The COP28 agreement, agreed in Dubai on December 13, has been called historic, but how good was it really for the climate? It was very positive that they succeeded in getting a summit declaration adopted, which calls on the countries to transition away from fossil energy, to accelerate the phasing out of coal, to reduce methane emissions and to speed up the transition to zero and low emission road transport. And towards 2030, renewable energy will triple and the annual rate for energy efficiency improvements must double.

Thanks to a great effort from the Danish Minister for Global Climate Policy, Dan Jørgensen, the Danish and European negotiating delegation succeeded in scrapping a very poor first draft from the COP28 chairman, Sultan Al Jaber, which simply stated that the member states can do something – e.g. to triple renewable energy. And there was nothing about switching away from fossil energy. The adopted COP28 declaration is much clearer about what the direction should be. But in its essence it is ultimately just words, and the countries have been given a take-your-own table with many different climate dishes, which they can choose to eat or leave.

There is also no UN authority that can oblige the nation-states to do something specific. The risk is that the next global calculation of the countries' "Nationally Determined Contributions", to be done at the COP30 summit in Brazil in 2025, will show that many countries have not lifted their share of responsibility at all.

The last eight years since the historic adoption at the UN's climate summit in Paris have so far been wasted, and the world is heading towards 2,9 degrees Celsius this century with the policy being pursued. Global greenhouse gas emissions have increased because the burning of fossil fuels and solid woody biomass has increased. The agricultural and forestry sector's methane emissions have increased. The nightmare is about to occur, because scientists warn that we are about to exceed five critical climate tipping points.

The fossil lobby cheers

It is dramatic that the governments with the policy pursued continue to increase their oil, gas and coal consumption towards 2030. And although the International Energy Agency, IEA hopes that it will peak there, there is absolutely no guarantee of that. The OPEC countries have no intention of turning down the flare, and several other countries such as The US, UK and Norway are also planning more drilling for fossil fuels. Right now, the forecast is that oil and gas production may increase right up to 2050 – see the figure.

If there is also demand for that much more oil and gas in the next decades, it will end in a nightmare scenario for our children and grandchildren. Then we are hardly looking at temperature increases of just 2,9 degrees, but perhaps closer to 4 degrees or more. The globe will boil and we will completely lose our grip on our future. In fact, no new fossil fields should be mined at all if we are to have a fair chance of staying close to the 1,5 degree target from the Paris summit eight years ago.

The COP28 summit was chaired by the oil chief of an oil state, as at the previous summit and the next. That says quite a lot. And there were more than 2400 fossil lobbyists in Dubai. Some of them were even part of the official negotiating delegations. They watered down the COP28 agreement, which – if it were to be true to climate science – should have required a firm phase-out of fossil energy and an end date for extraction. It is very telling that the American petroleum industry's powerful lobby group, the American Petroleum Institute, cheered after the summit because it had succeeded in stopping the proposals for a complete phase-out of fossil fuels.

A number of prominent climate scientists, on the other hand, were disheartened by the result. Professor Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania said, “switching away from fossil fuels is a thin cup of tea at best. It is equivalent to promising your doctor to switch away from donuts after receiving a diabetes diagnosis.”

To replace the word phasing out with the softer formulation conversion away from is not the same.

The climate science is absolutely clear. The fossils must go. We need a hard and fast phasing out. This means a deep transformation of the way we produce and consume energy, where fossil sources are subject to extra high taxes - and/or CO2 taxes - while large-scale investments should be made in clean renewable energy sources, energy efficiency improvements, battery technology, geothermal and other clean green technologies that can bring us faster, safer and cheaper to net zero emissions.

Solar, wind and batteries move

The good news is that solar and wind energy are already cheaper than fossil energy in terms of lifetime costs. The price of solar cells and batteries has fallen by as much as 80 per cent. in the last decade, and the price of offshore wind has fallen by 73 per cent. and onshore wind with 57 per cent. In the last ten years, the annual expansion of solar energy has increased sixfold, and wind energy has increased by more than threefold. Therefore, the COP28 target of tripling renewable energy by 2030 is actually at the lower end of business as usual, which is quite thought-provoking. China, but also increasingly the EU countries, with an offensive strategy for renewable energy, have helped to put the expansion into gear. Other countries bristle at the opposite bill or are afraid to challenge the old fossil interests. But it may well be a losing battle.

