Poetra.RH/Shutterstock At COP28 in Dubai, Opec producers have an important platform to make the case for retaining oil and gas in the transition.Priorities will be to soften any proposed language against fossil fuels and promote emission abatement technologies that will prolong their use 鈥� namely carbon capture, nature-based offsets and blue hydrogen.There is mounting opposition to these technologies but also new support for some of them in the Global South, as global climate battle-lines shift. Save for later Print Download Share There is a stacked to-do list at this COP, with nations charged with responding effectively to a first "global stocktake" of climate progress since the 2015 Paris Agreement. The stocktake will highlight that the world is badly off trajectory to hit its goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5掳C. It's also an unfortunate paradox that at the same time, as both the need and the political support for concrete climate action intensifies, the hurdles to accelerate that action are multiplying. Differences between producers and consumers have never been starker, with Opec recently raising its projections for oil demand growth at the same time as OECD energy watchdog the International Energy Agency (IEA) slashed its view on long-term appetite for oil. Economic headwinds, inflation and higher interest rates are making the task of funding the capital-intensive clean energy transition even more of a challenge.
