EU to seek virtual elimination of fossil fuels at COP28

The EU will seek a global phase-out of fossil fuels and for their use to reach a peak in this decade, according to the member states' common position adopted unanimously late Monday.

At the COP28 UN climate talks in November, the bloc will also call for eliminating "as soon as possible" subsidies for fossil fuels which do not serve to combat energy poverty or ensure a "just transition" -- but without setting a deadline as NGOs hoped.

"(The European) Council stresses that the transition to a climate-neutral economy will require a global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels and a peak in their consumption in this decade", said a statement released after the meeting of EU environment ministers.

At the same time the 27 European nations will advocate "the importance of having the energy sector predominantly free of fossil fuels well before 2050", a formula expressed this time without the mention of "unabated".

EU ministers meeting in Luxembourg bitterly clashed over the inclusion of the word in the negotiating mandate for new EU commissioner for climate matters, Wopke Hoekstra, who will represent them at COP28 in Dubai from November 30 to December 12.

Brussels is looking to triple the amount of global renewable energy used by the end of this decade and double energy efficiency in line with the goals of the COP28 presidency.

The EU has already set itself a horizon of 2050 to abolish "unabated" fossil fuels -- meaning those reliant on coal, oil and gas that do not have mechanisms to capture or store carbon.

Together with NGOs, some governments wanted the "unabated" label withdrawn or have strict conditions attached to the use of carbon capture technology, to prevent them being used as justification for continued fossil-fuel burning.

"There's no alternative for driving down emissions across the board," Hoekstra said.

"However some sectors are extremely hard to abate" and thus carbon-capture technology was needed "as part of the total solution space," he said.

France's energy transition minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher called such tech "of interest" but added that it should be reserved for sectors that were unable otherwise to decarbonise.

In the end, the term "unabated" was retained in the agreed text but is no longer mentioned in the formulation of the long-term objective of an energy sector predominantly free of fossil fuels "well before 2050".

In the immediate future, carbon capture technologies "should be tied to those sectors where it's going to be difficult to engage in decarbonisation, where it's difficult to wean themselves off fossil fuels for some of the industrial process", explained Spain's ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera, whose country chaired the Luxembourg meeting.

"The long-term objective is that fossil fuels should be phased out of our energy mix as we tried to promote decarbonisation," she said.

At COP28 many countries will push to secure an unprecedented commitment to move away from "unabated" fossil fuels.

But a global commitment to eliminating fossil fuels entirely would be "very complicated", Hoekstra said.