Category: Methane

Key Takeaways from COP30 in Belém

The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Belém, Brazil, concluded last week, and so – as I have done every year for about 20 years, I will offer my personal views about major takeaways from COP30.

Let’s begin by recognizing that the “Belém Package” was adopted, in which 195 Parties approved a broad set of nearly 30 individual decisions that cover many elements of international climate change policy going forward.

But what about specifics?  As always, there’s good news and bad news.  This year, I will begin with what I think of as disappointments and problematic outcomes, and then I will turn to one potentially very important outcome, which I don’t think has been sufficiently covered by much of the news media.

Disappointments and Problematic Outcomes

A Missing Statement about Phasing Out Fossil Fuels       

As was the case with COP29 post-mortems last year, the press has focused in its COP30 coverage on the conference’s final statement (or lack thereof) regarding the future of fossil fuels.  A year ago, I wrote at this blog about why such focus on what is at best a non-binding resolution was misplaced and given too much attention (What Happened at COP29 in Baku?, November 29, 2024).  This year, attention has again been focused unduly on the fact that the COP’s closing statement did not go beyond or even explicitly endorse the CO28 statement about “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, about which I also wrote at this blog (What Really Happened at COP-28 in Dubai, December 15, 2023).

So, there’s been abundant hand-wringing that the final COP30 language was weaker than many had hoped, and certainly did not include a formal fossil-fuel phase-out roadmap.  I won’t argue that such symbolic pronouncements, when made, are irrelevant, but the fact remains that these statements are only aspirational, and not tied in any meaningful way to the heart of the Paris Agreement’s implementation, namely the 195 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

What Happened to the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF)?

On November 6, 2025, the COP President, André Corrêa do Lago, formally launched this initiative to pay for tropical countries to conserve standing forests.  With support from Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expectations were high, with the ultimate target being a fund of $125 billion.  But the funding committed at COP 30, somewhat less than $7 billion, was less than expected.

The Just Transition Mechanism

A new “Belém Action Mechanism for Just Transition” is intended to provide a structured, multilateral framework to manage the transition from carbon-intensive economies to low-carbon economies in a just, equitable, inclusive way that protects workers, communities, and vulnerable populations. This is an important issue, because not only does climate change bring about economic damages, but so do climate change policies.  

The Belém text seems to refer only to developing countries, but since the time of COP3 in 1997 (where the Kyoto Protocol as adopted), the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) — a coalition of oil-exporting Arab states — has pushed for compensation for economic losses to the oil trade triggered by mitigation policies.  So, this new mechanism could have some significant unintended consequences.

The Global Implementation Accelerator

This was launched in Belém to quickly start high-impact, short-term climate actions, such as for reducing methane emission and implementing nature-based carbon removal. This is clearly meritorious, but what will the “Accelerator” actually do?  It is fundamentally voluntary, and requires significant finance.  So, it remains little more than a statement of intentions, unless this leads to national plans which are anchored in clear paths for finance & implementation.

Tripling Adaptation Finance

Countries committed in Belém to triple adaptation finance by 2035 to help vulnerable nations.  This means raising the adaptation finance target from roughly $40 billion/year (set in 2021) to about $120 billion per year by 2035.  The Paris Agreement is largely about mitigation (via the NDCs), and recently an ex post fund for Loss and Damage was launched.  But between these is the need for adaptation (It’s Not Too Soon to Take Climate Change Adaptation Seriously, November 7, 2021).  So the increased attention is merited, but there is no indication of a credible pathway that would unlock private capital and innovation, which is surely needed.

A Potentially Very Important Outcome

The negotiators in Belém launched a “Trade-Climate Dialogue” with a two-year work program on how international trade can support equitable climate action.  This, in my judgement, is potentially very important, partly because of the topic and partly because an actual program of work is specified for the countries to undertake.

A few days ago, I discussed this (plus the four concerns I’ve outlined above) with an excellent journalist from Newsweek – Jeff Young, the magazine’s Environment and Sustainability Editor.  I thought that some of my responses might make it into the article he was intending to write about CO30 outcomes, but it turned out that he published what is essentially an interview (not about my four concerns with COP30, but exclusively focused on the “potentially very important outcome” of COP30.  So, rather than summarizing or revising his prose and my responses to his questions, I am simply offering below Jeff Young’s article, which I hope you’ll find of interest.

