Cop29 is a cynical scam: technology and markets are already saving the planet

Don’t succumb to doomerism, superpower rivalry is set to drive down emissions

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If you wish to see the climate glass as dangerously empty, read this year’s Global Carbon Budget report by 119 global scientists. It sums up the state of the planet in 2024 and will confirm your worst fears.
The stated facts are: CO2 emissions will rise by 0.8pc to 37.4bn tonnes this year. We are still burning more fossil fuels. Coal emissions are up 0.2pc, oil 0.9pc and gas 2.4pc.
Atmospheric CO2 levels will rise by 2.8 parts per million to a new record of 422.5, up 52pc since 1850. There is no conceivable chance that we will halve emissions by 2030. Global warming will exceed 1.5C consistently by the early 2030s.
“The remaining carbon budget has almost run out,” says the report.
The world is still losing forests, mostly in Brazil, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, though the pace has been decreasing. Net emissions from “land-use change” added 4.2bn tonnes, made worse by wildfires in Canada’s boreal forests.
A parallel report by the World Meteorological Organisation says 2023 and 2024 will be the two warmest years on record. Mean surface temperature from January to September this year was 1.54°C above the pre-industrial average, boosted by the temporary effects of El Niño.
Switzerland has lost 10pc of its glaciers over a two-year span. Last year saw the largest loss of global glacier volume ever. Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent. The rise in sea levels has quickened from 2.13 mm a year in the 1990s to 4.77 mm over the last decade.
Both reports were released at the anti-Western COP29 summit this week in Baku. The Global Carbon Budget study is led by Exeter University’s Global Systems Institute and involves 80 bodies around the world.
One can succumb to doomerism but the glass looks half full if you move from a still shot of where we are to a “second derivative” analysis of where we are going. It is the change in the rate of change that foretells a radically better outcome.
The International Energy Agency says $2 trillion (£1.6 trillion) of annual energy investment is already going into renewables, and just $1 trillion into fossils. Over 90pc of new electricity is already green.
Global emissions rose by 2pc a year over the 2000s and 2010s. They have risen at a 0.5pc rate since 2019. They will soon turn negative as catch-up economies follow the falls seen across the OECD over the last 20 years.
Two giant developments have suddenly changed the equation: China’s emissions (32.2pc of the total) are already peaking, six years ahead of schedule; clean power is now cheaper than fossil power on a pure market basis almost everywhere.
This marks a boon for the trade balance and energy security of the fossil-importing countries which make up 80pc of the global population. The cost of solar panels has fallen 95pc since 2008 in a perfect demonstration of Wright’s Law.
China will reach 1,200 gigawatts (GW) of wind and solar this December. It will triple capacity again by 2030 if it continues at the same breakneck pace, more than enough to power its entire economy. Every 6GW of renewables comes with 1GW of coal plants as black-out insurance, but these plants will lie idle much of the time.
Uruguay has achieved 98pc clean power from wind and hydro. Chile has reached 61pc renewable power. Kenya is at 91pc and aiming for 100pc by 2030. “If you have the right regulatory framework, the money will pour in,” said Kingsmill Bond, energy strategist at RMI.
China’s economic system is going comprehensively electric. Sales of new economic vehicles (electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids) continue to hit new records each month. Battery costs halved last year. Within another two years mileage will surpass “bladder range”, and that is before solid-state batteries run away with the prize.
Chinese carmakers have cracked cheap and reliable electric vehicles (EVs) for the mass market. They are moving up the tonnage ladder: almost 10pc of new long-haul lorries are already electric. Anybody who spends time in South East Asia can see that the region is becoming a colony for Chinese EV car plants and sales.
China is not acting out of climate altruism. The Communist Party is electrifying for three reasons: it wants home-grown power beyond an American naval blockade; it has acquired clean-tech supremacy and wishes to exploit the advantage; it wants to dethrone the West’s auto industry.
Donald Trump may wish to crank up US exports of oil and liquefied natural gas but he will not find a global market to absorb either. The IEA says LNG will face a world glut by the 2020s and oil demand will fall 7pc by 2030 under its “announced pledges scenario”, before going into precipitous decline.
America was forced to respond to the China threat with $1.2 trillion of manufacturing rearmament because otherwise it faced industrial defeat. Trump will axe the silliest bits of the Inflation Reduction Act but the imperative remains and 60pc of the projects have gone to Republican districts. My guess is that America will decarbonise on an identical trajectory under a Trump 2.0 presidency.
Technology, markets and superpower rivalry are together bending down the curve of CO2 emissions, too slowly for a 1.5C world but perhaps enough for 2C.
What we do not need is the shake-down racket currently on display amid the drilling rigs of Baku, under a petro-strongman who welcomes his French guests with a gratuitous and public broadside over “colonial crimes” in the Pacific.
Progress does not depend on anything done, and even less said, at this degraded venue, an outdated showdown between the West and a victim category of “developing countries” that contains some of the richest and most brazen polluters, or others that persecute climate activists.
The “G77 plus China” group – actually 132 countries – wants $1.3 trillion in annual financing and grants as climate debt reparations. The Climate Action Network wants $5 trillion. No matter that an audit by Carbon Brief found that $6.5bn of past climate funding was actually used for coal, oil and gas development.
The G77 includes Saudi Arabia with per capita emissions of 19.9 tonnes per year, and the Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait with figures that are probably comparable. It includes Iran (9.2 tonnes), and China (8.3 tones). This compares with the EU (5.6 tonnes) and Britain (4.5 tonnes), according to the Global Carbon report.
The original COP process was necessary to kick start the clean-tech revolution. The Paris Agreement in 2015 told investors that a regulatory sledgehammer was coming down on carbon and that the energy fortunes of the future lay with renewables. It pulled forward funding and drove green energy costs below fossil parity.
It has been a success story but the job is done. Decarbonisation is irreversible. The COP process is now worse than superfluous: it has become a cynical exercise in moral blackmail against the West, the same creative West that invented the technologies now saving everybody. Let it wither on the vine.
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