2024 outlook + 2023 Year in review + Weak COP wording

Dear reader,

After the gavel was struck at COP28 in Dubai, the year is slowly drawing to a close. A perfect opportunity to look back. What landmark decisions were made this year, which were missing, and what do this year’s developments mean for future climate policy? Bernhard Pötter and Alexandra Endres summarize 2023’s biggest milestones.

But looking back at the year always requires looking ahead to what’s to come. And there’s plenty in store for 2024: The question of who will pay for global climate financing will likely generate intense debate in many places. The IMF and World Bank will continue their reform efforts in this regard. The COP29 in Azerbaijan is likely to be a COP about money. And then there will also be a few landmark elections. 2024 will certainly not be boring!

If you still haven’t had enough of COP28, look at our Climate in Numbers. It reveals that the final text of the Global Stocktake contains many positive elements – but these are generally coupled with weak verbs, meaning that they hardly translate into a call for decisive action. Nevertheless, climate researcher Wolfgang Obergassel argues in his opinion piece that the UN climate conferences help advance global climate action. He believes they are worth the effort.

We hope you stay with us in the coming year, enjoy the holidays and have some relaxing days off. We will be back here on January 7.

Your
Lukas Knigge

2023: These were the most important events and decisions

Both made their last big appearance on the international climate diplomacy stage at COP28: US climate envoy John Kerry and China’s chief negotiator Xie Zhenhua.

By

Bernhard Pötter

The year regularly comes to an end for climate diplomacy with the most important and largest international event: the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. What is decided – or not decided – at the climate summit has a significant impact on global and national climate policy. However, in addition to the many current resolutions adopted at the recent COP28 in Dubai, other developments and decisions have also shaped climate policy in 2023.

To mark the end of the year, here is a brief overview of the most important events:

Results of COP28

COP28 has decided to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems” with the aim of meeting the 1.5-degree target and practically halving global emissions by 2030. For the more ambitious members of the climate community, “transitioning away” is a clear signal that the fossil fuel era is ending. But for those who don’t see it that way, the wording is ambiguous enough to agree to a classic UN compromise.
COP28 also decided to triple the capacity of renewables worldwide by 2030 and double energy efficiency. It is a global, not a national target – ultimately, it can’t be attributed to anyone specific whether it is achieved or not. These developments are technologically possible, as can be seen from the triumph of renewables over the past decade. However, whether they are realized in tandem with the reduction of coal, oil and gas will be crucial for climate action. In other words, whether “transitioning away” means that global investment flows are truly redirected away from fossil fuels and towards clean energies, as required by the Paris Agreement.
The huge opening success at COP was the decision to implement the loss and damage fund (LDF) adopted at COP27 just a year ago. In addition, around 700 million US dollars have been pledged to fill the fund with money and life.
Politically significant: The United Arab Emirates is also contributing to the LDF. As the host of the COP, they pledged 100 million US dollars each in tandem with Germany. This has a symbolic effect above all: For the first time, a country that is officially categorized as an emerging and developing country in the UN is breaking through the previous global division in climate financing. Until now, only developed countries have paid.

Increasingly important: financial pledges

Developed countries are also paying into the second replenishment round of the UN Green Climate Fund, which was initiated in Bonn in October. After a slow start and less money than hoped for, the fund reached a record level of 13.5 billion US dollars by 20 December. However, as the UN Adaptation Gap Report shows, huge funding gaps of up to 350 billion US dollars annually remain open for the adaptation of the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change alone.
Good, but still unclear news: In 2021, the developed countries have raised a total of 89.6 billion US dollars of the pledged 100 billion US dollars for annual climate aid – and the OECD, which compiles the numbers, believes it is that the 100 billion pledge is “likely to have already been met as of 2022.” The downside is that the funds for climate adaptation are not half of the sum as was intended. Instead, they have actually decreased over the past year.
The World Bank initiated a reform process under its new head, Ajay Banga, (in office since June): In October, it decided to supplement its official goal of eradicating poverty with the words “on a livable planet.” The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also planned to contribute more to climate action. Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, calls in her “Bridgetown Initiative” on developed countries to their special drawing rights (SDRs) for this purpose. At the annual meeting in October, incremental progress was agreed upon.

