New COP28 draft deal stops short of fossil fuel 'phase out'
By Kate Abnett, Gloria Dickie and David Stanway
DUBAI (Reuters) -A draft of a potential climate deal at the COP28 summit on Monday offered various options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but stopped short of the full «phase out» of fossil fuels many nations have demanded.
U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said a central benchmark of success for COP28 would be whether it yields a deal to reduce coal, oil and gas use fast enough to avert disastrous climate change.
«That doesn't mean that all countries must phase out fossil fuels at the same time,» he told reporters at the Dubai summit, which is scheduled to end on Tuesday but could go on longer if negotiations drag on.
A new draft of a COP28 agreement, published by the United Arab Emirates' presidency of the summit, proposed various options but did not refer to a «phase out» of all fossil fuels, which had been included in a previous draft.
The draft deal listed eight options that countries «could» use to cut emissions, including by: «reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050».
Other actions listed included tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, «rapidly phasing down unabated coal» and scaling up technologies including those to capture CO2 emissions out of the atmosphere.
A coalition of more than 100 countries including oil and gas producers the United States, Canada and Norway, as well as the European Union and climate-vulnerable island nations, wanted an agreement that included language to phase out fossil fuels, a feat not achieved in 30 years of the U.N. summits.
The emissions from burning fossil fuels are by far the main driver of climate change.
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