from the negotiations, COP28 brought a wave of new international pledges – covering everything from oil-and-gas company emissions and tripling renewables, through to food systems and how the world can better integrate action on climate change and biodiversity loss.
Here, Carbon Brief provides in-depth analysis of all the key outcomes in Dubai – both inside and outside the COP.
Formal negotiations
Emirati leadership
UAE ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced that Dubai would host COP28 in November 2021. The UN climate change presidency is rotated around the world, with the UAE representing the Asia-Pacific region.
Dr Sultan Al Jaber was appointed COP28 president-designate in January of this year. The appointment of the head of the UAE’s state-owned oil company, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), to the role of arbiter of climate talks immediately sparked outcry.
According to Reuters, Greta Thunberg called Al Jaber’s appointment “completely ridiculous”, while former US vice president Al Gore said fossil-fuel interests had taken over COP.
In May, more than 100 US lawmakers and members of the European parliament called for his removal, the Financial Times reported.
Some, including US special climate envoy John Kerry, called the criticism of Al Jaber “unfair” and said it was important that oil-producing countries are included in the COP process.
In the days ahead of the summit, pressure on Al Jaber intensified after an investigation by BBC News and the Centre for Climate Reporting alleged that the UAE planned to use its role as COP host to strike “secret” oil-and-gas deals behind the scenes of the summit.
On Twitter, former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said the COP28 presidency had been “caught red-handed” and “will be under public scrutiny like no other ever before”. A COP28 advisory board member resigned over the allegations, Reuters reported.
The UAE’s COP28 team at first refused to deny the allegations to BBC News and said that “private meetings are private”. After the story’s release, Al Jaber released a statement saying that the allegations were “false, not true, incorrect and not accurate”, Bloomberg reported.
Al Jaber officially assumed the role of president during the summit’s opening on 30 November, taking over from Egypt’s COP27 president Sameh Shoukry.
In his first address to delegates, he vowed that this COP would leave “no issue off the table”, including “the role of fossil fuels” in driving climate change. (His remarks were misinterpreted by some as meaning he wanted fossil fuels to play a role in the solution to climate change.)
On the opening day, the COP28 presidency scored two big wins. First, it oversaw a new agreement on the operationalisation of a fund to pay for the loss and damage caused by climate change. (See: Loss and damage.)
This was a big priority for many parties arriving in Dubai, as illustrated by Carbon Brief’s interactive table of who wants what from COP.
Second, the COP28 presidency managed to get countries to agree on the official agenda for the conference without a time-consuming fight.
(Some items, such as one on mountains and climate change and another on the impact of unilateral trade measures on climate action, were removed from the agenda, with the presidency promising they would be taken up elsewhere.)
At an opening press conference, Al Jaber touted the agreement on loss and damage as a “unique unprecedented achievement”.
In response to questions from journalists about his possible conflict of interest as an oil executive, he stated that he had invited countries to include the role of fossil fuels in negotiated texts, adding:
“You’re going to see full transparency and we will deliver what parties reach consensus on.”
The next day, the COP28 presidency and the International Energy Agency (IEA) launched a joint statement acknowledging that “fossil fuel demand and supply must phase down this decade” – the clearest signal yet that the UAE would, against expectations, facilitate ambitious action on fossil fuels at the talks.
The same day, a first early draft of the global stocktake text was released (the key agreed outcome from the summit, see: Global Stocktake). It was the first UN document of its kind to include references to phasing out fossil fuels. (All of the COP28 texts can be viewed in Carbon Brief’s text tracker.)
However, crisis gripped the presidency again when remarks Al Jaber made regarding the science of phasing out fossil fuels during a live online event in November resurfaced in a story by the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting. On video, Al Jaber said:
“There is no science out there – or no scenario out there – that says the phase-out of fossil fuels is going to achieve 1.5C.”
The remark sparked fierce backlash from the scientific and political community.
The next day, Al Jaber faced journalists during a highly unusual COP press conference attended by Carbon Brief.