Hope for possible peaks

The International Energy Agency (IEA) sees the end of the fossil fuel era approaching: In its World Energy Outlook in October, the OECD authority declared that demand for and emissions from oil, gas and coal would peak by 2030 and then decline. OPEC then accuses the OECD of political rather than scientific, behavior. A study by the think tank Climate Analytics even suggests that global greenhouse gas emissions could have already peaked in 2023.
China, the world’s largest emitter, could also have passed the peak of its greenhouse gas emissions in 2023.
2023 was the hottest year ever recorded. According to a World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) report, global warming was 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels. This was due to climate change in conjunction with the natural weather phenomenon El Niño in the Eastern Pacific. 2024 could be even warmer.
International climate action personnel were replaced: The EU appointed a new climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, while the old guard of Sino-US climate relations, Xie Zhenhua and John Kerry, bid their farewells at COP28.

Africa speaks out, movements split

A deep rift has been running through the international climate movement since October: After the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties, the global movement for climate justice is divided: While German NGOs such as Fridays for Future Germany call for solidarity with Israel, the majority of the global movement stands with Palestine. At COP28, CAN International gave Israel the negative award “Fossil of the Day” for violating human rights – twice and without mentioning the terrorist organization Hamas.
2023 was also the year in which Africa made its voice heard on the global climate stage: Pioneering countries such as Kenya also raised their voices internationally, for example, at the first African Climate Summit. At the same time, calls for Africa to exploit its own fossil fuels in order to finance development grow louder, while the domestic economy plans to partly rely on renewables and lower fossil fuel subsidies (Nigeria) or green hydrogen (Namibia). The COP28 decision on adaptation and its financing, on the other hand, left African countries dissatisfied.
Elections and government changes have changed climate policy in many countries: Australia and Poland received new governments in 2023 that aim to step up climate efforts. In New Zealand, the UK and Argentina, on the other hand, current climate policy is in jeopardy.

2024: These will be the most important developments

At COP28 in Dubai, activists called for more climate finance and less investment in fossil fuels.

By

Bernhard Pötter

The coming year will also again bring important developments in climate policy. Some of these are already apparent: global warming, for instance, will continue and its effects will make new headlines. Other trends will probably continue in the same direction as before – while decisions such as elections can lead to unexpected changes.

An overview of what could and will happen:

The debate has been raging since the gavel was struck in Dubai on 13 December: What does “transitioning away from fossil fuels” mean? Initial assessments suggest that it is more than a “fossil fuel phase-down” and less than a fossil fuel phase-out. These were the controversial terms at COP28, and the ambiguous concept will keep politicians, the climate scene, think tanks and certainly the investment departments of many banks and companies busy in the new year.

Topic of the year: Climate finance

Climate financing could become one of the hottest topics next year. If the OECD’s preliminary forecast is correct, the organization will report in 2024 that the developed countries will have achieved their pledged USD 100 billion in financial aid for developing countries in 2022, two years late. This would be a good opening position for the big debates that await at COP29 in November. The aim in Azerbaijan is to decide how climate financing will continue beyond 2025. It is about the so-called “new collective quantified target” for climate finance (NCQG). The Paris Agreement is clear: It needs to be more than the previous 100 billion US dollars annually.
However, it is yet unclear who else will pay besides developed countries. It remains to be seen whether the decision by the United Arab Emirates to break the taboo of paying into the loss and damage fund as a non-annex country will prompt other rich emerging or oil countries to contribute. Discussions will also continue as to whether international taxes and levies on flights, shipping, fossil fuels or financial transactions will be used to raise money for aid. The debate is likely to be intense, not least because national budgets in developed countries are under pressure and the debt crisis in around 50 countries continues to hinder investment in sustainable development.
The reform of the World Bank and other financial institutions will continue to be a topic of discussion. The Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have set themselves the goal of enabling more climate investments in the future. The World Bank has already taken the first steps to free up the necessary funds – but its head Ajay Banga also made it very clear in 2023 that the institution urgently needs more capital for this. Next year’s spring meeting of the World Bank and IMF and the annual meeting in the fall will probably focus on where the funds can come from and how the World Bank plans to translate its climate pledge into projects and programs. Meanwhile, the debate at the IMF on Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s “Bridgetown Initiative” will continue.
In this context, the debt crisis is also likely to remain an important issue and the debate surrounding it could gain momentum. Many developing countries lack the money to finance the energy transition. They already spend more on debt servicing than on education and health, for example. Despite all the reform efforts of the international financial institutions, there is still no answer to the question of how to solve the problem.

When will emissions peak?

