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Baku talks divided on fossil fuel transition

Late on Saturday, when many COP29 delegates were letting their hair down after a long week, negotiators rowed openly over whether discussions on emissions-cutting should continue into the next week or be postponed.

A coalition of developed countries, small islands, the least developed countries and some Latin American nations support using a channel of the talks called the Mitigation Work Programme to take forward last year’s global commitment to transition away from fossil fuels.

They had pushed to set up an emissions-cutting “ facilitation process and platform” and “urge” governments to do things like stop building new coal-fired power plants and phase out (not just, as previously agreed, phase down) coal.

They wanted to set numerical targets for reducing methane emissions, curbing deforestation, increasing energy storage and improving grids to enable the roll-out of renewable energy.

But, speaking in Saturday night’s plenary, Saudi Arabia said this was an attempt at “eroding the flexibility developing countries depend on” and that there should be no new targets or goals.

Bolivia, speaking on behalf of the LMDC group which includes China, also rejected “targets and outlandish proposals”. Iran and India supported this, with India saying that the talks’ conclusions were supposed to be “non prescriptive”. The African group also rejected “attempts to impose new requirements”.

With governments divided over the very purpose of the talks, co-chairs suggested on Saturday not continuing them into the second week and delaying them for six months until the mid-year climate talks in the German city of Bonn – scrapping all the work done in week one. Sources in the room told Climate Home that Saudi Arabia raised this option.

Then, on Monday, COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev said he would make efforts to avoid this happening, adding “COP29 cannot be silent on mitigation” and that he would “address the matter in every direction” available.

At Monday’s plenary, several countries expressed disappointment with the state of the mitigation talks but rejected postponing them to next year, many of them saying this would be a priority.

Australia, on behalf of the Umbrella Group of developed countries, said “some parties consistently blocked” progress and welcomed the presidency’s efforts to keep the talks going. The EU also said this would be a priority.

The AOSIS group of small islands said they would not leave Baku without “a strong mitigation outcome”. “The fact that those discussions are stalled is extremely concerning for our group,” the negotiator from Samoa told the COP plenary.

Switzerland also noted that decisions made in Baku on mitigation will serve to inform the next round of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), which is due next year. “It’s not acceptable that in the very body meant to reduce emissions we do not have a clear message going forward,” the Swiss negotiator said.

The COP president said his team will run consultations with countries, which will be facilitated by Norway and South Africa and will conclude by Wednesday. He also ruled out the possibility of a cover text, which is a high-profile general statement signed off by all governments but not linked to any particular strand of the negotiations.

Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, said Saudi Arabia wants to be as “unconstructive as they can be when it comes to fossil fuels” and is “happy to be destructive”. He added that civil society “disagrees” with this because there is a need to talk about implementing last year’s decisions on energy transition as well as finance for that implementation.

The European Union waded into the debate on Monday afternoon, with its climate commissioner Hoekstra saying it was “imperative” to send a strong signal from Baku to inform the next round of national plans for cutting emissions (NDCs). “We must follow on our historic decision in Dubai to truly transition away from fossil fuels,” he added.

He praised the announcements of 2035 emissions reduction goals from the UAE, Brazil and the UK before and during COP29 as “positive and promising”.

He added that the EU would put together an ambitious NDC in line with the 1.5C warming limit – and is on the right track, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 8% in 2023. “We need – and we will continue to keep the pace,” he said, without clarifying when the EU’s updated NDC would land.

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Presidency gets help

At Monday’s plenary, the COP presidency announced the usual ministerial pairs that will facilitate discussions on the most contentious issues, including finance, mitigation and the UAE Dialogue on last year’s Global Stocktake.

Among the ministerial task forces, COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev announced that the UK and Brazil will “support and advise” the presidency to “ensure we deliver a high-ambition balanced package” in Baku. Brazil will hold the COP’s presidency next year while the UK is the last developed country to have held it in 2021.

“People have told me that they are concerned about the state of negotiations. Let me be clear: I’m also concerned that the parties are not moving towards each other quickly enough. It’s time for them to move faster,” Babayev told a press conference on the sidelines of COP29.

Azerbaijan has never had a major role in climate talks so – unlike the UK and Brazil – does not have many experienced negotiators. Its lead negotiator Yalchin Rafiyev is a relative newcomer to climate talks in his 30s.

The UAE last year got around its lack of capacity by hiring negotiators who had worked for previous presidencies as consultants, but Azerbaijan has not done the same. Leaning on the Brits and Brazilians looks like their last-minute solution.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell also called out parties for the slow progress, calling on parties to break “individual silos”. “ We cannot afford any outbreak of ‘you-first-ism’, where groups of parties dig in and refuse to move on one issue until others move elsewhere. This is a recipe for going literally nowhere.”

Time is ticking and Stiell called on negotiators to finish technical work early to have time to sort out the most contentious topics. Bab