Lidy Nacpil is the coordinator of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD).
The escalating instability in the Middle East has sent shockwaves through global energy markets, forcing Southeast Asian nations into a precarious position. While the region has made significant pledges to transition toward renewables, the threat of interrupted gas supplies and surging LNG prices is creating a dangerous incentive to prioritise immediate energy security over long-term climate goals.
Instead of a smooth transition to renewable energy, the current crisis heightens the risk that the region will fall back on its existing, domestic coal infrastructure, potentially stalling decarbonisation efforts for years to come.
As the conflict widens, the global energy landscape is weathering its most violent disruption since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. For nations stretching from Vietnam to Indonesia, this crisis represents a direct assault on the cost of living and a systemic threat to the regional energy transition.
The fragility of the current energy architecture was laid bare this week. Gas prices soared by 50% in a single day following a drone strike that paralysed production at the world’s premier LNG export hub in Qatar, the source of a fifth of global supply. With the Strait of Hormuz now a contested zone, the “liquid” in Liquefied Natural Gas has transformed from a flexible bridge fuel into a strategic liability.
New life for aging coal plants?
When vital shipping lanes become “no-go zones,” Southeast Asian nations are forced into a survivalist posture. In an environment where oil and gas are weaponised, coal – often sourced domestically or from immediate neighbours – becomes the desperate fallback for governments seeking to avoid industrial paralysis and social unrest.
Despite the looming deadlines of the Paris Agreement, a “debt-fossil fuel trap” is forcing a false binary: maintain grid stability with coal or risk economic volatility in pursuit of carbon targets. With coal-fired generation in the ASEAN region already hitting record peaks in 2024 and 2025, this latest market shock threatens to breathe new life into aging plants in Thailand and Indonesia, effectively closing the window on early retirement pathways.
The bitter irony of this volatility is that it often enriches the very actors who benefit from the carbon-intensive status quo. As Middle Eastern supply lines falter, the US fossil fuel industry is positioning its exports as a “secure” alternative.
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While Europe has already pivoted toward Washington to replace Russian gas, this is a hollow solution for Asia. It merely trades one form of geopolitical dependency for another, keeping local economies tethered to the pricing whims of distant conflicts and private interests.
Fossil fuels are inherently inflationary and inseparable from conflict. They provide the capital for invasions and the leverage for geopolitical bullying. To insulate against these systemic risks, the only viable path for ASEAN is a radical doubling down on electrification and renewable energy. This strategic pivot is no longer just an environmental goal. It is a matter of fiscal survival.
Renewables serve as hedge against volatility
As the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) for wind and solar continues its terminal decline, these technologies serve as a structural hedge against the volatility tax inherent in global gas markets. For Southeast Asia, this transition marks a departure from a vulnerable, centralised legacy system toward a decentralised model shielded from external shocks.
On April 28-29, the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands will host the First International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels to identify legal, economic and social pathways to accelerate a just, orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. This conference arrives at a critical juncture for climate finance and global peace through electrification and renewables.
As we look toward the Santa Marta conference, the stakes have never been higher. And the setting could not be more symbolic: Santa Marta, a major coal-exporting port that handles over 50% of the coal exported from Colombia, serves as a visceral reminder of the old energy system we must leave behind.
Moving beyond this legacy, however, requires more than voluntary pledges and symbolic gestures. It demands a departure from the volatile business-as-usual model that treats energy as a weaponised commodity. We need a fundamental systemic overhaul of the global energy architecture. This means moving beyond the “unmanaged” chaos of market-driven shocks toward a deliberate, financed transition that prioritises energy sovereignty over commodity dependence.
True system change requires a new financial logic, one that empowers nations to run on homegrown wind and solar, which have already emerged as the most cost-effective options for new generation. By decoupling energy security from geopolitical volatility, we can protect workers and frontline communities while ensuring that energy is no longer a currency used to fund conflict.
The post Middle East crisis increases Southeast Asia’s coal risk appeared first on Climate Home News.
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Just transition
At COP30 in Brazil in 2025, nations agreed to establish a practical mechanism to help drive a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.
Key aspects of this “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate finance
Climate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigation
At negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCs
Back in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issues
Turkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit
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