|
Max Bearak, The New York Times
As the final scheduled day of negotiations at the COP29 summit kicks off, the New York Times reports that developed and developing countries were “still deadlocked” over establishing a global climate finance goal. “Though UN climate summits normally run into overtime, they rarely collapse entirely. But money is such a contentious issue that the possibility of failure loomed over the negotiations on Thursday,” the newspaper explains. Associated Press says that nations “amped up the pressure on themselves” for Friday by “entering the last scheduled day of talks with no visible progress on their chief goals”. It explains that developing countries are seeking a climate finance target of more than $1tn, but the draft texts that emerged on Thursday “angered the developing world by essentially leaving blank the financial commitment”. Meanwhile, the Financial Times says “western countries have blasted oil-producing nations” at COP29 for “blocking” the mention of fossil fuels in two major negotiating texts. The article says “negotiators blamed a bloc of countries led by Saudi Arabia for the lack of reference to fossil fuels”. Agence France-Presse reports on public comments made to other delegates by a Saudi official, representing the 22-nation Arab Group, who said they would reject any climate deal that goes after fossil fuels at the COP29. Axios has an article about “the text no one likes”. Former UN climate envoy Mary Robinson tells the Guardian that poor countries may have to compromise on their demand for climate finance to achieve an outcome at COP29. Kenya’s the Nation has an article about climate activists urging negotiators not to include loans for climate action, particularly adaptation, in the final outcome. Premium Times in Nigeria has a piece about “seven key demands” from African negotiators. Politico has an article about the role the US is playing in shaping the talks, despite the fact that the incoming Donald Trump presidency is unlikely to stick to the key outcomes from them. UN secretary general Antonio Guterres has urged negotiators at COP29 to launch a “major push” for an agreement, according to Al Jazeera. With talks at “an impasse”, Bloomberg says that Brazil “is already looking to COP30”, where it will host as COP president.
To follow the latest in the frequently shifting negotiations in Baku, see the live blogs being run by BBC News, the Guardian and the Hindu. Carbon Brief’s negotiating text tracker captures all the latest key documents to emerge from the talks.
In other news around the COP, a Hungarian “climate institute” attending COP29 is an offshoot of a thinktank that is backed by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and funded by the state oil and gas company, according to DeSmog. And the New York Times has a feature in which one of its journalists visits a spa in Azerbaijan where people can bathe in oil.
Victoria Milko, The Associated Press
Indonesian president Prabowo Subianto has announced plans to retire all coal and other fossil-fuel power plants while boosting the country’s renewable energy capacity over the next 15 years, according to the Associated Press. The president also said he was “optimistic” that Indonesia would achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 – a decade sooner than its previous 2060 commitment, the news outlet adds. Speaking at the G20 summit in Brazil this week, Subianto said the nation had plans to build 75 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy capacity during this time, pointing in particular to geothermal energy. The article says that “experts and environmental activists welcomed the announcements, but hedged their expectations”. It explains that more than 250 coal plants are currently powering the country and “more are being built”. The Jakarta Post quotes economic minister Airlangga Hartarto, who says that in order to “achieve this vision”, the nation would need $235bn in investment. The article notes that Indonesia is the fourth-largest nation by population and is “one of world’s largest thermal coal exporters and carbon emitters”. Bloomberg points to BloombergNEF data that shows coal and natural gas account for nearly 80% of Indonesia’s electricity, and the country currently has less than 1GW of combined wind and solar capacity installed as of last year. Nevertheless, it adds that the president’s announcement “suggests a more aggressive approach toward reducing carbon emissions”, after his predecessor entered a $20bn deal with multinational funders to retire coal plants earlier than expected, which has “struggled so far to make headway”. The Jakarta Post also has an article by Indonesian climate activist Ginanjar Ariyasuta Eka Nugraha that states the nation “continues building new captive-coal power plants” while “continuously lowering renewable energy targets”.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times has an article about BP and partners giving the “green light” to a $7bn liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Indonesia, which “will later go on to use carbon capture in the production process”. The newspaper says the project “has been shipping LNG to Asian countries like Japan and China since 2009” and the development comes as “major energy companies continue to bank on demand for gas growing in the region”.
