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When Romain Ioualalen started a new campaigning job at Oil Change International, he was tasked with putting fossil fuels on the agenda of international climate talks.

That was in April 2020, just after the start of the pandemic. He told Climate Home recently that “it seemed like a pretty distant dream” at the time.

In fact, he used to joke that he had “found the only international climate policy job that didn’t require going to Cop because fossil fuels would never be a thing there”.

But become a thing they have. When Cop18 was held in Gulf oil and gas producer Qatar in 2012, the IISD think tank’s 28,000-word summary only mentioned fossil fuels once.

Those two words pop up 46 times in the same report produced after Cop28 where governments agreed for the first time to transition away from all fossil fuels in energy systems.

Asked why fossil fuels had gone from the fringes to the centre of negotiations, experts cited numerous reasons, which all worked together to build momentum over the years.

They referred to the falling cost of renewables, the mounting climate impacts, the interventions from authoritative mainstream voices, the tireless campaigning of the Pacific islands and civil society, and a healthy dose of good fortune.

Fossil fuels weren’t always absent though. Right at the start of climate talks, in 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), mentions them. Although it does not condemn them, it implies they have got to go or, at least, be reduced.

It does this by recognising the “special difficulties of those countries, especially developing countries, whose economies are particularly dependent on fossil fuel production, use and exportation, as a consequence of action taken on limiting greenhouse gas emissions”.

Then Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mello makes a toast to world leaders at the Rio Earth Summit (Photos: United Nations)

Kept outside

But after governments signed this landmark text, they gathered every year at a Cop for a quarter of a century without any of their agreements mentioning the need to reduce fossil fuels again.

Asked why, Joanna Depledge, who studies climate talks at Cambridge University, said fossil fuels had been actively kept outside the process, predominately by the Opec cartel of oil producers – Saudi Arabia, in particular – and by the USA.

She said Opec, the Saudis and others wanted, as they still do, to talk about emissions in general rather than particular sources of emissions like fossil fuels. 

For a long time “there wasn’t much questioning of that,” she said, “because the so-called comprehensive approach was seen as a good thing”. “There’s also an aversion to policy prescription in the climate change regime,” she added, “apart from the EU and the vulnerables, countries don’t like an international regime telling them what to do in particular sectors”. 

For decades, all the negotiations were focussed on signing an agreement that would commit all countries to take action to limit global warming. After several time and hope-depleting failures, they eventually succeeded in Paris in 2015.

Diplomats celebrate as the Paris Agreement is agreed in 2015 (Photos: UNFCCC)

Having agreed on the headline goal, they could discuss how to go about meeting it. That’s when one particular fossil fuel rose up the agenda – the most polluting one, coal.

Depledge says that it was Poland that unwittingly put coal in the crosshairs. The country is Europe’s biggest defender of coal and hosted the talks in 2008, 2013 and 2018.

In 2018, Cop24 was held in the heart of Poland’s coal country in Katowice, where delegates choked on polluted air and gazed at adverts from the Cop’s partners in the coal industry. 

The next year, the UK was announced as host of Cop26. Its coal record couldn’t be more different to Poland’s. Between 1990 and 2019, it reduced its coal use for electricity by 96% – replacing it mainly with gas and later wind.

Its government was keen to export this strategy to other countries, co-founding the Powering Past Coal Alliance in 2017. The work of launching this alliance “built momentum around having coal as the main outcome of Cop26”, said Center for Climate and Energy Solutions vice-president Kaveh Guilanpour.

A protester covers her mouth as she marches through Katowice during Cop24 (Photos: Greenpeace)

Then UK prime minister Boris Johnson confirmed this focus, saying Cop26 should be about “coal, car, cash and trees” and Cop president Alok Sharma said the summit should “consign coal to history”.

It was not just the UK with coal in the crosshairs though. The head of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres had been calling for an end to new coal power plants since 2019 and in August 2021 said the latest IPCC scientific report must “must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet.”

The same year, China, Japan and South Korea all said they would stop financing new foreign coal-fired power plants – a decision most Western nations and multilateral development banks had already taken.

With this momentum, the UK was able to convince governments to agree to “phase down” coal – the first-ever mention of a fossil fuel in a Cop agreement.

Not every country agreed to this enthusiastically though. Between them, China and India use two-thirds of the world’s coal and they teamed up to water down the language at the last minute from “phase out” to “phase down”, sparking tears from Sharma.