Solar and wind energy, like batteries, are granular technologies characterized by mass industrialization and rapidly falling prices. So if the market alone decided, the fossil fuels and the petrostates would probably have a bleak future. In addition, many of the old oil and gas fields are quite exhausted. In recent years, the far more expensive and far more climate-damaging extraction of shale gas and shale oil – including in the USA – has helped to increase the production of fossil fuels, but this fossil after party is also running out soon. The profit on the energy invested in extracting energy from the underground is decreasing.

If the US shale gas and shale oil adventure is about to peak, as more and more serious analysts say, it can for a period give the OPEC countries and Russia far greater influence on the macroeconomic development in countries that are heavily dependent on oil imports. This applies to many EU countries. Both for geopolitical and climate political reasons, we are in an extremely busy time to free ourselves from fossil fuels. But hopefully it will lighten up. In the last eight years, global investments in renewable energy have also been greater than fossil investments, and in 2023 the IEA's figures show that 70 per cent have been invested. more in clean energy rather than fossil energy.

In that light, it seems extremely conservative, even downright pessimistic, to settle for a global tripling of renewable energy by 2030, as recommended in the COP28 agreement. A three-fold increase corresponds to business as usual for the last ten years, so why has the level of ambition not been set even higher? The reason is probably that the strong and powerful economic interests in the oil and gas industry have resisted. But it may also be that many Western governments lack the imagination and leadership to actively challenge the entrenched economic interests of the fossil era, or that they fear a backlash from constituencies who find it difficult or ill-afforded to replace the fossil car or the oil and gas boiler with a pure electric alternative. Are the politicians ready to take the hard decisions and show a new direction?

One risk is that the tripling of renewable energy will occur at the same time as the oil-producing countries continue to increase their production, and that the extra energy will be swallowed up in extra economic growth with increasing total energy consumption. It doesn't help the climate. Only via an acceleration of green energy, which occurs at the same time as a phasing out of fossil fuels, can we achieve real progress for the benefit of the climate.

The countries of the world have now been given homework for if they are to deliver on the COP28 recommendations. Even Denmark, which otherwise normally sees itself as a green pioneering country, needs to step up. If you follow the Danish Energy Agency's projection for solar and wind up to 2030, Denmark's current policy is actually only on course for a doubling up to 2030. If we are to achieve the COP28 agreement's objective, it requires politicians to get into gear and deliver on their promises to quadruple solar and wind energy on land by 2030.

Denmark must improve on energy efficiency

Denmark is also challenged in relation to the COP agreement's goal of increasing the annual energy efficiency rate from 2 to 4 per cent. In recent years is Denmark fell down in the middle field among the EU countries, where we were previously one of the top performers in terms of improving energy efficiency. This year, the Minister for Climate and Energy has said that in public buildings you can once again turn up the heat to 23 degrees, where during the energy crisis in 2022 we were able to turn down the heat to 19 degrees in most public buildings. This kind of changing messages creates uncertainty about the energy saving policy. In May 2023, the government voted against a resolution proposal in the Folketing to create an ambitious strategy for energy efficiency improvements and energy savings in Denmark up to 2030, because they wanted to wait for the EU to reach a final agreement on the revisions of the Energy Efficiency and Building Directives.

They have now fallen into place, so in the spring of 2024 the government has promised to come up with plans for a national implementation of the EU directives. In the light of the COP28 agreement, it would be reasonable if this proposal at least ensures an improvement in energy efficiency by 4 per cent. per year. Denmark has a number of companies such as Danfoss and Grundfos, who are ready to deliver the energy efficient technology solutions, and they have also reacted very positively to the fact that the COP28 agreement set a goal of doubling the energy efficiency rate. Now it is up to the government to deliver on that part, and there is no time to waste.

