Major companies seek COP28 deal on quitting fossil fuels
eBay is one of 131 companies that are calling for a timeline for the phasing out of unabated fossil fuels / eBay
By Roberta Harrington in Los Angeles
October 26, 2023
More than 130 companies – including Bayer, eBay, Heineken, IKEA, Nestle, Mahindra Group and Volvo – are calling for a timeline for the phase-out of unabated fossil fuels.
They are asking that a timeline be agreed upon at COP28. The climate summit, convened by the UN, will be held in Dubai in late November and early December.
The phase out of fossil fuels will be a thorny issue at COP28, with major fossil fuel economies resisting and developing economies asking for financial help to reduce emissions.
The 131 companies are urging national governments to address the primary cause of climate change: burning fossil fuels. Members of the non-profit We Mean Business Coalition, they singed an open letter asking national governments to commit to fully decarbonised power by 2035 for developed economies and to financial help for developing nations so they can eliminate fossil fuels by 2040.
The companies that signed the letter represent nearly $1 trillion in global annual revenue. They include large name companies, as well as small and medium-sized businesses.
It’s already controversial that COP28 is in the UAE, an economy so dominated by oil, and that the president of the summit is Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
The open letter marks the first time that such a large group of companies have collectively urged governments to move away from fossil fuels, noted the Financial Times.
The companies warned that they are “feeling the effects and cost of increasing extreme weather events resulting from climate change”.
"To decarbonise the global energy system, we need to ramp up clean energy as fast as we phase out the use and production of fossil fuels," they said.
They continued: “We call on all parties attending COP28 to seek outcomes that will lay the groundwork to transform the global energy system towards a full phase-out of unabated fossil fuels and halve emissions this decade.”
The UN has warned that the world is not cutting emissions nearly fast enough. A scorecard issued in early September by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said the world remains very off-track.
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Sultan al-Jaber, the oil executive who is leading the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, has rocked the conference with highly controversial remarks that there is “no science” that phasing out fossil fuels is necessary.
Releases study showing 360,000 people could die prematurely before the end of the century because of global heating caused by companies’ 2022 greenhouse gas emissions alone.
Goal is to expedite energy transition and facilitate the deployment of 1.7 GW of new renewable energy capacity by 2030.
The COP28 talks in Dubai to save the planet from a climate catastrophe look like they are going to fall at the first fence as the oil lobby and some big economies push for a “phasing down” of fossil fuels, rather than the “phasing out”.
By wasting less food and eating less meat and dairy, consumers can help to slow down climate change. However, consumers in the EU have barely changed their diets.
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