At shadow climate summit on phasing out fossil fuels, scientists are center stage

Scientists know how to phase out fossil fuels. Some countries are listening

By Mariana Lenharo & Nature Review

Climatologists, who have been warning about the dangers of global warming for decades, have found some countries listening. This week, representatives from more than 50 countries gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia, for what was billed as the first global summit on phasing out fossil fuels. One of the first tasks was to create a group of scientists who would advise these countries on how to transition to clean energy.

“Here you have a coalition of governments who have decided that they really want to learn about the science,” says Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh, an expert on international climate change law at the University of Amsterdam.

This historic meeting, which began on April 24 and ended yesterday, was proposed at last year’s UN COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil. Oil-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, reportedly opposed the gathering’s attempts to create a road map to reduce the use of fossil fuels, which are the largest source of global greenhouse gas emissions and the largest contributor to climate change.

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Frustrated, the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands announced that they would host the first conference on the transition away from fossil fuels this year, independent of the UN COP climate summits. Countries that have expressed willingness to create a road map, including Australia, Cambodia and Mexico, have been invited. Oil-producing countries that have opposed such efforts have not.

In Santa Marta, not only was the new panel – called the Scientific Panel for the Global Energy Transition (SPGET) – launched, but a separate group of researchers also took center stage on April 24 to release a report listing 12 high-level actions nations can take to support the phase-out of fossil fuels.

Researchers find it refreshing to have an international forum where they are free to make ambitious recommendations. What happens at UN climate summits is that “because governments are the final decision-makers on what is made public, there is a lot of filtering” of scientific advice, says Gilberto Jannuzzi, an energy transition specialist at Campinas State University in São Paulo, Brazil. “Ultimately, I think we found a smaller audience, but an audience that sees us as having something relevant to them.”

Practical solutions

The report, written by 24 researchers in consultation with hundreds of other scientists from several countries over the three months leading up to the meeting, does not attempt to systematically synthesize all the scientific knowledge about the clean energy transition, says Frank Jotzo, a climate change economist at the Australian National University in Canberra, who was part of the editorial team. This is the role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which produces reports that are supposed to be neutral and inform policy without directly making recommendations. “We’re not trying to replicate the IPCC here. We’re trying to give practical policy ideas” based on science, Jotzo says.

For example, the report recommends that countries ban new fossil fuel infrastructure and phase out fossil fuel subsidies, such as tax breaks or financing that reduces the cost of producing oil, gas and coal. At the same time, he calls for financial incentives to establish clean energy sources.

Jotzo acknowledges that the guidelines are very ambitious and that some countries might consider them “incredibly difficult” to implement. “But these are the kinds of things that need to be done to move away from fossil fuels quickly enough to meet the long-term goals of the Paris agreement,” he says. Governments that signed the agreement in 2015 pledged to reduce emissions to prevent global temperatures from reaching 2°C above pre-industrial levels, a threshold intended to avoid catastrophic damage from sea level rise and extreme weather. “The role of the scientists involved in this process is to tell the truth about the urgency of the problem and to propose practical solutions that governments can adopt,” adds Jotzo.

Scientific start-up

About SPGET, Januzzi says: “We have about 30 top scientists who have already been consulted and are willing to voluntarily participate in this effort. » Among them are economists, social scientists and other researchers who study the transition to clean energy, according to Jannuzzi. The group is just getting started, he says, but its goal is to be able to present a comprehensive set of recommendations at COP31, which will be held in Antalya, Turkey, in November.

The gathering takes place amid the global energy crisis triggered by the United States and the war between Israel and Iran – which has caused some countries to rethink their dependence on imported fossil fuels. In Santa Marta, countries present were invited to start working on roadmaps to phase out fossil fuels. France published its plan on April 28 during the summit. How the plans should be structured and when countries should implement them have not yet been determined, Irene Velez Torres, Colombia’s environment minister, said at the meeting. “What we know is that we are going to have concentrated work dedicated to creating these pathways and that every country that needs support to design and implement these pathways will be supported,” she said. Nature that the summit will have “done its job” if it paves the way for results and cooperation in the years to come. Organizers agreed to continue the gathering every year. The next summit will be held in the island nation of Tuvalu and will be co-hosted by Ireland.

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