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.