Elsewhere, the Mail and Guardian reports that coal will remain a major part of the energy mix in South Africa “well into the 2030 to 2050 period”, according to officials. It says this is in spite of the just energy transition (JET) plan, backed by international funders, which “is progressing as plans gain momentum to upskills workers for renewable energy generation and to assist small businesses to roll out green projects”.
Jennifer A Dlouhy, Bloomberg
Mexico is targeting net-zero emissions by 2050 in “a fresh bid by the country to more aggressively confront climate change” under the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, Bloomberg reports. The article says that the move was “hailed as a crucial step forward by the world’s 13th-largest emitter”, adding that just one of the world’s 15 largest emitters – Iran – has yet to set a net-zero target. The announcement came alongside promises by the EU, Canada and other countries in an event at COP29 to set 2035 climate targets that require steep emissions reductions to hit net-zero goals by mid-century. Politico reports on the same event, which featured 11 countries but not the US, which it describes as “an architect of the initiative”. India Today also has an article about what it calls “a landmark announcement”, noting that the countries involved represent 30% of global GDP and 15% of greenhouse gas emissions”.
Mexico’s environment minister, Alicia Bárcena, writes in Mexican newspaper El Universal that they are pursuing policies to “advance towards the decarbonisation of our economy and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Achieving the goal of protecting 30% of the national territory – marine and terrestrial – by 2030 is another of our priorities”. Bárcena writes that Mexico will call for a dramatic increase in ambition for country climate plans under the Paris Agreement, which are due next February.
A study commissioned by the Guardian from Climate Action Tracker finds that the US and India have “made the greatest progress” among the world’s top 20 economies in implementing climate policies since the Paris Agreement came into effect in 2016. The study concludes that the G20 group have together introduced policies that “are likely to reduce CO2 discharges by 6.9 gigatons by 2030” over the past nine years.
Li Deshangyu, 21st Century Business Herald
Zhao Yingmin, head of China's climate delegation, tells business news outlet 21st Century Business Herald that climate finance negotiations at COP29 “must yield results” to ensure the Paris Agreement “progresses forward and not going backwards”, but says that “matters beyond the bounds” of its mandate “shouldn’t be discussed”. He also notes that China has to “hasten the expansion” of its carbon market to facilitate “credit transfer between countries” and that the China Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) voluntary carbon market “will be expanded to six different areas”, adds the outlet. China has issued 1.23bn green electricity certificates (GECs) in October, including 150m from wind power and 197m from solar, reports state news agency Xinhua. A sustainable “blue book” was published at COP29, reports the Communist party-affiliated newspaper People’s Daily.
Meanwhile, in a state visit to Brasilia, Chinese president Xi Jinping signed 37 agreements with his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on clean energy, environmental protection and other areas, reports Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP).
China's commerce ministry announced a raft of measures to “boost the country’s foreign trade” as the country’s exporters “[brace] for any trade disruptions” from Trump’s threat to impose tariffs, Reuters says in a separate report. SCMP quotes an economist suggesting that China is unlikely to “aggressively retaliate against the US as it did in Trump’s first term”. With Trump “expected to take the US again out of climate diplomacy”, China is seizing the “chance for climate mantle”, Agence France-Presse reports.
Elsewhere, the New York Times cites a Carbon Brief analysis in an article titled “China’s soaring emissions are upending climate politics”. German media outlet Deutsche Welle also cites the same analysis, noting that “the Paris Agreement called on developed countries to take the lead in climate action due to their disproportionately large historical emissions. However, China’s own historical emissions now surpass those of the EU.” The electricity consumption in China in October notched a year-on-year increase of 4.3%, reports Securities Daily. SCMP quotes a leading scientist in China’s early electric vehicle (EV) research projects saying the sector will “grow seven times bigger in the future”.
Finally, the Financial Times publishes a commentary by its columnist Simon Kuper posing the question, “Will China win the clean-energy era?”. And political scientist Carlos Eduardo Pina writes an opinion article in Japanese news outlet Nikkei Asia, noting China’s investment on the “critical infrastructure in [Latin America] such as… renewable and electric power plants” is driven by its “plan to achieve its national development goals”.
