Before kids born today go to primary school, the world must adopt goals that will redefine the global energy system, say leaders from the EU, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, William Ruto, and Mia Mottley, prime minister of Barbados, called for establishing “a common horizon” in an article posted on POLITICO. This view calls for setting global goals for doubling yearly savings in energy and triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.
The article stated, “COP28 will present the world with a crucial opportunity to course-correct on climate change”, underlying that “The world is not on track to meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal of the Paris Agreement; the global clean energy transition is dangerously off-course”.
After releasing a dismal UN report on the status of international efforts to combat climate change, they made their statement. The document’s other signatories included Sultan Al-Jaber, the representative of the United Arab Emirates overseeing the COP28 UN climate talks, which get underway in November.
Global Stocktake Technical Synthesis Report issued by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is the first comprehensive assessment since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.
That agreement obliged signatories to keep the rise in global temperatures “well within 2 degrees Celsius” and to attempt to limit the increase to 1.5C. The report took two years to prepare and is a routine task that will be revamped every five years.
The leaders claimed they would exert collective pressure on other leaders despite having previously made the same demands separately. At the G20 summit in India, von der Leyen will urge the leaders of the world’s top economies to join their alliance, kicking off that effort.
The dominance of fossil fuels in the world’s energy mix would be weakened by the expansion of clean electricity and the overall decline in consumption.
For conventional energy exporters, many of whom will be represented at the G20, it poses a significant problem. The UAE and other oil-rich Middle Eastern countries are included in this.
The world was on track to rise by more than 2 degrees above the average global temperature at the beginning of the industrial period, according to the UN.
Both the International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency have stated that it will be impossible to keep the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees, which is the point beyond which the severity of climate emergencies will dramatically and permanently worsen. The article’s authors also included the chiefs of both organizations.
However, 2023 is predicted to be a record year for both energy efficiency and renewable energy globally because the costs of many clean technologies are now more affordable than their less-clean counterparts.
While not the only solutions to combating climate change, renewable energy and energy efficiency “hold the key to getting the world back on track,” the leaders stated.