India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav speaks to Sharma at Cop26 (Photos: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

The next year, Cop delegates gathered in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. For the first week, the Cop looked set to be about one issue only. Not fossil fuels but rich countries paying for the loss and damage poorer ones are suffering from as a result of climate change.

That changed at the end of the first week of negotiations when Bloomberg reported that India had called on the Cop president to target all fossil fuels in the Cop27 agreement. Depledge said India was angered that the fossil fuel the country relies on – coal- was being singled out while the oil and gas that rich nations favour went unchallenged.

By that point, oil and gas had already started to feel some of the heat that coal was under.  Guterres’ rhetoric was broadening to all fossil fuels and Denmark and Costa Rica had co-founded at Cop26 a coalition of countries pledging to stop pumping oil and gas.

Ioualalen, who was involved in the initiative, said that was a “big, big thing” as it “put the notion that you could actually take measures to constrain the development of fossil fuel production on the map”.

So when India made their intervention in Egypt, they were pushing at a more open door. A significant minority of countries – including the European Union, small islands, Chile and Colombia – seized on the proposal.

Ministers from the “high ambition coalition” hold a press conference at Cop27 (Photos: Kiara Worth/UNFCCC)

But oil and gas-reliant states like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia voiced their opposition. The Egyptian presidency left it out and, at 4am on the day many negotiators were flying home, governments from the “high-ambition coalition” accepted defeat

After it was agreed, these ministers showed their displeasure. Tuvalu called it a “missed opportunity”, Chile said they were “very disappointed” and the EU said it was “not enough on [emissions reduction]”.

They had lost the battle but sounded determined to win the war and the decision to make Sultan Al-Jaber, the CEO of oil and gas firm Adnoc, the next Cop president only ramped up the focus on fossil fuels.

“The Cop28 presidency, as being a petro state, was initially a major concern”, recalled Harjeet Singh, Climate Action Network’s head of global political strategy. “However, it ironically served as a unique opportunity to exert significant pressure, leading to substantial discussions on curtailing all three fossil fuels.”

Singh said “this momentum transformed what was once a fleeting mention of fossil fuels at Cop26 in 2021 into a robust debate within the UN climate change dialogues” and allowed campaigners to highlight the “hypocrisy of rich nations targeting coal use in the developing world while simultaneously expanding oil and gas production”.

Al Jaber himself responded to criticism by saying that a fossil phase out was both “essential” and “inevitable” despite his company’s plans to increase production. Guilanpour said that the UAE’s status as an oil and gas producer and ally of Saudi Arabia gave them “credibility” with potential opponents of the fossil fuel phase out.

Sultan Al Jaber and Simon Stiell celebrate as the Cop28 agreement is passed (Photos: Cop28/Mahmoud Khaled)

By the time India hosted the G20 summit in Delhi last September, fossil fuels were at the very top of the climate agenda. India tried but failed to get 20 of the world’s biggest economies to agree to phase out fossil fuels.

The battleground was set for Cop28, where fossil fuels came to dominate the talks after the loss and damage fund had been agreed on the first day. But the Saudis and others wouldn’t agree to “phase out” or “phase down”, preferring the eventual compromise of “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

After Cop28, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister downplayed the significance of this agreement, calling it just an “option” on an “a la carte menu” and stressing the difference from “phase out” – an interpretation that E3G analyst Tom Evans called “incredibly misleading”.

Despite the Saudi dismissal, the head of the UNFCCC Simon Stiell called it the “beginning of the end” for the fossil fuel era. Guilanpour celebrated the decision too, saying that if that had been offered at the start of the year, “most people would have bitten your hand off”.

With that now agreed, fossil fuels are likely to take a back seat in the negotiations. Depledge predicted they would “move away from words and on to hard cash and the dollars”, with a new post-2025 climate finance target set to be agreed at Cop29.

Outside of negotiations, governments’ plans to keep producing fossil fuels are likely to come under ever more scrutiny in the media and public discourse, 

That became clear just hours after the Cop28 agreement was signed. In the room next door, Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva and then German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock held back-to-back press conferences at which they were both grilled on how their governments’ production plans fit with the deal they’d just agreed.


Ioualalen said that how climate leadership is judged has now changed. "You cannot just say that you are going to be a climate leader, that you're going to reach net zero, if you're going to continue increasing your oil and gas production - that's become very clear," he said.

