Countries including Germany, the UK, Denmark and Kenya have rallied behind a push to put plans on how and when to quit fossil fuels high up on the UN climate summit agenda.
Even as petrostates bet energy demand will be met by oil and gas in the meantime, a coalition at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, backed the call for a “road map” for nations to make plans to wean their economies off fossil fuels.
In the corridors of the COP30 summit, work was being done to get the backing of more countries for a road map proposal, several people said. “A rally is under way,” said one.
The aim was to take to the next stage an agreement already signed at COP28 in Dubai, where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuel energy systems by 2050.
In a political balancing act, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has promoted the idea of a road map in multiple speeches — only weeks after Brazil itself gave approval for drilling for new oil and gas near the mouth of the Amazon.
Past efforts to discuss how to move away from fossil fuels have floundered, with oil- and gas-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia blocking talks in past global forums, including at COP29 in Baku last year.
While the Belém talks remained open, the initiative would probably be voluntary, the people said.
Denmark’s climate ambassador Ole Thonke this week suggested that a road map for shifting away from fossil fuels could be inspired by analysis prepared this year on the options for scaling up climate finance.
“We need to find some sort of road map or way of implementing the just transition away from fossil fuels for all countries,” he said. “Because it will happen one way or the other.”
Ali Mohamed, Kenya’s climate envoy, said countries needed help to understand what the shift away from fossil fuels would mean for their economies and how they could be supported in their efforts.
Jochen Flasbarth, Germany’s state secretary for the environment, said he “was happy” that President Lula had pushed for a road map.
“The record expansion of renewables proves, not least, their competitiveness and public acceptance,” he said, adding that Germany and others would launch an initiative at COP30 aimed at global expansion of power grids, which have struggled to cope with rising renewable energy.
Energy think-tank Ember forecast in a new report this week that electricity supplied by fossil fuels would not grow at all this year, and all new demand would be met by renewable sources.
Its projections showed that output from fossil fuel-fired power stations will not have grown for the first time since the pandemic.
This follows its analysis earlier this year showing that renewables produced more electricity than coal-fired power stations during the first half of this year, for the first time.
The falling cost of solar panels as a result of Chinese mass production has helped countries around the world rapidly install the technology.
“Record solar power growth and stagnating fossil fuels in 2025 show how clean power has become the driving force in the power sector,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember.
This came on the heels of a more pessimistic report by the International Energy Agency this week which indicated oil and gas could continue to grow until 2050 as some governments backtracked on climate action.
The latest Global Carbon Budget report compiled by an international collaboration of scientists also showed an expected 1.1 per cent rise in emissions from fossil fuels and cement to a record 38.1bn tonnes in 2025.
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