Sat at a table flanked by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) chair Prof Jim Skea, he told reporters:
“We’re here because we very much believe and respect the science…Everything this presidency works on is centred around the science.”
At the press conference, Al Jaber also criticised the media for focusing on oil-and-gas deal allegations and his resurfaced remarks, while – in his opinion – omitting the presidency’s stated commitments to including language around fossil fuels in the negotiated texts.
The start of the second week saw the negotiations take centre stage.
The COP28 presidency announced a series of ministerial pairings to take discussions forward, as usual at UN climate summits. (Unusually, the presidency appointed the ministerial pairings six months in advance in a bid to speed up progress.)
When the ministerial pairings produced little progress, the presidency attempted to push talks forward by holding a “Majlis” on 10 December – an “Emirati tradition of bringing together a small, curated group to discuss specific challenges in an open, bold, and solutions-oriented way”, according to the UAE.
(At the summit’s end, Al Jaber said the Majlis made “all the difference” in agreeing the outcome of COP28.)
The next day – amid observers reporting that negotiations had fallen into “disarray” – the presidency launched a second draft version of the global stocktake text. It was widely interpreted as being much less ambitious than the first draft, sparking protests inside the venue and pointed reactions from parties ranging from the EU to small island states.
Amid the furore, negotiations ran over their scheduled finish time of 11am on 12 December.
Speaking to journalists on 12 December, COP28 director-general, Ambassador Majid Al Suwaidi, addressed the dissatisfaction with the global stocktake draft, saying:
“As you know, yesterday we released a text. As you also know, lots of parties felt it did not fully address their concerns. We expected that. In fact, we wanted the text to spark conversations…and that is what happened.”
Early in the morning of 13 December, a final draft of the global stocktake text containing language on transitioning away from fossil fuels was released to delegates. (See “global stocktake” for a full analysis of what it contained.)
A few hours later, a plenary session was held where the text was adopted with no objections at lightning speed – prompting hugs, cheers and celebration in the room.
Presenting the agreement to the world, Al Jaber said:
“Together, we have confronted realities and we have set the world in the right direction…Our country has shown that we can deliver on the global stage for the benefit of the planet and its people. We have helped restore faith and trust in multilateralism.”
However, small island states – a group that has played a historic role in furthering ambition to tackle climate change – stated their frustration that they were out of the room when the text was gavelled.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell summed at the progress at COP28 by saying:
“While we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.”
COP28 eventually ended at 5.11pm on Wednesday 13 December, just 23 hours over time.
Global Stocktake
At the heart of the COP28 negotiations was the culmination of the first-ever “global stocktake” under the Paris Agreement and, in particular, what it would say about fossil fuels.
In the end, the COP “call[ed] on” all countries “to contribute to” a list of goals, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels…accelerating action in this critical decade”.
After nearly 30 years, this is the first time a COP decision has explicitly called out all fossil fuels.
Nevertheless, the outcome fell short of the full “phase-out” many said was needed to stay below 1.5C, as well as in terms of the finance needed to support the transition.
The stocktake also calls on countries to contribute to the global tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling of the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
The stocktake is a five-yearly process, designed to check progress against Paris goals and inform the next round of national climate pledges, known as nationally-determined contributions (NDCs).
It is a key part of the Paris “ratchet mechanism”, according to which countries must regularly ramp up climate action over time, until their collective goals can be met.
This process made COP28 the most important since COP21 in Paris, according to Liu Zhenmin, who is expected to be China’s climate envoy after veteran diplomat Xie Zhenhua retires. Liu told a 5 December side event at China’s pavilion attended by Carbon Brief:
“COP28 is the most important COP since the Paris Agreement, because the global stocktake will set the direction for future work on climate action.”
Similarly, US climate envoy John Kerry told a 29 November briefing the stocktake was “a unique opportunity…to rally the world to significantly step up our collective efforts to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement”. He said it needed to be “candid, strong, visionary, comprehensive”.