Energy efficiency improvements and energy savings are a very important prerequisite for all the major equations to be solved in the transition to a fossil-free energy system. And Denmark has the opportunity to become a laboratory for the energy solutions of the future, if the politicians dare to set ambitious goals and act quickly on them with strict and forward-looking regulations. In this connection, you can also finance some of the transition by removing all state subsidies for fossil fuels and the burning of solid wood biomass, which with artificial state support competes with the clean renewable energy solutions. Here, it would be logical to increase the diesel tax to the German level and to remove agriculture's exemption from the diesel tax.

It would also be prudent to remove the state aid for burning solid wood biomass, which is converted to electricity in the cogeneration plants. And you could conveniently let the fossil companies pay a larger part of the bill for the expansion of the dilapidated Danish electricity grid, so that you do not impose an extra large bill on developers of solar and wind energy projects via increased distribution and transmission taxes.

Fossil subsidies threaten the climate

It is not just Denmark that should start to change all incentive structures, so that fossil fuels are allowed to pay the full bill for the climate, environmental and health damage they inflict on nature and people. At the same time, it should be made even more attractive to invest in energy-efficient solutions and clean renewable energy, so that the transition can be accelerated.

According to the International Monetary Fund, IMF, they constitute direct and indirect fossil subsidies today 7000 billion dollar. This corresponds to no less than 7,1 per cent. of the global gross domestic product, and that is a staggering amount of money to spend on something that exacerbates the global climate problems. Even more dramatically, the subsidies are expected to rise to DKK 8200 billion. dollar in 2030.

COP28 should have given a clear and unequivocal call for a rapid phasing out of this form of state aid. But in the agreement, the countries are only encouraged to phase out "inefficient" subsidies, as was also done at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.

Only the fossil lobby can cheer such nonsense. The wording opens a loading gate for interpretations and climate-dangerous behaviour. No fossil subsidies are effective, but only help to worsen the climate crisis and delay the transition to the clean renewable energy sources, which are cheaper than fossil fuels in lifetime costs.

The fossil lobby can also rejoice that they want to accelerate the transition to CO2 capture and storage and to low-emission hydrogen. The last one is laughable if it wasn't tragic. Today, only 110.000 tonnes of green hydrogen are produced globally via renewable energy. It is unlikely that in 2030 green hydrogen - and low-emission hydrogen with CO2 capture facilities - can be scaled up to 90 million. tonnes, which was discussed at last year's hydrogen ministerial meeting in Japan, because only 0,7 million are produced. tons today. And it is completely unrealistic to reach the 180 million. tons, which Sultan Al Jaber spoke about before the COP28 meeting. The main problem is the cost. According to the energy expert Michael Liebreich you will hardly be able to produce more than 15 million tonnes in 2030, as it requires at least 2-3 dollars in government support per kg to make green hydrogen competitive with hydrogen produced from gas.

The lobbyists' hot dream

The COP28 summit was a political breakthrough for the forces that lobbied hard for much more CO2 capture. At the previous two COP summits, CO2 capture (CCS) was not mentioned in the final declarations, but it was in Dubai. Not least the oil and gas industry has pushed hard to get the governments to invest more in CCS, because they hope that this will allow them to stick to business as usual. Before the summit, the COP28 chairman Sultan Al Jaber also strongly advocated much more CCS, so that one does not need to reduce the production of fossil fuels, but can simply aim to reduce the emissions. It is the oil and gas industry's hot dream.

But the head of the IEA, Fatih Birol, was very clear when he launched the energy agency's report in November on how the oil and gas industry can contribute to the transition to a net-zero future: "They must let go of the illusion that improbably large amounts CO2 capture is the solution.”