And when governments release their next round of climate plans in 2025, the role of fossil fuels will be closely watched. That year's Cop presidency will be Brazil - whose competing desires to pump more oil and gas and to save the Amazon rainforest and planet are sure to be noted.

While investment into the supply of fossil fuels is still rising, the IEA predicts that demand will soon peak. Whether supply is restrained and whether demand plateaus or falls sharply are two of the key climate questions of the decade.

Climate Home asked Ioualalen whether all the years of work getting fossil fuels on the agenda will help with that. "It's too early to say", he replied. "I'm seeing a lot of debate on the outcomes [of Cop28] on whether it's historic or an absolute catastrophe or greenwash etcetera - the reality is that it's probably a bit of both".

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When taps run dry in the Caribbean, it’s not enough to blame El Niño

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Amira Odeh Quiñones is a hydrologist and Caribbean organiser for the 350.org climate campaign group

El Niño, likely to be one of the strongest in modern history, has arrived on Caribbean shores.

Drought is slowly creeping up on our islands. But unlike the fiery wildfires ravaging parts of Europe, there’s no smoke signalling the damage being done, no sirens to warn of the danger. Only announcements from public health officials to stay indoors and remain hydrated — as if outdoor workers and farming communities have the luxury to heed such advice.

During El Niño, strong atmospheric winds alter rain patterns and trap heat across the Caribbean. But while we have experienced El Niño many times before, it has become very visible in recent years how climate change is making this natural phenomenon worse.

Across the Greater Antilles, temperatures are soaring past 38°C (100°F), with real-feel indexes reaching a gruelling 43°C in parts of Puerto Rico where I live. Cuba has it worse. Widespread power outages mean that methods for cooling down are unavailable for most of the day, leaving millions of vulnerable people at risk of heat stroke when temperatures hit 38°C.

Santa Marta coalition tested as co-chair Colombia turns back to fossil fuels

During the last strong drought a decade ago, I had water only two days a week in my home. Today, there are many families whose taps are about to run completely dry. Water authorities have already begun strict rationing in some municipalities, with more on the list scheduled for rationing if conditions don’t change.

Water rationing is far more than an inconvenience; it is an immediate health risk. This means thousands of people need to constantly haul heavy buckets up flights of stairs just so they could bathe, cook, stay hydrated – the basics of survival.

Heat causes health problems

Puerto Rico is home to roughly 300,000 elderly residents. Many live alone, isolated and without support. They risk severe physical injury when carrying heavy water containers, and are wont to suffer from silent heat exhaustion in unventilated rooms.

Furthermore, when water shortages force residents to store water in open household containers, it inadvertently creates breeding grounds for Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. Paired with scorching temperatures that tend to shorten the mosquito breeding cycle, the region is facing explosive outbreaks of dengue fever that endanger our most vulnerable: children and the elderly.

The economic fallout is equally devastating. Dry fields mean millions of dollars in lost crops, forcing small agricultural businesses to collapse, needing urgent government relief to survive. Extreme fuel shortages have already paralyzed Cuba’s agricultural sector, cutting food output by 60% – the El Niño dry spell threatens to decimate it.

At sea, warmer ocean waters fuel massive influxes of sargassum seaweed. Rotting sargassum chokes our beaches, destroying the local tourism industry that so many working families rely on. Tangled seaweed also damages nets and boat engines, slashing fish catches and driving up equipment costs for local fishers.

In the south of Puerto Rico, the coastal town of La Parguera is currently witnessing a historic amount of sargassum on its shores. This has halted most of the boating activity in the area, which is the seaside town’s main tourist draw and economic driver.

All over the Caribbean, from town halls to local group gatherings, the story I hear is always the same: constant headaches, lost work hours, failing health, and a sense that quality of life is silently being stolen. The compounding effects of heatwaves, drought, and marine destruction are exhausting our people, our islands.

Climate change to blame

Climate change makes each El Niño year hotter and more damaging. Higher baseline global temperatures increase the energy and moisture available for extreme weather. Latest projections show that El Niño may push the monthly global average temperature past 2°C of warming for the first time in early 2027. In the Caribbean islands, that will not just be breaking records – it’ll be breaking lives.

Recently, I had the opportunity to share a panel with climate scientists behind what is known as the field of “attribution science” – or the science that compares today’s climate conditions to what the Earth’s climate would be like without human activity, particularly burning fossil fuels. They’re unequivocal: it’s no longer a question of whether extreme weather is caused by climate change, it’s just a question of how much.