In the two years leading up to the summit, a technical stage of the stocktake had already shown that countries were falling far short of their collective climate goals.
The task for COP28 was to turn these stark findings into action.
Ahead of COP28, the co-chairs of the “subsidiary bodies” of the UN climate regime, SBSTA and SBI, wrote in a 17 November joint note that this was a “pivotal moment”. They said:
“The first global stocktake, a crucial process that has been examining, over the last two years, where the world stands collectively in meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement, needs to conclude at COP28 with a comprehensive outcome that clearly identifies a path towards radical decarbonisation of our societies.”
In an opening press briefing attended by Carbon Brief, COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber said:
“We’re laser-focused on keeping 1.5C in reach and delivering an ambitious global stocktake.”
Al Jaber used these phrases – “laser-focused”, “ambitious stocktake” and his “north star” of “keeping 1.5C in reach” – repeatedly during the summit.
This appeared to be deliberate communications strategy, setting up those outcomes as key tests – albeit ambiguous ones – for the COP overall.
Al Jaber was not the only one to speak repeatedly of “keeping 1.5C in reach”. Rueanna Haynes, AOSIS lead stocktake negotiator, told a 4 December briefing attended by Carbon Brief that the process was the “only stocktake that matters” for keeping 1.5C in reach:
“We are here to make sure that this first-ever stocktake under the Paris Agreement is a success, because it is the only stocktake that matters for keeping the 1.5C goal within reach.”
(The stocktake informs the next round of NDCs, which run to 2035 or even 2040. By the next stocktake in 2028, the carbon budget for 1.5C will have been all but completely used up.)
At the same briefing, Tina Stege, Marshall Islands climate envoy, zoomed in on what keeping 1.5C in reach might actually mean, arguing that the stocktake was “the tool we have” to “course-correct” and “address the root cause of the problem, which is the burning of fossil fuels”.
For many countries and campaigners, then, fossil fuels were the key focus – particularly after efforts to include them in the outcome at COP27 in Egypt had failed.
Ahead of the talks in Dubai, 106 EU, African and island nations backed a fossil fuel phase-out, with this list expanding to “at least 127 countries” as the talks went on.
At a briefing held by Climate Action Network on day one of the talks, Romain Ioualalen, global policy campaign manager of NGO Oil Change International, said COP28 would only be a success if it delivered a decision on the phase-out of fossil fuels.
This phase-out needed to be “fast, fair, full and funded”, he added, flagging the need for support for developing countries, if they were to play their part in a global effort on fossil fuels.
In the first week of the talks, the stocktake was shepherded by co-chairs from the UK and Singapore, who had to turn hundreds of pages of submissions into a coherent document.
As Carbon Brief noted ahead of the summit, these submissions were “as varied as the COP negotiations themselves”, with one expert saying the stocktake risked becoming a “dumping ground” for “politically thorny issues” that might hamper its ability to drive real action.
The first iteration of the text delivered by the co-chairs reflected the diversity of inputs in a 12-page list of bullet points – effectively a laundry list of all the ideas put forward by parties.
On energy, it listed: “phase down/out fossil fuels, phase down/out/ no new coal, tripling renewables, doubling energy efficiency, the role of transitional fuels”.
The second version, issued on 5 December, fleshed out these bullets into 96 different “options” and ballooning to 24-pages – nearly as long as the entire 25-page Paris Agreement.
This version included three options: a fossil fuel phase-out; a phase out for “unabated” fossil fuels; or “no text”, meaning there would not be any wording on fossil fuels.
The day after this draft was issued, on 6 December, the head of the Opec oil producers’ cartel sent a letter to member states – later leaked to the press – urging them to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy ie fossil fuels rather than emissions”. It warned:
“It seems that the undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences, as the draft decision still contains options on fossil fuels phase-out.”
Indeed, Opec members within the Arab Group of nations at the climate summit – including Saudi Arabia – were prominent among those opposing language on fossil fuel phase-out.
