Alan Thornett assesses the outcome of COP29 and the response of the new Labour government to the challenge of decarbonisation and climate change.
This paper is an assessment of the latest UN climate change conference—COP29— which met in Baku Azerbaijan between the 11th and 22nd of November. 198 countries represented by 65,000 delegates, plus a staggering 1,700, coal, oil and gas lobbyists who were controversially granted access to it. It took place under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
It is also an assessment of the new Labour government in Britain as far as its climate change policies are concerned.
Most difficult
COP29 in Baku was the most difficult COP conference since Copenhagen, in 2009, which broke up in disarray when there was a Barak Obama led a split from it. This split was not surmounted until Paris in 2016.
It teetered on the brink of collapse for most of the time, and overran by two-days. This was not only because it was set the most difficult task, getting money out of the rich countries to help the poor countries deal with climate change, but because of the reactionary positions of the Azerbaijani Government. They opened the conference with the proposition that fossil fuel is a gift from god.
It also coincided with unprecedented flooding in Spain, and the news that 2024 is likely to be the warmest year ever recorded. Before the end of the year the French island of Mayotte was devastated by cyclone Chido and the worst storm in over a 100 years.
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, described the situation in Spain as: “Families running for their lives before the next hurricane strikes; workers and pilgrims collapsing in insufferable heat; floods tearing through communities and tearing down infrastructure; children going to bed hungry as droughts ravage crops,” he said. “All these disasters, and more, are being supercharged by human-generated climate change.”
Demands for Reform
As with many other COP conferences it faced demands for the reform of its procedures.
This time it took the form of an open letter signed by more than 20 key participants, and 150 supporters, from all corners of progressive society. The key participants include former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, the former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, the former secretary of the UN Framework Convention Karen Christiana Figueres, and the renowned Earth scientist Johan Rockström. He is the director of the Potsdam institute for climate research—which gave us, amongst many other things, planetary boundaries.
The letter makes the following appeal:
“We, the undersigned, write today to reiterate and update the call for COP reform, which was first conveyed in our open letter to the UNFCCC Secretariat, dated February 23rd, 2023.”
“We recognise the important diplomatic milestones of the past 28 years of climate negotiations. A remarkable consensus has been achieved with over 195 countries having agreed to strive to hold global warming to 1.5°C. We also recognise the key role of the UNFCCC Secretariat in helping to bring all 195 countries along the steps necessary to establish the global policy framework, which is underpinned by the Paris Agreement and its subsequent COP decisions.”
“Beyond the Paris goals, countries have now agreed to phase out fossil fuels, end inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies, stop deforestation by 2030, operationalise carbon trading globally, and most have joined the Global Methane Pledge.” Governments have pledged $100 billion annually to the Green Climate Fund, and the Loss and Damage Fund is officially established…
“28 COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this. However, its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity. This is what compels our call for a fundamental overhaul of the COP.”
They argued that: “We need strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries that do not support the phase-out/transition away from fossil energy” (as agreed in Dubai). They argued that: “Host countries must demonstrate their high level of ambition to uphold the goals of the Paris agreement” before they are allowed to take it on.
Although the letter is understandable, there is a problem. George Monbiot (who is not a signatory) argued something similar in advance of Dubai. This year he argues, in the Guardian, that the COP process “is the stuff of total delusion”. He goes on (rightly) to denounce the strengthening of carbon trading that took place in Baku, and the illusions that still exist in Carbon Capture and Storage. His main message, however, is that the COP process is virtually dead while he has no alternative to offer.
The Observer of Sunday November 17th got it right when it said, after reviewing the arguments, that: “The idea may sound attractive but it would be folly to act so precipitously. COP summits are still the only meetings at which every nation—rich and poor—gets a seat at the table when it comes to trying to save planet.”
The number of fossil fuel lobbyists do indeed need to be cut back, but the central task of the UN must be to win every country on the planet over in resolving the climate crisis, not crating a two-tire system which would risk a second split.
There is another reason as well. Every country learns something by staging a COP conference—even the petro-states. Individuals can also increase their commitment. Alok Sharma was press-ganged into organising COP26 in Glasgow, on behalf of the Tories after multiple ministerial positions in Tory administrations and emerged from the experience with a remarkable level commitment to the environment and a harsh critic of successive Tory governments.
This year there was also a vigorous campaign led by Saudi Arabia to reverse the breakthrough decision made at COP28 in Dubai to ‘transition away from fossil fuel’. They almost succeeded, but in the end it was put it on hold to be rediscussed at the next, COP30 in Belém in Brazil, from in November 2025.
The radical left
Whilst the big NGOs, the Green Party, and most independent environmentalists, recognise the crucial (if grossly inadequate) role played by the COP process, the radical left continue to dismiss it with varying degrees of vitriol. They, however, do have an alternative, they tell us that revolution is just around the corner, and anything else is a reformist diversion.
Many are even opposed to the electrification of road transport, for example, without which it will be impossible to reach net zero by 2050. Electric vehicles are not only the most efficient but also by far the cleanest. Globally the transportation sector is a major polluter—producing 24 per cent of all GHG emissions. We want far less cars, of course, but where they are unavoidable they should be electric.
We also want far less people exposed to the air pollution pumped out by road vehicles, which the left is reluctant to talk about. The transport sector is responsible for a large proportion of air pollution, as well as being a leading source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. An estimated 4.2 million premature deaths are attributed to ambient (outdoor) air pollution globally.
Balance Sheet of Baku
Geoffrey Lean, a specialist environmental reporter, writing in The Guardian of Sunday 24th of November argued (rightly) that:
“The (Baku) deal falls a long way short of hopes at the start of the climate summit, and even further behind what the world urgently needs. But coming after negotiations that frequently teetered on the very edge of collapse, the result does keep climate talks alive, despite Donald Trump’s second coming, and has laid the first ever international foundation, however weak, on which the world could finally construct a system of financing poor countries’ transition away from fossil fuels.”
“The meeting was always going to be difficult given that it requires reaching decisions by consensus among nearly 200 governments, a process described by Ed Miliband as playing “198-dimensional chess”. And in focusing on this issue of finance, the first COP to do so, it was addressing the thorniest issue of all.”
Lean is right. Eventually, after a walkout by the poorest countries, the conference agreed to a figure of “at least” $300bn a year to help poor counties transition away from fossil fuel, whilst this trebles the previous commitment, is well short of the $1.3tr the poor countries were asking for.
Starmer’s intervention
To his credit Keir Starmer was at the start of the conference, and Ed Miliband was there throughout. Starmer announced that the UK, in line with its advisory body The Climate Change Committee, would be strengthening its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) by pledging to cut its carbon emissions by at least 81 per cent against 1990 levels by 2035. It was a very significant announcement. He also pledged a further £239m towards protecting the rainforests.
(The Climate Change Committee was established by the Climate Change Act 2008. it’s job is to advise governments on climate change but it has historically been far more radicle than successive administrations.)
Starmer’s announcement was well received. Guterres told the conference that: “The fallout from Mr Trump’s election and the political crisis in Germany mean that leaders of several of the world’s richest nations did not travel to Baku. But Sir Keir Starmer took the opportunity to announce an ambitious new climate goal for the UK”.
Rebecca Newsom, a Senior Policy Adviser at Greenpeace International, has said since that: “Starmer’s commitment to a relatively ambitious new target for cutting emissions will inject new momentum into the talks and he is right to highlight the huge opportunity offered by the green transition to cut bills, unlock investment and create jobs across the UK. But much clearer plans are still needed—particularly more investment for those working in offshore oil and gas to transition to renewable energy.”
The Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay MP said that:
“This COP has tested the patience of everyone who wants to see the devastating climate crisis tackled. The final agreement is simply not good enough for the world’s poorest nations with too little money to deal with devastating impact of climate change, and the oil and gas lobby has succeeded in weakening the commitment made at the last COP to ‘transition away from fossil fuels”.
“Yet, COP is still the one international forum in which those who are today bearing the major, immediate burdens of the human-made climate catastrophe become visible and heard. It is the one forum that offers the chance to bring nations together to act and move away from the fossil fuel economies that are destroying our planet and making life intolerable for millions in the global South.”… “That is worth protecting and building on” she said.
Hitting the ground running
Labour have undoubtedly hit the ground running in their first five months of office—as far as climate change is concerned. They have initiated the creation Great British Energy, and they have changed their fiscal rules to separate long-term infrastructure borrowing from the day-to-day running of the economy, which is crucial to decarbonisation.
They have vetoed new investment in North Sea oil and gas since Labour took office, and support for a new deep coal mine in Cumbria was withdrawn before it could be made illegal. The replacement of gas boilers by heat pumps has started, and new gas boilers will be outlawed from 2035.
There is also to be a tightening up of eco-regulations on new-build houses, although, regrettably, solar roof panels are to be advisory, rather than mandatory, at the present time. At the moment around 30 per cent of new homes are solar powered—which is a dramatic increase from a years ago when the Tories were in charge. According to Starmer, the government is close to approving 150 new infrastructure projects.
Anyone who thinks that this Labour government is the same or only marginally different to the Tories should think again. Today’s rump Tory Party are climate deniers. Kemi Badenoch, the new party leader, has told Parliament that she is also a net-zero sceptic. Whilst the Tories are all about cuts, including the size of the state, Labour are about taxing the employers in order to have better public services, including the NHS, and both decarbonising the National Grid and building 1.5m new homes by 2030.
Behind Badenoch, however, is Farage, and behind Farage if Trump and Musk’s multi-millions.
Action Plan
On December 13th labour doubled down on its commitment to decarbonisation with an important document entitled: A Clean Power 2030 Action Plan: A New Era of Clean Electricity.
Ed Miliband wrote in the foreword: “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain has experienced a devastating cost of living crisis caused by our exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets. Every family and business in the country has paid the price and we remain exposed to future energy shocks. In an increasingly unstable world, our dependence on fossil fuels leaves us deeply vulnerable as a country—and that is true no matter where they come from. But there is a solution. By sprinting to clean, homegrown energy, we can takeback control from the dictators and the petrostates”.
As I point out in my article on the Botley West solar farm in Oxfordshire, Lumfly Energy, which advises green energy investors, says the following about what’s on offer:
“Many landowners are looking to diversify their income streams with renewable energy projects. And, as the average return on investment for a solar farm is between 10% and 20%, these projects usually pay for themselves within 5 to 10 years.”
In other words, it is a very good investment for landowners at a time of crisis in the farming industry.
It is also a way of producing a lot of renewable energy quickly and environmentalists should embrace it—even where it involves private capital. Large quantities renewable quickly are crucial and it can be nationalised at a later date whereas you can’t do anything with a dead planet.
It is one of the reasons why Starmer is able to drop most of his £28bn a year green energy commitment, because private finance is increasingly available for such projects, wind and solar in particular. It is important that the left are clear about this because it would be a disaster if the left opposed green energy projects because they are being created by private capital.
Reactionary policies
Labour still has reactionary policies, of course. And they are capable of retreating from progressives policies under pressure from the employers, who hate the recent budget, or from the Tories or Reform UK. They refuse to end the scandalous two-child limit on benefits and they continue to advocate crack-pot policies like carbon capture and storage and carbon trading. They also continue to support nuclear power, despite the unresolved risk factors, and the costs continuing to spiral out of control.
Labour’s greatest liability, however, is its immigration policy, which is also the biggest threat to a second term. whilst it has some tactical differences with the Tories, over Ruanda for example, they agree with them on the fundamentals. They both see immigration in negative terms and strive to deport as many people as possible. Both refuse to countenance safe routes (other than in exceptional cases) and neither are prepared to defend migration as the asset it is to the UK. They both subscribe to what can best be called state racism.
It’s why Starmer finds himself seeking advice in immigration policy from the fascist Italian prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni.
The Solar Revolution
One thing that is lacking at recent COP conferences is a proper discussion on the rapid rise of renewables—off-shore and on-shore wind, and in particular solar—and the opportunities that this creates for improving NCDs.
Research by Our World in Data shows that the cost of solar panels has dropped by 90 per cent in the last decade. The cost of onshore wind has fallen by 70 per cent. Solar is also the most versatile and easy to maintain of all the renewable technologies available. Stick a solar panel in a field and it will function for decades with minimal attention.
