Australia Leads COP31 While Fossil Exports Persist

Australia is co-leading COP31 negotiations while remaining the world’s third-largest fossil-fuel exporter, a contradiction climate scientists put directly to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. In an open letter, 500 scientists and experts said Australia “cannot credibly lead on climate abroad nor ensure national nor regional security while it expands coal and gas at home.” The negotiating role sits beside the export business, not outside it.

Pacific leaders are pressing for action as scientists warn that the world is on track to exceed 1.5°C of warming. Negotiators are considering a proposed “35 by 35” target: electricity would account for 35 per cent of global energy consumption by 2035. The proposal is a plan for changing how energy is used, but its path runs through COP bargaining among governments with sharply different interests.

The target and the machinery

Energy Minister Chris Bowen was due to arrive in Türkiye to lead negotiations alongside conference president and Turkish Climate Minister Murat Kurum. COP leadership commissioned the International Energy Agency to assess the target. The IEA found existing technologies could cost-effectively raise electricity’s share from 23 per cent today to 33 per cent by 2035, with emerging technologies potentially bringing the 35 per cent goal within reach.

The proposed shift would cover cars, heating and cooling equipment, and larger vehicles. The IEA estimated that meeting the target would reduce oil use by 18 million barrels a day and save oil-importing countries between $US400 billion and $US500 billion annually. Combined with a shift to clean power generation, electrification could cut emissions from the global energy sector by half and avoid two gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.

That change would require about US$1 trillion in new equipment. IEA chief Fatih Birol said the proposal faced opposition from countries with an interest in maintaining oil demand. “Geopolitics has a long and dark shadow on energy,” he said. The savings and emissions reductions are laid out in the assessment; the negotiations will determine whether governments act on them.

Overshoot, finance and fossil interests

A United Nations report in September acknowledged the world had missed its chance to hold warming to 1.5 degrees. Its most optimistic scenario projects warming will pass that threshold by the end of the decade and reach 1.8 degrees later this century, before emissions reductions might stabilize the climate over centuries. The report called this “by no means an acceptable or preferred pathway,” but “simply the best remaining option,” and said limiting additional warming and time above the threshold would lessen risks and damages.

Kurum said this was “the first COP where it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that the world will overshoot the 1.5-degree target.” He called the target “our compass” and said the talks in Antalya must respond to the reality of overshoot. Delegates will also press for climate-finance commitments and fossil-fuel cuts, while trust between developing and wealthy nations over climate finance has declined.

The COP process is under strain. The United States has withdrawn from it, and the consensus reached in Glasgow collapsed after the Trump administration threatened companies it accused of “wokism.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the US and Israeli attack on Iran increased demand for energy and fossil-fuel extraction, while energy-company profits rose. At the previous COP meeting in Brazil, one in 25 attendees worked for the fossil-fuel industry.

Promises against the record

COP negotiations have dealt in frameworks, rules, finance mechanisms and pledges since the Paris accord was signed in 2016. Glasgow produced the first explicit targeting of coal; a later agreement in Dubai called for a “transition away” from fossil fuels. The record of negotiated language now sits beside expanding fossil-fuel extraction and the difficulty of securing trust and finance.

Birol said a COP requires sustained negotiation: “Ministers in rooms all night. It’s not a set piece. It’s not a symbolic thing. It is a real negotiation.” He said Australia was well placed to lead despite its fossil-fuel exports, and argued it had a responsibility to help its energy customers maintain their grids while making the case for transition. “I would feel much better if there were not one, but at least five Australias in this world,” he said.

Bowen called electrification an “obvious next frontier,” saying, “unless you’re electrifying, we have no chance of holding the world to 1.5 degrees.” He described it as “the positive side of the coin.” At the same time, a former UN staffer questioned why 70,000 or 80,000 people had attended the previous COP and called them “climate narcissists.” Pacific island nations’ vulnerability and energy security remain central issues in the talks. The target is on the table; the exporters, energy interests and governments negotiating it are too.