COP29 must deliver on the world’s energy transition promises

Dr. Sindra Sharma is senior policy advisor at Pacific Climate Action Network, Shady Khalil is global policy senior strategist at Oil Change International, and Andreas Sieber is associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org.

At the COP28 climate summit last year, nations took a historic step by agreeing to call on each other to transition away from fossil fuels and pledging to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030.

COP29 starts next week in Azerbaijan. It is rightfully positioned as a financial COP and is the opportunity to make significant progress on paying for this transition. At the same time, it must build on the outcomes from last year’s Global Stocktake , and further steps on emissions cuts and energy transition urgently.

The president of Azerbaijan has called fossil fuels a “gift from god”  rather than providing proposals on how to transition away from them. Thankfully, several more progressive governments have been stepping up instead – openly or behind the scenes – to advance proposals and ideas to implement the transition to renewable energy. Here’s what we need from COP29:

No new fossil fuels

As we approach COP29, governments’ current UN climate plans (NDCs) put the planet on track to reach 2.6-2.8C of warming. To avoid this catastrophe, rich countries must lead the energy transition with the urgency the crisis demands or the target of limiting global warming to 1.5C will slip out of our hands, exacerbating the extreme climate events already intensifying worldwide.

Science leaves no ambiguity: all NDC climate plans must commit to ending new oil, gas and coal project approvals. The International Energy Agency calculates that fossil fuel production must decline 55% by 2035 to align with the 1.5C limit.

It’s important to remember that just five rich countries – the US, Canada, Australia, Norway and the UK – are responsible for more than half of all planned oil and gas expansion.

But the presidencies of COP28, COP29 and COP30 (UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil) have a particular responsibility to align with climate action and ambition. Despite this, research from Oil Change International shows that collectively these countries plan to increase oil and gas production by about a third by 2035 .

They need to rise to the challenge and draw inspiration from countries like Colombia, which have halted new oil and gas exploration and prioritized climate action and the lives of billions of people over short-term profits.

Finance goal

If we want to see a truly just and equitable transition to renewable energy, the new post-2025 climate finance goal being negotiated at COP29 must deliver on the scale of finance, across sub-goals of emissions cuts (mitigation), adapting to climate change (adaptation) and loss and damage.

We must also see progressive reform around policy, debt, fossil fuel subsidies and transparency mechanisms, including monitoring and tracking. The success of COP29 hinges on agreeing to an ambitious new financial goal of trillions every year, in grants not just loans.

Global South countries are facing a worst-in-history debt and inequality crisis that is blocking climate action. Communities need real support for climate adaptation and mitigation, not more debt. The good news is that governments can find the money by ending fossil fuel handouts, making big polluters pay,

Cover Decision

Most COP summits agree on a headline text called a cover decision, which gets branded according to where it is held – the Glasgow Agreement or the Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan. These cover decisions have become pivotal political signals from COPs. Azerbaijan has shown no signs of preparing one but must do so to cement steps forward.

Any cover decision should aim to affirm the COP28 outcome, mandate that the next round of NDC climate plans end the expansion of fossil fuels, and specify equitable phaseout dates for their production and use.

While nations have pledged to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5C, current NDCs fall short of that goal. It is unthinkable to accept this as inevitable. Therefore, the cover decision should empower COP30 to demand further revisions if collective NDCs do not align with the Paris Agreement’s climate targets.

Global Clean Power Alliance

The energy transition landscape is crowded with initiatives, from Just Energy Transition Partnerships and multilateral funds to alliances like Beyond Oil and Gas and Powering Past Coal.

Yet, these efforts remain less than the sum of their parts. At COP29, the UK and several partners are set to launch the Global Clean Power Alliance, an initiative intended to address this fragmentation including through a “finance mission”.

While unlikely to bridge the vast and drastically underestimated energy support gap on its own for a true energy transition, the Global Clean Power Alliance could be a promising development if it manages to mobilize additional resources, foster true coordination and ensure that Global South nations take leadership roles.

Crucially, to be a legitimate initiative supporting the energy transition, the Alliance must not only aim to scale up renewables — without replicating the harmful nature of extractive industries — but make actively phasing out fossil fuels a cornerstone of its vision.

Institutionalize energy transition

While the COP28 energy decision was unprecedented, it currently lacks a clear home within the UN climate process where its implementation can be discussed and taken forward. The UN climate negotiations need to institutionalize ways to put the energy and other transitions into practice.

There is a negotiating track called the ‘Mitigation Work Programme’ – but it has failed to be the productive space we need it to be. Unlocking this space with a meaningful outcome at COP29 will demand bold leadership and bridge-building to overcome entrenched resistance, especially from countries like Saudi Arabia , which have actively obstructed substantive outcomes.

Similarly, wealthy developed nations have diluted the ‘Just Transition Work Programme’ by insisting on the exclusion of the international dimension of this transition and avoiding their historic responsibility for causing climate change.

Plans to turn Europe’s biggest coal mine into a leisure lake prove divisive

Brazil has stepped forward with an initial proposal : transforming the Mitigation Work Program from a negotiating forum into an implementation-focused body with a concrete focus on the energy transition.

This is the kind of leadership COP29 desperately needs, but Brazil must be prepared to defend its vision against expected swift opposition from Saudi Arabia. As we look to COP30 in Belém, Brazil’s political resolution will be crucial to keeping the energy transition on course. Floating bold ideas without putting one’s weight behind them as the future COP presidency is political theater not leadership. Brazil can and should be one of the first countries to lead.

True climate leadership requires the courage to confront fossil fuel dependency head-on and to invest deeply in the energy transition and provide the finance for it. Last year saw the UN climate process take a big step in the right direction. At COP29, we can further normalize and institutionalize the energy transition in this critical multilateral space.