    Attribution science recently got a boost from the U.S.’ top scientific advisory body. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recognized that researchers’ methods have advanced considerably in recent years, resulting in better assessments on how much extreme weather can be attributed to human-caused climate change. It noted that attribution findings could be relevant in some types of legal cases, including those seeking damages from oil companies for climate impacts.

    This crisis, which is already taking a heavy toll on our communities’ survival, needs real, urgent, and structural action that goes beyond aid. With similar droughts now gripping parts of Asia and Africa, we’re falling into the familiar narrative of treating the looming humanitarian crisis as if no one was to blame, as if it is being caused solely by a natural phenomenon we can’t control.

    It’s not. The world was already on fire before its regular visitor, El Niño, came. While we need humanitarian action, we need climate action too, in order to permanently put out the flames.

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    Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change?

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    China has released a five-year plan dedicated to addressing climate change.

    The 15th five-year plan for a national response to climate change is the latest in a series to outline in-depth climate and energy targets for the 2026-2030 period.

    These include five-year plans for “building a Beautiful China”, developing a “new-type energy system” and developing renewable energy.

    There are also separate “action plans” for the 2026-2030 period, such as for peaking carbon emissions

    China has pledged to peak its emissions before 2030 and reach carbon neutrality before 2060.

    The new plan does not include any major new targets, instead consolidating and reaffirming existing policies.

    Nevertheless, it includes significant signals on key policy areas, such as non-carbon dioxide (CO2) greenhouse gases, global climate governance and carbon markets.

    Below, Carbon Brief examines some of the notable elements in the latest five-year plan and what it reveals about China’s policy direction through to 2030.

    What does the climate plan cover?

    The Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) released the plan in late July, in unison with 18 other government departments. These include the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, and the National Energy Administration.

    The document covers a range of topics, including CO2 emissions, other greenhouse gases (non-CO2 GHGs), carbon markets, carbon footprints, climate adaptation and international cooperation on climate change.

    For the first time at the five-year plan level, the plan creates a comprehensive target system covering all areas of climate policy, say officials in a MEE Q&A.

    They describe it as “the main policy instrument” for advancing China’s climate action during 2026-2030.

    China rarely issues high-level multi-year policies dedicated to “responding to climate change”. In 2014, the NDRC published a plan on the topic running through to 2020, but this was not linked to a five-year plan period.

    Qin Yan, principal analyst at ClearBlue Markets, tells Carbon Brief that the plan shows that China’s climate governance has reached “an unprecedented strategic level”.

    She adds that the plan creates an “all-encompassing target system” to support China’s Paris Agreement climate pledges for 2030 and 2035.

    In its 2030 pledge, China aimed to peak emissions “before 2030” and reduce carbon intensity – its emissions per unit of GDP – by more than 65% from 2005 levels.

    Last year, president Xi Jinping personally announced China’s 2035 pledge to cut China’s greenhouse gas emissions to 7-10% below peak levels by 2035, while “striving to do better”.

    The five-year plan marks a new phase in China’s climate policy, according to researchers at CIB Research, an economic research body affiliated with the Industrial Bank, whose largest shareholder is the Fujian provincial government.

    Their analysis adds that the plan represents a broad effort to strengthen China’s climate-governance system, implementation mechanisms and underlying capacity.

    Nevertheless, several headline targets and policies in the document simply reiterate already established plans.

    These include:

    • Cutting carbon intensity by 17% across the five years
    • Reducing carbon intensity per product in industries under China’s carbon market by 3%
    • Substituting fossil fuels with renewables
    • Strengthening climate adaptation
    • Supporting the “free flow” of cleantech

    What does the plan say about non-CO2 GHGs?

    The plan also goes into detail on China’s approach to non-CO2 GHGs. This includes reaffirming a target of an emissions “reduction capacity” from these gases totalling 30m tonnes of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030, although the baseline is unclear.

    The target previously appeared in the overarching five-year plan, as well as the plan for building a “Beautiful China”.

    The goal refers to emissions reductions, which can be realised through implementing current non-CO2 emissions reduction policies and projects, says Chen Meian, programme director and senior analyst at the Institute for Global Decarbonization Progress (iGDP). 

    She adds that it is “relatively achievable”, with sources including increasing the number of coal-mine methane utilisation projects.

    She points to an MEE explanatory note for a draft methodology under the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) scheme, China’s voluntary carbon-credit market. Chen says the note suggests that projects using ventilation air methane and coal-mine methane with concentrations below 8% alone could deliver around 20MtCO2e of reduction by 2030.

