Dr. Sindra Sharma is senior policy advisor at Pacific Climate Action Network, Shady Khalil is global policy senior strategist at Oil Change International, and Andreas Sieber is associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org.
At the COP28 climate summit last year, nations took a historic step by agreeing to call on each other to transition away from fossil fuels and pledging to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030.
COP29 starts next week in Azerbaijan. It is rightfully positioned as a financial COP and is the opportunity to make significant progress on paying for this transition. At the same time, it must build on the outcomes from last year’s Global Stocktake , and further steps on emissions cuts and energy transition urgently.
The president of Azerbaijan has called fossil fuels a “gift from god” rather than providing proposals on how to transition away from them. Thankfully, several more progressive governments have been stepping up instead – openly or behind the scenes – to advance proposals and ideas to implement the transition to renewable energy. Here’s what we need from COP29:
No new fossil fuels
As we approach COP29, governments’ current UN climate plans (NDCs) put the planet on track to reach 2.6-2.8C of warming. To avoid this catastrophe, rich countries must lead the energy transition with the urgency the crisis demands or the target of limiting global warming to 1.5C will slip out of our hands, exacerbating the extreme climate events already intensifying worldwide.
Science leaves no ambiguity: all NDC climate plans must commit to ending new oil, gas and coal project approvals. The International Energy Agency calculates that fossil fuel production must decline 55% by 2035 to align with the 1.5C limit.
It’s important to remember that just five rich countries – the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK – are responsible for more than half of all planned oil and gas expansion.
Oil Change International’s analysis of data from Rystad Energy (July 2023)
But the presidencies of COP28, COP29 and COP30 (UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil) have a particular responsibility to align with climate action and ambition. Despite this, research from Oil Change International shows that collectively these countries plan to increase oil and gas production by about a third by 2035 .
They need to rise to the challenge and draw inspiration from countries like Colombia, which have halted new oil and gas exploration and prioritized climate action and the lives of billions of people over short-term profits.
Finance goal
If we want to see a truly just and equitable transition to renewable energy, the new post-2025 climate finance goal being negotiated at COP29 must deliver on the scale of finance, across sub-goals of emissions cuts (mitigation), adapting to climate change (adaptation) and loss and damage.
We must also see progressive reform around policy, debt, fossil fuel subsidies and transparency mechanisms, including monitoring and tracking. The success of COP29 hinges on agreeing to an ambitious new financial goal of trillions every year, in grants not just loans.
Global South countries are facing a worst-in-history debt and inequality crisis that is blocking climate action. Communities need real support for climate adaptation and mitigation, not more debt. The good news is that governments can find the money by ending fossil fuel handouts, making big polluters pay,
Cover Decision
Most COP summits agree on a headline text called a cover decision, which gets branded according to where it is held – the Glasgow Agreement or the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan. These cover decisions have become pivotal political signals from COPs. Azerbaijan has shown no signs of preparing one but must do so to cement steps forward.
Any cover decision should aim to affirm the COP28 outcome, mandate that the next round of NDC climate plans end the expansion of fossil fuels, and specify equitable phaseout dates for their production and use.
While nations have pledged to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5C, current NDCs fall short of that goal. It is unthinkable to accept this as inevitable. Therefore, the cover decision should empower COP30 to demand further revisions if collective NDCs do not align with the Paris Agreement’s climate targets.
Global Clean Power Alliance
The energy transition landscape is crowded with initiatives, from Just Energy Transition Partnerships and multilateral funds to alliances like Beyond Oil and Gas and Powering Past Coal.
Yet, these efforts remain less than the sum of their parts. At COP29, the UK and several partners are set to launch the Global Clean Power Alliance, an initiative intended to address this fragmentation including through a “finance mission”.
While unlikely to bridge the vast and drastically underestimated energy support gap on its own for a true energy transition, the Global Clean Power Alliance could be a promising development if it manages to mobilize additional resources, foster true coordination and ensure that Global South nations take leadership roles.
Crucially, to be a legitimate initiative supporting the energy transition, the Alliance must not only aim to scale up renewables — without replicating the harmful nature of extractive industries — but make actively phasing out fossil fuels a cornerstone of its vision.
Institutionalize energy transition
While the COP28 energy decision was unprecedented, it currently lacks a clear home within the UN climate process where its implementation can be discussed and taken forward. The UN climate negotiations need to institutionalize ways to put the energy and other transitions into practice.
There is a negotiating track called the ‘Mitigation Work Programme’ – but it has failed to be the productive space we need it to be. Unlocking this space with a meaningful outcome at COP29 will demand bold leadership and bridge-building to overcome entrenched resistance, especially from countries like Saudi Arabia , which have actively obstructed substantive outcomes.
Similarly, wealthy developed nations have diluted the ‘Just Transition Work Programme’ by insisting on the exclusion of the international dimension of this transition and avoiding their historic responsibility for causing climate change.
Plans to turn Europe’s biggest coal mine into a leisure lake prove divisive
Brazil has stepped forward with an initial proposal : transforming the Mitigation Work Program from a negotiating forum into an implementation-focused body with a concrete focus on the energy transition.
This is the kind of leadership COP29 desperately needs, but Brazil must be prepared to defend its vision against expected swift opposition from Saudi Arabia. As we look to COP30 in Belém, Brazil’s political resolution will be crucial to keeping the energy transition on course. Floating bold ideas without putting one’s weight behind them as the future COP presidency is political theater not leadership. Brazil can and should be one of the first countries to lead.
True climate leadership requires the courage to confront fossil fuel dependency head-on and to invest deeply in the energy transition and provide the finance for it. Last year saw the UN climate process take a big step in the right direction. At COP29, we can further normalize and institutionalize the energy transition in this critical multilateral space.
