New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
COP29 week 2: A mixed bag of debate, new initiatives and criticism
20/11/2024
10 min read
Feature
Mixed messages have been coming from the first days of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Despite an agreement at last year’s COP conference to transition faster from fossil fuels, there was talk of a controversial ‘gas swap’ scheme being held by Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, there was a plethora of new initiatives, though nothing yet attention grabbing on levelling the Global North and Global South divide on the financial front. New Energy World Features Editor Brian Davis reports.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev didn’t particularly win over many hearts at COP29 when he said that oil and gas are a ‘gift of God’ and nations ‘should not be blamed’ for having fossil fuel reserves. There were rumours of high-level fossil fuel related discussions, and an Azerbaijan offer to sell gas to central European nations when a Russian supply route through Ukraine is cut off at the end of this month.
The Sunday Times claimed that lack of sufficient pipeline capacity to send significant volumes of gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, meant Russian gas would simply be rebadged as coming from Azerbaijan (a close ally) and the flow from Gazprom would continue.
This story did not sit well with COP29 delegates, whose ranks were already depleted by the absence of several world leaders, a walkout by Austria, and the shadow of US President-Elect Donald Trump’s threat to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Nevertheless, there was some good news.