Global talks ahead of the 2024 COP29 climate summit must find a way to boost the share of clean energy investments in emerging economies, which has “remained flat” over the last 10 years, IEA Executive Director, Fatih Birol, said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Discussions about increasing funds to help poorer countries fight global warming and how the money will be divided among them are still ongoing, “with different if not opposing views on the topic,” he noted.
Ahead of COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan in November, countries are working out details of a new annual climate finance goal, which is likely to be at least hundreds of billions of dollars. The topic has become controversial at UN summits, as a previous climate finance goal set in 2009 to deliver $100 billion per year by 2020 to poorer nations was only hit once, in 2022, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Birol said overall global clean energy investments are growing significantly, but the amount of money going to emerging and developing countries has “remained flat” at 15% of the total amount since 2015. It is currently about $250 billion, he said.
“So, this, in my view, is the fault line of our journey to reach our climate target,” he said. “This will be the key topic for our high-level dialogues with our colleagues from Azerbaijan and the rest of the countries.”
OSCE and Azerbaijan are already co-operating in the field of ecology and climate change, OSCE Chair-in-Office, Malta’s Minister for Foreign, European Affairs and Trade, Ian Borg, said in an interview with Report.
He welcomed Azerbaijan’s active participation in a project on climate and security, which is facilitating cross-border cooperation between Azerbaijan and Georgia on wildfire risk reduction for climate resilience.
Borg said: “With Azerbaijan preparing to host COP29, there is a significant opportunity for deepening this cooperation even further and developing meaningful discussions on the nexus between climate change and security. These discussions could be highly beneficial and align with ongoing conversations within the OSCE on this critical intersection.”
The step taken by Armenia to hold the 29th session of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) in Azerbaijan was a very good sign, Deputy Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan and Chief Executive Director of COP29, Elnur Soltanov, said.
He made the remark at the presentation ceremony in Lachin regarding COP29 with the participation of members of diplomatic corps accredited in Azerbaijan, including military attachés.
According to him, the decision to hold COP29 in Azerbaijan was made possible with the support of the entire international community:
“It is a very responsible task to lead the most important negotiations on climate change and climate crisis in the world as the host of COP29. We need to take measures to fight the global climate crisis. But for this we need some tools. The main tool of implementation is finance. Thus, we must come up with an ambitious action agenda, and we have started work on this path. In this way, we will inspire and revive the world community.”
The Deputy Minister said that Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur have been declared green energy zone.
“Thus, Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur become a testing ground for Azerbaijan’s green technology and green energy. Therefore, the importance of this region coincides with the great task we have undertaken. Because Karabakh and Eastern Zangazur are the places where we test the best technologies for the green world. If it is successful, we will apply it in other regions of Azerbaijan. We will produce more green energy than is consumed in this region, and it could be exported to other regions of Azerbaijan.”
