Despite COP28’s stand-out agreement to transition away from fossil fuels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned that phasing out oil, coal and natural gas usage won’t be enough to limit global warming to the 1.5˚C target.
As many as 130 countries, who account for over half of the world’s gross domestic product, together with 50 fossil fuel companies, pledged to cut emissions at the UAE-hosted Climate Conference.
But IEA analysis has revealed that even if all the measures were fully implemented, this would “still leave the world far off track in limiting global warming to 1.5˚C above pre-industrial levels,” according to a Financial Times report.
“It is good, but it is not good enough,” IEA chief executive Fatih Birol was quoted by the FT.
He said it was “imperative” that countries agreed to an “orderly and just decline in fossil fuels in line with our international climate goals.”
At COP28, as part of President Sultan al-Jaber’s global decarbonisation charter, the bloc of 130 countries – including the US, the EU and Canada – agreed to triple renewable energy capacity to at least 11,000 gigawatts by 2030, as well as pledging to double the average rate of energy efficiency improvements to 4% until the end of this decade.
In addition, 50 major oil and gas companies signed up to plug all methane leaks and to stop routine excess gas flaring.
But Mr Birol said oil and gas companies needed to boost their spending on renewables and clean energy technologies, warning that there was currently a “major gap” between what they claimed to be investing into clean technologies and their rhetoric on climate change.
The IEA’s damning assessment followed criticism of the COP28 agreement by UN secretary-general António Guterres, who said the plans “clearly fall short of what is required.”
In 2023, the IEA said fossil fuel demand would need to fall by a quarter by 2030, if the world was to successfully limit global warming to 1.5˚C, in line with the goal set out at the 2015 Paris Agreement. Since then, the increase in global temperature has already surpassed 1.1˚C.
The FT report said that in 2021, the IEA had “stunned the oil and gas industry” by declaring that further exploration would need to be halted “if global warming thresholds were to be met.” The Agency, which also forecast that demand for oil, coal and natural gas would peak by 2030, had “found itself under sustained attack from the OPEC cartel of oil and gas producers.”
COP28 fossil fuel pledges will not limit global warming to 1.5C, says IEA (ft.com)