The post COP29 must deliver on the world’s energy transition promises appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP29 must deliver on the world’s energy transition promises
Climate Change
States Say They Need More Help Replacing Lead Pipes. Congress May Cut the Funding Instead.
The U.S. House voted to cut millions promised for the work this year. The Senate will vote this week, as advocates and some lawmakers push back.
The Senate is taking up a spending package passed by the House of Representatives that would cut $125 million in funding promised this year to replace toxic lead pipes.
States Say They Need More Help Replacing Lead Pipes. Congress May Cut the Funding Instead.
Here are 6 inspiring books discussing oceans, critiques of capitalism, the Indigenous fight for environmental justice, and hope—for your upcoming reading list this year.
The Deepest Map: The High-Stakes Race to Chart the World’s Oceans
by Laura Trethewey (2023)
This book reminds me of the statement saying that people hear more about the moon and other planets in space than what lies beneath Earth’s oceans, which are often cited as ‘scary’ and ‘harsh’. Through investigative and in-depth reportage, ocean journalist and writer Laura Trethewey tackles important aspects of ocean mapping.
The mapping and exploration can be very useful to understand more about the oceans and to learn how we can protect them. On the other hand, thanks to neoliberal capitalism, it can potentially lead to commercial exploitation and mass industrialisation of this most mysterious ecosystem of our world.
The Deepest Map is not as intimidating as it sounds. Instead, it’s more exciting than I anticipated as it shows us more discoveries we may little know of: interrelated issues between seafloor mapping, geopolitical implications, ocean exploitation due to commercial interest, and climate change.
The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality
by Katharina Pistor (2019)
Through The Code of Capital, Katharina Pistor talks about the correlation between law and the creation of wealth and inequality. She noted that though the wealthy love to claim hard work and skills as reasons why they easily significantly generate their fortunes, their accumulation of wealth would not last long without legal coding.
“The law is a powerful tool for social ordering and, if used wisely, has the potential to serve a broad range of social objectives: yet, for reasons and with implications that I attempt to explain, the law has been placed firmly in the service of capital,” she stated.
The book does not only show interesting takes on looking at inequality and the distribution of wealth, but also how those people in power manage to hoard their wealth with certain codes and laws, such as turning land into private property, while lots of people are struggling under the unjust system.
The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet
by Leah Thomas (2022)
Arguing that capitalism, racism, and other systems of oppression are the drivers of exploitation, activist Leah Thomas focuses on addressing the application of intersectionality to environmental justice through The Intersectional Environmentalist. Marginalised people all over the world are already on the front lines of the worsening climate crisis yet struggling to get justice they deserve.
I echo what she says, as a woman born and raised in Indonesia where clean air and drinkable water are considered luxury in various regions, where the extreme weather events exacerbated by the climate crisis hit the most vulnerable communities (without real mitigation and implementations by the government while oligarchies hijack our resources).
I think this powerful book is aligned with what Greenpeace has been speaking up about for years as well, that social justice and climate justice are deeply intertwined so it’s crucial to fight for both at the same time to help achieve a sustainable future for all.
As Long As Grass Grows
by Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2019)
Starting with the question “what does environmental justice look like when Indigenous people are at the centre?” Dina Gilio-Whitaker takes us to see the complexities of environmental justice and the endless efforts of Indigenous people in Indian country (the lands and communities of Native American tribes) to restore their traditional cultures while healing from the legacy of trauma caused by hundreds of years of Western colonisation.
She emphasizes that what distinguishes Indigenous peoples from colonisers is their unbroken spiritual relationship to their ancestral homelands. “The origin of environmental justice for Indigenous people is dispossession of land in all its forms; injustice is continually reproduced in what is inherently a culturally genocidal structure that systematically erases Indigenous people’s relationships and responsibilities to their ancestral places,” said Gilio-Whitaker.
I believe that the realm of today’s modern environmentalism should include Indigenous communities and learn their history: the resistance, the time-tested climate knowledge systems, their harmony with nature, and most importantly, their crucial role in preserving our planet’s biodiversity.
The Book of Hope
by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams with Gail Hudson (2021)
The Book of Hope is a marvelous glimpse into primatologist and global figure Jane Goodall’s life and work. The collaborator of the book, journalist Douglas Abrams, makes this reading experience even more enjoyable by sharing the reflective conversations between them, such as the definition of hope, and how to keep it alive amid difficult times.
Sadly, as we all know, Jane passed away this year. We have lost an incredible human being in the era when we need more someone like her who has inspired millions to care about nature, someone whose wisdom radiated warmth and compassion. Though she’s no longer with us, her legacy to spread hope stays.
Ocean: Earth’s Last Wilderness
by David Attenborough and Colin Butfield (2025)
“I could only have dreamed of recording in the early stages of my career, and we have changed the ocean so profoundly that the next hundred years could either witness a mass extinction of ocean life or a spectacular recovery.”
The legend David Attenborough highlights how much humans have yet to understand the ocean in his latest book with Colin Butfield. The first part of it begins with what has happened in a blue whale’s lifetime. Later it takes us to coral reefs, the deep of the ocean, kelp forest, mangroves, even Arctic, Oceanic seamounts, and Southern Ocean. The book contains powerful stories and scientific facts that will inspire ocean lovers, those who love to learn more about this ecosystem, and those who are willing to help protect our Earth.
To me, this book is not only about the wonder of the ocean, but also about hope to protect our planet. Just like what Attenborough believes: the more people understand nature, the greater our hope of saving it.
Kezia Rynita is a Content Editor for Greenpeace International, based in Indonesia.
The Whanganui River is officially a living being and legal person. Māori leaders explain how Indigenous knowledge and persistence made it happen.
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‘I Am the River’: How Indigenous Knowledge Reshaped New Zealand’s Law
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