Countries have started to come out in support of Turkey's electrification goal at the UN Cop 31 climate talks in Antalya, Turkey, but developing nations have reminded developed ones that the share of electrification cannot increase without funding and that the pledge cannot become a distraction.
UK prime minister Andy Burnham told other nations' leaders at Cop 31 that he is supporting Turkey's pledge for three reasons: to achieve energy security, create good jobs and lower energy bills.
The Turkish Cop 31 presidency has set out a broad voluntary "35-by-35" global goal for electricity to reach 35pc of global final energy consumption by 2035, up from around 20pc currently.
Burnham's words echoed those of EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen, who said that electrification would lower bills, emissions and offer greater energy security. South Korea's envoy Kang Kumsil said the country was "strongly" supporting the target as it strives to become "an electro-state".
Other countries have signalled support for the Turkish target, including Australia, which is presiding over negotiations during the summit, and other European countries such as Germany, Italy, Norway and Finland. Some Pacific Islands, including Palau and Solomon Islands, as well as some African countries have also signalled support, according to observers.
"Early support for the 35-by-35 electrification pledge is encouraging, but many more countries need to endorse it and turn their commitments into credible national plans backed by concrete policies and investment," climate think-tank the World Resources Institute (WRI) president Ani Dasgupta said.
But for developing countries, the drive to electrify economies must come with the means to implement it. North Macedonia president Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova made this clear during the leader's summit.
"We cannot make these transformations alone", Congo president Felix Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo said. "Solidarity must be measured in investments. Electrification is an urgent issue for development and climate justice."
Developed countries signalled that they would not increase finance beyond the $300bn agreed to at Cop 29 in Baku and are looking to rope in private capital. The UK's Burnham announced today support for the Amplify programme, which will aim to secure £5bn ($6.6bn) of new private finance for clean energy projects around the world, "taking a modest amount of public funding and converting it into significant sums of private investment." The UK, Norway and Canada also announced a partnership at Cop 31 which could bring $10bn in climate finance by 2030, including mobilised private capital.
Ambition
But the electrification pledge may prove too broad or not ambitious enough for countries to fully get behind it.
Some European nations have said that they want to see a clean energy element attached to it, which does not currently appear in the cards.
The IEA said that the 35-by-35 target is already within reach, saying that electricity could "cost-effectively" meet 33pc of the world's final energy consumption by 2035, up from 23pc. Around 70pc of the energy system of Finland is electrified. Electricity accounts for 27pc of the energy consumed in France. China already has a target to raise the share of electricity in final energy consumption to 35pc by 2030.
Marshall Islands' president Hilda Heine warned that electrification risks becoming a distraction if policymakers do not confront fossil-fuel use directly. "If it is not tied to the transition away from fossil fuels, it is a distraction from the issue at the heart of the crisis, she said.
Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that with the 35-by-35 goal, his country seeks to mobilize the necessary financing, technology and international cooperation. But "we cannot impose a single prescription on anyone, that would be neither right nor fair".
