Australia backs COP28 renewables push as King urges end to climate ‘experiment’

Dubai: The Albanese government has joined more than 100 countries at the COP28 climate conference to push for an acceleration in the use of renewables.

Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said Australia would back a UAE pledge to triple global renewable energy generation capacity and double global average annual energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

An aerial view of the RayGen Power Plant Carwarp renewable energy project in Mildura. Victoria. The Albanese government has backed a COP28 pledge to push for a worldwide expansion in the use of renewables.Credit: Eddie Jim

Other major energy exporters, including the United States, Canada and Norway, are also backing the pledge.

“We know that renewables are the cleanest and cheapest form of energy – and that energy efficiency can also help drive down bills and emissions,” said Bowen.

He said Australia, which has the highest penetration of rooftop solar in the world and has earmarked reaching 82 per cent renewables by 2030, needed to be at the forefront of a wider international push.

“Australia has the resources and the smarts to help supply the world with clean energy technologies to drive down those emissions while spurring new Australian industry,” Bowen said.

The King warned that efforts to tackle climate change were “dreadfully far off track”. Credit: AP

On day two of the UN climate talks on Friday, King Charles told world leaders that the hope of humanity rested on the decisions they took in Dubai as lives and livelihoods could be laid waste by the worst impacts of climate change.

In a sombre address, the King said the future was being imperilled as the natural world was taken “outside balanced norms and limits” into uncharted territory.

“We are carrying out a vast, frightening experiment of changing every ecological condition, all at once, at a pace that far outstrips nature’s ability to cope,” he said on Friday.

The King’s warning at the annual talks, which are being held in the oil-producing United Arab Emirates, landed amid criticism in the UK of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government for scaling back measures to meet net-zero targets.

Sunak, who was forced to defend his decision to spend only half a day at the talks, conceded the world was not moving fast enough to address the climate crisis, but argued that the UK accounted “for less than one per cent of global emissions”.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Brazil’s President Inacio Lula de Silva were among the heads of state to descend on Dubai on Friday for leaders’ day at COP28.

Addressing the delegation at Dubai’s Expo 2020 site, Modi took aim at wealthy nations for fuelling the climate crisis in poorer countries where the impacts were more acute.

“Over the past century, a small section of humanity has indiscriminately exploited nature. However, entire humanity is paying the price for this, especially people living in the global south,” he said.

“We must resolve that every country shall fulfil the climate targets it is setting for itself and the commitments it is making.”

The event, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is not attending, is being billed as the most consequential climate summit since the 2015 COP21 meeting in France that resulted in the Paris Agreement, where nations committed to limit warming to 2 degrees or as close as possible to 1.5 degrees.

In January, the World Meteorological Organisation declared the previous eight years to have been the hottest on record, around 1.15 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial period.

The Dubai summit launched on a high note on Thursday, with a surprise announcement that an agreement had been forged to create a new fund to help poor nations cope with costly climate disasters, with financial pledges from the UAE, European Union, Germany and Japan.

On Friday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned the gathering of more than 170 leaders that the world was far from the goals set in 2015, and “minutes to midnight for the 1.5-degree limit”.

Guterres used his opening address to counter calls to embrace the ongoing use of fossil fuels, with a pointed message to industry leaders that their time was over.

“Your old road is rapidly ageing. Do not double-down on an obsolete business model,” he said, urging governments to push industry by regulating, putting a price on carbon, and ending fossil fuel subsidies.

“The road to climate sustainability is also the only viable pathway to [the] economic sustainability of your companies.”

The future role played by fossil fuels is a key point of contention at the talks, which are being led by the UAE’s Dr Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the chief executive of the country’s state-owned oil company.

Jaber has proposed embracing the continued use of fossil fuels under a strategy he bills as “just transition,” while facing criticism for giving industry an outsized influence over the summit.

A first draft for a potential template of a final agreement out of COP28 was published by the UN on Friday, including options for commitments to phase out or phase down the use of fossil fuels.

On Friday, UAE President Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan also announced a $US30 billion ($44.9 billion) climate fund that aims to attract $US250 billion of investment by the end of the decade.

Rishi Sunak, who did not meet the host nation on the summit sidelines, pledged £1.6 billion ($3.05 billion) in climate finance, and announced a new £11 billion investment in a major UK offshore wind farm.

US Vice President Kamala Harris landed in Dubai for the talks on Saturday, when she was expected to announce a pledge of US$3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, Reuters reported, quoting sources familiar with the matter.

The fund was created in 2010 and is the largest international fund dedicated to climate action. It has more than $20 billion in pledges.

Australian Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will attend the Dubai summit from next week.

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