Harvard Economist Cites ‘Important’ COP30 Development on Climate and Trade

Nov 25, 2025

By Jeff Young

Environment and Sustainability Editor

The COP30 climate talks launched two weeks ago amid high expectations for progress in Belém, Brazil. After 10 years of the Paris Climate Agreement, new national commitments to cut greenhouse gases were due and momentum was building for an international plan to phase out the world’s use of fossil fuels.

Further, the COP30 setting at the mouth of the Amazon River stressed the importance of forests and nature conservation in the climate fight, and Brazil was set to unveil a new way to fund forest protections.

But early signs of progress at the talks seemed to bog down in the tropical heat. By the time negotiators took up the idea of a “road map” to phase out fossil fuels, a fire in the venue forced a temporary evacuation and offered fitting symbolism for a COP going down in flames.

On Saturday, the talks closed with mixed results at best: financing for forests grew but not to the hoped-for levels; national plans still came short of the Paris target; and the COP30 final document did not call for new action to end fossil fuels.

“My own judgment is that the outcomes were a combination of disappointing, problematic and potentially important,” Harvard economist and veteran COP observer Robert Stavins told Newsweek. Stavins directs both the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and the school’s Project on Climate Agreements and he has attended close to 20 of the annual United Nations climate gatherings.

Stavins said that with the Trump administration abandoning the Paris Agreement and ignoring COP30 (for the first time in COP history, the U.S. did not send an official delegation), the realistic expectations for a strong outcome were low.

However, he said, COP30 produced a “potentially important” development on global trade and climate, a relatively new topic in the COP process.

The European Union has tied trade to climate action with the adoption of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a means of pricing the greenhouse gas emissions involved in the manufacturing of many products the E.U. imports. In effect, CBAM is a CO2 tariff on carbon-intensive products, including iron and steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers, hydrogen, and electricity.

In this interview, edited for length and clarity, Stavins said a dialogue on trade launched at COP30 could serve to overcome some objections to the CBAM and encourage other countries to take a similar approach to pricing carbon pollution.

Newsweek: Tell me about what you found “potentially important” coming out of COP30.

Robert Stavins: They established what is called a trade and climate dialogue. Obviously, the relationship between international trade and climate change is extremely important and one can view it in lots of ways. Some countries are very hostile towards the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism in the European Union and feel that it’s a way of keeping developing countries mired in poverty through what is essentially environmental protectionism.

The Europeans obviously view it as both necessary for establishing a level playing field but also as a way of inducing other countries to take on domestic carbon pricing mechanisms in order to escape the tariff when they export those specific bulk products: iron and steel and cement, aluminum, a few others, into the European Union.

What’s striking is that they agreed to start a 2-year work program on how international trade can support equitable climate action. Well, once they start a program, then they have to meet and talk about it, they have to put things on paper, so this one actually does have a bit of meat.

There was interest expressed from the Brazilian presidency going into the COP in the notion of something broader than the CBAM:  A number of countries putting in place carbon pricing domestic mechanisms—whether it’s a carbon tax or auctioned allowances under cap and trade—keeping the revenue and then putting in place essentially trade barriers like the CBAM on non-participating countries. In other words, expanding the CBAM into something like a carbon pricing club.

[For this blog essay, let me add that I am referring above to the “Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets,” proposed by Brazil’s Finance Ministry ahead of COP30, initially with 11 supporting parties (Brazil, China, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Armenia, Zambia, and France), and having since expanded to 18 parties.  More to the point, a very promising potential avenue forward for such a coalition (club) is provided by a recent proposal from the Global Climate Policy Project at Harvard and MIT, namely “Building a Climate Coalition: Aligning Carbon Pricing, Trade, and Development,” which I’m pleased to say is the focus of my upcoming podcast episode (and related blog essay) featuring Professor Catherine Wolfram of the MIT-Sloan School of Management.]

Newsweek: That reminds me that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the environment committee, was the sole federal U.S. representative there in Belém and this was one of his top talking points. He called the CBAM “a lifeboat” for climate safety, and I’m wondering if you agree with that assessment.

Stavins: I think it is. I originally saw it as an understandable reaction, trying to make European industry happy, so that they wouldn’t be at a competitive disadvantage. But I was very skeptical of the possibility of it actually inducing other countries to put in place carbon pricing mechanisms. But I was wrong, because in fact other countries are in that process.

Turkey has been completely upfront about the fact that they’re developing a carbon price mechanism for the explicit purpose of not having to pay the CBAM. And I can tell you that I think it’s five other countries that are also developing plans—I can’t comment on some because I’ve been working with them, so it’s confidential. So, to me, that is a potentially very promising development, but I say potentially because, you know, there are a lot of caveats.

Newsweek: One of the caveats there might be what the Trump administration will do in response to this.

Stavins: Obviously, tariffs have been essential to the first ten months of the Trump administration’s policies. Leading up to COP30, the Trump administration tried with several other countries to get them to back down on their NDCs [national commitments to cut CO2 emissions]. And the way they did it was to say, you know and we’ll look upon you favorably in terms of international trade if you do. That failed.

So rather than using trade barriers in a positive way, which I think is what the CBAM is, the Trump administration has been using them in regards to climate change in a negative way.

Newsweek: How big a deal was it that the U.S. wasn’t there? Did that create a sort of leadership void, and did others seek to fill that? I’m thinking of China in particular.

Stavins: The answer is yes. The overall effect is a change of mood. Leading up to the Paris Agreement, the U.S. and China were partners—we never would have gotten the Paris Agreement otherwise.

China now is happy to emerge into sole leadership. China now is emerging and in broader terms than just climate, it is in terms of all kinds of soft power as the U.S. pulls back with the cancelling of USAID and so much else.

Newsweek: What do you think of the future of the COP process itself? There are growing calls for reform to the process—do you see it changing, and do you think it remains relevant?

Stavins: I don’t see it going away because it has a huge constituency. Developing countries don’t walk out on it because they don’t want to jeopardize the process and see something like the G20 take over. So, for that reason, my opinion is that we will continue to have it for quite some time. It will become irrelevant only as an alternative parallel to it emerges and that could be what I described before but it might be something else, but I think it’s going to be with us for a while.

One last thing I’ll say is I would be more optimistic about COP31 in Turkey. Turkey is a very interesting place, they are a real bridge between Europe and Asia, obviously, and Australia is going to have some element of the [COP] presidency. Most importantly, I don’t think expectations are going to be high, and everything in life, whether it’s personal, institutional or political, is relative to expectations.

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Hope and Expectation for Bottom-Up Climate Progress

Vijay Vaitheeswaran, whom I have known and worked with for over 30 years, is the long-time global energy and climate innovation editor at The Economist. In the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Conversations on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” he expresses his appreciation for bottom-up climate approaches. The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  You can listen to our complete conversation here.

Visionary entrepreneurs and the private sector will play increasingly important roles in driving climate progress, Vijay Vaitheeswaran argues, particularly in an era of what he calls “slowbalization,” during which nations will attempt to regionalize and even nationalize supply chains, and establish industrial policies, a trend he says “will have some deleterious consequences” on climate policy. However, he also notes that there could be some longer-term positive effects.

“From the perspective of emissions, I worry. Making very expensive solar panels at home in America or very unattractive and expensive electric cars that nobody wants to buy because you’re reliant on domestic technology or energy storage [is inefficient]. Another example where we have at scale with quite a lot of innovation embedded cutting edge technologies that are available quite inexpensively because China invested and got them to scale and is making them available, but very high tariffs will keep them out of markets like the U.S. And what will happen?,” he asks. “My prediction is that a number of those technologies will be redirected to the emerging world. If that happens, that would be a good thing. It might even help with a green leapfrog in India or certainly in Africa, Latin America.  It doesn’t matter to the planet where the emissions cuts are made in the long term.”

Vijay observes that much of current-day green energy solutions are driven by the private sector, and that trend, he says, shows no signs of slowing.

“I have a great deal of appreciation for bottom-up forces, understanding that whatever the cycle and rhythm of international negotiations… and the vicissitudes of domestic policy, that in fact the momentum often builds from the bottom-up, from markets, from the role of business, from the opportunities that are created from technology innovation advancing,” he remarks.  “That’s where I keep my eye on both – what’s happening from the top-down… The framework matters, but oftentimes the longer-term trends are determined by what comes from the bottom-up.”

