A new draft negotiating text from the UN Cop 28 climate conference calls upon countries to take action including "reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science". It does not mention a phase-out of all fossil fuels.
The text is a draft for the global stocktake which concludes in Dubai and measures progress towards Paris Agreement goals. It will be the main outcome of this summit. It was released by the Cop 28 presidency, illustrating that negotiations have moved along.
Although the outcome is not yet finalised and must be agreed by consensus, language around curbing all fossil fuels has never been included in a Cop outcome text.
The draft calls on parties to the UNFCCC — the UN's climate body — to take actions which could include "rapidly phasing down unabated coal" and "limitations on permitting new and unabated coal power generation". This goes further than previous language on coal, which called for "accelerating efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power".
It also includes a call for parties to ramp up "zero and low emissions technologies", naming renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) "so as to enhance efforts towards substitution of unabated fossil fuels in energy systems".
The text references a key Cop 28 pledge, asking countries to triple renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency rates by 2030.
The president's draft calls on countries to accelerate efforts "towards net zero emissions energy systems… well before or by around mid-century" and to phase out "inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible". The Cop process has previously called for a phase out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, but has not before attached a definition. The text on subsidies echoes the language used in G20 meetings.
The previous global stocktake draft had four options for a phase out of fossil fuels and one for no text on the subject at all.
"We need a fossil fuel phaseout, not an optional ‘reduction' in fossil fuels", civil society organisation Oil Change International global policy lead Romain Ioualalen said. References to ‘low carbon fuels' in the text are "coded language for promoting fossil gas", he added.
Several ministers today pointed to strong momentum for language around a phase out of fossil fuels in the final outcome of Cop 28.
"Countries all over the world" are in favour of a phase out of fossil fuels, French minister for energy transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher said today. "It's been remarkable… to see the momentum building", Swedish climate ambassador Mattias Frumerie said. "We haven't seen that kind of momentum before", he added.
And Ireland's environment minister and EU lead negotiator on climate finance Eamon Ryan cautioned that the global stocktake text "has to include so many items, it has to be broad".
"It won't be perfect for everyone," he told Argus on the Cop 28 sidelines today.
