From cross-border pipelines for green hydrogen that can also carry natural gas, to sustainable aviation fuel that threatens forests, and costly carbon capture projects that are used to recover more oil, “false solutions” to climate change have gained ground in recent years, often backed by fossil fuel firms.
A new research paper, published last month in the journal Energy Research and Social Science, shines a light on this trend, exploring such projects that have also caused environmental injustices such as air pollution or depriving communities of their source of income.
The study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), in collaboration with the University of Sussex, is based on 48 cases of environmental conflicts around the world, contained in the ICTA-UAB’s Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas).
The selected cases range from Norway’s Trollvind offshore wind farm, built partly to decarbonise the power supply to the Troll and Oseberg oil and gas fields; to US fossil fuel firms working with the dairy industry to turn manure into biogas; and a tree plantation in the Republic of Congo proposed by TotalEnergies, where locals say they have been prevented from accessing their customary farmland.
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The researchers argue that “false solutions” – which also include large-scale carbon offsetting projects, many of which have been discredited – help to reinforce the political and economic power of the industry that is responsible for the climate crisis, and are undermining the global energy transition.
Climate Home News spoke to co-author Freddie Daley, a research associate at the University of Sussex’s Centre for Global Political Economy, about the paper’s findings and implications for climate policy.
Q: What was your motivation in exploring these types of “false solutions” to the climate crisis?
A: It’s very much a reaction to the fossil fuel industry insisting these technologies are solutions, rather than us creating a typology of things that are not working. All of the [paper’s] authors are very keen on a habitable planet – and we’re not going to let perfection be the enemy of the good.
But this is a call [to] arms to say that governments need to be very careful about what they’re giving public subsidy to, because in a complex situation – where there’s an urgency for reducing emissions but also for creating sustainable livelihoods and for ensuring that the needs of people living in and around these projects are met – I think it’s very important to scrutinise the viability of these schemes.
The starting point was off the back of oil majors – or so-called integrated energy companies – coming out and being very bullish on sustainability and net zero, and alongside this, proffering that they were part of the solution to climate mitigation, energy transition, job creation, green growth. And we took this as a problem statement to begin our analysis: How can fossil companies be part of the solution?
Q: What did your work reveal about “false solutions” and how can it deepen understanding of them?
A: “False solutions” is a term that’s been used for many, many years by Indigenous groups and by frontline communities – so we wanted to formalise it because it’s not really been engaged with in academic literature so far. We thought it was quite a big gap that needed to be filled.
We thought how can we categorise it? How can we help redefine it? What are the characteristics of these false solutions? So we dug into the data, the EJ Atlas, across many technologies – from hydrogen through to carbon offsets and biofuels, but also renewable energy projects, because we were finding that renewable energy projects causing conflicts were either being used to fuel fossil fuel production, such as solar panels or wind turbines to run rigs, which we thought was an interesting pattern – and also utility-scale renewable energy projects which were operated by fossil fuel firms.
Out of total energy generation, fossil fuel companies’ production of renewables is a tiny, tiny fraction. Why do these projects exist, and how do they operate within the broader energy system? We wanted to look at what their function was – and going through the data and the lived experience of the communities on the frontlines of these projects, we found that they’re very much used to legitimise fossil fuel expansion or just continued operation.
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And then we also looked at the governmental role within the institutions as well – so fossil fuel firms using these technologies and these false solutions as ways to garner public subsidy, particularly for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen, to some degree.
And what we found across all these cases was they did very little to reduce emissions and generated environmental conflicts… and they ultimately delayed an energy transition, or the sort of industrial transformation that’s required to deliver deep and rapid emissions cuts.
Q: Shouldn’t fossil fuel companies be able to use all the climate solutions available to help reduce their emissions while the world is transitioning away from coal, oil and gas?
A: My response [to that argument] is to actually look at the data. When people say hydrogen and CCS are very important and they’re crucial, I don’t disagree with the idea that we might need some sort of technology to suck carbon out the atmosphere at some point in the future. But currently, the operational projects are not delivering that, and fossil fuel projects should not be expanded on the premise that future technologies can undo their emissions.
