12/06/26
Energy transition must 'reflect national circumstances'
Sao Paulo, 12 June (Argus) — The roadmap for the transition away from fossil
fuels being drafted by the UN Cop 30 climate summit's presidency will "reflect
diverse national circumstances", the Cop 30 presidency said on Friday during the
Bonn climate talks. The roadmap — which was first proposed by Brazilian
president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during Cop 30 , held in Brazil last November
— will consider "different levels of socioeconomic development, energy access,
fossil fuel dependency and capacity to transition", among other factors, the Cop
30 presidency said. The roadmap has so far received input from 115 countries and
247 non-state actors, the presidency said. The Cop 30 presidency has so far
identified four main levers to accelerate the roadmap's implementation:
Reforming the international financial architecture, which would include linking
debt-relief mechanisms to the transition away from fossil fuels and increasing
access to concessional finance and global carbon markets; Strengthening
capacity-building, enabling technology sharing, in particular in transportation,
supporting innovation in hard-to-abate sectors and increasing energy efficiency
and electrification rates; Implementing regional and global cooperation
mechanisms to reform international trade and legal framework for investments,
and foster producer-consumer dialogue; Prioritizing the just transition,
particularly for fossil fuel-dependent economies, by addressing competing
development priorities, with information integrity and building trust across
countries at different stages of development. During the meeting, a
representative from the International Renewable Energy Agency agreed that
electrification will be key to the global transition away from fossil fuels. The
topic is set to take center stage during Cop 31, which will be held in Turkey in
November, as that country has proposed a global goal for electricity to reach
35pc of global final energy consumption by 2035 as part of its action agenda.
Some of the main barriers encountered so far for the transition away from fossil
fuels are "structural imbalances in the global financial architecture,
insufficient de-risking mechanisms and continued international finance flows
towards fossil projects", the Cop 30 presidency added. The presidency has also
found that the concentration of clean energy supply chains, the high-cost nature
of nascent, hard-to-abate solutions, and limited technology sharing, as well as
the absence of dedicated transition coordination mechanisms, also hinder the
transition. Other factors such as insufficient political leadership,
geopolitical uncertainty and armed conflicts — such as the Iran war — and
outdated legal and trade frameworks are also hurdles for the transition. "The
recent geopolitical crisis has shown very clearly how fossil fuels are linked to
vulnerabilities, and we need to address this in the roadmap," Cop 30 president
Andre Correa do Lago said. But the roadmap's implementation will be much easier
than other climate negotiations, he added. "The great advantage of
implementation is that we have much more freedom to implement than to
negotiate," he said. "Negotiation requires consensus; implementation does not."
The Cop 30 presidency expects to unveil the roadmap during Cop 31. It is also
working on a roadmap to address deforestation, which it will also unveil at Cop
31. By Lucas Parolin Send comments and request more information at
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