The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate this Sunday acknowledged the difficulty of reaching consensus on fossil fuels, but reiterated Portugal’s position on eliminating them in the coming decades.
On the eve of the first of at least two days dedicated exclusively to the final negotiations at the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), Ana Fontoura Gouveia said Portugal and the European Union are committed to eliminating fossil fuels by 2050.
“The issue of fossil fuels is one of the most difficult, and that is why we are here, to find common ground. The main goal is to eliminate fossil fuels by 2050,” a government official told reporters at the conference. end of the day.
In discussions of the Global Stocktake—the main mechanism for assessing progress under the Paris Agreement, which is being assessed for the first time this year—various ways of wording what it says are discussed. Table: Regarding the issue of fossil fuels.
Two of the options strongly contested by oil producers involve a phase-out of fossil fuels, while the other two only indicate a phase-out of fossil fuels in which carbon capture is not possible, which is described as “unrelenting.”
“The technologies that allow us to capture carbon dioxide emissions associated with fossil fuels are very expensive or do not yet exist, so the path must be to phase out fossil fuels by 2050,” the secretary of state insisted.
As the final negotiations approach, this topic remains one of the least agreed upon, but Ana Fontoura Gouveia believes that an agreement will be possible by the scheduled end of the summit on Tuesday, and hopes above all that the result will make it possible to achieve the goals of the European Union .
“We have many texts, many proposals, many bilateral discussions to bring positions closer together. We strongly believe that with a little more work we can achieve a final text that is true to what brought us all to Dubai. “, he foresaw.
Answering a question about the position of some oil-producing countries, as well as commenting on the possibility of holding the next summit in Azerbaijan, the Secretary of State noted that “these are suitable regions for such a discussion.”
“We cannot have a serious discussion about the climate transition if we exclude these countries that are essentially committed to dialogue here. This is what we saw,” citing the example of the United Arab Emirates and the president of COP28: Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the president of the national oil company.
Despite controversial statements before the summit, when he believed that a very rapid energy transition would mean a return to the “cave age”, Al Jaber has since recanted and, according to the Portuguese Secretary of State, COP28 President, has “set the bar very high”.
“This has been a driving force for greater commitment from those countries that may want to leave the COP with less ambition,” he said.
COP28 began on November 30 and will run until November 12 in Dubai. After several days of thematic program, Monday and Tuesday will be devoted only to the final negotiations.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
I am Michael Melvin, an experienced news writer with a passion for uncovering stories and bringing them to the public. I have been working in the news industry for over five years now, and my work has been published on multiple websites. As an author at 24 News Reporters, I cover world section of current events stories that are both informative and captivating to read.