The government praised the efforts of the Iraqi negotiators who it said were able to preserve the role of fossil fuels as a tool for development and prevented the adoption of texts sought by some developed countries which are “harmful to the interests of our peoples”.

The deal struck in Dubai after two weeks of hard-fought negotiations was meant to send a powerful signal to investors and policy-makers that the world is united in its desire to break with fossil fuels, something scientists say is the last best hope to stave off climate catastrophe.

COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber called the deal “historic” but added that its true success would be in its implementation.

“We are what we do, not what we say,” he told the crowded plenary at the summit. “We must take the steps necessary to turn this agreement into tangible actions.”

Several countries cheered the deal for accomplishing something elusive in decades of climate talks.

“It is the first time that the world unites around such a clear text on the need to transition away from fossil fuels,” said Norway Minister of Foreign Affairs Espen Barth Eide.

More than 100 countries had lobbied hard for strong language in the COP28 agreement to “phase out” oil, gas and coal use, but came up against powerful opposition from the Saudi Arabia-led oil producer group OPEC, which argued that the world can slash emissions without shunning specific fuels.

That battle pushed the summit a full day into overtime on Wednesday, and had some observers worried the negotiations would end at an impasse.

Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries control nearly 80% of the world’s proven oil reserves along with about a third of global oil output, and their governments rely heavily on those revenues.

Small climate-vulnerable island states, meanwhile, were among the most vocal supporters of language to phase out fossil fuels and had the backing of huge oil and gas producers such as the United States, Canada and Norway, along with the EU bloc and scores of other governments.

“This is a moment where multilateralism has actually come together and people have taken individual interests and attempted to define the common good,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said after the deal was adopted.

The lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States, Anne Rasmussen, criticised the deal as unambitious.

“We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual, when what we really need is an exponential step change in our actions,” she said.

But she did not formally object to the pact, and her speech drew a standing ovation.

Danish Minister for Climate and Energy Dan Jorgensen marveled at the circumstances of the deal: “We’re standing here in an oil country, surrounded by oil countries, and we made the decision saying let’s move away from oil and gas.”

Emissions Reduction

The deal calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner … so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”

It also calls for a tripling of renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, speeding up efforts to reduce coal use, and accelerating technologies such as carbon capture and storage that can clean up hard-to-decarbonize industries.

A representative for Saudi Arabia welcomed the deal, saying it would help the world limit global warming to the targeted 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times set in the 2015 Paris deal, but repeated the oil producer’s stance that tackling climate change was about reducing emissions.

“We must use every opportunity to reduce emissions regardless of the source,” he said.

Several other oil producer countries, including the summit host UAE, had advocated for a role for carbon capture in the pact. Critics say the technology remains expensive and unproven at scale, and argue it is a false flag to justify continued drilling.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore also welcomed the deal, but said: “The influence of petrostates is still evident in the half measures and loopholes included in the final agreement.”

Now that the deal is struck, countries are responsible for delivering through national policies and investments.

In the United States, the world’s top producer of oil and gas and the top historical emitter of greenhouse gases, climate-conscious administrations have struggled to pass laws aligned with their climate vows through a divided Congress.

U.S. President Joe Biden scored a major victory on that front last year with passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained hundreds of billions of dollars in clean energy subsidies.

Mounting public support for renewables and electric vehicles from Brussels to Beijing in recent years, along with improving technology, sliding costs, and rising private investment have also driven rapid growth in their deployments.

Even so, oil, gas, and coal still account for about 80% of the world’s energy, and projections vary widely about when global demand will finally hit its peak.

Rachel Cleetus, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, praised the climate deal, but noted that it does not commit rich countries to offer more financing to help developing countries pay for the transition away from fossil fuels.

“The finance and equity provisions… are seriously insufficient and must be improved in the time ahead in order to ensure low- and middle-income countries can transition to clean energy and close the energy poverty gap,” she said.

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Representatives from nearly 200 countries agreed at the summit to begin reducing global consumption of fossil fuels to combat climate change, signalling the end of the oil era.

More than 100 countries had lobbied for strong language to “phase out” oil, gas and coal use, but faced powerful opposition from the Saudi Arabia-led oil producer group OPEC, which argued that the world can slash emissions without shunning specific fuels.

The Saudi source pointed to the wording of Article 28 of the accord as key to why the kingdom found it agreeable.