China will most likely reach its emissions peak earlier than expected. According to several forecasts, the country’s emissions could stop rising in 2024. If China is to reduce them at that point, it will have to lay the groundwork in 2024. But the challenge is enormous: renewable energies do not only have to push the currently dominant coal-fired electricity out of the grid. They also have to meet the growing electricity demand resulting from the electrification of industry, transport and the heating sector. The decision to double energy efficiency at COP28 could play an important role here.
Researchers are optimistic that global greenhouse gas emissions will already fall in 2024. This means that the emissions peak would have been reached by 2023. However, the prerequisite for this is that the current growth trends in renewable energies and green technologies such as EVs pick up pace and that countries implement their methane emission reduction commitments.
Will gas also peak? According to forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global growth in demand for natural gas will slow down in the coming years as consumption declines overall. However, whether this will happen as early as 2024 will only be known later.

Important elections set the course

Europe will elect the new EU Parliament from June 6 to 9, 2024, which will then also elect the new EU Commission. Advancing the Green Deal is likely to become more difficult after the election. The Parliament risks moving to the right, where majorities for more action on climate change are significantly harder to mobilize. The main task of the new Commission and the new Parliament when it comes to climate policy will be to legislate on the climate target for 2040. The current Commission will issue the first target for this in February 2024 (expected to be a reduction in CO2 emissions of 90 percent compared to 1990). The actual proposal for implementing the target will then come from the new Commission. The EU’s next NDC for 2035 is also still open and will need to be submitted by COP30 in Belém in 2025. Given the lengthy legislative process in the EU, the first proposal would have to be submitted as early as 2024.
The population in other countries with important climate policies will also elect their governments: Pakistan in January, Indonesia in February and Mexico in early June.
Italy holds the G7 presidency, Brazil leads the G20. It is unclear whether the Italian post-fascist government under Georgia Meloni will set climate policy directions in the club of old developed countries. Brazil, on the other hand, will devote itself extensively to the climate issue as the host of the COP30 in 2025: Lula’s government intends to form a “troika” with the UAE and Azerbaijan to prepare for the summit in Belém and its “Mission 1.5”. Finally, the new NDCs based on the Dubai Global Stocktake are to be presented in 2025.

The other COP and its link to climate

The “other COP” will take place at the end of October (probably in Colombia): COP16 on biodiversity. Following the success of the 2022 Montréal agreement, it now remains to be seen how things will progress. And how the links to the climate process – for example when it comes to conserving forests, oceans and nature-based services such as peatlands – can be strengthened.
Shortly before COP29 in Baku from November 11 to 24, the US is set to make a landmark decision on November 5: Will Donald Trump, who has already led the biggest CO2 polluter out of the Paris Agreement after 2016, make it back to the White House? The race will be tight. But regardless of Trump and his ideas on the climate, conditions have also changed in the USA: Extreme weather events, triggered by climate change, are becoming more frequent and more visible. And Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides almost 400 billion US dollars for green technologies, is flowing primarily into Republican regions. The election will show what impact this will have on US climate policy.
Will the global climate movement manage to separate its dispute over Israel and Gaza from its climate work enough to continue to speak out loudly and collectively? Or will this voice grow significantly quieter in the climate concert? There have already been minor and major disagreements in Dubai and the run-up to COP28. The talks will have to continue in the coming year.

Climate in figures: Global Stocktake decision with weak wording

How clearly did COP28 herald the end of the fossil fuel age? COP resolutions are packed with semantic nuances. No wonder, as they are meant to advance international climate action while being accepted by all countries negotiating at the UN climate summits – including petrostates.

The Global Stocktake, the core document of this year’s COP, is no different. The text does provide a clear course: away from coal, oil and gas. However, the call to transition away from fossil fuels remains remarkably vague. This is revealed in an analysis of the text by the British climate news service Carbon Brief, which counted the verbs used in the Global Stocktake (GST). Our chart shows the result.

A glance at the verbs used in the final document illustrates that only very few of them clearly require countries to take action. More than 30 times each, the text merely recognizes things or “notes” them. It only “encourages” 29 times.

The Global Stocktake recalls, welcomes, emphasizes, acknowledges, recommends, repeats and underlines – sometimes even using synonyms, with subtle differences that are hard to make out. Even some of the calls to action remain remarkably vague: the text “requests” something 16 times, “invites” 14 times and calls for action 8 times. Very rarely does it dare to actually “decide” something (8 times). How much progress it brings will now depend on the goodwill of all involved. ae

Commission urges EU members to step up climate efforts

Germany lags furthest behind in the EU climate targets for transport and buildings.

The EU countries will only cut greenhouse gases by 51 percent by 2030 instead of the agreed 55 percent under their national climate targets. This is what the Commission writes in its assessment of the draft National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP), which was published on Monday. The renewable energy plans of the member states also fall short of the EU targets. Together, they will probably only achieve a maximum share of 39.3 percent of energy consumption. The EU target is 42.5 percent.

