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".
The post How fossil fuels went from sidelines to headlines in climate talks appeared first on Climate Home News.
How fossil fuels went from sidelines to headlines in climate talks
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight
The African Group wants dedicated space on tripling adaptation finance, the Green Climate Fund and trade, setting up a possible clash
To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
COP31 presidency announces AI pledge as UN climate chief says Big Tech ‘on thin ice’
None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines