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World leaders are due to gather for annual climate change talks in Dubai in December. On the agenda: the phase down — or even phase out — of fossil fuels, a global goal to help the world adapt to extreme weather events, trading carbon emissions and a new fund to pay for the loss and damage wreaked by global warming.

This year has once again seen the devastating effects of climate change on the planet. The summer season in the northern hemisphere was the warmest on record globally. At least 5,000 people were killed in Libya in the Mediterranean storm Daniel in September, while a wildfire on the Hawaiian island Maui killed at least 115 people.

When is COP28?

It starts on Thursday 30 November and is due to finish on Tuesday 12 December. While the talks are scheduled to last a fortnight, they are notorious for spilling over by an extra day or two as delegates argue over the final language of the communique.

Where is COP28 being held?

This year the rotating presidency is held by the United Arab Emirates and COP28 will be held at the Expo City in Dubai.

While eyebrows were raised when one of the world’s biggest oil producers was selected to lead the talks, the UAE argues it is in a strong position to convince other oil-and-gas-rich countries to go further and faster on cutting emissions.

What is COP28?

Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, addresses last year’s COP in EgyptPhotographer: Islam Safwat/Bloomberg

It’s the annual gathering of nearly 200 countries, hosted by the United Nations, to discuss ways of avoiding man made climate change and adapting to warming temperatures. The talks have been going for 28 years, giving this year’s talks the technical name of the 28th Conference of the Parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The original idea three decades ago was to create a multilateral process in which everyone got to have an equal say in how the world should best cut greenhouse gases. In reality, there are stubborn divides between rich and poor countries. Developing countries argue that developed countries got rich over the last century by creating industries founded on fossil fuels, and that they should be able to do the same.

The COP process made a breakthrough deal in Paris in 2015, when all countries agreed for the first time to ensure that temperature rises stay well below 2 degrees Celsius compared to pre industrial levels and they set a stretch goal to ensure warming doesn’t breach 1.5 C. To achieve that means emissions should fall to “net zero” by the middle of the century.

While the Paris Agreement was a landmark moment, countries have struggled to deliver on it. Each member must make pledges showing how they will contribute their fair share to keeping temperatures in check. But those plans aren’t good enough. This year, countries will hold their first official stocktake of progress so far.

How many people will attend COP28?

This year’s summit is expected to be the biggest yet with more than 70,000 people expected to show up. The UAE is well set up to manage a mammoth event with plenty of hotel rooms in Dubai and one of the world’s best-connected airports. Both COP21 in Paris and COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 had more than 40,000 registered participants, while 33,000 people registered to attend last year’s meeting in Egypt.

Who can attend COP28?

Delegates in traditional headdress attend the COP27 climate conference.Photographer: Islam Safwat/Bloomberg

At the heart of COP28 are the negotiators — civil servants from 197 countries, who spend two weeks locked behind closed doors thrashing out the details of the agreements that are supposed to drive action on tackling climate change. Negotiators are often accompanied by their ministers, and sometimes the heads of state who can help to seal a deal. Achieving a consensus is key to the COP process. Every country has an equal say regardless of their size.

But it’s not just governments who attend. Members of civil society groups as well as businesses all turn up too, to make their cases heard on the fringes of the event. And of course, the site is teeming with journalists reporting what’s happening to the wider world.

Why is COP28 Important?

This is the first year since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 that countries will take stock of the progress they’re making on tackling climate change. We already know the answer: that they’re not going fast enough in cutting emissions at the pace Paris promised. The review is supposed to put pressure on countries to speed things up.

After COP28, countries will have until 2025 to submit new national plans to fight climate change — which will truly determine if the world is heading in the right direction.

Some richer countries, particularly in Europe, are pushing for tougher commitments, such as phasing out fossil fuels and “peaking” emissions (stop them from climbing) by 2025. That’s a big ask for many developing countries, such as India that see fossil fuels as crucial to growing their economies.

This year’s COP will also be crucial for climate finance. Rich countries have now delivered on their promise to mobilize $100 billion a year to help poor countries deal with the worst impacts of climate change. But that is a tiny amount compared to the $2.5 trillion per year that will be needed by 2030. Negotiators will be seeking to reach a deal on a new, post-2025 collective goal for climate finance. Initially, wealthy nations responsible for the most historical emissions were asked to chip in, but now countries such as Ghana are calling for the pool of contributors to be widened to include major economies such as China, the world’s biggest source of climate-warming gases.

The first few days of COP28 will also see a flurry of announcements by world leaders on tackling potent methane emissions from oil and gas, making farming and food production more sustainable, and tripling renewable energy capacity. The host country is also expected to announce a multi billion dollar fund to invest in climate friendly technologies.

Is COP28 destined to be a flop?

A true COP flop is when no progress can be agreed at the end of the two weeks. This happened in Madrid in 2019, with COP25 ending in failure when the parties could not compromise on a final text in many areas. COP21 in Copenhagen in 2009 was also famously deemed a failure. Negotiators couldn’t reach a binding deal to cut greenhouse gases that was supposed to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expired in 2012.

But even if a final text is agreed, many countries — particularly small island nations — will still see it as a failure unless it commits to strong language around phasing out fossil fuels and keeping global warming below 1.5C. The risk this year is that the COP president won’t be seen as impartial enough to broker a deal with all the parties.

It’s starting to look like the world’s biggest emitters may be in the mood to compromise. The leaders of China and the US agreed a deal in mid-November to step up climate action, back global efforts to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, accelerate the domestic build out of green power to replace coal, oil and gas, and advance cooperation to limit emissions of nitrous oxide and methane, two particularly pernicious greenhouse gases.

Who is the COP28 president?

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, this year’s COP presidentPhotographer: Aaron M. Sprecher/Bloomberg

The UAE has appointed Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber as COP28 president. He also heads up the UAE’s state oil producer, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., and that has led many environmental campaigners to question whether he can remain impartial as the negotiations heat up over the course of the conference. His supporters point out that he also chairs Masdar, the state renewable company and one of the world’s leading solar developer’s Al Jaber’s job is to bring together all 197 parties, using his diplomacy skills to help countries bridge their divides and final agreement over the line.

Source: Bloomberg Green 

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Deutsche Bank: Big Oil stocks should be included in ESG offerings because investors want them.
WSJ: investors were leaving these funds at such a pace that fund managers were changing the names of the funds, removing terms like “ESG” and “sustainable.”.
Oil and gas appear to remain essential for meeting the world’s energy needs, which in turn renders producers one again more attractive for investors who disillusioned with alternative energy investments dubbed environmentally responsible.

This week saw the release of the latest report from the International Energy Agency, which called for a fast reduction in oil and gas investments and production, embracing alternative energy sources instead to help advance the transition.

Also this week, media picked up another story that makes the ground for the IEA report a bit shaky. The story came from Deutsche Bank and took the form of a statement by a senior executive involved in the lender’s ESG business. The statement: Big Oil stocks should be included in ESG offerings because investors want them.

The IEA’s Fatih Birol called the present day a moment of truth for the oil and gas industry. In fact, transition-related industries are facing their own moment of truth, and investors are aware of it.

“When we think about clean energy, these are business models which are quite new and sensitive to interest rates,” Deutsche Bank’s Markus Mueller, chief investment officer ESG, told Reuters. “Investors are looking for traditional [energy] companies that have capex in renewables… They prefer the transition than to exclusions,” he explained.

Investors also appear to prefer larger rather than smaller profits, even if they come from what are commonly called renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar farms. The Wall Street Journal addressed a substantial outflow from ESG funds in a recent article, which noted that investors were leaving these funds at such a pace that fund managers were changing the names of the funds, removing terms like “ESG” and “sustainable.”

Meanwhile, the IEA has told the oil and gas industry to forget about carbon capture as a way of continuing to produce the same amounts of oil and gas that it is producing now.

“The industry needs to commit to genuinely helping the world meet its energy needs and climate goals – which means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution,” Birol said in the news release of the report.

However, based on investor behavior and stock performance in oil and gas, and wind and solar, it seems meeting the world’s energy needs still depends on hydrocarbons rather than devices capturing the energy generated by the sun and the wind. After all, the IEA itself said in its latest Oil Market Report that demand for the fuel is set to grow by 2.4 million bpd this year.

The end result, then, is that oil and gas appear to remain essential for meeting the world’s energy needs, which in turn renders producers once again more attractive for investors who are disillusioned with alternative energy investments dubbed environmentally responsible. The recent tremors in the carbon offsets market likely contributed to this disappointment and redirection of attention.

Perhaps this return of investor attention to oil and gas is spurring stronger pressure on the industry. A recent report by the Financial Times, for instance, cited S&P Global Ratings as saying oil and gas companies faced “virtually no extra borrowing costs compared with less polluting companies” despite a push by the UN and other entities to make them pay more than other industries.

In any other context, calls for essentially penalizing an industry for being what it is would smack of discrimination. Only in the context of the energy transition, which is trying to force higher borrowing costs on an industry, is this considered a perfectly acceptable and even highly desirable way to mitigate the risks that IPCC scientists say originated from the oil and gas industry.

“Environmental concerns seem to be far from the most important factor for funding oil and gas companies,” S&P Global Ratings analysts said, with one of the new report’s authors commenting that “It shows lenders are not really baking in premiums for [environmental, social and governance]-related factors.”

Indeed, they are not baking in such premiums. That’s probably for the same reason as the one investors away from ESG funds and into oil and gas: oil and gas are making money. They are making money because the world needs them, including the loudest cheerleaders of the transition, such as the UK and Germany, not to mention China, which is simultaneously the biggest investor in wind and solar and the biggest investor in coal.

The ESG investment movement has had a moment of truth, and things are changing fast. Investors are falling back on the certainty of oil and gas, even with the extra volatility, as OPEC grapples with economic growth worries that have substantially undermined its price control efforts.

This has worried the leaders of the transition because it means less money for transition industries—governments can’t shoulder the whole financial burden of total electrification. Confidence appears to be on the way in some parts of the transition world, and it would take time to restore it, risking a wider divide between Paris Agreement targets and actual developments. That was only to be expected. It’s what you get when you try to play government plans against the market.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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ENB Pub Note: As we move closer to 2024, things will become more apparent and painful. World organizations like the IEA have agendas contrary to humanity’s best interests. The IEA is working with the WHO, IMF, and the WEF. As there is an awakening in progress, those in power will behave like wolves caught in the corner. The IEA has a track record of reports with misinformation about renewable energy performance and impact. The market will start deciding, as evidenced by wind projects not being bid on or canceled. This is not about if we need to take care of the environment. We have to, but we must be able to sustain market balances with technology that works. If you have any discussion points either way, please reach out to see if you can be on the podcast to discuss all sides of energy. We want to hear from everyone. 

Oil and gas firms will face a crucial choice at UN climate talks next week between contributing to the climate crisis or embracing the clean energy transition, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.

The future of fossil fuels that play a massive role in climate change will be at the heart of COP28 negotiations in Dubai, as the world struggles to meet the goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“The oil and gas industry is facing a moment of truth at COP28 in Dubai,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said ahead of the November 30-December 12 conference.

In a report, the Paris-based energy watchdog said the industry’s engagement has been “minimal” so far, accounting for less than one percent of global clean energy investment.

It invested $20 billion in clean energy last year, or just 2.7 percent of its total capital spending.

To meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C target, the oil and gas sector must devote 50 percent of its investments on clean energy projects by 2030.

By comparison, $800 billion is invested in the oil and gas sector each year.

While investment in oil and gas supply is still needed, the figure is twice as high as what should be spent to respect the Paris goals, the agency said.

“Producers must choose between contributing to a deepening climate crisis or becoming part of the solution by embracing the shift to clean energy,” the IEA said.

– Oil sector stalling –

Oil and gas use would fall by 75 percent by 2050 if governments successfully pursued the 1.5C target and emissions from the energy sector reached net zero by then, the report said.

Instead of cutting fossil fuels outright, oil giants have touted several once-marginal technologies as promising solutions to cut emissions.

They include carbon capture and storage (CCS), direct air capture and carbon credit trading.

CCS prevents CO2 from entering the atmosphere by siphoning exhaust from power plants, while direct air capture pulls CO2 from thin air.

Both technologies have been demonstrated to work, but remain far from maturity and commercial scalability.

“The industry needs to commit to genuinely helping the world meet its energy needs and climate goals –- which means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution,” Birol said.

The think tank Carbon Tracker said in September that oil and gas sector emission reduction pledges have stalled and in some cases gone backwards.

Oil major BP watered down a previous 2030 production cut target and Shell said its “liquids” output would remain stable — both angering climate campaigners.

– Tripling renewables capacity –

Campaigners have raised concerns over the influence of fossil fuel interests at the UN climate conference, noting that COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber is both UAE climate envoy and head of state-owned oil firm ADNOC.

Jaber has proposed tripling global renewable energy capacity and doubling the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.

“The fossil fuel sector must make tough decisions now, and their choices will have consequences for decades to come,” Birol said.

“Clean energy progress will continue with or without oil and gas producers. However, the journey to net zero emissions will be more costly, and harder to navigate, if the sector is not on board.”

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One significant political development seen throughout 2023 has featured a move to more conservative governments in countries like Italy, Argentina, Greece, the Netherlands and even regions in Germany as the publics in those and other nations begin to revolt over constantly rising energy costs caused by the irrational policy choices made by the ruling elites.

CNN ran a story on Thanksgiving detailing a burgeoning revolt in Germany protesting that country’s increasingly authoritarian government’s latest mandates that will require consumers to ultimately replace their cheap and efficient gas-or-oil furnaces with costly and less efficient heat pumps in the coming years. Coming as it does on the heels of President Biden’s decision this month to invoke the rarely used Defense Production Act (DPA) to funnel $160 million in new subsidies to makers of heat pumps in preparation for similar mandates in a second term, it is becoming increasingly easy to see the seeds for a similar revolt being sown here in the United States.

Biden has been strongly urged by climate activists and members of his own party in congress to take things even further, to declare a full climate national emergency that would give him extraordinary, near-dictatorial powers to fight the nebulous, seemingly all-powerful climate enemy. Biden’s handlers have thus far been reluctant to make such an overtly authoritarian move in advance of next year’s election, but the decision to invoke the DPA is clearly an effort to test the waters to gauge public reaction.

Republican presidential contender Ron DeSantis certainly sees what is coming. “This is all part of an agenda to control you; and to control your behavior,” DeSantis said, as quoted by CNN. “They are trying to limit your choices as Americans, they’re trying to circumscribe your ambitions.”

Why, yes, that is exactly what the Biden government is doing, all in the name of climate change. Where COVID became the excuse to invoke authoritarian edicts in 2020, climate change is increasingly becoming the favored pretense used by aspiring authoritarians across the western world now. It is the excuse being used by federal bureaucracies now to invoke regulations ultimately designed to force you to replace your gas kitchen stove with more costly and less efficient electric ones. The move to subsidize the makers of noisy and costly heat pumps is an obvious precursor to forcing the replacement of your cheaper and more effective furnaces and air conditioning units. This is all plainly obvious.

Politicians with authoritarian tendencies in the U.S. and other “free” countries witnessed in 2020 and 2021 how easy it turned out to be to impose lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, mandatory masking and various other edicts on a sheepish, compliant public, especially given the willing, unquestioning cooperation of the legacy media and Big Tech platforms. It was quite clear in real time that these measures would be completely ineffective and incredibly destructive, outcomes even the incurious, government narrative-parroting legacy media operations are having to now admit. But the public at large was easily bullied into meekly accepting them without major upset. This was an incredibly dangerous lesson to teach these authoritarian brutes. (RELATED: VIJAY JAYARAJ: Africa Doesn’t Need Western Elites’ Meaningless Climate Policies)

But Americans – at least those outside of California – have one big advantage over their European and South American counterparts, which is that the efforts by the federal government to adopt these irrational measures have trailed several years behind efforts in Germany, the UK and other western democracies. The Biden regime is doing everything it can to try to catch up but has so far been unable to reach that goal. As a result, we get to observe the impacts of such policies on costs and freedoms in other countries and use those observations to help inform our own voting decisions.

Vigilance is one of the most important keys to the maintenance of real freedom. Real vigilance in advance of the 2024 elections in the U.S. reveals that down one path lies an inevitable evolution of an increasingly authoritarian government in the name of climate change. Down the other path lies a return to policies that promote the energy security America enjoyed from 2017-2020.

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I have had the pleasure of interviewing and introducing Sean several times over the years, and he is a true energy leader on the front lines. With over 30 years in the Global Energy, Trade, and Transportation markets, he has undertaken a new challenge where the United States needs the talent to help keep our energy security at the forefront.

Our past podcasts were when he was at the Port of Corpus Christi and was at the helm of a fantastic team that had made the port one of the world’s top 3 global energy export hubs.

In today’s episode, Sean covers the global LNG trading market and the underserved interests of the United States. Sit back, get your popcorn, and enjoy listening to Sean.

Thanks, Sean, for your leadership and your time. – Stu

Connect and follow Sean on his LinkedIn Here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanstrawbridge/

00:00 – Intro

01:42 – Voyager Energy Partners aims to export American oil and gas, ensuring clean and safe practices.

05:37 – Voyager Energy Partners controls vessels for LNG, emphasizing accountability in trade agreements.

07:45 – Are you also looking at the short term and long term contracts?

10:47 – Emphasizes U.S. LNG export market growth and diversification in global energy portfolios.

13:30 – Discusses Japan’s LNG use, vessel needs in hydrogen transport, and advocating for U.S. merchant marine.

16:35 – Highlights LNG’s role in vessels, the need for a global fueling network, and defending LNG’s environmental impact.

19:52 – Sean Strawbridge discusses the size of container ships and the need for infrastructure development.

23:01 – Sean Strawbridge discusses evolving shipping alternatives, infrastructure needs, and responsible hydrocarbon production.

28:34 – Outro

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