Just a few weeks ago, the Financial Times ran a very big story about how most of the oil majors have cancelled all their hydrogen projects because the scale of it’s not there yet, and they don’t think it’s going to stack up. These are companies with huge amounts of capital in an easy-to-abate sector – energy – saying we’re not going to do this. So you have to question the plan of hydrogen as a solution, if even the people that have the expertise and the capital to make it work are saying we’re not going to do this because we cannot make it work.
Likewise with carbon capture, many of the large energy projects and energy producers that have garnered vast amounts of public subsidies on the promise that they will do carbon capture are cutting those research projects down.
So at this stage in the energy transition – which some people call the “mid transition”, the difficult part – I think we need to scrutinise these technologies and look at what they do deliver on a project-by-project basis, and then on an aggregate basis.
Q: High-carbon industries say they need government subsidies to cover the high cost of researching, developing and creating markets for new technologies to help combat climate change. Is this justified?
A: I’m a big believer in the idea that the energy transition – the ideal energy transition, which is one of scaling up new industry while phasing out an old one – is going to require not only public money, but public coordination. That means states actively stewarding investment, picking winners and sequencing what is going to be a highly disruptive process.
I think public subsidy is necessary. We need to see deep and rapid decarbonisation, especially in wealthy industrialised states, but it should be used in a very targeted way to scale up technologies which have a marked impact on emissions and also uplift welfare as well – so heat pumps insulating homes in poorer communities. With these sort of things, you get your bang for your buck.
Comment: The battle over a global energy transition is on between petro-states and electro-states
You don’t get bang for your buck giving BP and Shell money to pilot a carbon capture and storage facility. It’s an extension of existing relationships between big business and government that needs to be looked at closely in the context of energy transition, because ultimately, these companies are not serious about transitioning at the requisite speed or scale to stave off climate disaster.
Look at both oil and gas companies’ ownership of renewable assets (1.42% of operational renewable projects around the world) and the renewables share of their primary generation (0.13%). They have the capital, and they have the know-how to do this. They haven’t done it. The question is, why do they need more public subsidy to continue not doing it?
This interview was shortened and edited for clarity.
The post Q&A: “False” climate solutions help keep fossil fuel firms in business appeared first on Climate Home News.
Q&A: “False” climate solutions help keep fossil fuel firms in business
Kicking off proceedings at the mid-year climate talks in Bonn amid fraught global geopolitics, UN climate chief Simon Stiell told delegates that tackling the global climate crisis is “the hardest, but most important, thing humanity has ever tried to do together”.
Perhaps hoping to forestall the usual diplomatic wrangling that routinely bogs down the talks, he warned governments that there is no time to “re-open past debates or renegotiate commitments already made”.
Instead, he added, there is an imperative to accelerate real-world action as deadly heat intensifies and the fossil-fuel cost crisis sparked by the Iran war strangles economies, “taking a wrecking ball to lives and prosperity”.
That message seemed to sink in with the negotiators in Bonn, where the opening session kicked off only an hour late and was not marred by agenda rows, which delayed the start of the talks by a day last year.
On bridging the gap between the negotiations and the real economy, Stiell called for elevating the Global Climate Action Agenda, a goal long promised but never fully delivered.
But, he added, Türkiye – working with Australia – is now building on the efforts by last year’s COP30 presidency to streamline this process into six thematic areas, including boosting energy and food security, curbing methane and strengthening the resilience of cities.
Stiell was also keen to stress that the formal negotiations remain central to driving implementation of the Paris Agreement. He urged governments in Bonn to advance key issues including the Global Goal on Adaptation, the delivery of the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake and the development of a new just transition mechanism.
The first Global Stocktake was an assessment of countries’ collective progress in meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, which led to a 2023 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems and a 2030 goal to triple renewable energy, among other things.
Hinting at upcoming reforms to the UN climate regime – which has often been accused of failing to keep pace with advancements in the real world – Stiell said all institutions must continuously evolve and improve. The UN climate secretariat has heard countries’ calls to work more efficiently, support access to climate finance and reduce the reporting burden on governments, he added.
