Ukraine’s war boost to fossil fuels blocks Climate Summit

COP27 has difficulty including oil, gas or coal in its decisions while multiple contracts and agreements to explore and sell fossil fuels are becoming known

There is an elephant, fossil, in the COP27 room. It is striking the delay accumulated by the Egyptian Climate Summit that this Wednesday entered its tenth day without having produced a draft final decision. Observers in Sharm el Seikh agree on the difficulties in naming fossil fuels in the documents and specifying how developed countries should pay for the damage that the climate crisis causes to the impoverished.

Last year at this point COP had already sprouted a text that called, for the first time, to end public subsidies for oil, gas and coal. Then that point was watered down, but there it was. At COP27, the special envoy of the Egyptian government, Wael Aboulmagd, has had to deal on Wednesday with the fact that in his list of important points the words fossil fuels do not appear.

It is these fuels, in the form of oil, gas and coal, that are the main sources of greenhouse gases that human activity releases into the atmosphere: the cause of global warming.

“It is the most balanced list we could draw up by listening to all parties,” Aboulmagd said. “Many countries do not want the experience of COP26 in Glasgow to be repeated,” says David Howell, head of climate change at SEO, from Egypt, who admits that it is “a source of tension in the conversations.”

At 5.30 this Thursday, the presidency of the COP has published a new list of negotiating points that almost copies the mention of the final agreement of Glasgow on the progressive exit of coal and the abandonment of “inefficient economic aid” to fossil fuels. That point only changes the verb applied in 2021, which was, “invokes the parties to…” and by “encourages the parties to….”.

More and more African countries are claiming their right to exploit their reserves as an element in their economic growth

David Howell, Head of Climate Change at SEO

Howell believes that it is “crucial to recognize the need to replace fossil fuels, to reduce their use rapidly in the coming years and to end the associated subsidies.” But if at the COP in Glasgow, India championed the opposition to ending coal subsidies, this year is added the multiplication of contracts, agreements and projects to buy and produce gas after the energy crisis triggered by the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

Only between October 31, shortly before the start of the COP, and this Tuesday, 13 agreements of different types have been known and covering the entire globe. From the agreement between the US and Great Britain for gas supply, the commitment of the United Arab Emirates to sell gas to India, the memorandum between China and Turkmenistan to collaborate, also, in gas matters or the agreement of the French Total to start explorations of this hydrocarbon in Lebanon.

In addition, Germany and the US have said they will finance renewable energy in Egypt to… release 2 billion cubic meters of gas for export. In this sense, Egypt had already agreed to sell 15% of its production to Europe, but during the COP, it has been known that the Government has rationed its use in exchange for feeding its power plants with mazut: a heavy fuel of poor quality and highly polluting, as revealed by Climate Change News.

Nigeria, Mauritania, Tanzania and Algeria have announced gas export or exploration agreements during this period. “More and more African countries are claiming their right to exploit their reserves as an element in their economic growth,” says David Howell. Most of those agreements have countries from the global north signing what Ecologists gas expert Marina Gros has called “an energy colonization. A race between countries, especially Europeans, to gasify Africa.”

One last detail in this contradiction: the German company RWE has begun to dismantle a wind farm in the Central European country in order to expand a lignite coal mine. Its representatives have admitted that “this seems paradoxical, but that’s the way things are.” RWE plans to reactivate three coal-fired power plants to generate electricity. Still, the company insists it will abandon coal by 2030.

“The presidency is very late and we fear that there will be kicks forward, that is, procrastinate decisions,” says from the COP the head of climate change of Ecologists in Action, Javier Andaluz. “We’re told it’s a normal pace, but by now we should have had a draft to discuss on Wednesday.”

Indeed, the official delegations of the countries insist that “this is normal in summits.” And the Egyptian spokesman insisted on Wednesday that “this is the usual pace”, although, immediately, Aboulmagd admitted that “there are delegations that are being closed in several aspects”.

Loss and damage

The former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, has told on Wednesday how “the blockade” is in the negotiations to compensate for the damages and losses that the climate crisis causes to impoverished countries.

On Tuesday, 77 developing countries plus China asked for a fund that the U.S. rejected, Robinson said, according to Reuters. In this regard, the Egyptian presidency of the COP does affirm that “we want something really meaningful because loss and damage is not something abstract it is something very concrete”.

It does not end there: “The European Union does not agree very much on the financing mechanism for the most affected countries. It is about that obsession of the European Union to tell those who have to face the losses how they should do it, “analyzes Andaluz. “They should still back down and let those states – like the island states – lead those discussions and the EU support.”

Source: El Diario