COP29 host’s own climate plans are ‘critically insufficient’, says expert group

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The country hosting this year’s UN climate summit is making “critically insufficient” efforts in tackling its own contribution to global warming, according to an expert assessment that will prove embarrassing to Azerbaijan.

The report comes about six weeks ahead of the UN climate talks to be held in Baku and during New York climate week, held on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, where Azerbaijan presented its vision as COP29 host.

The COP29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev appeared at the Global Renewables Summit at New York’s Plaza Hotel on Tuesday to lay out an agenda before an audience that included European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Kenyan leader William Ruto.

This involved a target to increase the capacity of energy storage six-fold, reaching 1,500 gigawatts by 2030. “The energy transition is a vital step for sustainable development,” Babayev said.

But the independent scientific group Climate Action Tracker, which assesses national climate plans, said Azerbaijan was one of the few countries to have weakened its climate targets when they were submitted in late 2023. It doubled down on oil and gas production at a time when the world had agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, the report noted.

The CAT group also put a spotlight on the EU, which signed gas agreements with Azerbaijan after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, prompting the COP29 host to increase production.

Azerbaijan has faced criticism since it was anointed host at the end of the COP28 summit in Dubai, following a rotating vote by the eastern European group of countries choosing the next summit location.

Campaigners have expressed concerns about the selection of yet another country that is heavily reliant on the sale of oil and gas to oversee the world’s most important climate negotiations. Questions about human rights followed after several arrests of government critics.

Azerbaijan was one of a “tiny group” of countries that appeared to have weakened their climate targets, CAT found, based on their 2023 national climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

The research group said the country did not have a net zero emissions commitment. Instead emissions are projected to rise about 20 per cent in the years to 2030 as Baku plans to increase gas extraction by more than 30 per cent.

The nearly 200 countries that signed up to the UN Paris agreement are due to submit improved national plans by 2025 to cover the period to 2035. Azerbaijan is among those expected to submit an improved plan by COP29.

A major point of difference is resistance by oil-rich countries to the key pledge to transition away from the use of fossil fuels responsible for global warming, adopted as part of the UN consensus agreement in Dubai.

“Azerbaijan does not include a transition away from fossil fuels in its NDC or in the COP29 agenda,” said Ana Missirliu from CAT partner organisation NewClimate Institute. “This is not the kind of leadership we need in this crucial time of climate action as the world is increasingly being hit by catastrophic, climate-fuelled weather events.”

CAT recommended that Azerbaijan “substantially upgrade” policies and targets in order to cut emissions by 2030, while also setting a net zero goal and a plan to shift away from fossil fuels, both for domestic power production and export.

It noted that the government’s recent renewables push was aimed at replacing domestic use of gas in order to increase exports to Europe. The EU needs to reduce its own gas demand instead of importing fuels from Azerbaijan, the report added, and to help the country transition to a low-carbon economy.

In response to the CAT report, Azerbaijan said it was “actively working on its updated NDC in line with the 1.5C goal” of the Paris agreement to limit global average temperature rise, adding that it would incorporate “ambitious targets”.

Azerbaijan is also working on its long-term low emissions development strategy, “providing stakeholders with a clear pathway for implementing effective climate action”, it said.