For the first time since nations began meeting three decades ago to tackle climate change, diplomats from nearly 200 countries approved a global pact that explicitly calls for “transitioning away from fossil fuels” like oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet.
The sweeping agreement, which comes during the hottest year in recorded history, was reached on Wednesday after two weeks of furious debate at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. European leaders and many of the nations most vulnerable to climate-fueled extreme weather were urging language that called for a complete “phaseout” of fossil fuels. But that proposal faced intense pushback from major oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Iraq as well as fast-growing countries like India and Nigeria.
In the end, negotiators struck a compromise: The new deal calls on countries to accelerate a global shift away from fossil fuels this decade in a “just, orderly and equitable manner,” and to quit adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by midcentury. It also calls on nations to triple the amount of renewable energy, like wind and solar power, installed around the world by 2030 and to slash emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
While past U.N. climate deals have urged countries to reduce emissions, they have shied away from explicitly mentioning the words “fossil fuels,” even though the burning of oil, gas and coal are the primary cause of global warming.
The new deal is not legally binding and can’t, on its own, force any country to take action. Yet many of the politicians, environmentalists and business leaders here hoped it would send a message to investors and policymakers that it is the beginning of the end of fossil fuels. Over the next two years, each nation is supposed to submit a detailed, formal plan for how it intends to curb greenhouse gas emissions through 2035. Wednesday’s agreement is meant to guide those plans.
“This sends a clear signal that the world is moving decisively to phaseout fossil fuels, turbocharge renewable energy and efficiency, and tackle forest loss and degradation,” said Jake Schmidt, the senior strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “It puts the fossil fuel industry formally on notice that its old business model is expiring.”
The deal represents a diplomatic victory for the United Arab Emirates, the oil-rich nation that hosted these talks at a sprawling expo center in Dubai under hazy skies just 11 miles away from the largest natural gas power plant in the world. Sultan Al Jaber, the Emirati official and oil executive presiding over the talks, has called a phaseout of fossil fuels “inevitable” and has staked his reputation on being able to persuade other oil nations to sign on to a major new climate change agreement.
“Through the night and the early hours of the morning we worked collectively for consensus,” said Mr. Al Jaber on Wednesday morning before a room full of applauding negotiators. “I promised I would roll up my sleeves. We have the basis to make transformational change happen.”
It remains to be seen if countries follow through on the agreement. Scientists say that nations will need to slash their greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 43 percent this decade if they hope to limit total global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to previous levels. Beyond that level, scientists say, humans will struggle to adapt to rising sea levels, wildfires, extreme storms and drought.
Past climate agreements have often failed to encourage meaningful action. In 2021, nations struck a deal in Glasgow to “phase down” coal-fired power plants. But Britain approved a new coal mine just one year later and global coal use has since soared to record highs.
As bleary-eyed diplomats in Dubai argued in all-night sessions over the precise language they should use to recommend new actions on climate change, they were forced to wrestle with the challenges of a global transition away from fossil fuels in greater detail than ever before.
Saudi Arabia and oil and gas companies said that the talks should focus on emissions, instead of fossil fuels themselves, arguing that technologies such as carbon capture and storage could trap and bury greenhouse gases from oil and gas and allow their continued use. To date, nations have struggled to deploy that technology on a broad scale.
But other world leaders countered that the best way to cut emissions was to switch to cleaner forms of energy like solar, wind, or nuclear, reserving carbon capture for rare situations where alternatives are unavailable. The final text calls on nations to accelerate carbon capture “particularly in hard-to-abate sectors.” Some negotiators expressed concern that fossil-fuel companies could seize on that language to continue emitting at high rates while promising to capture the emissions later.
Many African countries strongly opposed a blanket call to phaseout fossil fuels, arguing that Africa is responsible for only a tiny fraction of emissions and should be allowed to exploit its own considerable oil and gas reserves in order to grow their economies before switching to cleaner forms of energy.
“Asking Nigeria, or indeed asking Africa, to phase out fossil fuels is like asking us to stop breathing without life support,” said Ishaq Salako, the Nigerian environmental minister. “It is not acceptable and it is not possible.”
Some climate activists criticized wealthier emitters like the United States, Europe and Japan for not providing enough financial support to low-income countries to help them transition away from fossil fuels. In places like Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, many nations are facing soaring interest rates that have made it difficult to finance new renewable energy projects.
The new agreement nods to the role of finance, but countries agreed to tackle the issue in more detail at the next round of climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, next year.
“The text calls for a transition away from fossil fuels in this critical decade, but the transition is not funded or fair,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, an environmental group. “We’re still missing enough finance to help developing countries decarbonize and there needs to be greater expectation on rich fossil fuel producers to phase out first.”
Max Bearak, Lisa Friedman, Somini Sengupta and Jenny Gross contributed reporting from Dubai.