He also notes the trend toward increased use of alternative fuels in several important industrial sectors.

“I think the long game for oil is already in sight that in the long term we know how to electrify transport. That’s a problem that we have a pathway for, certainly in passenger transport. With freight we have to see which technology wins out, whether it is indeed electrification, which is making gains even with freight, even though batteries are heavy and cannot go as far,” he states. “There is an argument for hydrogen or some other kinds of synthetic fuels as well. So, there’s an open competition, but we have pathways to alternatives there. We’re seeing shipping as well moving quite rapidly, in fact, towards some alternatives… to petroleum-based fuels.”

As these alternative fuel technologies come to scale, Vaitheeswaran says, they will help the world lessen its reliance on oil, thereby reducing global CO₂ emissions.

“The way we should work for change faster is to develop these alternatives, make them attractive, make them affordable, keeping in mind energy poverty is still a significant problem for 800 million to a billion people around the world [who have] little or no access to modern energy and to accommodate a world that’s going to use much more energy in future, and rightly so, in developing countries. And in developed countries, of course with the AI surge, we will certainly use more energy for that purpose – to make it clean and firm,” he remarks. “So, I think those are the kinds of outlines of… [a] future that probably calls for fossil fuels to be with us for some time and for more thought in how we think about the emissions from those fuels.”

Vijay also addresses the challenges posed by upstream methane, an issue which has become front and center in recent climate negotiations.

“We now understand, although scientists have known this for a very long time, but much more in the political consciousness, that methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term in the 10-to-20-year timeframe because it does have a shorter life than CO₂,” he says. “And global accords were reached at Dubai, at the COP Summit, and reaffirmed in Baku, to try to dramatically reduce the methane footprint of oil and gas companies during their production process.”

For this and much more, please listen to my complete podcast conversation with Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the 65th episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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What Happened at COP29 in Baku?

Having recently returned from the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Baku, Azerbaijan, I want to offer my personal summary and assessment of the major takeaways from COP29, briefly summarize Harvard’s participation, and offer some thoughts about the path ahead to COP30.

Why Azerbaijan?

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the setting for this COP in the oil-rich, authoritarian state of Azerbaijan was not conducive to a productive let alone an enjoyable Conference of the Parties.  Azerbaijan feels like exactly what it is – a former Soviet republic – the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic – from 1920 until 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved, and now an “independent” country that remains firmly within the Russian sphere of influence.  So, why was it held in Azerbaijan?  The reason is simple:  Vladimir Putin said it could be held there.  Let me explain.

The COPs rotate among five regional groups of United Nations member states to ensure geographical diversity and equity in hosting the conferences. These regions, in alphabetical order, are: (1) Africa; (2) Asia-Pacific; (3) Eastern Europe; (4) Latin America and the Caribbean; and (5) Western Europe and Others.  This was the turn of Eastern Europe.  The specific location of the COP within a given region depends on which country from the region volunteers, as long as no country from the region objects.  Poland volunteered (they have held three remarkably successful COPs in the past), but Russia objected to any (Eastern European) country that supported Ukraine in the current war being the host.  The result was Azerbaijan volunteering to host, and Russia approving.  This was not an auspicious beginning to the process of Baku following Dubai.

Five Major Takeaways from COP29

      I can identify five significant takeaways – important phenomena or negotiating outcomes – from the two-week Conference in Baku:  (1) the counter-productive leadership of COP29 by Azerbaijan’s president; (2) the lame duck status of the U.S. delegation; (3) the outcome of negotiations on “finance;” (4) the evolution of language about the future role of fossil fuels; and (5) the completion of the “carbon-market article” in the Paris Agreement.  I take these in turn.

  • (1)  COP29 Leadership by Azerbaijan

As the President of COP29, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev sought to position his country and his leadership at COP29 as a bridge-builder between the Global North and the Global South.  In practice, it did not turn out that way.  Indeed, I would say that geopolitical tensions at COP29 between rich and poor countries were greater than ever before.