Türkiye to outline targets for Action Agenda
While Australia will run the negotiations at COP31, for co-host Türkiye – which is organising the talks in Antalya – the focus is on the so-called Global Climate Action Agenda. This is a sprawling smorgasbord of around 500 voluntary initiatives bringing together governments, businesses, investors, cities and civil society. It covers everything from strengthening power grids for clean energy, to restoring degraded forests and land, and reducing emissions from buildings.
COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum told the opening session of the Bonn talks his team will present the “main framework” of the Action Agenda on Tuesday, adding it will be “based on concrete and tangible targets”. He also said Türkiye will announce a roadmap for translating what happens in the negotiations into the real world, which will ”point to a science-based process with highly clear and defined outcomes” and steps for getting there.
“In the second decade of the Paris Agreement, the COP31 Action Agenda will bring the outcomes of the first Global Stocktake to life, and we will make a strong start to the second decade,” Kurum said.
In a joint letter issued in May, the two host nations said COP31 will be shaped as an “Implementation COP” and a “COP of the Future,” aimed at translating commitments into tangible and trackable progress. They outlined priority areas – to be achieved through the six axes of the Action Agenda defined ahead of COP30 – including electrification, zero waste, resilient cities, sustainable agriculture, green industrial transformation and climate finance.
Chiming with this, Australia’s Chris Bowen, the COP31 president of negotiations, made the global energy transition the centerpiece of his opening intervention in Bonn.
This year’s climate summit, he said, must send investors and corporations the message that countries are “collectively committed” to building up renewable energy and reducing fossil fuel reliance. Fossil fuels were not directly mentioned in the main outcome at COP30 last year after countries failed to agree on developing a global transition roadmap, which Brazil is now putting together outside of formal negotiations.
Bowen, Australia’s minister of climate change and energy, said that, while energy crises like the one the world is going through now will become more frequent and more unpredictable, accelerating the shift to cleaner sources will “ease shocks to our energy systems”.
He identified progress on electrification as a priority for COP31, pointing to an assessment by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that electricity’s share of final energy consumption needs to reach 35% by 2035 to keep the 1.5C temperature goal in sight.
“In a world of geopolitical uncertainty and energy disruption, the transition is not a risk,” Bowen added, “it is the solution and an immense opportunity”.
Tensions around trade and climate surface again
Over the weekend, it became clear that discussions on trade and climate would once again become a source of contention between countries – if not as explosively as they did at the start of the talks a year ago.
As agreed in the COP30 Global Mutirão decision, a series of dialogues on trade and climate will be held in Bonn yearly from 2026 to 2028. Climate Home News understands that the G77 + China has expressed discontent about the organisation of the first dialogue that will take place on June 13, because it plans to incorporate contributions from a range of organisations rather than just governments.
In a statement at the opening plenary, Uruguay, on behalf of the G77 group of developing nations, “encouraged Parties [countries] to engage constructively in the dialogue in a robust and structured manner”. Many in the Global South are concerned that international trade measures to make products greener, such as the European Union’s carbon levy on imports, could end up discriminating against them.
Russia warned during its opening statement that the new dialogue should not be used to create trade barriers.
Comment: Indonesia’s failing Just Energy Transition Partnership is a cautionary tale
Avantika Goswami, climate change and green economy programme manager at the India-based Centre for Science and Environment, told Climate Home News that the UN climate secretariat has been unclear and untransparent about what will be discussed at the dialogue. “We don’t know if observers and civil society are going to be able to contribute,” she added.
After the three mid-year dialogues, in 2028 there will be a high-level event for countries to exchange their views and experiences, and the officials in charge will have to present a report summarising these discussions.
At Monday’s opening session, Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, the Ghanian chair of the African Group of Negotiators, said it would be “important to provide clarity on how they intend to present the report” and suggested that the co-chairs of the Bonn talks should consult with countries on how best to do that.
The post Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says appeared first on Climate Home News.