By mid-2024, all EU member states must revise their drafts and submit their final climate plans to the Commission. ber

Climate action can only progress so quickly thanks to the COPs

By Wolfgang Obergassel

Are the outcomes of the UN climate summit worth the effort? After COP28 in Dubai, this question is being raised once again. Two other questions can help answer it: What problem are international climate conferences meant to solve, what goal are they meant to achieve in the first place? And what can the summits contribute to this?

It is supposed to tackle the problems of progressing climate change, and the goal is nothing less than the total transformation of the global economy. Such transformation processes usually take decades. Naturally, a single UN conference is not enough to initiate them or even bring them to a successful conclusion.

Above all, however, such far-reaching transformations always produce winners and losers. In the case of international climate policy, for example, most documented fossil fuel reserves must remain underground. The IEA already pointed out in 2021 that if the world is to have any chance of staying within the 1.5-degree limit, no new oil, gas or coal mining projects must be approved. But, many countries and companies are heavily dependent on these resources.

Struggle for prosperity and influence

Naturally, the losers do not simply accept these losses. They fight to maintain their prosperity and their market position. A prime example of this – albeit at a national level – was this year’s dispute over the German Buildings Energy Act. Its central question: How long can the oil and gas heating system providers continue with their business model?

International processes accelerate such conflicts. Important political debates are initiated by creating an annual political moment where climate action is at the heart of the agenda and political decision-makers are forced to adopt a position.

Pacemaker Paris

The Paris Agreement has permanently embedded this pacemaker function in the political processes of all signatory states by creating a five-year cycle in which the submission of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the Global Stocktake and new NDCs based on it follow each other.

The UN process creates additional pressure on countries with high emissions because poorer countries – those most vulnerable to climate change – also have a seat and a voice. It also provides information that would probably not be available without it. We know how significant the discrepancy is between ambition and actual action because countries have to regularly report internationally on their emissions and measures as part of the UN negotiations.

Benchmark for acceptable climate policy

In addition, the decisions made at the conferences set the benchmark for what behavior by governments – or other actors – is deemed acceptable. In this way, they provide significant legitimacy for all actors aiming to progress national or international climate action.

For instance, the climate movement Fridays for Future bases its demands on the Paris Agreement. More and more court rulings do the same, such as the German Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling from 2021, in which it found the German Climate Change Act in its version at the time insufficient.

At COP28, it was finally possible for the first time to identify fossil fuels as the central cause of the climate problem and to call for a “transition away from them.” The conference has thus generated further leverage for future political and legal disputes.

The predicted warming is lower today

Outside the official negotiations, the annual conference is also a key platform for networking climate policy stakeholders, sharing knowledge and announcing new pioneering initiatives.

Numbers also show how much the UN summits help advance climate action. When the Paris Agreement was adopted, the global average temperature was predicted to rise by 3.5 to 4 degrees by the end of the century. Today, only 2.5 to 3 degrees are expected – this is still far too high, and the progress cannot be attributed solely to the Paris Agreement. By the same token, it is hard to imagine that progress on this scale would have been achieved without international processes.

What should happen in the future

Future conferences could further break down the abstract problem of global climate change into practically manageable sub-problems. COP28 sends out a signal for the global energy transition. However, the equally crucial green transition in transport, heating, agriculture and industry has been barely discussed.

Climate summits should devote more attention to the green transformation of these sectors. And they should keep a closer eye on what individual countries have already done to restructure the transport, building heating, agricultural and industrial sectors, instead of focusing on the development of national emissions as has been the case so far. For example, relevant ministries could be asked to explain how they implement the goals of the Paris Agreement in their respective sectors as part of the international transparency mechanisms.

Wolfgang Obergassel is Co-Head of the Research Unit Global Climate Governance at the Wuppertal Institute. His work focuses on the development of the international climate regime and its mechanisms.

CLIMATE.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

Bernhard
Pötter

Alexandra
Endres

Christiane
Kühl

Lisa
Kuner

Lukas
Knigge

Malte
Kreutzfeldt

Nico
Beckert

Dear reader,

After the gavel was struck at COP28 in Dubai, the year is slowly drawing to a close. A perfect opportunity to look back. What landmark decisions were made this year, which were missing, and what do this year’s developments mean for future climate policy? Bernhard Pötter and Alexandra Endres summarize 2023’s biggest milestones.

But looking back at the year always requires looking ahead to what’s to come. And there’s plenty in store for 2024: The question of who will pay for global climate financing will likely generate intense debate in many places. The IMF and World Bank will continue their reform efforts in this regard. The COP29 in Azerbaijan is likely to be a COP about money. And then there will also be a few landmark elections. 2024 will certainly not be boring!

