This has been a hard year for me in my Energy engagements. What really triggered me to go even deeper into my energy shell was this year was the outcomes of the CoP28 followed by CoP29. I wrote a piece “dealing with the raw emotions of the CoP28 event“- it really did “push my buttons”. So much advice and pursuit of making the Energy transition changes seem to be tackled (and defended) from such narrow country or specific energy perspectives you can be in real danger of losing your engagement.

Here we are already one year further and having some really disappointing outcomes from CoP29. One quote I picked up upon “There is no deal to come out of Baku that will not leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth,” said Avinash Persaud, special advisor on climate at the Inter-American Development Bank.

This CoP29 continued to highlight the recurring impasses that had Saudi Arabia, India, Russia and China all pursing different blocking tactics and China still claiming it is a developing nation. How can some 20,000 delegates from nearly 200 countries gathered find unanimity? At this CoP29 the emerging anger at addressing real climate problems does not auger well for future CoPs. Something has to radically change, although there were some limited progress made in finance help for the flow of capital from developed countries to low- and middle-income countries to support emissions reductions and climate change adaptation.

We need real global commitment to really accelerating renewable energy, doubling down on energy efficiency and a clear commitment to transition away from fossil fuels. Yet we know how a new Trump presidency looking to ensure national security and leverage all its fossil fuel assets, arguable to the maximum.

Energy and Climate are in growing disunity

The world still faces disunity in climate policies, thoughtful transition approaches in its energy approaches. We are heading for polarization that does give low confidence for the future. Some argue that during the two weeks of fractious and at times openly hostile United Nations climate talks at CoP29 in Azerbaijan, we are learning more about where countries have drawn their red lines on climate cooperation and how can you achieve universal consensus?

Really is 1.5 degrees Celsius realistic?

The battle to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius has become a “fig leaf” that still keeps a rallying cry for climate action for nearly a decade but we have blown past that. Does a 1.5 make any sense now? Recently a report claiming the planet is almost certain to blow past the target why are we still clinging to a goal that no longer makes sense?  At COP28 last year, Bill Gates said realistically even 2C isn’t that likely anymore, and the world should just be sure to stay below 3C. Sadly for the world’s most at-risk nations, abandoning the 1.5C goal is not an option and why CoP29 was such a disappointment in finding the funding to attempt to hold the line or perish. After decades of pollution responsible for more extreme weather that now threatens their very existence. Can we afford to keep The 1.5C goal as a diplomatic and largely symbolic one. We need to get realistic but will we soon?

As nations around the world slow their transitions to emission-free energy and constrain their ambition in setting new carbon-reducing targets, which are due in February 2025 as redefined goals and realities on these recent CoP meetings where will this leave us? All three pillars of the energy transition – affordability, security and sustainability – are very precarious as governments the world over struggle to keep them in balance with domestic demands and finding all the funding demands to make a slew of transitions we need.

Climate breakdown is real

The rise in the estimated consistent hits to the world’s economies as a result of the shocks from flooding, droughts, temperature rises, and mitigating and adapting to extreme weather adds the huge increase in the risk from physical shocks to the economy. Will these new “constants” be the recognition point for a new global consensus?

We have yet to recognize the costs ahead of us when we start accounting for all the visible and invisible impacts we will have of climate tipping points, sea temperature rises, migration and conflict as a result of global heating, human health impacts or biodiversity loss.

What will happen with these Climate tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, and the deforestation of the Amazon, both are critical thresholds that, if crossed, will lead to huge, accelerating and sometimes irreversible changes in the climate system. How will we account for that when it becomes irreversible? some predictions are a massive one-third hit from physical damage on GDP to 33% of any global growth. Add in a shift to trade wars, tariffs, more wars etc, we seem to be in for some really tough times ahead, especially from extreme heat (acceleration)

Are we going to shift funding to preventable climate-related catastrophe management?

We need to turn more to energy and climate policymakers. We need more consistency of purpose. There as as many or more forces of change today than ever. How can we balance security and affordability? How can we build for sustainability and drive for efficiency when so much of our economics are based on fossil fuels? We have such an inherently complex set of challenges, one “wrong” move has impact or so many unintended consequences. We have unrealistic targets today and those are driving policies being made that have far-reaching impact which can span environment, social, economic and political spheres.