However, they were certainly not alone, with the group of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) including China and India also opposed – at least in part on the principled basis that, in their view, the stocktake outcome had no mandate to set sectoral targets.
At the end of the first week of the talks, the second iteration of the stocktake text was passed up to the ministerial level, accompanied by a compilation of views that parties felt were not yet reflected.
Later on the same day, 8 December, a third iteration came out, now with four options around fossil fuel “phase-out” and a fifth option for “no text”.
In total, this text ran to 27 pages and 206 paragraphs, containing 159 different options. As such, it remained more of a compilation of views than a clean set of choices for ministers to pick from.
Moreover, Carbon Brief understands that – beyond the “no text” option – this text did not reflect the views of those opposed to language on fossil fuels. As such, it represented the high point in terms of the wording on fossil fuel phase-out.
Three days later, on 11 December, the presidency itself released a new fourth version of the stocktake text. Fossil fuel “phase-out” was gone from the text, replaced with loose wording that “call[ed] on parties to take actions that could include” – making any response optional.
This text drew swift and near-universal condemnation, with David Waskow, director of international climate initiative at the World Resources Institute, telling a press briefing that the wording “could include” turned the text into a “choose-your-own-adventure approach to climate action”.
At a heads of delegation meeting that evening, Colombia, for AILAC, called the text “worrisome”, while Bangladesh for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) said that the north star of 1.5C was “missing” and that the “language is weak and in places contradictory”.
According to RTE, EU finance negotiator Eamon Ryan threatened to walk out of the talks if the wording was not strengthened and said “that one word ‘could’ just kills everything”.
Those condemning this draft of the text including the US climate envoy John Kerry, the LDC chair, the UK, the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol, EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra, COP26 president Alok Sharma, AOSIS, the German government and its climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.
Climate campaigners also reacted angrily to the text, holding an unauthorised protest at the COP28 venue where they called on negotiators to “hold the line”.
The fight over the stocktake language on fossil fuels was “not surprising”, said Dr Joanna Depledge, an expert on the international climate negotiations at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance.
She told Carbon Brief as the talks were coming to a close:
“It’s crunch time. The climate change regime has been bypassing, avoiding, dodging, circumventing the need to phase out fossil fuels forever. The science and passage of time mean it just can’t do that anymore. And negotiators are being asked to bite the bullet, in Dubai, with a petrostate presidency.”
After hours of fevered speculation, including the wide circulation of a “leaked” draft that prompted the UNFCCC secretariat to deny its provenance, the fifth and final version of the stocktake text emerged in the small hours of 13 December.
The final stocktake deal, including the text on “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, came “after 12 hours of intense shuttle diplomacy”, said German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.
It situates the call for “contributions to the following global efforts” in the context of the “need for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5C”, as well as recognising “different national circumstances”.
However, beyond the loose “accelerating action in this critical decade”, the wording does not include any near-term targets, pointing only to net-zero emissions by 2050.
The figure below illustrates the development of fossil fuel language, through each version of the stocktake text at COP28.
Although there was no agreement to phase out fossil fuels, many – though by no means all – reactions to the text were broadly positive.
Its adoption was greeted with a “sustained standing ovation and loud applause from across the room”, the Earth Negotiations Bulletin reported.
One developed country negotiator told Carbon Brief the outcome was “pretty strong given the circumstances”. They added:
“I think ‘transition away from’, with action in this critical decade and net-zero by 2050, sends a strong signal. The important thing now is delivering on it.”
German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said the deal “marks the end of the fossil fuel era”. UN secretary general António Guterres responded to the text by attacking “those who opposed a clear reference to phase out of fossil fuels”, saying this was “inevitable”.
However, many noted that the deal came with very little in the way of climate finance to support developing countries “transitioning away” from fossil fuels.
Others pointed to the continued approval of new fossil fuel extraction in developed countries – including the UK and the US – as well as the lack of clear differentiation in the stocktake text on who should be moving fastest to move away from fossil fuels.