Aliyev started things off with a defiant opening presentation at the beginning of COP29, in which he characterized his country’s oil and gas reserves as “a gift of God,” maintained that it is “not fair” to call his country a petrostate, and then accused Western countries of “double standards” and “political hypocrisy.”  Then, the next day, he attacked France and the Netherlands for their overseas territories, which he described as “colonies” which don’t have seats in the climate negotiations.  In addition, the Azerbaijani government and its state company, SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, the national oil and gas company), finalized several natural gas deals at COP29 to increase natural gas exports to Europe.

This perspective on fossil fuel use from an autocratic ruler made it challenging, to say the least, for Azerbaijan to preside over the talks and find compromise on some very delicate climate topics.  I cannot say exactly how Aliyev’s leadership resulted in the COP29 outcomes, but in the hallways, delegates from a diverse set of countries complained vociferously about the host country’s leadership of the Conference.

  • (2) The Lame Duck Status of the United States

Donald Trump’s election as the next U.S. president pervaded everyone’s thinking, at least during the first week in Baku.  In particular, expectations that Trump will follow through on his promise to pull the USA out of the Paris Climate Agreement, as he did in 2017 during his first term in office, fueled concern that this would have profound, negative impacts on multilateral climate action.  (See my previous blog essay, Looking Back, Looking Forward:  Implications of Trump 2.0.)

The chief U.S. climate envoy, John Podesta, tried in vain to reassure his various audiences – other countries’ negotiators, climate activists, and the press – that the U.S. remains on track at the U.N. climate talks.  I will note that there is merit to his claim that the global energy-transition trend will not be stopped by a change in U.S. administration, because much of it, in my view, is driven by markets and exogenous technological change.  After a few days, the significance of the U.S. election may have faded somewhat in the negotiators’ minds, but it remained the starting point for discussion in every meeting in which I engaged – with a diverse set of people from governments, NGOs, industry, and the press.

The key question, of course, is whether Trump’s election and the anticipated withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement – or more broadly, the election results and the promise of Trump 2.0 – has on other countries’ climate stances, pledges, and policies.  It was clear that the U.S. delegation was more muted than usual, and that there would be no effective pressure from the USA (as there was during the Obama years) for China to become more ambitious in its pledges.

It was striking that during the first week of COP29, right-wing populist leader Javier Milei threatened to withdraw Argentina from the talks altogether, which led some delegates to fear that Trump’s win might precipitate a global chain reaction of far-right governments withdrawing from the Paris Agreement.  But the Argentinian government subsequently clarified that it was not leaving Paris Agreement, and those fears dissipated.

It may be that Trump’s election need not derail global climate action, but it is too soon to make firm predictions.  For one thing, it does appear that Trump’s victory emboldened Saudi Arabia to be much more strident in its defense of fossil fuels at COP29, even more aggressive than it has been in previous COPs.

  • (3) The Center-Stage Outcome:  Finance

COP29 was labeled the “Finance COP,” because it was intended that the focus would be on augmenting developed countries’ commitment made in 2009 (at COP15 in Copenhagen) to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to support developing countries in addressing climate change, both for mitigation and for adaptation (that target appears to have been met about two years late). 

The debates on this continued for the entire two weeks of COP29 (and then some), ranging from heated discussions to acrimonious arguments, with developed countries on one side, and, on the other side, developing countries plus China, which insists it is a “developing country” under UN rules from 1990.  China’s position remains that it supports developing country demands for very high levels of financial transfers, but as a developing country itself, it will not contribute, despite the fact that it has been the world’s largest emitter since 2006, and is now second only to the United States as a contributor to the stock of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs).

The developing countries at COP29 insisted on $1.3 trillion/year as the new level of commitment, but the rich countries offered a new goal to deliver to poor countries $300 billion/year by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead and some developing countries (that is, China) encouraged to contribute on a voluntary basis.  The developing world wanted all of the funds to come from public sources (that is, foreign aid), but the final deal allows some money to come from private sources, such as foreign direct investment, which (in my opinion) makes abundant sense.

Although the new $300 billion/year target is three times the size of the previous target (see above), it is less than 25% of the $1.3 trillion/year sought by developing countries.  So, not surprisingly, developing countries were not happy, with the complaints led vocally by India’s lead negotiator, Chandni Raina, who called it “a paltry sum” and a “travesty of justice.”

