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In a report sent to Rigzone on Wednesday, Matthew Bey, a senior analyst at RANE, outlined several things to watch out for at the COP28 climate summit, which is taking place from November 30 to December 12 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“The centerpiece of the conference will be discussions surrounding the Paris Agreement’s so-called ‘global stocktake’, where the technical findings indicate insufficient global progress toward combating climate change,” Bey said in the report.

“The global stocktake is a key part of the Paris Agreement that is used to assess its signatories’ collective progress in implementing and achieving the goals outlined in the 2015 climate pact,” he added.

“On September 8, the United Nations released a synthesis of its technical dialogue of its first ‘global stocktake’, which unsurprisingly found that although the Paris Agreement had ‘significantly’ reduced forecasts of future global warming, the world was ‘not on track to meet the long-term goals’ of the international treaty,” Bey continued.

The RANE analyst noted in the report that negotiations over the global stocktake will likely reveal wide differences between developing countries, which he said want more financial support for the green transition, and their developed counterparts, which Bey stated want large emitting developing states to strengthen their climate commitments.

“COP28 will see the final phase of the global stocktake, known as the ‘consideration of outputs’, where countries will meet and discuss the technical reports released by the United Nations earlier this year,” Bey highlighted in the report.

“The political outcome of the stocktake process at this year’s conference, and agreements made on how to accelerate or increase global climate ambitions, will then inform the next round of NDCs (nationally determined contributions) that are due in 2025,” he added.

“Developed countries have so far faced pressure to set more ambitious NDCs than developing countries, leading to Western countries’ NDCs being more detailed and comprehensive than those made by developing countries, including large emitting countries like China, India, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia,” he continued.

At COP28, the West will likely push large emitting countries to increase the comprehensiveness of their future NDCs, according to Bey.

“However, the Like-Minded Group of Developing Countries (LMDCs), a block of countries aligning on certain trade and climate issues led by China, India and Saudi Arabia, will probably assert that any increase in climate ambition will need to be accompanied by increases in green finance by the West to help fund the more ambitious commitments,” he said in the report.

Phase Out or Phase Down?

Bey noted in the report that the question of whether to ‘phase out’ or ‘phase down’ the use of fossil fuels will also be a hot-button issue at COP28.

“The technical findings in the United Nations’ global stocktake and annual emissions gap reports revealed a stark gap between the Paris Agreement’s goals and countries’ current actions toward combatting climate change,” Bey said in the report.

“At the upcoming conference, the West, and particularly the European Union, will use this gap to try to justify a global agreement on eventually ending the use of fossil fuels,” he added.

“In October, the European Council released its negotiating position at the COP28, which stressed the need for a ‘global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels’,” he continued.

“Most developing countries will likely find such language as hostile, preferring to instead use softer language like ‘phasing down’, which implies countries only need to reduce their ‘unabated’ fossil fuel consumption (i.e. consumption that does not have a substantial amount of its emissions captured) as opposed to eventually ending it altogether,” Bey went on to state.

Even discussions of a phase-down of fossil fuels may be too toxic for major oil producers to consider, Bey said in the report, “particularly if they view it as a stepping stone to greater ambitions in the future”.

“However, in recent months, COP28 President-designate al-Jaber has reiterated that the world does eventually need to reduce its consumption of fossil fuels,” Bey noted in the report.

“At an October pre-COP summit in Abu Dhabi attended by a number of countries, al-Jaber additionally said that he knew there were ‘strong views about the idea of including language on fossil fuels and renewables in the negotiated text’, and stressed the need for negotiators to ‘work together to come forward with solutions that can achieve alignment, common ground and consensus between all parties’,” Bey highlighted.

“As head of ADNOC and a major voice in OPEC, Al-Jaber’s position may lead to more Emirati pressure on similar oil-producing countries to offer at least some concessions on phasing down unabated fossil fuels,” Bey continued.

“But even if countries ink a deal on reducing fossil fuel consumption at COP28, the final agreed-upon text will almost certainly be extremely narrow and include various caveats,” he went on to state.