Article 28 recognises the need for “for deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in line with 1.5 degrees Celsius pathways and calls on Parties to contribute to the following global efforts, in a nationally determined manner, taking into account the Paris Agreement and their different national circumstances, pathways and approaches.”

“What you see behind that is recipes and if you are vegan you can go vegan, if you are vegetarian you can be and if you are a fish lover then you have that,” the source said.

The agreement, struck in Dubai after two weeks of negotiations, was meant to send a powerful signal to investors and policy-makers that the world is united in its desire to break with fossil fuels, something scientists say is the last best hope to stave off climate catastrophe.

Members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries control nearly 80% of the world’s proven oil reserves along with about a third of global oil output, and their governments rely heavily on those revenues.

The draft has set the stage for contentious last-minute negotiations in the two-week summit in Dubai, which has laid bare deep international divisions over whether oil, gas and coal should have a place in a climate-friendly future.

A coalition of more than 100 countries have been pushing for an agreement would for the first time promise an eventual end to the oil age – but are up against opposition from members of the oil producer group OPEC.

COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber – who has previously used the conference to call for a paradigm shift – urged the nearly 200 countries at the talks to redouble their efforts to finalize a deal ahead of the scheduled close of the conference on Tuesday, saying they “still have a lot to do”.

“You know what remains to be agreed. And you know that I want you to deliver the highest ambition on all items including on fossil fuel language,” he said.

The new draft of a COP28 agreement, published by the United Arab Emirates’ presidency of the summit, proposed various options but did not refer to a “phase out” of fossil fuels.

Instead, it listed eight options that countries could use to cut emissions, including: “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050”.

Other actions listed included tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, “rapidly phasing down unabated coal” and scaling up technologies including those to capture CO2 emissions to keep them from the atmosphere.

Alden Meyer, a senior associate at environmental think tank E3G, criticised the new deal as “basically an a la carte menu that allows countries to individually choose what they want to do.”

Despite the fact emissions from burning fossil fuels are by far the main driver of climate change, 30 years’ worth of international climate negotiations have never resulted in a global agreement to cut their use.

The text triggered a protest from dozens of delegates who stood in near silence, holding hands and lining the long route into a room where negotiators gathered, forcing them to run an eerie gauntlet before getting back to work.

“Please give us a good text,” one delegate pleaded as negotiators filed in.

U.S. Special Climate Envoy John Kerry told the meeting, which ran for around three hours, that the draft agreement had to be strengthened.

“We’re not where we’re meant to be in terms of the text,” Kerry said. “Many of us have called for the world to largely phase out fossil fuels, and that starts with a critical reduction this decade.”

Speaking with voice worn hoarse by the summit, he said the outcome of COP28 was existential: “This is a war for survival”.

EU chief negotiator Wopke Hoekstra told reporters the draft was “clearly insufficient and not adequate to addressing the problem we are here to address.”

Representatives from Pacific Island nations Samoa and the Marshall Islands, already suffering the impacts of rising seas, said the draft was a death sentence.

“We will not go silently to our watery graves,” said John Silk, the head of the Marshall Islands delegation.

“We cannot sign on to a text that does not have strong commitment on phasing out fossil fuels,” Samoa environment minister Cedric Schuster told reporters.

Dan Jorgensen, the Danish climate minister, said he believed many countries opposed the current text. “So, it was clear that this is only the starting point and that we are not even close to getting a result.”

A new draft document is expected early on Tuesday, which would leave little time for further disagreement ahead of the conference’s scheduled close at 0700 GMT. COP summits rarely finish on schedule.

Sources familiar with the discussions said the UAE had come under pressure from Saudi Arabia, de facto leader of the OPEC oil producers’ group of which UAE is a member, to drop any mention of fossil fuels from the text.

Saudi Arabia’s government did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Consensus

It was unclear if China, currently the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter, supported the draft.

Leaving their pavilion late on Monday, senior members of the China delegation, including chief envoy Xie Zhenhua, did not respond to questions.

But observers noted that some of the language in the document was in line with China’s previous policy positions, as well as parts of the Sunnylands agreement signed by China and the United States in November.

The Sunnylands agreement did not use phrases like “phasing out” but instead called for the accelerated substitution of coal, oil and gas with renewable energy sources, and backed the pledge to triple renewable energy by 2030.

Speaking to ministers and negotiators on Sunday, a representative for Saudi Arabia’s delegation said a COP28 deal should not pick and choose energy sources but should instead focus on cutting emissions.

