COP28: We need strong political will to break through barriers

Editor's note: What could be expected from COP28? How will the warming relationships between China and the United States affect it? We've asked the CEO of The Climate Group Helen Clarkson these questions before she departed for COP28 in Dubai. The views expressed in the video are her own and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Edited excerpts:

CGTN: The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated after the release of a report on November 14 that "the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference must be the place to urgently bridge the climate ambition gap." What is the most critical issue in that gap?

Helen Clarkson: The most critical issue is actually around fossil fuels. We've got to really speed up the phase-out of fossil fuels. There's going to be a lot of talk about that at this COP. Obviously, it's a big issue. It's being held in the UAE. That's an oil producing country. So, it's been quite controversial. But we've got to go much, much faster. And this has been a real sticking point in the last few years where towards the end of the negotiation, some of the language has been watered down. We need to get a really clear plan of how the world gets off fossil fuels and how we speed up the rollout of renewable energy.

They'll talk about a goal at this COP. I think there will be a negotiated outcome to triple renewable energy by 2030, to double energy efficiency. That's great. But there are a lot of political barriers to doing that. So, what we need to see is countries really putting the plans in place to deliver on that.

So the International Energy Agency last year said that solar is now the cheapest form of energy in history. When we work, Climate Group runs something called RE100, which is a collection of 400 global companies. They're all committed to 100 percent renewable electricity. And we talked about what are the barriers to you just getting to 100 percent now.

Actually, cost isn't the big issue. The big issue is the rollout of renewable was on the grid in different countries. And that's prevented for a number of reasons whether it's political, lot of things around permitting who can put what renewable energy where. The amount of time that it takes to build a wind farm in somewhere like the UK, you are looking at 10 years. But actually, only two of those are (spent on) construction, eight of them are (spent on) the permit process – the regulation getting the permission to build.

So that's the sort of thing that we need to cut down. I think the other thing is that there's a lot of subsidies are still going into fossil fuels. And it's just not a level playing field for renewable. Everyone sort of raises the alarm when renewables are subsidized, they should compete on the market. But fossil fuels are hugely subsidized. So we'd like to see a level-playing field for renewable and fossil fuels. And then you'll really see the balance starts to tip. It's really happening across the world. We’ve seen how much solar has rolled out in the last few years. So, I think that the trajectory is now unstoppable. But, it could go faster with that political will to remove some of those sort of quite technical, regulatory barriers that you see around the world.

CGTN: Do you think those political barriers being torn down somewhat by the warming relationships between China and United States and specifically in their Sunnylands Statement, they said that they want to help to triple the renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, and they want to help to accelerate the substitution for coal, oil, and gas generation. And they also launched the Working Group on Enhancing Climate Action in the 2020s. So, how substantial will that impact this conference?

Helen Clarkson: I think it's really good news to see China and the USA talking to each other again on these issues. It was absolutely critical that agreement between China and the U.S. led to the Paris Agreement in 2015.

Together, the U.S. and China account for 40 percent of emissions. So, it's clear we don't get anywhere on climate unless the U.S. and China are working together and really making those commitments. So, I think this is really good news.

Again, we need to get from those commitments into action. I think we've seen a lot from China. China has built more and more into its domestic plans. We've seen a lot of investment in the last few years into electric vehicles. That's critical. And I think a lot of the innovation will sit with the U.S. and China that we need. So, I think it's really positive to see the two countries, whatever other disagreements there are, working together on climate.

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