This Time Transition Means Phase Out
I attended the first week of COP28 in Dubai. The hours-long lines in the sun of the first few days are now a memory, and I'm eagerly awaiting the text of the COP decision. Hopefully, countries will end the meeting with an ambitious final agreement but, at the moment, it seems doubtful because of a particularly contentious point: the language surrounding a fossil fuel "phase out" or "phase down". It was expected to be this year’s biggest sticking point, and it has lived up to expectations.
As I was listening to the debate in Dubai, a recent podcast came to mind. The podcast host interviewed two experts (Meghan O’Sullivan and Jason Bordoff), who discussed how today's energy transition is different than all of the energy transitions of the past. They said that when people talk about “energy transitions” they typically mean the “transition” from wood to coal or from coal to oil. Today, people use the same language to discuss the “transition” from fossil fuels to renewables.
I know I’ve used this language when talking about the historical evolution of energy and, googling quickly, here is an example of a recent article with the framing above.
The conundrum is that the previous “transitions” didn’t move from one fuel to another but instead added the newer fuel to the existing fuels. First humans were burning wood, then wood and coal, and then wood, coal, and oil. A true “transition” would have phased out wood but, as you can see in the figure, biomass energy has been relatively constant for centuries.
Today's energy transition is a true transition from problematic energy sources to completely new sources –not additive but transformational. Fossil fuels need to phase down. Importantly, renewable energy needs to expand to both replace the energy provided by fossil fuels and to meet future growth of energy demand.
Previous COP decisions have affirmed and reaffirmed stabilizing global temperatures at well below 2-degrees Celsius. The science says fossil fuel emissions need to decline drastically to stay within the carbon budget.
Today’s negotiators at COP28 are discussing whether nations can explicitly name the fact that we have to transition away from fossil fuel energy by including language about a “phase down” or “phase out” in the COP decision text. Some countries and OPEC would like to not be explicit about nature of the problem. We’ll soon see which side carries the day when they publish the final text tomorrow.
Travis Franck is the Climate Modeling and Policy Director at The Climate Policy Lab. He is also an Assistant Research Professor at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.