Countries Say Out with Fossil Fuels, in With Renewable Energy As Climate Negotiations Resume
Newsletter
From 8-13 February, government leaders from around the globe gathered in Geneva, Switzerland to kick off a busy year of climate change negotiations. The UN climate change conference is just 10 months away and these sessions aim to smooth the way to a successful climate agreement come December.
The Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP), formed under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), succeeded in further expanding a draft negotiation text which will be used as a baseline for the remaining negotiations this year.
The full text is here, and a session brief is here, but one key takeaway was the broad acknowledgement that fossil fuel subsidies must be phased out while actions on renewable energy and energy efficiency must be scaled up.
The next step for governments is to present their national action plans (referred to as intended nationally determined contributions - INDCs) in support of the new climate agreement. The national action plans will detail how countries plan to step away from fossil fuels, step towards renewable energy and increase their resilience to climate change.
IRENA participated in the session to share resources with delegates that can aid in the elaboration of their national action plans. For example, IRENAs renewable readiness assessments (already completed with 22 individual countries), island roadmaps, and the Remap 2030 reports all contain valuable information on the global potential and opportunities for renewable energy. Resource, the newly launched online search platform, also contains data and information countries can use as they consider their contributions.
As the road to Paris continues, IRENA will continue working with countries to aid where possible in the development of their INDCs.
For more information, email remap@irena.org