In addition to the language on all fossil fuels, the final text repeats wording from COP26 on phasing down unabated coal power, but still does not define what “unabated” means. It also lacks wording from earlier drafts on ending permitting of new coal power.
The final text calls for the tripling of renewable energy capacity and doubling of the rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030, though without the specific numerical targets that had appeared in earlier drafts.
(Along with cutting methane emissions from fossil fuel production, meeting these goals would provide 80% of the emissions cuts needed this decade to get on track for 1.5C.)
The text calls for “accelerating zero- and low-emissions technologies, including…carbon capture and utilisation and storage” (CCS), though this is tied “particularly” to “hard-to abate sectors”, weakly limiting the use of CCS as a cover for business-as-usual.
On non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, the final text calls for “accelerating and substantially reducing” emissions “in particular methane emissions by 2030”. However, it lacks the numerical targets that had been in earlier drafts.
On fossil fuel subsidies, the text calls for the phasing out of “inefficient…subsidies that do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible”.
Finally, the text “recognises that transitional fuels can play a role in facilitating the energy transition”. This wording, taken to refer to gas as a “bridge fuel”, was pushed by Russia.
Note, however, that it is in a separate paragraph, not linked to an operative verb in the text, as it is only “recognised” rather than tied to a “call”, “request” or “invitation” to action.
Beyond these details, the stocktake was never supposed to focus on cutting emissions alone, as AOSIS negotiator Haynes explained. She told the 4 December briefing:
“The stocktake is not just about mitigation, it is way more comprehensive than that. It covers the entirety of the Paris Agreement and, in fact, if we are to have a stocktake outcome that truly allows us to course correct, we do need to see the energy package as a component, but it does not stand alone and it cannot stand alone.”
EU lead negotiator Jake Werksman told a 5 December press briefing attended by Carbon Brief that this breadth made the stocktake “the mother of all cover decisions”, referring to the broad political “cover decisions” that have emerged from talks at COP26 and COP27.
As such, in addition to the section on mitigation, the stocktake also includes sections of:
- Adaptation.
- “Means of implementation and support”, meaning finance, capacity building and technology.
- Loss and damage.
- “Response measures”, meaning the impact of climate action on fossil-fuel dependent economies.
- International cooperation.
These are covered in the relevant sections of Carbon Brief’s summary, below.
The final part of the stocktake decision was its “guidance and way forward” for all countries, on how to develop their next national climate pledges under the Paris regime.
The stocktake decides that all countries should submit their next climate pledges “at least 9-12 months in advance” of COP30, which will be held in November 2025 in Belem, Brazil.
It “encourages” them to submit “ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all greenhouse gases, sectors and categories…aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5C”.
(Many NDCs to date only cover carbon dioxide emissions, selected parts of the economy and do not set emissions reduction targets.)
The text also “encourages” countries to “align” their next pledges with long-term targets, such as the net-zero goals set by most of the world’s major economies.
(At the closing plenary, US climate envoy Kerry said both the US and China would update their long-term strategies “and we invite other parties to join us”.)
In addition, paragraph 169 of the text reminds countries that their next pledges have to include information on how they have been “informed” by the first stocktake.
Naoyuki Yamagishi, energy and climate director for WWF Japan, told Carbon Brief this was “a tiny little confirmation for us to hold them accountable” on the stocktake decision.
Kaveh Guilanpour, a former negotiator and now vice president for international strategies at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), told Carbon Brief:
“Coming into COP28, I was looking for three things in relation to the global stocktake: a clear and unambiguous signal that the world will accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels; that this will be reflected in the climate targets of countries to be tabled in 2025; and a commitment to enhance international cooperation to tackle climate change.”
He said the outcome delivered all three “to some extent”, but the “moment of truth” would come when countries file their new pledges in 2025.
Finally, the stocktake “decides” on a “road map to mission 1.5C” run by the presidencies of COP28, COP29 and COP30 (UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil, respectively). This will “stimulate ambition…action and implementation over this critical decade” to “[keep] 1.5C within reach”.