Adam Vaughan and Steven Swinford, The Times
The UK government is relaxing planning rules in order to make it easier for households to fit heat pumps, the Times reports. Previously, households have been blocked from installing heat pumps within a metre of a boundary – “a rule that had been in place over noise concerns but looked antiquated as quieter models were developed”, the newspaper explains. At the same time, the government has “watered down a so-called ‘boiler tax’ over cost of living concerns”, the piece continues. Under a scheme to encourage a switch to cleaner heating technologies, boiler manufacturers will have to ensure 6% of their sales are heat pumps from April 2025 to April 2026, in order to avoid fines, the newspaper says. [This is not a tax. Rather, some manufacturers have indicated that they will increase boiler prices for consumers to offset the cost of the fines.] However, it explains that the government had initially set these fines at £5,000 for each missed heat pump sale and this has now been cut to £500 – a level that the Conservative Lord Callanan, “the architect of the scheme”, says makes it “completely ineffective”. Meanwhile, the Daily Mail has a completely different take on the same story, with a frontpage that reads “Ed Miliband to slap green ‘tax’ on your boiler”. It says “the energy secretary has signed off on a proposal to impose swingeing taxes on boiler manufacturers if they fail to meet his targets for installing heat pumps – targets that industry sources have branded ‘unachievable’”. The newspaper says Conservative shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho had “scrapped the move while in government”, noting that she “condemned” Miliband’s actions. [The policy was originally introduced by the previous Conservative government and Coutinho only ever delayed the start date from 2024 to 2025, rather than “scrapping” it.]
The newspaper also has an editorial on the subject, taking aim at “Mr Miliband and his band of net-zero fanatics”. It says: “Replacing every boiler in Britain with a heat pump would have a negligible effect on climate change. The only real consequence would be to leave countless households poorer and colder.” And Matthew Lynn, a financial columnist at the Daily Telegraph, goes even further with a column titled “Ed Miliband’s new heat pump plan could tip us into civil unrest”.
RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland
Germany’s chief negotiator, foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, emphasised during her first public appearance at COP29 in Azerbaijan that “it remains an extremely rocky road” to achieving a successful outcome for the conference, reports RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND). The outlet quotes Baerbock stating: “We, as team Germany and team Europe, will continue to fight hard over the coming days for every millimetre of progress and every tiny improvement” in an effort to build a broad and strong climate coalition across continents. On the ongoing dispute at COP29 regarding increased climate aid for poorer nations, Baerbock reaffirmed that Germany and Europe remain “reliable partners in international climate financing”, notes the outlet. According to Der Spiegel, although climate aid funding in Germany’s federal budget is decreasing, the country’s financial contributions to developing nations reached €10bn this year. Most of this aid was in the form of loans for renewable energy projects, explains RND.
Meanwhile, Table.Media reports that Germany dropped two places and now ranks 16th out of 63 countries in the Climate Change Performance Index compiled by Germanwatch and the New Climate Institute, going from “good” to “medium” in terms of climate change mitigation performance. Tagesschau explains that while wind and solar energy expansion continues to progress, the country still faces rising emissions.
Finally, Handelsblatt reports that German chemical company BASF – in collaboration with the startup Vulcan Energy – aims to significantly reduce CO2 emissions at its headquarters in Ludwigshafen, exploring the options of using geothermal energy at the company’s largest site, which could help avoid 800,000 tonnes of CO2.
Nick Toscano and Mike Foley, The Sydney Morning Herald
US bribery charges against Indian “coal baron” Gautam Adani have led to calls for an urgent review of his company Adani Group’s “giant coal mine” in central Queensland, Australia, and “intensified warnings for Australian superannuation investors holding shares in the company”, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The newspaper explains that the billionaire was indicted in New York this week “in connection with an alleged multibillion-dollar scheme to bribe Indian officials in return for favourable solar power contracts between 2020 and 2024”. The Hindu reports that Kenyan president William Ruto says he has cancelled a multimillion-dollar airport expansion and energy deals with Adani after the indictments emerged. |
