Not less than 480 lobbyists engaged on carbon seize and storage (CCS) have been granted entry to the UN local weather summit, generally known as Cop29, the Guardian can reveal.
That’s 5 extra CCS lobbyists than have been current at last year’s climate talks, regardless of the general variety of individuals shrinking considerably from about 85,000 to about 70,000.
CCS lobbyists at Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, outnumber the core nationwide delegations from highly effective nations together with the US and Canada. Almost half of the lobbyists have been granted entry as members of nationwide delegations, affording them better entry to negotiations, together with 55 who have been invited as “visitors” by the Azerbaijani authorities, which is internet hosting this 12 months’s local weather summit, and given what some on the convention are calling “red-carpet therapy.”
The determine, calculated by the Heart for Worldwide Environmental Regulation (CIEL) and shared completely with the Guardian, comes amid concern from activists that the local weather summit is simply too closely that includes “false options”.
“We’re witnessing fossil-fuel greenwashing by these trying to delay the inevitable fossil fuels phase-out,” mentioned Rachel Kennerley, a campaigner at CIEL. “This huge presence of lobbyists is a affirmation that the carbon seize trade is working laborious to advertise the misguided CCS expertise. However governments and firms merely can’t ‘clear’ their coal, oil, and gasoline by capturing and ‘managing’ emissions.”
On Friday, it was revealed that 1,773 coal, oil, and gas lobbyists have been granted access to the local weather talks, together with 132 invited by the host country, because the Guardian reported.
CCS has been closely promoted at Cop29, and has additionally featured closely in nationwide decarbonisation plans submitted this week, together with the UK’s and the UAE’s.
The oil and gasoline trade has lengthy advocated for CCS. Whether it is handled as a major car for decarbonisation, it might permit firms to proceed promoting fossil fuels and thereby protect their fundamental enterprise fashions.
However activists have lengthy derided the expertise, noting it doesn’t but exist at scale and doesn’t the native harms of fossil gas extraction, and that it can be dangerous. And regardless of its branding as a local weather answer, it has thus far principally been used to get better carbon from oil wells after which inject it again underground to assist squeeze extra gas from depleted fields – a course of generally known as enhanced oil restoration.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change, the world’s main local weather authority, has mentioned CCS – or CCUS, which incorporates carbon “utilisation” for fertiliser manufacturing or enhanced oil restoration – ought to play a job in world decarbonisation plans. However final 12 months, the group’s chief mentioned that over-reliance on the applied sciences could lead on the world to surpass local weather tipping factors.
In 2022, the analysis organisation Institute for Energy Economics and Monetary Evaluation discovered underperforming carbon seize initiatives outnumbered profitable ones by massive margins. This 12 months, they discovered using fossil fuels with carbon seize and storage is unlikely to be economically aggressive with renewable-based options.
“The numerous variety of CCS lobbyists at Cop29 highlights the fossil gas trade’s substantial funding in trying to safe its future, regardless of the pressing have to section out fossil fuels,” Kennerley mentioned. “Investing on this costly and unreliable expertise will lock in fossil fuels and waste valuable money and time that we can’t afford. Massive-scale CCS transport and storage additionally comes with important well being and security dangers.”
Negotiators authorized rules on the use of carbon markets on the primary day of the negotiations this week. Carbon market guidelines fall below article 6 of the 2016 Paris local weather settlement, and a subsection of article 6 permits for carbon credit to stem from emissions reductions and removals. CIEL is anxious that the subsection might open the door for the elevated reliance on CCS. And the campaigners fear that lobbyists are pushing negotiators to enshrine guidelines that might increase financing for the applied sciences.
For the evaluation, CIEL pored over the UN’s listing of people registered to attend Cop29 and disclosed affiliations, totalling up all those that have been concerned in CCS and CCUS initiatives as per an Worldwide Vitality Company database, and different firms and organisations which have a public monitor document advocating for the applied sciences.
Fossil gas trade paperwork launched by a 2021 US congressional investigation counsel that oil bosses have lengthy been conscious of CCUS’s limitations – and its potential as a lifeline for fossil fuels.
The Guardian has contacted the International CCS Institute and the CCS Affiliation for remark.
