Nearly 200 countries at the United Nations COP28 climate talks in Dubai reached an agreement on Wednesday to begin transitioning away from fossil fuels, an unprecedented deal meant to facilitate the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
“We have language on fossil fuels in our final agreement for the first time ever,” COP28 President Sultan al Jaber told delegates early Wednesday in a crowded auditorium following the second night of extensive negotiations.
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“We have set the world in the right direction,” al Jaber said.
The new agreement asks countries to set “ambitious, economywide” emissions reduction goals by 2025 for all greenhouse gases that align with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to pre-industrial levels and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
The text states that countries must reduce the use of fossil fuels “in a just, orderly and equitable manner” while taking into account the “different national circumstances” of smaller or underdeveloped nations.
The text comes after days of intense and protracted negotiations over the draft COP28 agreement, which had pitted the United States, European Union, and other Western allies against OPEC+ producers led by Saudi Arabia, which insisted the language be softened.
U.S. and EU leaders said the deal still falls short of some of their more ambitious goals, including calling for the direct phaseout of fossil fuels.
Though the text asks countries to set “ambitious, economywide” emissions reduction goals within the next two years for all greenhouse gases in order to comply with the global 1.5 degrees Celsius warming target, it also includes text further in the document that acknowledges the use of fossil fuels to “play a role in help facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security.”
The text also endorses tripling renewable energy growth by 2030 and ramping up carbon capture technologies.
Many parties “would have liked clearer language” on fossil fuels,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said after negotiations wrapped.
Still, he said, “This document sends very strong messages to the world.”
Some negotiators had feared they would be forced to leave COP28 without an agreement in hand.
Still, some criticized the final deal as unambitious and vague, including, most prominently, the delegates from small and undeveloped nations considered most vulnerable to climate change.
Anne Rasmussen, the Samoa delegate representing the Alliance of Small Island States, lamented the text as incremental and vague. She and other small island developing state representatives were not even present at the moment the text was adopted — they had been meeting separately to discuss their position on the text.
“We have come to the conclusion that the course correction that is needed has not been secured,” she said.
Madeleine Diouf Sarr, Senegal’s climate minister and chairwoman of the group of Least Developed Countries, said the text “reflects the very lowest possible ambition that we could accept rather than what we know … is necessary to urgently address the climate crisis.”
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Others, though, celebrated.
“Humanity has finally done what is long, long, long overdue,” European Commissioner for Climate Action Wopke Hoekstra said at the end of the summit.
