“In the end, we are not following this track, in agreement between India and us,” said Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary in the German ministry for economic cooperation and development. “We realised that the approach is not attractive for India,” he told Clean Energy Wire in an interview at the UN climate change conference COP29 in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan.
Why India is rebuffing a coal-to-clean deal with rich nations
It has been clear for some time that the agreement is unlikely to materialise, but the governments have never been as clear as the state secretary about the end of the talks.
“I can speak openly about it because I openly discussed it with my Indian friends,” Flasbarth said.
To push forward the climate-friendly transition in emerging nations through financial as well as technical support and capacity building, the COP26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow in 2021 birthed the world’s first JETP. The U.S., the UK, France, Germany and the European Union had joined together and made a deal worth 8.5 billion U.S. dollars with South Africa to help the country move away from coal.
Under Germany’s presidency, the large economies in the Group of Seven (G7) agreed to establish similar partnerships with Indonesia, Senegal, Vietnam – and India. India’s prime minister Narendra Modi attended the summit in southern Germany in 2022.
India’s reluctance
The other partnerships came through, but a little over two years later, negotiations on a JETP for India are discontinued.
India, the world’s most populous nation with an ever-growing energy demand, has resisted a coal-focused JETP from the time conversations with wealthy countries began, seeking instead one focused on renewable energy and investment in skills.
The country remains heavily dependent on coal to meet its energy demand and increased coal production by 12 percent in 2023-24 (compared to 2022-23), with the government aiming for an up to seven percent annual rise in production over the next six years to reach 1.5 billion tonnes in domestic coal production by 2030.
The country is also investing big in renewable energy projects, aiming to achieve 500 GW in clean energy capacity by 2030.
Flasbarth’s statement has not come as a surprise for analysts tracking dialogue on JETP, though they said this was the first official statement on the matter.
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An Indian analyst familiar with the country’s reluctance with a JETP said the United States and Germany were leading the discussions, but India had not shown much interest. “But this has never been spoken about,” the analyst said, who asked to remain anonymous, because they were not authorised to speak to the media on behalf of their organisation. The analyst added that the International Partners’ Group (IPG) of donor countries, which was trying to get India to the table, will not pursue a JETP anymore.
A coal-focused JETP, like the one with South Africa and Indonesia, would not have worked for India as the fossil fuel not only remains a stable source of energy but is also an income source.
Analysts say that a JETP arrangement does not capture the complexities of the transition of a coal-dependent nation like India, where at least five states have coal-dependent economies and where ten to 15 million people depend directly or indirectly on the planet-heating fossil fuel, according to researchers.
Trade unions had also feared that a JETP focused largely on technical and financial issues would ignore the social aspect of transition.
And then there was the question of lending.
“For G7 countries India was a key country under consideration for striking a JETP. However, the momentum has faded over the past year,” said Srestha Banerjee, director of just transition at the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology (iFOREST), a global research and policy think tank. “The Indian government has been measured about entering into a JETP given their nature, which has been loan heavy.”
While India is “cautious about taking on additional loans through these partnerships,” it remains open to international engagement and also financial support, which must not increase the debt burden of developing countries, Banerjee said.
Germany’s Flasbarth argued that the architecture of the JETPs has the advantage that donor countries coordinate well. “It means that the different donor countries do not knock on the recipient’s door every few days with a slightly different approach on how to achieve a climate-friendly economy,” he said. “I see this as an advantage, as do many of our recipient countries. India does not.”
Renewables financing as way forward
Flasbarth sees a key reason for the end of the talks in “some kind of suspicion over whether the country remains in the driver’s seat” on its plans for a just transition. He said donor governments had repeatedly tried to assure that the worries were unfounded, “because you cannot organise a transition in your own country without ownership over the essential decisions.”
“As there was a lot of this suspicion, we put the approach aside, and discussed other ways with India,” said the state secretary.
Instead of the coal exit, a key focus of cooperation could be renewable energies. “India targets 500 gigawatts of solar power, but the country is not on track,” said Flasbarth. “We talked about what we could do together to get this done.” Germany had helped organise an investors’ conference on renewable energy with a focus on India, as well as started a joint discussion on diversifying global supply chains, he said.
“We as Germans have learned our lessons about where you end up with mono-dependencies, in our case with gas,” said Flasbarth. “We do not want that to happen again in the transformative industries, and countries like India also do not desire that.”
Putting a pause on the JETP is not necessarily a “negative thing,” said Madhura Joshi, a senior associate with climate change think tank E3G, where she leads the work on India’s energy transition, as it opens an avenue for taking forward conversation on renewable energy.
India, she said, was pursuing a long-term transition plan with more ambition expected on renewable energy and storage. The transition could now be strategically planned to align with the country’s adaptation plans and also to finance flow, she said.
India could use this opportunity to consider developing a country platform in partnership with multilateral development banks to garner public, private and international investments to finance action, she said.
This article was produced as part of the COP29 Cross-Border Energy Transition Reporting Fellowship, a programme organised by Clean Energy Wire and the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and originally published in Clean Energy Wire.
The post India, donor countries give up on Just Energy Transition Partnership – German official appeared first on Climate Home News.
India, donor countries give up on Just Energy Transition Partnership – German official
Governments at the COP17 nature summit in Armenia agreed on Saturday to scale up their policies to protect the planet’s shrinking biodiversity, and for the first time invited large emerging economies like China and Gulf states to take on donor responsibilities to help fund those efforts.
For the past two weeks, countries held talks in Yerevan under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity to outline a plan to ramp up currently “insufficient” policies to conserve land and marine ecosystems. A recent UN progress report found the world is off track to meet 22 out of 23 global targets aimed at reversing species loss and protecting 30% of land and seas by 2030.
