How the world agreed to move away from fossil fuels at COP28

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By Maha El Dahan, David Stanway and Valerie Volcovici

DUBAI (Reuters) — The COP28 climate summit in Dubai started with all the ingredients for spectacular failure: It proposed an end to the fossil-fuel era at a conference situated in Arab oil country amid overt opposition from the powerful oil-producer group OPEC.

Landing a pact that all 196 countries could live with took deft maneuvering by the conference host, the United Arab Emirates, along with back-channel diplomacy from the United States' and China's top climate envoys, sources told Reuters.

The COP28’s UAE presidency employed a strategy during the two-week summit of issuing deliberately provocative drafts for a deal designed to force negotiators to reveal the outer limits of their positions and find common ground, according to the sources.

The top envoys from the world's biggest climate polluters, the United States and China — relying on a personal relationship two decades in the making — together found the right words to describe the world's move away from oil, gas and coal and persuaded OPEC leaders to come along.

The details of the UAE's strategy and the role of the U.S. and China in securing the deal have not previously been reported.

At the end of the conference, which spilled into overtime and was marked by moments of near-crisis, negotiators emerged with an accord that called for «transitioning» away from fossil fuels, marking the first time in history countries expressed a unified desire to end the oil age.

In a concession to oil producers, including OPEC members and their allies, the deal also provided an option for cleansing existing oil, gas and coal of their climate impact using technologies like carbon capture and sequestration, in which the