    The note states that, currently, such projects are estimated to be able to “generate annual emission reductions of approximately 4.5MtCO2e”.

    In addition, Chen says, measures targeting industrial nitrous oxide (N2O) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) could help make up the remainder needed to meet the target.

    According to iGDP analysis of biennial reports submitted by China to the UNFCCC, China emitted around 14,000MtCO2e of GHGs in 2021, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF).

    Non-CO2 GHGs accounted for around 2,700MtCO2e, or 19%, of the total, the majority of which was methane, as shown in the figure below.

    Methane is China’s main source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions by gas, MtCO2e. Stacked bar chart from 2005 to 2021 showing total emissions rising to over 2,700 MtCO2e. Methane consistently accounts for the largest share, followed by Nitrous Oxide and F-gases. Source: iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report - (alt text generated by Google Gemini)
    iGDP analysis of China’s first Biennial Transparency Report and fourth Biennial Update Report.

    China’s plans to curb these super-pollutants in the five-year period include coal-mine methane utilisation projects, end-of-pipe destruction technologies for HFCs and guidance on the use of catalysts to reduce N2O emissions.

    The plan also calls for the recovery and replacement of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) in power equipment.

    For Chen, the plan’s focus on SF6 control is particularly noteworthy. She says the gas is “finally receiving policy attention” and that proactive action is “timely and will help avoid future emissions growth” as China’s power system expands.

    What does the plan say about global climate governance?

    One of the plan’s clearest objectives for international cooperation is for China to play a more active role in global climate governance.

    By 2030, it says China should markedly increase its “influence, guiding power, shaping power and moral appeal” in this area.

    It says China’s climate action could also feed into the Global Governance Initiative, a policy initiative aimed at reforming the global governance system.

    China will also aim to “build a new narrative on climate governance”, it adds.

    Prof Thomas Hale, a professor in public policy at the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, writes on LinkedIn that the plan “marks a major rhetorical shift” towards China being increasingly willing to “lead and shape” global climate action.

    Another clear focal point for international cooperation is in carbon markets.

    The plan calls for China to expand the global influence of its carbon market, such as through international rule-setting, cooperation on standards and by hosting the China Carbon Market Conference.

    Qin says China’s more active role in global carbon pricing is already evident in the launch of the open coalition on compliance carbon markets with the EU and Brazil. This coalition is expected to adopt a work plan at the China Carbon Market Conference in September.

    Qin also notes that China “could become the world’s largest [carbon] offset buyer” as its energy transition progresses.

    The country would, therefore, “benefit from helping shape global rules under the Article 6 framework [for carbon trading under the Paris Agreement]”, she adds.

    The post Q&A: What is in China’s new five-year plan for climate change? appeared first on Carbon Brief.

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    Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline

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    About a quarter of the countries signed up to the Paris Agreement are still breaching its rules by failing to submit a new national climate plan, 18 months after the February 2025 deadline.

    Forty-five nations had not submitted a plan known as a nationally determined contribution (NDC), according to the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee’s (PAICC) newly-published report of its 7-10 July 2026 meeting. One, Oman, has published it since the meeting.

    Twelve countries ignored the committee’s repeated attempts to find out why they had not yet produced a climate plan, the report said. They will be invited to the committee’s next meeting, from September 1-4, so it can identify the challenges and constraints they face.

    Members of the committee are divided, as they were at their last meeting, on whether to name those countries publicly and will debate the question again in September.

    The PAICC does not have any power to punish governments, as building these powers into the Paris Agreement was thought to be so controversial that it could have stopped some governments from joining, experts have previously told Climate Home News.

    A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects.

    The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025.

    Some medium-sized emitters

    Countries without an updated NDC include Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Phillippines, all of which rank among the world’s 40 largest greenhouse gas emitters. The rest of the countries are smaller, poorer nations, with many in Africa or the Caribbean.

    Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.

      The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords.

      The committee also expressed concern that the UN’s NDC registry continued to label the climate plans of countries that are no longer party to the Paris Agreement as “active”, according to its report. The US submission has since been archived.

      Since the last PAICC meeting in March, ten countries have published NDCs. The committee did not name them but they include India, Algeria, Cameroon and Guyana.

      The post Quarter of countries still missing UN climate plans 18 months after deadline appeared first on Climate Home News.

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