If you still haven’t had enough of COP28, look at our Climate in Numbers. It reveals that the final text of the Global Stocktake contains many positive elements – but these are generally coupled with weak verbs, meaning that they hardly translate into a call for decisive action. Nevertheless, climate researcher Wolfgang Obergassel argues in his opinion piece that the UN climate conferences help advance global climate action. He believes they are worth the effort.

We hope you stay with us in the coming year, enjoy the holidays and have some relaxing days off. We will be back here on January 7.

Your
Lukas Knigge

2023: These were the most important events and decisions

By

Bernhard Pötter

The year regularly comes to an end for climate diplomacy with the most important and largest international event: the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. What is decided – or not decided – at the climate summit has a significant impact on global and national climate policy. However, in addition to the many current resolutions adopted at the recent COP28 in Dubai, other developments and decisions have also shaped climate policy in 2023.

To mark the end of the year, here is a brief overview of the most important events:

Results of COP28

COP28 has decided to “transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems” with the aim of meeting the 1.5-degree target and practically halving global emissions by 2030. For the more ambitious members of the climate community, “transitioning away” is a clear signal that the fossil fuel era is ending. But for those who don’t see it that way, the wording is ambiguous enough to agree to a classic UN compromise.
COP28 also decided to triple the capacity of renewables worldwide by 2030 and double energy efficiency. It is a global, not a national target – ultimately, it can’t be attributed to anyone specific whether it is achieved or not. These developments are technologically possible, as can be seen from the triumph of renewables over the past decade. However, whether they are realized in tandem with the reduction of coal, oil and gas will be crucial for climate action. In other words, whether “transitioning away” means that global investment flows are truly redirected away from fossil fuels and towards clean energies, as required by the Paris Agreement.
The huge opening success at COP was the decision to implement the loss and damage fund (LDF) adopted at COP27 just a year ago. In addition, around 700 million US dollars have been pledged to fill the fund with money and life.
Politically significant: The United Arab Emirates is also contributing to the LDF. As the host of the COP, they pledged 100 million US dollars each in tandem with Germany. This has a symbolic effect above all: For the first time, a country that is officially categorized as an emerging and developing country in the UN is breaking through the previous global division in climate financing. Until now, only developed countries have paid.

Increasingly important: financial pledges

Developed countries are also paying into the second replenishment round of the UN Green Climate Fund, which was initiated in Bonn in October. After a slow start and less money than hoped for, the fund reached a record level of 13.5 billion US dollars by 20 December. However, as the UN Adaptation Gap Report shows, huge funding gaps of up to 350 billion US dollars annually remain open for the adaptation of the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change alone.
Good, but still unclear news: In 2021, the developed countries have raised a total of 89.6 billion US dollars of the pledged 100 billion US dollars for annual climate aid – and the OECD, which compiles the numbers, believes it is that the 100 billion pledge is “likely to have already been met as of 2022.” The downside is that the funds for climate adaptation are not half of the sum as was intended. Instead, they have actually decreased over the past year.
The World Bank initiated a reform process under its new head, Ajay Banga, (in office since June): In October, it decided to supplement its official goal of eradicating poverty with the words “on a livable planet.” The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also planned to contribute more to climate action. Mia Mottley, Prime Minister of Barbados, calls in her “Bridgetown Initiative” on developed countries to their special drawing rights (SDRs) for this purpose. At the annual meeting in October, incremental progress was agreed upon.

Hope for possible peaks

The International Energy Agency (IEA) sees the end of the fossil fuel era approaching: In its World Energy Outlook in October, the OECD authority declared that demand for and emissions from oil, gas and coal would peak by 2030 and then decline. OPEC then accuses the OECD of political rather than scientific, behavior. A study by the think tank Climate Analytics even suggests that global greenhouse gas emissions could have already peaked in 2023.
China, the world’s largest emitter, could also have passed the peak of its greenhouse gas emissions in 2023.
2023 was the hottest year ever recorded. According to a World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) report, global warming was 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels. This was due to climate change in conjunction with the natural weather phenomenon El Niño in the Eastern Pacific. 2024 could be even warmer.
International climate action personnel were replaced: The EU appointed a new climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, while the old guard of Sino-US climate relations, Xie Zhenhua and John Kerry, bid their farewells at COP28.