The struggles are real, the lobbyists for one group try to influence decisions and this is one of the biggest “blights” on CoP meetings today. A staggering 480 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been granted access to the UN climate summit, over 1,700 coal, oil and gas lobbyists granted access to Cop29. Yet is was estimated the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations have only a combined 1,033 delegates at the negotiations. Something needs to change here? The lobbyists look to achieve “incremental change” at the best. Why is this allowed?

The other “beef” I have is “Net Zero”

Net Zero is banded about as the our saviour. This is where it gets really hard (for me) So what is Net Zero? We should consider Net Zero as ‘net zero impact’ on our whole ecosystem (not just emissions, but all forms of pollution, waste and related harms on climate, nature and the biosphere as a whole)

In our current political environment, Net Zero is reached when any greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are reduced to zero in total (against 1990 levels). This anchors the phrase Net Zero to ‘climate‘, for now.

Tomorrow, today, yesterday — ‘net’ means balancing the future and the past

In considering Net Zero impact we should be ensuring that not only our current impacts are non-negative, but also address the historical impact of our actions. Our material sustainability is contingent on ensuring that the net sum of the harms and benefits we create don’t cause compound negatives: we need to ‘spend’ less than we make so that we don’t bankrupt the ecosystem which we rely upon to prosper.

Just think about this. It bends my mind.

Hundreds of companies have pledged to reach “net zero” by the middle of the century, meaning that they’ll try to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to zero, and any remaining will be offset by planting trees, sucking carbon from the atmosphere, or other ways to capture CO2. So we get into the merky waters of carbon capture, storage, credits or offsets. If ever this stops me believing in an energy transition, it is this “Net Zero” that gets as close as you can get. For me it is only  real and meaningful reductions in emissions seen, verified and accounted for not all this experimental “hog wash” of carbon capture and storage. (CCS or CCUS).

Is there a light at the end of the tunnel or (multiple) trains rushing towards us?

Of course there are more that make me despair but what will change this and when. Is it going to be the sum of so many catastrophes, the vanishing of whole nations as they see their islands slip under rapidly rising water, the dramatic change in seasons, that are so unpredictable our crops and harvests fail or the areas we grow them become unsustainable and this forces dramatic agricultural upheavals. Is it going to be this “unstoppable” move to renewables some claim is occurring? Is it going to be a clear distinction of policy separated from narrow commercial interest. Is it going to be social unrest. Investor uncertainty, growing bankruptcies and market volatility.

The complex interplay

We do have to recognize it is such a complex interplay between regulations, market dynamics, technology development and geopolitics but we do need a consistent purpose, pace and direction and that still is not to be seen. We need greater integration, alignment and collaborations but we seem to be going in the wrong direction on that, at present.

The thinking about adaptive frameworks, integrated approaches where we attempt to cover entire value chains to understand, (scope1,2,&3 being transparent) and we need to recognize rapid progress over the next 10 to 15- years is essential.

How do we achieve the most radical transition this world needs to sustain humans but to bring a balance back into our planet?

Should the United Nations undergo the most radical transformation or will that be blocked by radicals on the right and left? We do need international alignment and co-operations and major agreements on methane, plastics, carbon emissions, finance to bring us to advancing common goals

Have we the time, the will and the ability to achieve this Energy and Climate Transition? It has been a hard year indeed for me. Does my writing about it help? I doubt it as there are so many excellent reports written be experts that seem to just come and go.

After-thought: After I posted this I was reflecting on where progress really needs progressing. Bloomberg offered a Climate Policy Factbook : CoP29 edition to give three major policy areas that need significant progress to be made in the coming year, before and during CoP30 in Brazil. The first is addressing fossil-fuel support, it is rising not falling and this is suffering from a global consensus for making headway on subsidy reforms. The second area lies in carbon pricing policies where generous concessions and even free emission allowances and how they support green incentives. The third area relates to climate-risk, where a number of countries lack rules requiring firms and financial institutions to assess, report and mitigate their exposure to climate-related risks. The need for harmonization, stringency and resolving a fragmented approach to these three policy areas would significantly help move us along

Yet as Bloomberg point out climate plans are due to be bolder and proposed for CoP30 in Brazil. How more ambitious plans can be proposed when budgetary constraints, cost-of-living crisis, still strong wishes for energy independence (national security) and the approaches to using and extracting the domestic natural resources is mixed into a potentially volatile political period after recent election outcomes (Argentina, USA, UK) or pending ones (Germany, France for example).

Any radically new answers I want to hear

I wish I had answers as the human species is threatened but perhaps it is the evolutionary process kicking in as we seemingly don’t want to agree we are being threatened.

It is all rather depressing to be honest.