While a response plan, called the “Global Review of Collective Progress”, was expected to be the main outcome of COP17, negotiations struggled to advance amid a deadlock over the controversial subject of how to finance the boost in conservation measures needed.
After an all-night session on Friday, delegates agreed to invite developing countries to voluntarily signal their interest in assuming donor funding obligations alongside developed nations. Negotiators repeatedly warned that any stronger provisions on expanding the donor base would collapse the deal.
COP president: Results beat expectations
An exhausted COP17 president Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia’s environment minister, told journalists in the early hours of Saturday that “we’ve achieved more than we could’ve expected” given the “importance” of the decisions being taken.
“It was 100% possible that those items did not made it through. 100% possible,” he said, adding that the conference had made progress on “all the most important items”.
Speaking at the closing plenary, the group of Pacific Islands said that, while the summit had achieved “great outcomes”, delegates are also departing Yerevan “with realities not reflected in the official text”, such as the low replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a key funder of nature projects.
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Lula’s election win in Brazil raises hopes for zero deforestation drive
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Some observers also said the deal did not go far enough. Steven Guilbeault, a former Canadian environment minister who helped broker the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), said the Yerevan package of action is “an important step forward”, but still “falls short of what is needed to meet our 2030 commitments”.
An Lambrechts, biodiversity politics expert at Greenpeace International, said COP17 had kept things moving forward and set well-intentioned promises, but added that these “won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation” such as insufficient finance and debt constraints in developing countries.
WWF chief conservation officer Daudi Sumba noted that financial issues were not fully resolved. Despite the deal in Yerevan, “I fear finance will remain the key issue that continues to haunt the UN biodiversity summits,” he said in a statement.
‘Yerevan Pathway’ tackles nature plans and subsidies
In the lead-up to the summit, the UN assessment report showed countries are falling short on virtually all targets in the GBF, the 2022 global deal often referred to as the ‘Paris Agreement for nature’.
They include a landmark target to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and sea by 2030. If countries all stick to their current national goals, about 26% of land would be protected and only about 12% of marine ecosystems would be under conservation measures.
The main COP17 decision – named the Yerevan Pathway by the presidency – calls for countries to revise their biodiversity plans, subject to available funding, with a particular focus on addressing the gap in coverage of “marine, coastal and inland water ecosystems”.
It also urges the over 60 countries who have not submitted a biodiversity plan yet to finalise them “as soon as possible” and taking into account the gaps identified by the UN progress report.
Countries also agreed to tackle the drivers of biodiversity loss by “accelerating” the reduction of subsidies for activities that damage nature. Subsidy reform, covered by Target 18 of the GBF, is where countries have made the least progress so far, according to the assessment report.
Jill Hepp, director of nature and marine policy and incentives at green group Conservation International, said singling out subsidies in the Yerevan Pathway “gives a strong signal” that closing the gap for biodiversity action requires “more urgent efforts to reform harmful incentives and scale up positive incentives”.
“Timid” steps to expand base of donors
Having failed to meet a target to channel $20 billion for biodiversity conservation by 2025 and faced with shrinking aid budgets, the EU pushed a proposal to expand the list of which countries count as donors, so that wealthy emerging economies like China and Saudi Arabia could also voluntarily contribute. The group of Arab nations strongly opposed this.
During the talks, Irish minister of state for nature, Christopher O’Sullivan, whose country holds the EU presidency, said the bloc wanted the world’s “new realities” to be reflected in the donor list.
Negotiations remained gridlocked for most of the two-week talks, until a last-day compromise was struck to invite developing countries that may want donor status “to indicate to the [Convention on Biological Diversity] secretariat their interest in being included in the corresponding list”.
Countries also asked the secretariat to send an invitation to emerging economies wanting donor status at each subsequent COP, and requested a technical report on “the implications of inclusion in the list” for emerging economies.
Swiss lead negotiator Gabriela Blatter said during one of the sessions that her country had expected greater steps towards expanding the base of contributing countries, but added that “if we’re mutually unhappy, it’s probably the closest we can get on these very delicate political compromises”. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, also noted their dissatisfaction but said it had expected “a lot less”.
The fragile deal was approved in a package of decisions together with the Global Review, after some delegations including Brazil and China appealed to the plenary not to make further changes to the text at the risk of collapsing the whole agreement.
In a statement delivered to the closing plenary, the EU said the finance outcome had delivered “timid” progress towards fully broadening the base of donors.
Cali Fund still not operational
Adopted two years ago at COP16, the Cali Fund was seen by some observers as a way to channel private-sector finance into biodiversity conservation, as governments struggle to find public funds. But it is still struggling to get up on its feet.
The fund allows big corporations to access certificates for the use of genetic material found in biodiversity in return for a financial contribution, which experts estimate has the potential to raise up to $6.9bn for biodiversity. While voluntary, companies are encouraged to pay 1% of their profits or 0.1% of revenue into the fund.
But since its creation, the fund has received little more than $10,000, which Guilbeault argued is because the rules for disbursements to local communities and the operation of the fund had yet to be fleshed out. This was due to happen at COP17.
Yet, while the final decision on the fund laid out some of the rules – including how companies can earn “Cali Fund certificates” – some key technical details were left to the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador. This includes the issue of whether companies can pay a lower rate if they use genetic data for only a small portion of their products.
“By punting essential decisions to two years from now, parties have all but ensured the fund remains empty until then,” said Pakhi Das, a public policy advisor at NGO Plant-for-the-Planet.
The post COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP17 delivers fragile deal to boost conservation and funding for nature
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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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 resul