COP29 leaders unveil funding targets for climate change and energy storage by Reuters

By Gloria Dickie

LONDON (Reuters) – With less than two months to go before the United Nations COP29 Climate Summit, Azeri leadership on Tuesday laid out plans for what it hopes to achieve as countries continue to grapple with how to and raise ambitions for a new funding target.

The main task of the summit in November is for countries to agree on a new annual funding target that rich countries will pay to help poorer nations deal with climate change. Many developing countries say they cannot improve their emission reduction targets more quickly without first receiving financial support to invest towards this goal.

As countries remain far from agreeing on the funding target, the COP29 presidency this week highlighted more than a dozen side initiatives that could raise ambitions but do not require the cross-party negotiation and consensus-building that can prevent progress. These take the form of new funds, commitments and declarations that national governments can adopt.

In particular, it includes a fund with voluntary contributions from fossil fuel-producing countries and companies for the public and private sectors working on climate issues, as well as grants that can be awarded to help with climate-fueled natural disasters in countries in development course.

Such secondary agendas use “the convening power of the COP and the respective national capacities of the hosts to form coalitions and drive progress,” said Mukhtar Babayev, who holds the rotating presidency of the COP, in a letter to all parties and stakeholders.

More than 120 countries committed at last year’s COP28 summit in Dubai, for example, to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

The COP29 presidency also hopes to build support around a commitment to increase global energy storage capacity sixfold over 2022 levels, reaching 1,500 gigawatts by 2030. This would include a commitment to step up investment in energy networks , adding or renovating more than 80 million km. (50 million miles) by 2040.

Babayev, who is Azerbaijan’s minister of ecology and natural resources, said the agenda would “help raise ambition by bringing stakeholders together around common principles and goals.”

“We hope to address some of the most pressing issues while highlighting the remaining priorities,” he said.

Another declaration would see countries and companies create a global market for clean hydrogen by addressing regulatory, technological, financing and standardization barriers.

COP29 leaders also called for a “COP Truce” to highlight the importance of peace and climate action.

Despite countries’ existing climate commitments, carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels hit a record high last year, and the world just experienced its hottest summer on record as temperatures soar.