Bonn Bulletin: Tackling climate crisis is “hardest” challenge ever, Stiell says
Climate Change
Bowen urged to lead with vision and ambition to accelerate fossil fuel phase out at Bonn climate meeting, as global energy crisis bites
Bonn, Germany, Monday 8 June 2026 — As the UN climate negotiations in Bonn commence, Greenpeace Australia Pacific is calling on Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen to lead with vision and ambition to advance multilateral climate cooperation, and use his unique position to drive concrete progress at COP31 and ensure a meaningful partnership with the Pacific.
In the context of a global energy crisis and turbulent geopolitics, the Bonn Climate Change Conference will be a critical moment to sustain emerging political momentum towards a just transition away from fossil fuels. The midway point on the road to COP31 in Türkiye in November, Bonn will be the first time Minister Bowen has attended a major UN conference in his role as COP31 President of Negotiations.
The start of the Bonn meetings also marks 100 days since the illegal US-Israel war on Iran sparked a global energy shock and after 57 countries including Australia met in Santa Marta, Colombia in April for the world’s first conference on the transition away from fossil fuels — a landmark moment signalling political winds of change in the face of threats to multilateralism.
Speaking from Bonn, Dr Simon Bradshaw, COP31 Lead at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Amidst a global energy crisis, accelerating climate disasters and a looming super El Niño, the urgency to accelerate climate action and break free from fossil fuel dependence has never been clearer.
“Minister Bowen has been telling Australia and the world that we are in a global ‘fossil fuel crisis’, and that unhooking from fossil fuels is fundamental both to tackling the climate crisis and to ensuring secure and affordable energy. It’s time to match that message with a clear vision and agenda for COP31 — one that has the transition away from fossil fuels at its heart.
“As COP31 President of Negotiations, Australia has both the opportunity and responsibility to build on the momentum of COP30 in Belém and the recent landmark conference in Santa Marta on transitioning away from fossil fuels. This includes leading by example at home, with an immediate halt to new fossil fuel projects — including the mammoth proposed Browse gas project — and committing to develop a national roadmap away from fossil fuel production.”
“Few countries have as much skin the game as Australia: we are a country highly vulnerable to extreme heat, fires, floods and other impacts of climate change, we are suffering the consequences of fossil fuel dependency in terms of our energy security and affordability, but we have some of the world’s best renewable energy opportunities.
“Bonn is a key moment for the incoming Presidency to start shaping the vision, building the necessary trust, and actively setting priorities and expectations for the COP. We therefore hope and expect our Minister to be much more vocal and active in Bonn.
“Australia, in partnership with the Pacific, is taking the reins of global climate cooperation at a critical moment in the world’s transition away from fossil fuels. There is no more time to lose.”
Also in Bonn, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “Multilateral cooperation is the antidote to climate and geopolitical chaos. At Bonn, Pacific nations’ legacy of leadership from the frontlines of the climate crisis can be our guiding star as we build a more peaceful and secure world for all.
“We must build on the progress at Santa Marta and break the hold fossil fuels have on our global security and economies. Pacific nations are already facing the brunt of a global climate crisis, but now facing the compounding injustice of an energy crisis brought on by fossil fuel dependence. We did not create either of these crises, but are among the most exposed to both.
“The International Court of Justice made clear that responsibility to address the climate crisis extends beyond borders and that continuing to expand fossil fuel production, including for export, could constitute an internationally wrongful act — a ruling that has now been overwhelmingly endorsed by the UN General Assembly. Continuing down the fossil fuel path, and failing to align efforts with limiting warming to 1.5C, is a breach of our international legal obligations.
“We must not lose sight of what’s needed — by elevating the voices of Pacific leaders, backing Pacific-led solutions, and maximising the opportunity of the Pacific pre-COP, we can ensure the 1.5°C imperative and the transition away from fossil fuels are central to the agenda at COP31, and that communities are granted the finance they need to build a strong, resilient future beyond fossil fuels.”
Ahead of SB64, Greenpeace International has produced a policy briefing outlining the core elements of a just transition away from fossil fuels and the urgent, priority actions needed from national governments and through global co-operation to make it a reality.[1]
ENDS
[1] A Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels: Policy Briefing
Photos in the Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal) or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
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