In a special edition of The Economist, in June 2024, headlined the Dawn Of The Solar Age, the renewable energy analyst Michael Liebreich contends that:
“What makes solar energy revolutionary is the rate of growth which brought it to this just-beyond-the-marginal state. Michael Liebreich, a veteran analyst of clean-energy technology and economics, puts it this way: in 2004, it took the world a whole year to install a gigawatt of solar-power capacity in 2010, it took a month; in 2016, a week. In 2023 there were single days which saw a gigawatt of installation take place.”
Ed Miliband approved three large solar farms in the East Midlands within days of his appointment as Secretary of State. They were the Mallard Pass solar farm in Rutland, the Gate Burton solar farm in Lincolnshire and the Sunnica Solar Energy Park in Suffolk. They are capable (jointly) of supplying over 400,000 homes, equivalent to a city the size of Birmingham and they had all been stalled by the Tories. My article on the Solar revolution can be found here.
Under new government rules new solar farms over 50 megawatts need the approval of the Minister of State to go to the next stage, and Miliband gave this with great enthusiasm. It will now come back to him for the final sign-off. Local consultation remains important, but national priorities must prevail particularly at a time of national emergency.
The Economist also predicts that: “Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid-2030s… On current trends the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today… Much of the world—including Africa, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.”
The National Grid
Where public investment is particularly crucial is with the National Grid—which needs a rapid upgrade if the 2030 decarbonisation deadline is to be met. (We are talking England and Wales since the Grid is devolved in Scotland.)
In November (2023) there were 500 GWs of renewable energy waiting for grid connection, and the backlog it is still growing. The grid has a £16bn project designed to resolve this problem. This includes new transmission lines and distribution to share electricity with neighbouring countries, a new overhead line from Chesterfield to Willington, two new offshore high voltage electricity links between Scotland and England, a new East London substation, and a 3km transmission tunnel through Snowdonia.
They also plan to build a 114-mile above ground power line from south of Norwich to Tilbury in Essex to carry electricity generated from offshore windfarms. This, however, has attracted strong opposition.
The BBC reported, in May 2024, that the Norfolk County Councils Scrutiny Committee had discussed the proposal and were opposed to it.
“Keith Kiddie, Conservative county councillor for Diss and Roydon, said: “I’ve never seen people either quite so angry or quite so in despair over these proposals. The National Grid is currently asking for people’s views on the proposals, which it says will help the government meet its target of net zero by 2050. The Norwich to Tilbury project would run between the existing substations at Bramford in Suffolk and Tilbury, as well as connecting to new offshore wind farms”.
Dan Roper, chairman of the County Council scrutiny committee, said they opposed the pylons completely. “We feel the pylon plan is absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “It doesn’t bring benefits to Norfolk, there are alternative technologies out there, which haven’t been fully explored yet.
Steve Morphew, leader of the Labour group, said members supported renewable energy—just not pylons. “Clearly, we are very keen on alternative sources of wind generation and all sorts of new technologies which can make the power in the first place,” he said, however, “We should get our share by making sure that we don’t have to put up with pylons and that lines go under the sea or under the ground, frankly anything but pylons so we don’t spoil our county.”
China and India
China already has a commanding lead in every field green technology—including electric cars. China dominates solar energy globally with a current capacity of 2,919 gigawatts. It also manufactures 80 per cent of solar panels. It is by far the biggest producer a user of batteries for both EVs.
India now has the biggest population on earth and solar power has allowed it to leapfrog the fossil fuel era, in some respects, and go straight to large scale solar and wind projects, financed by a combination of the private and governmental capital. And what’s happening in India can be a model for countries in Africa, Central and South America and South East Asia.
A good description of this process is provided by Akshat Rathi in his recent book “Climate Capitalism—Winning the Global race for Zero Emissions”, first published in Britain in 2023. Rathi references the Pavagada Solar Park a few hundred miles from Bengaluru, the tech capital of India. It covers 13,000 acres—with the capacity to generate 2,050 MW of emission free electricity. This is 2.5 times the size of the farm from proposed in Oxfordshire which is currently the biggest being proposed in Britain, and was commissioned in 2019.
As Rathi says: “The government began leasing land from farmers to build the solar park. Without it he said, pointing to the construction site where rows of neatly laid solar panels stretched to the horizon, hundreds of farmers in debt with large agricultural loans would have been staring into the abyss.