  •  (4) The Future of Fossil Fuels

One year earlier, at the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, the closing statement (officially the “Decision of the First Global Stocktake”) endorsed “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner …”.  That statement received more attention than any other outcome of COP28, although I wrote at the time that it was not of great significance (What Really Happened at COP28 in Dubai).  However, many governments, NGOs, and the press hailed that compromise statement as making COP28 a success.

So, when it came to the conclusion of COP29 in Baku, all eyes were turned to the question of whether COP29 would endorse, indeed strengthen that language about transitioning away from fossil fuels.  The result, largely due to Saudi Arabia fighting aggressively and effectively against any negative comments about fossil fuels in the final text, was that the COP29 text simply references the Dubai outcome, but does not repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels, let alone offer something stronger. The European Union (EU) and the U.S. negotiators wanted something to be included about actions to achieve any goal, but that was likewise rejected.

  • (5)  What About Article 6 of the Paris Agreement?

As some of you may know, I’ve worked on and written about Article 6 (more specifically, Article 6.2) of the Paris Agreement, which deals with “international cooperation,” since long before the Paris Agreement and Article 6 were even developed, via my extensive work on international linkage of heterogeneous policy instruments (Jaffe and Stavins 2008; Ranson and Stavins 2013; Ranson and Stavins 2015). And once the Paris Agreement began to take shape, I turned to examining how international policy linkage could be facilitated by its Article 6.2 (Bodansky, Hoedl, Metcalf, and Stavins 2015; Mehling, Metcalf, and Stavins 2019), as well as numerous essays at this blog.

            So, what happened in this regard at COP29?  Remarkably, despite the very contentious debates on finance and the future of fossil fuels, there was finally (eight years after the Paris Agreement came into force) agreement on the adoption of Article 6, which can facilitate international GHG trading.  Unfortunately, as I will write about in some future essay at this blog, the ways in which countries are interpreting Article 6.2 and exploiting it do not bode well for it living up to its great promise.

So, that’s my summary and assessment of five meaningful takeaways – significant phenomena and negotiating outcomes – from the two-week Conference in Baku.  I leave it to readers to decide whether this indicates that COP29 was a success or not.

I now turn to a very brief summary of the work our Harvard delegation was doing at COP-29, and then conclude with some thoughts about the path ahead to COP30.

Harvard Participation

            Once again, I led our Harvard delegation, which was severely limited in size at COP29 due to the low allocation of badges we were awarded by the host country.  Nevertheless, we held a couple of dozen meetings over three days with governments, industry representatives, NGOs, and the press, largely focused on the work of the Harvard Salata Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions, which I’m directing. 

In addition, we hosted two official side events.  The first was on New Horizons in Methane-Emissions Abatement, co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD), on Tuesday, November 12, 2024.

Speakers included:  Zerin Osho, Director, India Program, Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD); Sarah Smith, Program Director – Energy, Global Methane Hub; Ole Sander, Senior Scientist for Climate Change, International Rice Research Institute; and myself, as moderator and presenter.

Our second side event was on Industrial Policy, Trade, and the Political Economy of Decarbonization, co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, the Enel Foundation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Foundation Environment – Law Society, on Thursday, November 14, 2024.

This second panel, which I moderated, featured:  Daniele Agostini, Head of Energy and Climate Policies, Enel Group; Chantal Line Carpentier, Head of the Trade, Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development Branch at UNCTAD; Michael Mehling, Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, MIT; and Joyashree Roy, Distinguished Professor and Director SMARTS Center, Asian Institute of Technology.  A background paper, “Good Spillover, Bad Spillover? Industrial Policy, Trade, and the Political Economy of Decarbonization,” and its 2-page summary can be downloaded here.

The Path Ahead

There is some consistency between COP28 (Dubai), COP29 (Baku), and next year’s COP30 in Brazil, as that country is Latin America’s largest oil producer (Petrobras now surpasses the production of Mexico and Venezuela).  But expectations are very high for COP-30, which will take place November 10-21, 2025, in Belém do Pará in the Amazon region of Brazil, because that is where countries’ updated targets under the Paris Agreement are scheduled to be finalized.  Those revised Nationally Determined Contributions are due to be submitted by February 2025.  Stay tuned.

Whether I will maintain my streak next year in Brazil of annual COP participation is, as always, an open question, particularly after having spent several days this year in Baku, Azerbaijan.

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