COP29: UK Priorities

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

Thank you, Dr Huq, for reminding me of process and having patience with me during my first Westminster Hall debate. Thank you, too, to the hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) for facilitating this debate.

At the end of a year of record-shattering temperatures and climate extremes, COP29 will prove a test of our collective willingness to respond to the climate crisis with the urgency and resolve it demands. We know that there is no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure if we are to have any chance of staying within safe climate limits. That is a scientific fact—one that the International Energy Agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and countless experts have made clear.

Historic progress was made at COP28, when the UK joined nearly 200 countries in agreeing to transition away from fossil fuels, marking a major breakthrough for international climate action. One year on, COP29 has the vital task of locking in momentum towards that promise. Yet despite the science and the consensus reached in Dubai, Governments around the world plan to produce 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with just a 50% chance of limiting warming to the Paris agreement goal of 1.5°.

About half of all planned oil and gas developments between now and 2050 will be sanctioned by five wealthy Governments who position themselves as climate leaders, one of which is the UK. With the COP29 summit being hosted in a country with plans to increase its fossil fuel production by a third over the next decade, there is an urgent need for other big polluters, such as the UK, to show better leadership. Unless the promise made in Dubai is seen as a clear instruction to quit fossil fuels, last year’s hard-won consensus is destined to fall apart. Rhetoric must be met with action.

In that context, the Government’s intention to consult on ending licences for the exploration of new oil and gas fields is a welcome relief from the previous Government’s dangerous obsession with maxing out fossil fuels. It marks a small step towards ending years of climate hypocrisy, which have undermined our position in international negotiations. However, it is only the bare minimum of ambition. To do what is necessary for both the climate and the UK’s credibility in international fora, the Government must move quickly to lock in their no new licensing position, and take the urgent next step of stopping development consents for all new oil and gas fields. That must be done alongside bringing forward a coherent plan to transition oil and gas workers into the clean energy jobs of the future, so that we can show other countries that that transition can and will be done in a fair and just way.

Let us take the example of Rosebank. Bringing that oilfield online would be catastrophic for our climate and our international reputation. Burning the oil and gas from that huge field would produce over 200 million tonnes of CO₂—more than the 28 lowest-income countries combined produce in a year. The emissions created just by extracting the oil from Rosebank would see the UK’s oil and gas industry blow past its emissions reduction target.

Aside from being a climate crime, the new field would go against what is needed to strengthen the UK’s energy security—lower bills and a just transition. I welcome the Government doing the sensible thing and deciding not to defend in court the previous Government’s approval of new oil drilling at Rosebank, which makes it even more likely that the legal challenge against the field will be successful. If Equinor then seeks approval for the field again, the Government will have the opportunity to make a fresh start and a fresh decision on Rosebank. If presented with that opportunity, will the Government make the right choice, reject the field and mark the end of the road for climate-wrecking oil and gas projects in UK waters? Only then can we begin to rebuild our credibility on the global stage and reasonably look other countries in the eye at the negotiating table as we ask them to keep their own oil and gas reserves in the ground.

As a country with broad shoulders and historic responsibility for accelerating climate chaos, the UK not only has a duty to deliver the transition away from fossil fuels here at home, but must play a leading role in supporting those countries that are least responsible for, but worst impacted by, climate breakdown. Baku’s big test, therefore, will be the delivery of the new collective quantified goal on climate finance. This is a crucial opportunity for richer countries to contribute their fair share, following years of broken promises and failure to deliver the $100 billion on time.

At this COP, we must ensure that past mistakes are not repeated. That means agreeing a new goal that is not just a political deal but a real number, based on the needs of people in the global south and of vulnerable populations on the frontline of climate impacts. A black-box headline figure without clarity on how it will be delivered will not do. We must ensure that the goal results in funds that are genuinely new and additional, not double-counted from existing aid budgets—a reprehensible practice that has played a huge role in allowing the climate finance gap to widen over the past decade. Indeed, in February, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact found that under the previous Government the Foreign Office reclassified around £1.7 billion of existing UK aid as international climate finance. The UK has one of the largest gaps between its fair share and the climate finance it has delivered. We are letting the world down—it is right there in black and white—so will the Government ensure that UK negotiators show up to COP29 with a mandate to champion an ambitious new climate finance goal, and will they unlock the necessary public finance in addition to private finance?

There is much more the UK could be doing, from tackling tax abuse and evasion by the extremely wealthy and corporations, removing subsidies for fossil fuels and looking at undertaxed sectors such as aviation, where the “polluter pays” principle is simply not being upheld. Justice requires that the nations most responsible for the climate crisis step up. That is our cue.