Africa speaks out, movements split

A deep rift has been running through the international climate movement since October: After the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, resulting in thousands of civilian casualties, the global movement for climate justice is divided: While German NGOs such as Fridays for Future Germany call for solidarity with Israel, the majority of the global movement stands with Palestine. At COP28, CAN International gave Israel the negative award “Fossil of the Day” for violating human rights – twice and without mentioning the terrorist organization Hamas.
2023 was also the year in which Africa made its voice heard on the global climate stage: Pioneering countries such as Kenya also raised their voices internationally, for example, at the first African Climate Summit. At the same time, calls for Africa to exploit its own fossil fuels in order to finance development grow louder, while the domestic economy plans to partly rely on renewables and lower fossil fuel subsidies (Nigeria) or green hydrogen (Namibia). The COP28 decision on adaptation and its financing, on the other hand, left African countries dissatisfied.
Elections and government changes have changed climate policy in many countries: Australia and Poland received new governments in 2023 that aim to step up climate efforts. In New Zealand, the UK and Argentina, on the other hand, current climate policy is in jeopardy.

2024: These will be the most important developments

By

Bernhard Pötter

The coming year will also again bring important developments in climate policy. Some of these are already apparent: global warming, for instance, will continue and its effects will make new headlines. Other trends will probably continue in the same direction as before – while decisions such as elections can lead to unexpected changes.

An overview of what could and will happen:

The debate has been raging since the gavel was struck in Dubai on 13 December: What does “transitioning away from fossil fuels” mean? Initial assessments suggest that it is more than a “fossil fuel phase-down” and less than a fossil fuel phase-out. These were the controversial terms at COP28, and the ambiguous concept will keep politicians, the climate scene, think tanks and certainly the investment departments of many banks and companies busy in the new year.

Topic of the year: Climate finance

Climate financing could become one of the hottest topics next year. If the OECD’s preliminary forecast is correct, the organization will report in 2024 that the developed countries will have achieved their pledged USD 100 billion in financial aid for developing countries in 2022, two years late. This would be a good opening position for the big debates that await at COP29 in November. The aim in Azerbaijan is to decide how climate financing will continue beyond 2025. It is about the so-called “new collective quantified target” for climate finance (NCQG). The Paris Agreement is clear: It needs to be more than the previous 100 billion US dollars annually.
However, it is yet unclear who else will pay besides developed countries. It remains to be seen whether the decision by the United Arab Emirates to break the taboo of paying into the loss and damage fund as a non-annex country will prompt other rich emerging or oil countries to contribute. Discussions will also continue as to whether international taxes and levies on flights, shipping, fossil fuels or financial transactions will be used to raise money for aid. The debate is likely to be intense, not least because national budgets in developed countries are under pressure and the debt crisis in around 50 countries continues to hinder investment in sustainable development.
The reform of the World Bank and other financial institutions will continue to be a topic of discussion. The Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have set themselves the goal of enabling more climate investments in the future. The World Bank has already taken the first steps to free up the necessary funds – but its head Ajay Banga also made it very clear in 2023 that the institution urgently needs more capital for this. Next year’s spring meeting of the World Bank and IMF and the annual meeting in the fall will probably focus on where the funds can come from and how the World Bank plans to translate its climate pledge into projects and programs. Meanwhile, the debate at the IMF on Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s “Bridgetown Initiative” will continue.
In this context, the debt crisis is also likely to remain an important issue and the debate surrounding it could gain momentum. Many developing countries lack the money to finance the energy transition. They already spend more on debt servicing than on education and health, for example. Despite all the reform efforts of the international financial institutions, there is still no answer to the question of how to solve the problem.

When will emissions peak?

China will most likely reach its emissions peak earlier than expected. According to several forecasts, the country’s emissions could stop rising in 2024. If China is to reduce them at that point, it will have to lay the groundwork in 2024. But the challenge is enormous: renewable energies do not only have to push the currently dominant coal-fired electricity out of the grid. They also have to meet the growing electricity demand resulting from the electrification of industry, transport and the heating sector. The decision to double energy efficiency at COP28 could play an important role here.
Researchers are optimistic that global greenhouse gas emissions will already fall in 2024. This means that the emissions peak would have been reached by 2023. However, the prerequisite for this is that the current growth trends in renewable energies and green technologies such as EVs pick up pace and that countries implement their methane emission reduction commitments.
Will gas also peak? According to forecasts by the International Energy Agency (IEA), global growth in demand for natural gas will slow down in the coming years as consumption declines overall. However, whether this will happen as early as 2024 will only be known later.