Climate Financing

While the West will be focused on strengthening global climate commitments at COP28, the developing world’s priority will be securing more climate financing, Bey said in the report.

“The idea that wealthier countries should help finance the energy transition in the developing world is a key principle of both the Paris Agreement and other international climate pacts,” he added.

“Developing countries, however, failed to reach a 2009 commitment to increase global climate finance support to $100 billion by 2020,” he continued.

“The West eventually reached that target in 2022. However, the U.N. global stocktake report still identified large gaps in climate financing, which China, India, Saudi Arabia, and other members of the so-called LMDCs will likely use at COP28 to push for the establishment of a new similar pledge of financing by 2030 or 2035 with a higher annual headline figure,” Bey went on to state.

In the report, Bey said climate finance is one of the most crucial, and contentious, outlying aspects of the Loss and Damage Fund that countries agreed to establish at COP27 and will be tasked with finalizing at this year’s conference.

“After months of tenuous negotiations, COP27 attendees reached a last-minute, temporary agreement on establishing such a fund as a way to help developing countries pay for the consequences of climate change,” Bey said in the report.

“The proposal sets up the World Bank as the fund’s host for the first four years, but the draft agreement, including the specifics of how the mechanism will be structured and financed, still needs to be approved at COP28,” he added, noting that “this could prove challenging”.

COP29 Location

Bey stated in the report that conflicting geopolitical priorities have prevented the selection of a host for COP29, which he said could leave the UAE hosting meetings next year.

“COP29 is supposed to be held in Eastern Europe per the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), but the 23-country Eastern European group must choose a spot based on consensus,” Bey highlighted in the report.

“Russia is blocking an EU member from hosting COP29, arguing that such a country wouldn’t be impartial in organizing the event. But Bulgaria, which has offered to host the conference, has said that Russia’s position is instead retribution for Europe supporting Ukraine and phasing out its consumption of Russian oil and gas via sanctions,” he added.

“While Russia could try to host the meeting, Western countries would oppose this and would not send a high-ranking delegation to Russia to attend the conference. Moreover, Azerbaijan and Armenia are also blocking each other from hosting the conference,” he continued.

Bey said in the report that, if no agreement is found, COP29’s location would default to Bonn, the headquarters of the UNFCCC secretariat.

“But the presidency would still remain with the United Arab Emirates,” he added, noting that “negotiators hope to resolve the issue at COP28”.

Key Event

In a separate report sent to Rigzone this week, analysts at Standard Chartered outlined that the start of the COP28 conference was one of two “key events for energy this week”. The other was “the delayed OPEC+ meeting” the analysts highlighted in the report.

“Some elements of the dialogue between energy consumers and energy producers have proved a source of diplomatic tension in advance of COP28,” the Standard Chartered analysts said in the report.

“A statement from the OPEC Secretariat on November 27 noted that the IEA has used its social media platforms to criticize energy producers in isolation in the run-up to the meeting. The OPEC statement observed ‘In a world where more dialogue is needed, we repeat that finger pointing is not a constructive approach’,” they added.

“The recent strains in the producer-consumer dialogue are unfortunate in our view, and the narrow focus of the IEA’s recent media strategy appears unlikely to improve the quality of the debate,” the analysts went on to state.

70,000+ Participants

COP28 UAE is taking place at Expo City Dubai. The conference is expected to convene over 70,000 participants, including heads of state, government officials, international industry leaders, private sector representatives, academics, experts, youth, and non-state actors, according to the COP28 website.

“COP28 UAE brings the world together at a critical moment for global transformative climate action,” the COP28 website notes.

“To deliver on its ambitious agenda, COP28 will be inclusive, transparent, pragmatic, and results-oriented,” it adds.

In a welcome message posted on the COP28 site, Ahmed Al Jaber, the President-Designate for COP28 UAE, said “at COP21 in 2015, the world agreed to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels by 2050”.

“To remain on target, science tells us that emissions must be halved by 2030. We only have another seven years to meet that goal,” he added.

“COP28 UAE is a prime opportunity to rethink, reboot, and refocus the climate agenda,” Jaber continued.