Andreas Sieber is the associate director of global policy and campaigns at 350.org. Stela Herschmann is Climate Policy Specialist at Observatório do Clima, a network of 130 Brazilian organisations.

Four work pillars. Sixteen possible negotiated outcomes. Three advisory “circles”. One “ethical stocktake”. Councils, roadmaps. There are so many shiny objects garnishing the agenda of COP30 that it’s easy to overlook one key absence: the preparations for the Belém climate change conference are simply not addressing the main cause of our current climate disruption.

Fossil fuels, the source of 75% of greenhouse gases, are nowhere to be seen in the negotiations. That must change if Brazil is really willing to make its mutirão – the term it is using to launch a global mobilisation – a turning point in the fight for a livable planet.

At COP28 in Dubai – hosted by a petrostate under the helm of an oil executive – the Global Stocktake (GST) delivered a breakthrough: a clear call to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in an orderly, just and equitable manner”, with urgent action this decade. That this emerged despite, not because of, the host’s interests only underscores its significance.

The Global Stocktake may be dressed in the usual diplomatic language, but its message is unmistakable. It has set a new gold standard for climate action: putting the fossil fuel phaseout at the centre of the global response to the climate crisis.

A few weeks after the landmark Dubai decision, however, some countries started voicing what a top diplomat has called “buyer’s remorse”. At the G20 summit in Brazil last year, some countries led a rebellion against the GST, and managed to prevent the leaders’ declaration from doing as much as reaffirm the commitment from paragraph 28d.

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At COP29, in Baku, the bloody fight for finance, with rich countries’ intransigence denying many others the possibility of implementing the transition, meant that no progress was made on the crucial energy issue.

Some countries argue that the Global Stocktake is not a buffet where countries pick and choose what to implement; all of its provisions must be followed up, including those on finance, which are anathema to developed nations.

Furthermore, they say, the phaseout of fossil fuels outlined in Dubai must be delivered in each country’s climate plan, or NDC. The GST is but a guideline to better NDCs, and now it is up to each country to implement those guidelines as they see fit.

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Meanwhile, in the real world, a fossil frenzy is going on with no end in sight. Rich oil-producing nations such as Norway, Canada and Australia, are expanding their production like there’s no tomorrow (and at the current pace, there really won’t be).

Major developing economies like Brazil and the United Arab Emirates are using the Global North expansion as an excuse to “drill, baby, drill” themselves, each one betting on being the last seller of oil, all gambling with the future of humankind.

Not to say anything, of course, of the world’s top oil producer, the United States, which has become a rogue state under climate-change denier Donald Trump. To countries profiteering from the post-Ukraine invasion fossil orgy, that Saturday morning in 2023 when the gavel came down in Dubai is a hazy memory indeed.

Which brings us to COP30 and its host country.

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Brazil is the only major emitter so far to go beyond merely reaffirming the GST language in its NDC. There, it said it would “welcome the launching of international work for the definition of schedules for transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

That sentence captures one crucial thing about the Dubai energy decision that is lost to GST haters: it is not self-implementable. It needs timetables and a suitable definition of “orderly, just and equitable”. Who goes first, in which time horizons? What are the barriers? How to overcome them?

The world cannot simply commit to phasing out fossil fuels and expect every country to come up voluntarily with a plan on how to constrain its own fossil industries – especially considering the record profits of oil companies this decade. To be implemented, the Dubai text needs to be fleshed out. In short, it needs a COP decision.

What progress on energy at COP30 looks like

To be worthy of its historic billing, COP30 must deliver a formal outcome that accelerates the energy transition and implementation of the first Global Stocktake. There are calls to restrict the energy transition to the Action Agenda, where voluntary commitments are made (and as easily forgotten). This is not nearly enough.

Whether through a mandated process like the UAE Dialogue or a clear-eyed cover decision, COP30 must send a clear political signal and accelerate the energy transition and GST implementation. Here, the COP30 Presidency holds the pen – and the political responsibility – to secure a meaningful outcome on the energy transition that doesn’t tiptoe around hard choices.

What’s more, the COP30 leader-level moment must reinforce and accelerate commitments to triple renewable energy capacity, double energy efficiency, and transition unambiguously away from fossil fuels.

Brazil is well-positioned to lead a dialogue on protecting biodiverse areas from fossil fuel exploration and to initiate discussions on fossil fuel phaseout timelines, as indicated in its NDC. These deliberations should also lead to mandating the tracking of the transition away from fossil fuels and/or setting quantified goals for cutting fossil fuels, e.g. by a reduction goal in their share of the global energy mix by 2030.  

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But Brazil can’t go it alone. Other countries also need to step up and put all their heart and diplomatic creativity to work. We are looking at you, Europe, whose leadership has been faltering.

In the case of the African Group of Negotiators, notably the fairly progressive position of the least developed countries (LDCs) has not always been represented by group negotiators on the topics of mitigation (emissions reductions) and fossil fuels.

There is a need to recreate the alliance that led to the successful Dubai outcome, while listening to the concerns of other countries that do not have the fiscal space to transition, in Africa in particular, or are concerned about meeting development needs, as in Asia. 

In the coming weeks, two key moments for climate diplomacy shall test the will of the world to deal with the elephant in the room. This week, ministers and heads of delegation have gathered in Copenhagen to find political common ground for Belém. In June, technical UN negotiations for COP30 will take place in Bonn. At both meetings, fossil fuels need to be part of the conversation. We don’t have another 30 years to waste.

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COP30 must heed the elephant in the room: fossil fuels