That position echoes a call made by OPEC in a letter to its members earlier in the summit, seen by Reuters, which asked them to oppose any language targeting fossil fuels directly.

Deals at U.N. climate summits must be passed by consensus among the nearly 200 countries present.

Developing nations have said any COP28 deal to overhaul the world’s energy system must be matched with sufficient financial support to help them do this.

“We need support as developing countries and economies for a just transition,” said Colombia’s Environment Minister Susana Muhamad. Colombia supports phasing out fossil fuels.

Despite the rapid growth of renewable energy, fossil fuels still produce around 80% of the world’s energy.

Negotiators told Reuters that other OPEC and OPEC+ members including Russia, Iraq and Iran, have also resisted attempts to insert a fossil fuel phase-out into the COP28 deal.

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais in a letter dated Dec. 6 and seen by Reuters urged OPEC members to reject any COP28 deal which targets fossil fuels rather than emissions.

Ministers from Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria and Oman arrived for the energy meeting, as well as Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman who had been in Dubai for the U.N climate summit.

United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Mohamed Al Mazrouei was absent.

Saudi Arabia, the de-facto leader of OPEC, and top ally Russia are among several countries insisting that the COP28 conference in Dubai focus only on reducing climate pollution – and not on targeting the fossil fuels causing it, according to observers in the negotiations.

Yet at least 80 countries including the United States, the European Union and many poor, climate-vulnerable nations are demanding that a COP28 deal call clearly for an eventual end to fossil fuel use.

When asked about Kuwait’s position on the climate talks, Oil Minister Saad Al Barrak told reporters it was not established yet.

Deals at U.N. climate summits must be passed by consensus among the nearly 200 countries present. The summits aim to establish a consensus on the world’s next steps to address climate change – though it is up to individual countries to ensure it happens through their national policies and investments.

For oil-rich countries, a deal to ditch fossil fuels – even without a firm end date – would signal a political willingness from other nations to slash their use.

COP28 is scheduled to end on 12 December, as is the two-day 12th Arab Energy Conference.

So far, 130 countries have agreed to triple renewables and double the rate of energy efficiency improvements, while 50 oil and gas companies have agreed to cut out methane emissions and eliminate routine flaring by 2030 under the Oil and Gas Decarbonisation Charter.

If everyone delivered on their commitments, it would lower global-energy related greenhouse gas emissions by 4 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030, the IEA analysis said.

That is about a third of the emissions gap that needs to be closed in the next six years to limit warming to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, as agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“They would not be nearly enough to move the world onto a path to reaching international climate targets,” the IEA said. “The IEA will continue to monitor the ongoing developments at COP28 and update its assessment as needed.”

The IEA has previously said that countries would need to deliver in five key areas at COP28 to keep 1.5C a possibility.

In addition to adding renewables, boosting energy efficiency and cutting methane, it said a large-scale financing mechanism is needed to triple clean energy investment in poorer nations. The IEA also said the world would need to commit to a decline in the use of fossil fuels, and end new approvals of unabated coal-fired power plants.

The COP28 summit runs through Dec. 12.

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The comments underlined India’s long-held position that, as a developing country, it should not be a forced to cut its energy-related emissions – even as it is the world’s third-biggest emitting country after China and the United States.

With the COP28 climate summit in Dubai scheduled to end on Tuesday, delegates were working to resolve an impasse over whether to address the future use of fossil fuel.

India and other countries whose economies rely on fossil fuels argue that wealthy countries should be doing more, because they have released more climate-warming emissions since the industrial revolution.

“India firmly believes that equity and climate justice must be the basis of global climate action,” Yadav told the summit.

Earlier in the two-week COP28 conference, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a speech in which he offered to host COP33 talks in 2028.

“Over the past century, a small section of humanity has indiscriminately exploited nature,” he said. “However, entire humanity is paying the price for this, especially people living in the global south.”

Coal-fired power accounts for about 80% percent of India’s electricity supply. After the COP26 summit in Glasgow led to a pact calling for a global “phase down” in unabated coal power, India lobbied unsuccessfully at last year’s COP27 in Egypt for that call to be extended to all fossil fuels.

It has since opposed setting specific timelines for phasing down coal, while domestic power demand surged to new heights during this year’s sweltering summer.

Total electricity demand in June hit a record 140 billion kilowatt-hours – nearly 5% up from June 2022.

India has set a goal for 50% of its electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030.