Storage
The dinosaurs of the Tory party and Reform UK like to bleat on about how the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow when they are attempting to treat green energy as a joke, but there is a serious point involved. Wind and solar are indeed ‘intermittent’ forms of energy and need large amounts of storage capacity built into the system if they are to deliver a constant supply of renewable power.
The Royal Society puts it this way: “No matter how much generating capacity is available, there will be times when wind and solar cannot meet all demand, and large-scale storage will be needed. Historical weather records indicate that it will be necessary to store large amounts of energy (some 1000 times that is provided by pumped hydro for example) for many years”.
China has nearly half the world’s battery storage capacity and this is growing at great speed. From 2022 to 2023, the country added over 19 gigawatts of storage to its grid, moving from 7.8 to 27.1 GW. The US also significantly increased its capacity in 2023, moving from 9.3 to 15.8 GW. Against this Britain has little to offer. It does not even have enough gigafactory capacity to run a car manufacturing industry properly.
China also has 82% of the world’s gigafactory capacity for electric car batteries. This is due to China’s investments in domestic battery producers and its access to raw materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel. However, a number of western countries, notably in Europe and North America, which are expected to reduce China’s share to 68% by 2030.
Conclusion
No one knows what is going to happen when Trump takes office for the second time. He will shape the world to his own distorted ideas as much as he possibly can. He regards climate change ‘a hoax’ and will unravel as much of Biden’s $369 of climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, as possible.
The Labour government in Britain is vulnerable despite its 412 seats and its 174 majority. Although winning the election by a landslide, its share of the vote was just 33.7 per cent—the lowest of the any party forming a post-war majority government. The gap between vote share and seat share was the most disproportionate on record. Reform UK won 14.3 per cent of the vote which gave them five MPs putting them in front of the Lib Dems who got 78 MPs. The Greens won 6.7 percent which gave them four MPs. The need for proportional representation has never been clearer.
Fortunately, the populist right does not have all the cards in its hands. The transition to green energy is irreversible—even in the USA. This was the case with Trump’s first term and it will be the same with his second term. Unfortunately, he has the capacity to create a setback on the road to net-zero which can cause a lot of misery death and destruction in the meantime.
The Trumpites, however, are climate deniers first and foremost and are unlikely to be able to challenge Labour if by that time it has decarbonised the National Grid, multiplied the availability of clean energy many times over, are well advanced in replacing gas boilers, have met its housing target or come close to it, and have improved the social service by reinvestment. If Labour are able to do that they will be in a strong position win another term.
Jonathan Freedman puts it this way in the Guardian of December 6th under the headline: “We cannot afford for Starmer’s government to fail because Farage is lying in wait”:
“This government must not fail. Let’s get that clear from the start. If Keir Starmer does not succeed, too many British voters will conclude that both the traditional parties, Labour and Conservative, have proved useless and that it is time to try something else – with that something else being nationalist populism. If this Labour government goes down, what comes next will be Faragism, either as a Reform UK-Conservative hybrid or neat and undiluted.”
It was, and is, a dangerous situation. Climate chaos could be irreversible within a decade and the 1.5°C limit hangs by a thread. Against this the decision reached in which developed countries pledged to “take the lead” in raising $300bn annually to help developing countries protect themselves against climate change was entirely inadequate. Even if the 1.5°C is consistently breached, however, it will remain as a scientific target for a safe planet.
The task we face today is not whether global capitalism can be overthrown in the next five years, but the transitional question as to whether it can be forced to take the measures necessary to save the planet from global warming as a part of a longer-term struggle to replace capitalism with an ecosocialist society. If we are unable to build a movement capable of forcing serious change under capitalism, how are we going to build a movement capable of its revolutionary overthrow?
The left must lead
The left must give a lead on this. The harsh reality is that there will be organised opposition any national infrastructure project that is proposed even if that project is crucial to reaching net-zero the future of the planet depends on it. Local consultation, and the right to oppose, are important but so is the right of the majority to have the infrastructure necessary for planetary survival.
Not every opposition to a solar park or a wind farm, or indeed the upgrading of the national grid, is based on nimbyism’ but many are and If the left is unable to tell the difference then the planet has a bleak future indeed.
It is to the credit of the Labour government that they are taking climate Change and its implications seriously but the left must play its part if we are to transform electricity generation and break the back of the fossil fuel economy in Britain in the next five years.
Alan Thornett, January 2025
