Erick Burgueño Salas
Research expert covering climate change and the water industry
COP 29 - statistics & facts
2024 is almost guaranteed to be the warmest year on record. Meanwhile, fossil fuel consumption worldwide hit a new record in 2023, with more than 140 petawatts-hour consumed across the globe. Amidst the upward trend in the use of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change, and the ever more visible impacts of a warming planet, world leaders gathered for the 29th time at the Conference of Parties (COP 29) of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change in November. The COP 29 took place in Baku, Azerbaijan, and gathered controversy due to the oil and gas dependency of the host nation, as well as generalized disappointment from the results.
After two weeks of discussions, the closing of COP 29 left dissatisfaction across the board. From climate finance to the phasing out of fossil fuels, and further steps and strategies toward mitigation, a lot of crucial decisions were left to be discussed in the following summit. COP 30 will take place in November 2025, in Belém, Brazil.
The finance conference
The main topic on the COP 29 agenda was the establishment of a new collective quantified climate finance goal (NCQG). The NCQG will replace the previous goal set during COP 15, where developed countries agreed to mobilize 100 billion U.S. dollars per year for climate action in developing countries. While developing countries were united behind a demand of 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars in climate finance per year, the final text of COP 29 saw developed countries agreeing to triple the existing annual goal, to 300 billion U.S. dollars mobilized by 2035. Parties also agreed to work together in order to scale up finance from private and public sources, as well as voluntary contributions from developing countries, in order to reach the trillion-dollar goal. However, discussions on how this scaling should be undertaken were postponed to COP 30 in Brazil. In 2022, climate finance mobilized by developed countries surpassed 100 billion U.S. dollars for the first time since the target was set.A phaseout of fossil fuels? Not a priority
The agenda for COP 29 did not explicitly include discussions for a foreseeable phaseout of fossil fuels, even though the COP 28 deal mentioned the need for a transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in order to achieve net-zero by 2050. Azerbaijan’s economy depends greatly on crude oil and natural gas exports, with the country’s president even hailing fossil fuels as “a gift of God” during the first week of the summit. The conflict of interests reignited the debate about the role of fossil fuel companies in the UN summit, as Azerbaijan became the third petrostate in a row to be granted the presidency of the climate talks, after the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.An agreement on carbon markets
COP 29 saw limited progress toward mitigation discussions, with the conference’s main highlights being the publication of updated Nationally Determined Contributions from Brazil, the UK, and the United Arab Emirates. In addition, one of the biggest successes of the conference was finalizing discussions around Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, almost a decade after its establishment. The agreement forms the building blocks and minimum standards for carbon markets worldwide, although further discussions will continue in the coming years.After two weeks of discussions, the closing of COP 29 left dissatisfaction across the board. From climate finance to the phasing out of fossil fuels, and further steps and strategies toward mitigation, a lot of crucial decisions were left to be discussed in the following summit. COP 30 will take place in November 2025, in Belém, Brazil.
