At an International Energy Agency (IEA) round table on the implementation of COP28 commitments (see EUROPE 13313/16) held in Paris on Tuesday 20 February, the President of the COP, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, stressed the need to release the financing required to promote the energy transition and implement international commitments.
“The key enabler of positive change at the speed and scale required is quite simply financing (...) and we need finance at every level”, he said.
“The next COP (in Baku) has a mandate to provide a new collective and quantifiable objective (....). The world must now raise the bar to address the challenge we face. We need to start thinking trillions, not billions”, he continued.
He explained that all possible sources of funding had to be mobilised, but that it was more than necessary to stimulate private funding, “the only catalyst for success”, through government policies and incentives.
More broadly, “we need new blended financing models that leverage concessional, catalytic and investment funds to ensure that climate progress is fully extended to countries in the Global South and emerging markets”, he added.
The President of the IEA, Fatih Birol, also asked how “a creative financial mechanism” could be put in place to support the transition to clean energy in developing countries.
“Last year, total investment in clean energy worldwide amounted to US$1.8 trillion (compared with US$1 trillion for investment in fossil fuels); is this enough to achieve our climate goals? But above all, only 15% of this 1,800 billion was generated in emerging and developing countries”, he deplored.
Sultan Al-Jaber recalled that the COP had mobilised $85 billion in new pledges and commitments from multiple sources, and welcomed the launch of Alterra, a $30 billion investment fund launched by the United Arab Emirates for climate partnerships at COP28.
“Altérra is based on the idea that solving the climate challenge is not a burden, but rather a unique opportunity to redirect economies towards a low-carbon, high-growth future”, he explained, adding that financial vehicles of this type should be replicated in the future, while at the same time continuing to build an appropriate global financial architecture to stimulate private investment in different regions of the world.
“Financing to fight climate change must be made available, accessible and affordable, especially for countries in the Global South and emerging markets”, he concluded. (Original version in French by Pauline Denys)