UN climate talks in Bonn 'tough' with high pressure from fossil fuel lobby – NGO

The UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, on 5-15 June are set to be marked by “tough negotiations under high pressure from the fossil fuel lobby,” NGO Germanwatch said. By all indications, the United Arab Emirates, as the upcoming presidency of the major COP28 climate talks in December, “will try to massively push its agenda to prolong the age of oil and gas,” commented David Ryfisch, head of international climate policy at Germanwatch.

The annual talks in Bonn are meant to prepare decisions for adoption at the COP climate summits later in the year. COP28 is slated for December in the United Arab Emirates. The country’s designated COP28 president, Sultan Al Jaber – who is also the UAE's industry minister and chief executive of national oil company ADNOC –, had dampened hopes at the recent Petersberg Climate Dialogue that the December conference could agree on a fossil fuel phaseout. Instead of calling for this, Al Jaber called for a bigger role for carbon capture and storage (CCS), and only said “fossil fuel emissions” had to be phased out.

Kerstin Opfer, energy policy officer at Germanwatch, called CCS used in energy systems expensive and “a misguided path that cements fossil business models for a long time and thus does not solve the problem.” Instead, the technology should only be used in industry processes where rapid decarbonisation is not possible, she said.