Important elections set the course

Europe will elect the new EU Parliament from June 6 to 9, 2024, which will then also elect the new EU Commission. Advancing the Green Deal is likely to become more difficult after the election. The Parliament risks moving to the right, where majorities for more action on climate change are significantly harder to mobilize. The main task of the new Commission and the new Parliament when it comes to climate policy will be to legislate on the climate target for 2040. The current Commission will issue the first target for this in February 2024 (expected to be a reduction in CO2 emissions of 90 percent compared to 1990). The actual proposal for implementing the target will then come from the new Commission. The EU’s next NDC for 2035 is also still open and will need to be submitted by COP30 in Belém in 2025. Given the lengthy legislative process in the EU, the first proposal would have to be submitted as early as 2024.
The population in other countries with important climate policies will also elect their governments: Pakistan in January, Indonesia in February and Mexico in early June.
Italy holds the G7 presidency, Brazil leads the G20. It is unclear whether the Italian post-fascist government under Georgia Meloni will set climate policy directions in the club of old developed countries. Brazil, on the other hand, will devote itself extensively to the climate issue as the host of the COP30 in 2025: Lula’s government intends to form a “troika” with the UAE and Azerbaijan to prepare for the summit in Belém and its “Mission 1.5”. Finally, the new NDCs based on the Dubai Global Stocktake are to be presented in 2025.

The other COP and its link to climate

The “other COP” will take place at the end of October (probably in Colombia): COP16 on biodiversity. Following the success of the 2022 Montréal agreement, it now remains to be seen how things will progress. And how the links to the climate process – for example when it comes to conserving forests, oceans and nature-based services such as peatlands – can be strengthened.
Shortly before COP29 in Baku from November 11 to 24, the US is set to make a landmark decision on November 5: Will Donald Trump, who has already led the biggest CO2 polluter out of the Paris Agreement after 2016, make it back to the White House? The race will be tight. But regardless of Trump and his ideas on the climate, conditions have also changed in the USA: Extreme weather events, triggered by climate change, are becoming more frequent and more visible. And Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which provides almost 400 billion US dollars for green technologies, is flowing primarily into Republican regions. The election will show what impact this will have on US climate policy.
Will the global climate movement manage to separate its dispute over Israel and Gaza from its climate work enough to continue to speak out loudly and collectively? Or will this voice grow significantly quieter in the climate concert? There have already been minor and major disagreements in Dubai and the run-up to COP28. The talks will have to continue in the coming year.

Climate in figures: Global Stocktake decision with weak wording

How clearly did COP28 herald the end of the fossil fuel age? COP resolutions are packed with semantic nuances. No wonder, as they are meant to advance international climate action while being accepted by all countries negotiating at the UN climate summits – including petrostates.

The Global Stocktake, the core document of this year’s COP, is no different. The text does provide a clear course: away from coal, oil and gas. However, the call to transition away from fossil fuels remains remarkably vague. This is revealed in an analysis of the text by the British climate news service Carbon Brief, which counted the verbs used in the Global Stocktake (GST). Our chart shows the result.

A glance at the verbs used in the final document illustrates that only very few of them clearly require countries to take action. More than 30 times each, the text merely recognizes things or “notes” them. It only “encourages” 29 times.

The Global Stocktake recalls, welcomes, emphasizes, acknowledges, recommends, repeats and underlines – sometimes even using synonyms, with subtle differences that are hard to make out. Even some of the calls to action remain remarkably vague: the text “requests” something 16 times, “invites” 14 times and calls for action 8 times. Very rarely does it dare to actually “decide” something (8 times). How much progress it brings will now depend on the goodwill of all involved. ae

Commission urges EU members to step up climate efforts

The EU countries will only cut greenhouse gases by 51 percent by 2030 instead of the agreed 55 percent under their national climate targets. This is what the Commission writes in its assessment of the draft National Energy and Climate Plans (NECP), which was published on Monday. The renewable energy plans of the member states also fall short of the EU targets. Together, they will probably only achieve a maximum share of 39.3 percent of energy consumption. The EU target is 42.5 percent.

By mid-2024, all EU member states must revise their drafts and submit their final climate plans to the Commission. ber

Climate action can only progress so quickly thanks to the COPs

By Wolfgang Obergassel

Are the outcomes of the UN climate summit worth the effort? After COP28 in Dubai, this question is being raised once again. Two other questions can help answer it: What problem are international climate conferences meant to solve, what goal are they meant to achieve in the first place? And what can the summits contribute to this?

It is supposed to tackle the problems of progressing climate change, and the goal is nothing less than the total transformation of the global economy. Such transformation processes usually take decades. Naturally, a single UN conference is not enough to initiate them or even bring them to a successful conclusion.

