RES Foundation attended today the thematic day of energy transition at COP28 – the UN conference on climate change in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The conference brought together around 70,000 representatives of governments, international organizations, and civil society under the slogan “Unite.Act.Deliver.”.
At COP21 in 2015, the world agreed to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels by 2050. To remain on target, science tells us that emissions must be halved by 2030. COP28 UAE is a prime opportunity to rethink, reboot, and refocus the climate agenda.
Today’s agenda focus was decarbonization and energy transition, with many events and sessions highlighting innovative local and global solutions that have been implemented so far. Of the events attended by RES Foundation, two panels stand out.
The first one was “Advancing legal and regulatory principles for energy transition”, at which participants discussed the essential legal principles which legislators, regulators, and adjudicators can use to guide their structuring of regulatory frameworks to ensure that countries take care of complementary (but apparently contradictory) objectives: reducing GHG emissions, ensuring energy availability, and achieving development. The partner was Oxford University.
“Enabling a just and managed transition for coal” was the second panel particularly important for our region. COP28 presidency reinforces the global urgency for the phasedown of coal fired power plants, which make up ~25% of global emissions and recognizes the challenges in energy transition away from coal for coal-dependent countries. This initiative focuses on an innovative market-based solution – use of transition credits, carbon credits generated from early retirement of coal plants in line with energy resilience and Just transition considerations, and early action across transaction entities including methodology developers and utility providers backed by country and corporate buyers – all to accelerate phasedown at scale.
See photo galery below:
