Tag: COP30

More Insights on COP30 and Prospects for Climate Coalitions

In my previous blog essay (November 28, 2025), I offered my thought on Key Takeaways from COP30 in Belém, and today I’m pleased to provide insights from energy economist Catherine Wolfram, who shared her thoughts on the 30th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP30) and on the prospects for climate coalitions to significantly reduce CO₂ emissions, in the latest episode of my podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” Listen to our conversation here.

Wolfram, the William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, spent several days at COP30 in Belém, Brazil last month, and concluded that although the negotiators did not close the conference with a strong statement about phasing down fossil fuel use, there were some quite positive aspects of COP30, including the fact that no other countries joined the U.S. in withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.

“I think in some ways Brazil pulled a victory from the jaws of defeat in that way,” she says. “Not having the U.S. there really hurt things [because] the U.S. is usually a force against the Saudi Arabias and the Russias and can help get stronger statements on phasing out fossil fuels or climate ambition, whatever it is into the text. And so that was one of the results of not having the U.S. there. But as I say, not by any means the worst result that we could have seen.”

Catherine, who co-leads the Global Climate Policy Project at Harvard and MIT (GCPP), observes that Brazil’s Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets, launched in Belém during the COP, aligns very well with the research being conducted by GCPP.

“While the COPs and the Paris Climate Agreement are important, we need more. We need to be thinking about additional ways to push forward at a global scale on climate. And so, [researchers at GCPP] have several projects thinking about geoengineering, thinking about climate finance, thinking about industrial policy, but the project where we’ve had the most impact and made the most progress so far is the project on climate and trade. So yes, as you say, we were absolutely thrilled to see Brazil’s declaration on the Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets.”

Wolfram and her team at GCPP recently released a detailed report intended to help policymakers envision what a climate coalition could look like.

“One of our scenarios was the conventional scenario [in which] every country to join the coalition would have to have a minimum carbon price, and there would be one minimum. But then another scenario that we outlined…allowed for graduated admission criteria. So, the low- and middle-income countries could get into the coalition at say one third the carbon price that a high-income country would need to get into the coalition and middle-income countries could join for two thirds,” she explains. “I do think that it helps recognize fairness issues and fairness challenges so that you’re letting low- and middle-income countries essentially use more of the remaining carbon budget if they have a lower carbon price to get in. And I think it helps make this a little bit more realistic than some of the stricter interpretations of the climate club where everyone has to have the same price.”

In order to entice low- and middle-income countries to join a climate coalition and set prices on carbon, Catherine says that there need to be additional levers in place to support them.

“We thought about a kind of targeted climate finance. We thought about having free trade and the inputs to decarbonization… I think the other thing that we did to try to make this actionable and have some chance of getting off the ground in the near term was to focus on a couple industries,” she says. “There’s the European Union Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) that’s starting in several weeks, and that is initially targeting the aluminum, steel, fertilizer, and cement industries. And so, in our report, we imagined that coalition membership initially just requires carbon prices for those industries.”

The CBAM model can be a very effective tool for inciting climate action on a national or regional level, Wolfram argues.

“Turkey is a prime example. Turkey has explicitly said that because of the CBAM, they themselves are pursuing an emissions trading system. And they’re even thinking about enacting a CBAM. Once you’re charging carbon prices to your domestic industry, it makes sense to think about leveling the playing field for them and making sure that imports face that carbon price as well,” she says. “There are other examples of countries that have either introduced carbon prices or expanded their carbon pricing systems. For instance, China, a huge, huge emitter, especially in the CBAM sectors, expanded their carbon pricing system from covering just the electricity sector to covering also steel, aluminum, and cement… And Brazil, India, lots and lots of countries are planning to implement carbon prices.”

For this and much, much more, I encourage you to listen to this 72nd episode 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:

  • Gina McCarthy, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
  • Nick Stern of the London School of Economics discussing his career, British politics, and efforts to combat climate change
  • Andrei Marcu, founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition
  • Paul Watkinson, Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
  • Jos Delbeke, professor at the European University Institute in Florence and at the KU Leuven in Belgium, and formerly Director-General of the European Commission’s DG Climate Action
  • David Keith, professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
  • Joe Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
  • Scott Barrett,  professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
  • Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
  • Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
  • Richard Schmalensee, the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Kelley Kizier, Associate Vice President for International Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
  • David Hone, Chief Climate Change Adviser, Shell International.
  • Vicky Bailey, 30 years of experience in corporate and government positions in the energy sector. 
  • David Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
  • Lisa Friedman, reporter on the climate desk at the The New York Times.
  • Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for The New York Times from Washington.
  • Spencer Dale, BP Group Chief Economist.
  • Richard Revesz, professor at the NYU School of Law.
  • Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environment and Law at Yale University. 
  • William Hogan, Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard.
  • Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
  • John Graham, Dean Emeritus, Paul O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
  • Gernot Wagner, Clinical Associate Professor at New York University.
  • John Holdren, Research Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Larry Goulder, Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Stanford University.
  • Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund.
  • Sheila Olmstead, Professor of Public Affairs, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin.
  • Robert Pindyck, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management.
  • Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University.
  • Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
  • Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT.
  • Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
  • Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
  • Jonathan Wiener, the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
  • Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
  • Daniel Yergin, founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
  • Jeffrey Holmstead, who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
  • Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
  • Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.
  • Billy Pizer, Vice President for Research & Policy Engagement, Resources for the Future. 
  • Daniel Bodansky, Regents’ Professor, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.
  • Catherine Wolfram, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, currently on leave at the Harvard Kennedy School.
  • James Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.
  • Mary Nichols, long-time leader in California, U.S., and international climate change policy.
  • Geoffrey Heal, Donald Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School.
  • Kathleen Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut.
  • Meredith Fowlie, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, U.C. Berkeley. 
  • Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
  • Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
  • Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
  • Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University.
  • Nathaniel Keohane, President, C2ES.
  • Amy Harder, Executive Editor, Cypher News.
  • Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Kimberly (Kim) Clausing, School of Law, University of California at Los Angeles
  • Hunt Allcott, Professor of Global Environmental Policy, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
  • Meghan O’Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Robert Lawrence, Albert Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Charles Taylor, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Wolfram Schlenker, Ray Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Karen Fisher-Vanden, Professor of Environmental & Resource Economics, Pennsylvania State University
  • Max Bearak, climate and energy reporter, New York Times
  • Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy and climate innovation editor, The Economist
  • Joseph Aldy, Teresa & John Heinz Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Elaine Buckberg, Senior Fellow, Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University
  • Anna Russo, Junior Fellow, Harvard University
  • John Podesta, Advisor to Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden

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

Share

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 was 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.

Share

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.

Share