Above all, however, such far-reaching transformations always produce winners and losers. In the case of international climate policy, for example, most documented fossil fuel reserves must remain underground. The IEA already pointed out in 2021 that if the world is to have any chance of staying within the 1.5-degree limit, no new oil, gas or coal mining projects must be approved. But, many countries and companies are heavily dependent on these resources.

Struggle for prosperity and influence

Naturally, the losers do not simply accept these losses. They fight to maintain their prosperity and their market position. A prime example of this – albeit at a national level – was this year’s dispute over the German Buildings Energy Act. Its central question: How long can the oil and gas heating system providers continue with their business model?

International processes accelerate such conflicts. Important political debates are initiated by creating an annual political moment where climate action is at the heart of the agenda and political decision-makers are forced to adopt a position.

Pacemaker Paris

The Paris Agreement has permanently embedded this pacemaker function in the political processes of all signatory states by creating a five-year cycle in which the submission of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the Global Stocktake and new NDCs based on it follow each other.

The UN process creates additional pressure on countries with high emissions because poorer countries – those most vulnerable to climate change – also have a seat and a voice. It also provides information that would probably not be available without it. We know how significant the discrepancy is between ambition and actual action because countries have to regularly report internationally on their emissions and measures as part of the UN negotiations.

Benchmark for acceptable climate policy

In addition, the decisions made at the conferences set the benchmark for what behavior by governments – or other actors – is deemed acceptable. In this way, they provide significant legitimacy for all actors aiming to progress national or international climate action.

For instance, the climate movement Fridays for Future bases its demands on the Paris Agreement. More and more court rulings do the same, such as the German Federal Constitutional Court’s ruling from 2021, in which it found the German Climate Change Act in its version at the time insufficient.

At COP28, it was finally possible for the first time to identify fossil fuels as the central cause of the climate problem and to call for a “transition away from them.” The conference has thus generated further leverage for future political and legal disputes.

The predicted warming is lower today

Outside the official negotiations, the annual conference is also a key platform for networking climate policy stakeholders, sharing knowledge and announcing new pioneering initiatives.

Numbers also show how much the UN summits help advance climate action. When the Paris Agreement was adopted, the global average temperature was predicted to rise by 3.5 to 4 degrees by the end of the century. Today, only 2.5 to 3 degrees are expected – this is still far too high, and the progress cannot be attributed solely to the Paris Agreement. By the same token, it is hard to imagine that progress on this scale would have been achieved without international processes.

What should happen in the future

Future conferences could further break down the abstract problem of global climate change into practically manageable sub-problems. COP28 sends out a signal for the global energy transition. However, the equally crucial green transition in transport, heating, agriculture and industry has been barely discussed.

Climate summits should devote more attention to the green transformation of these sectors. And they should keep a closer eye on what individual countries have already done to restructure the transport, building heating, agricultural and industrial sectors, instead of focusing on the development of national emissions as has been the case so far. For example, relevant ministries could be asked to explain how they implement the goals of the Paris Agreement in their respective sectors as part of the international transparency mechanisms.

Wolfgang Obergassel is Co-Head of the Research Unit Global Climate Governance at the Wuppertal Institute. His work focuses on the development of the international climate regime and its mechanisms.

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Feature

2023: These were the most important events and decisions

Results of COP28

Increasingly important: financial pledges

Hope for possible peaks

Africa speaks out, movements split

2024: These will be the most important developments

Topic of the year: Climate finance

When will emissions peak?

Important elections set the course

The other COP and its link to climate

Events

News

Climate in figures: Global Stocktake decision with weak wording

Commission urges EU members to step up climate efforts

Opinion

Climate action can only progress so quickly thanks to the COPs

Struggle for prosperity and influence

Pacemaker Paris

Benchmark for acceptable climate policy

The predicted warming is lower today

What should happen in the future

Climate.Table editorial team

CLIMATE.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

Feature

2023: These were the most important events and decisions

Results of COP28

Increasingly important: financial pledges

Hope for possible peaks

Africa speaks out, movements split

2024: These will be the most important developments

Topic of the year: Climate finance

When will emissions peak?

Important elections set the course

The other COP and its link to climate

Events

News

Climate in figures: Global Stocktake decision with weak wording

Commission urges EU members to step up climate efforts

Opinion

Climate action can only progress so quickly thanks to the COPs

Struggle for prosperity and influence

Pacemaker Paris

Benchmark for acceptable climate policy

The predicted warming is lower today

What should happen in the future

Climate.Table editorial team

CLIMATE.TABLE EDITORIAL OFFICE

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