It also plans to add another 17 gigawatts of coal capacity over the next 16 months, after producing a record amount of electricity from coal in October to make up for a shortfall in hydropower generation following lower-than-normal monsoon rains.

Negotiators and observers at the annual U.N. climate talks, pursuing a deal to tackle the worst impacts of climate change, said several OPEC members appeared to have heeded calls by the oil producer group to veto any deal to phase out fossil fuels.

In a letter dated Wednesday, OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais called on members to reject language targeting fossil fuels, saying “the undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences”.

Al Ghais declined to comment on the letter but said OPEC wanted to keep the focus of the talks on reducing emissions, as opposed to picking energy sources.

“The world requires major investments in all energies, including hydrocarbons,” he said. “Energy transitions must be just, fair and inclusive.”

At least 80 countries are demanding a COP28 deal that calls for an eventual end to fossil fuel use, the top source of planet-warming emissions, to try to get on track to reach the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But they face a struggle to persuade countries that rely on oil and gas for revenue, many of which are instead promoting technologies like carbon capture, which is expensive and has yet to be proven at scale.

Tina Stege, climate envoy of the Republic of the Marshall Islands – one of the places worst affected by climate change, said any pushback on including a phase-out of fossil fuels risked the world’s prosperity.

“Nothing puts the prosperity and future of all people on earth, including all of the citizens of OPEC countries, at greater risk than fossil fuels,” said Stege, whose country chairs the High Ambition Coalition, a group of nations pushing for more ambitious emissions targets and policies.

“This is why the High Ambition Coalition is pushing for a phase out of fossil fuels, which are at the root of this crisis. 1.5 is not negotiable, and that means an end to fossil fuels,” she said in a statement.

Critical Stage’

After a week of technical talks, the negotiations now have ministerial input before the scheduled end of the summit on Tuesday – the last phase when countries wrestle to find consensus over the wording regarding fossil fuels.

The latest version of the negotiating text includes a range of options – from agreeing to a “phase out of fossil fuels in line with best available science”, to phasing out “unabated fossil fuels”, to including no language on them at all.

Germany’s state secretary and special envoy for climate action, Jennifer Morgan, said counties were now “moving into the critical stage of negotiations”.

“It is time for all countries to remember what is at stake and to be ready to send the signal the world needs at this critical moment of the global climate crisis. I am concerned that not all are constructively engaging.”

Asked about the OPEC letter, COP28 Director General Majid Al Suwaidi avoided the term “fossil fuels” but said the United Arab Emirates, as president of the summit, wanted a deal to get the world on track for 1.5 degrees.

“Our COP president has been very clear from day one that he wants to achieve an outcome that puts us clearly on track for 1.5 degrees,” he told a news conference. “He clearly wants to see an outcome that is as ambitious as possible and we believe we are going to deliver it.”

Negotiators have a tough job ahead.

Wael Aboulmagd, special representative to the COP27 Egyptian presidency, said there were too many options in the text on fossil fuels, adding there was also deadlock in talks on measures to help nations adapt to extreme weather and other climate change impacts.

“We still have some serious issues with adaptation. We are still way behind on that.”

The groups, led by Friends of the Earth, released a letter to Biden at the COP28 United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where dozens of nations are pushing for a global agreement to phase out use of CO2-emitting fossil fuels like LNG.

LNG is natural gas used for heating and electricity that has been cooled to a liquid state for shipping and storage. Climate activists advocate for phasing out fossil fuels like LNG and replacing them with renewable sources like wind and solar.

The letter demands that the administration stop permitting new LNG facilities and cease financial and diplomatic support for the industry.

The Biden administration has approved five U.S. LNG export licenses to serve the European market following Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine, having approved none beforehand.

The U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of LNG, with most of those shipments going to Europe as it seeks to wean itself from a reliance on Russian gas. Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. LNG facilities have soared 81% since 2019, according to government data.

“Any push for a phase-out of all fossil fuels at COP28 risks falling flat if the world’s leading LNG exporter shows no signs of changing course,” the letter said. “We urge the Biden administration to publicly commit during COP to no further regulatory, financial, or diplomatic support for LNG in the United States or anywhere in the world.”

Ahead of next November’s U.S. presidential election, Biden will have to consider how approvals for fossil fuel projects could alienate environmentally minded voters who are part of his base.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. LNG exports averaged a record 11.6 billion cubic feet per day during the first half of 2023, up 4% from the first half of last year, according to the Energy Information Administration. In November, about 68% of U.S. LNG was exported to Europe, according to LSEG.