In its net-zero scenario, the IEA expects around 7,5 billion to be captured. tonnes of CO2 in 2050. But if oil and gas consumption increases as much as it appears from the already adopted policy, and at the same time you have to stay at 1,5 degrees Celsius, it will according to The IEA requires "a completely unthinkable" level of 32 billion tonnes of captured carbon, including 23 billion tonnes captured via Direct Air Capture. "The amount of electricity that must be used for these technologies will correspond to more than the world's total electricity consumption," it states of the IEA report, who estimates that it will require investments of less than DKK 3200 billion. dollar every single year until 2050, if you have to scale up so strongly with CO2 capture in a scenario where oil and gas production is maintained, and you focus on capturing the CO2 at the end of the chimney. It's not realistic at all.

Today, approximately DKK 4 billion is invested globally. dollar per year in building new CCS, but currently is there only 41 working works, and approximately 47 million are caught. tons of CO2 globally. It is not that Fatih Birol and the IEA are against CO2 capture in general, so he merely criticizes the fossil industry's hope of being able to continue business as usual with CO2 capture plants at the end of the chimney.

CO2 capture at biomass plants is a dead end

When the IEA published its latest World Energy Outlook report in October, the agency suggested that it might be necessary to catch up to 350 million tonnes of CO2 in 2030. But the question is whether it is realistic, because in the last eight years the capacity of the world's capture facilities has not increased, and many projects have gone back on themselves. Fatih Birol also said at the WEO launch, however, that "CCS has been the story of a big disappointment." The fact is that it has never delivered on the much-hyped future goals. It is still a very immature technology for capturing CO2 at the point sources of industry and power plants. Green Transition Denmark published this autumn a memo about the international experience so far, and our assessment is that the highly hyped notions about how much CO2 capture the world must have in the next decades may very soon be hit by a reality shock. CO2 capture plants are extremely expensive on industrial point sources, they require huge amounts of government support, they have so far proven very difficult to scale and they add a large extra energy bill.

At the COP28 summit, Denmark helped launch a global alliance for negative emissions – which is very tellingly abbreviated to (GONE). If the alliance only focused on afforestation, it would be really positive, because the natural absorption in the forests should increase significantly in the coming years. But the GONE alliance will also promote more CO2 capture in the hope that negative emissions can be delivered technologically and chemically. The alliance is, among other things, advocates that CO2 capture on biomass plants (BECCS) is part of the solution. It might seem logical that the Danish government - where they have already given Ørsted 8,2 billion in state aid to capture CO2 at their biomass plant – enters into such an alliance. But the risk is that you end up wasting a lot of money on a technology that is expensive and difficult to scale up. The energy consumption at the biomass power plants will also increase by up to 50-55 per cent when CO2 capture is carried out, and this will increase the energy bill, where we should be saving energy.

Worse is that BECCS plants only have a net positive effect on the climate after approx 30 years of operation. Because it takes a long time to regenerate the lost biological stock in the forests where the wood is taken from, and only after many years will the replanted forests be able to absorb the same amount of CO2 that disappears from the felled trees to the cogeneration plants. Scaling BECCS risks ending up in an active policy of increased deforestation. It will also seize huge amounts of land. If one were to globally scale up the BECCS technology to capture between 2-3 gigatons of CO2e in 2050, it would require using a land area corresponding to all India with forest, which must be constantly felled to keep the works moving. In addition, very large funds must be invested in the adjacent infrastructure. If you want to capture, transport and store 3 Gigatons it will require an infrastructure as large as the global oil industry depends on. Compared to the rapid scaling and large price drops on the world market of solar and wind energy and new generations of high-performance batteries, scaling with BECCS plants worldwide is not a very attractive solution. Let's hope it is soon gone.

It would produce a much faster and safer climate effect if, instead of investing in capture systems at the end of the chimneys, we made a plan for the phasing out of fossil fuels and the extensive firing with solid wood biomass in Denmark's and other countries' power plants. It would be much better in terms of climate and energy economy to electrify the heat supply, and it is already technologically possible. Instead, the risk is that large government investments in CO2 capture in the coming years will end up extending the lifespan of both fossil fuels and heating with solid wood biomass.