The outcome of the most important climate negotiations since 2015, at COP28, could be based on ambiguity around a crucial word, according to experts: “unabated fossil fuels”, or fossil fuels without measures to reduce carbon emissions.
But why ? Because among the very controversial options retained by COP28 negotiators in a draft agreement this week, there is in particular that of accelerating “efforts aimed at gradually eliminating ‘unabated fossil fuels'” – fossil fuels not backed by carbon capture devices – and to reduce their use to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. There is also an option during this decade to “rapidly abandon unabated coal power” – coal-fired energy without measures to recover CO2.
“No clear meaning at the moment”
The problem, experts say, is specifying what that actually means. “Terms like ‘unabated’ don’t have a clear meaning at the moment,” Lisa Fischer, an analyst at the E3G think tank, told reporters this week. “Abated” generally refers to the capture of emissions before they are released into the atmosphere.
A footnote in the latest benchmark report from the UN scientific advisory body, the IPCC, states that “unabated” fossil fuels are “those which are not subject to interventions that significantly reduce » greenhouse gas emissions.
For now, discussions on reducing emissions focus mainly on carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies that trap emissions at the exit of power plants or industrial sites. The oil and gas industry and the main producing countries, including the United Arab Emirates, host of COP28, are advocating it. In the short term, the IPCC estimates that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by almost half during this decade to contain global warming to +1.5°C. This means rapidly replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, say experts, who note that CCS has little role to play in this crucial decade.
In 2022, 35 facilities around the world will only sequester a total of 45 million tons of CO2, according to the International Energy Agency. However, global emissions should be reduced by 22 billion tonnes “over the next seven years”, repeats Sultan Al Jaber, president of COP28, who also heads the Emirati oil company Adnoc. Even in the longer term, scientists predict that the use of CCS techniques will be limited and concentrated on sectors that are hardest to decarbonize, such as cement.
Towards a surplus of 86 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions?
In a statement released ahead of the climate talks, the High Ambition Coalition, which brings together countries including France, Kenya and Colombia, said abatement technologies had only a “minimal” role to play. to decarbonize energy. “We cannot use it to greenlight fossil fuel expansion,” they said. Some also fear that the technology is not effective enough.
Because over-reliance on large-scale CCS – and underperformance – could lead to an excess of 86 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions between 2020 and 2050, according to an analysis by the Climate Analytics group. Lisa Fischer of E3G sees it as “a diversionary tactic”: “we can’t really install a small carbon capture device on every car exhaust pipe”. Until now, installing CO2 capture devices on gas or coal-fired power plants and then storing the CO2 has proven technically feasible, but not cost-effective.
According to a report from the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (University of Oxford), a heavy reliance on CCS would cost at least $30 trillion more than betting on renewable energy and energy efficiency.