In a speech late on Wednesday, Jaber praised delegates from nearly 200 countries for the agreement on the opening day of the two-week summit on a “loss and damage” fund to aid countries stricken by climate-driven disasters.

Countries, businesses and philanthropies have since pledged to mobilise $83 billion in climate finance, which “can only raise the bar higher”, Jaber told the delegates.

“What we have collectively accomplished only in a week is, in my view, nothing short of being historic,” he said. “In just seven days we have demonstrated that multilateralism does actually work, it is alive and well.”

While the summit venue was quiet on Thursday, with negotiations officially paused for a scheduled “day of rest”, delegates were working toward a final COP28 agreement by the conference’s scheduled Dec. 12 close.

When the summit resumes on Friday, countries will start to tackle the finer details and Jaber is expected to outline his work plan for the second week, including a goal to close on schedule.

That would be a feat U.N. climate talks have not achieved since COP9, 20 years ago in Milan.

Eight of the last 10 COP meetings have stretched into overtime by at least 24 hours, according to Carbon Brief news and data website – including last year’s COP27 in Egypt and the previous COP26 in Glasgow.

In the final stretch of COP28, negotiations focus on some of this year’s toughest issues.

Global Stocktake

For the first time, countries are undertaking the mammoth task of assessing their climate progress so far and what remains to be done.

Known as the “global stocktake,” the work is expected to yield a blueprint for future policy action by governments to try to prevent climate change from escalating to extremes.

Draft texts so far show numerous options for national climate plans to take up, meaning ministers must address a lack of consensus.

“They still have a lot to accomplish to provide the political signals that will course correct towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and keeping 1.5 degrees within reach,” said observer Kiryssa Kasprzyk, climate policy director at Conservation International.

Saudi Arabia

Some delegates have said that oil-producer Saudi Arabia has held up negotiations in different work streams by pressing for the removal of any mention of a phasing down of fossil fuels.

Colombia’s Environment Minister Susana Muhamad told Reuters that her country has asked for a high-level meeting with the Saudi delegation, after Colombian delegates witnessed the Saudis blocking text in negotiating rooms.

Saudi Arabia “is trying to keep things status quo, you know, more of an attitude,” she said. “But the reality is that we can’t do that” given the climate-fueled weather extremes and disasters occuring around the world.

Phase Down? Phase Out?

The 27-member European Union, Chile and others want the final COP28 deal to include a clear call to phase out fossil fuel use – without including language that might enable countries to heavily rely on carbon capture and removal for that goal.

Chile’s Environment Minister Maisa Rojas – herself, a climate scientist – urged her counterparts from other countries to not postpone the issue to a future year.

“It is absolutely necessary,” Rojas told Reuters of a phase out. “We have known this for a long time.”

To get round objections from Saudi Arabia, Russia and other countries whose economies rely on oil and gas, negotiators are looking for alternative wording to signal a shift from fossil fuels through the 2030s.

The “phase down/phase out” language has become a flashpoint for countries that produce oil, gas or coal.

Trinidad and Tobago for the Alliance of Small Island States, known as AOSIS, suggested the language: “phasing out of fossil fuels in line with the best available science and IPCC pathways and principles and provisions of the Paris agreement,” an observer of the negotiations said.

The United States and China managed to avoid the terms altogether, agreeing in their November bilateral in Sunnylands, California – to triple renewable energy deployment to “accelerate the substitution for coal, oil and gas generation” and “meaningful absolute power sector emission reduction, in this critical decade of the 2020s”.

“I expect we’ll see some creative wordplay,” Catherine Abreu, founder of NGO Destination Zero, said.

Climate Finance And Adaptation

Since the deal for the disaster fund was adopted on Nov. 30, Jaber said countries have mobilised over $726 million to capitalise it, and he expected to get more into the fund by the end of this year’s COP.

Progress on climate adapatation has stalled, however, with ministers needing to resolve a stalemate over wealthy versus poor country obligations to pay into the fund.

They will also need to address how to boost climate finance.

The pledges made at COP28 are still far short of the hundreds of millions that will be needed each year to help developing countries adapt to the conditions of a warming world – including sea level rise and increasingly dangerous heat.

Developing nations also need billions, if not trillions of dollars in annual finance to shift to cleaner energy.

“The finance piece is particularly important because developing countries are understandably hesitant to be burdened with global targets that they can’t afford to carry out,” said Teresa Anderson, who leads climate justice work at the global nonprofit ActionAid International.