COP presidents should be ‘judged by what they deliver’, says climate policy specialist

In Azerbaijan protestors have gathered outside one of the main plenary halls at the UN’s COP29 climate summit in Baku.

It’s part of a global day of action calling for climate justice amid slow progress at the summit on reaching a finance deal for rich countries to pay for the damage their pollution has caused.

We spoke to Jennifer Morgan, who’s Germany’s special representative for international climate policy. We asked her if she agreed with a former UN boss this week who said the entire COP process needs radical overhaul.

Jennifer Morgan: I think the COPs are absolutely essential. That they are absolutely key is where every country in the world has a seat at the table. We also know this is a global problem. If we don’t have a UN kind of a framework, then we would need to invent it. We need everybody there. I think the key thing, though, is that we need to judge these COP presidents by what they deliver. The UK hosted a COP and the UK, you could say, exports fossil fuels, but Glasgow was a good success. The UK government took that very seriously.

Alex Thomson: So your view is even if you hold them in repressive petrostates like Dubai, you can get change as we did last year?

Jennifer Morgan: Yes, if the COP president listens to all the countries and really performs a COP president role, which is not a national role, it’s a multinational, multilateral role and really moves forward, then, we saw last year, you can get that transition away from fossil fuels in a gas and oil producing country.

Alex Thomson: But when people say, ‘look, there are huge numbers of lobbyists from oil, gas and coal allowed into these things’, surely there’s room for reform on things like that.

Jennifer Morgan: I think, Alex, there are areas for reform, that’s for sure. One is we need to have good transparency and processes around who is here. And I think there’s been some improvements already on trying to get it clearer. We do need all stakeholders at the table, that’s for sure. And we need other improvements, like we need to modernise this and make sure that it’s fit for purpose today.

Alex Thomson: But your view there is, if I read you right, I infer from that you’re saying that we need oil and gas and even coal at the table because we’ve got to work with them. Banning these organisations, these companies, ain’t going to get us anywhere.

Jennifer Morgan: No, we need to have an all society approach. For me, representing Germany, I obviously travel to oil producing countries and we work together to see how they can diversify their economy. I work with South Africa to see how it can have a just energy transition. Those are all extremely important conversations and they need to be here at the table, but they need to be focussed on achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Alex Thomson: Right. We’ve got to talk Trump, so let’s do it now. Two Democrat senators having a press conference right in the COP saying, ‘don’t worry about the White House. We’re still in movement. City states across the state are going to behave as if we’re still in Paris, ignore Trump and still chase the 1.5 Celsius goal’. Is that really how it’s going to be and is that significant?

Jennifer Morgan: I think it is significant that they’re here. I think it is significant that there are states that are moving forward in the US. And I think the figures of the International Energy Agency are so important. 85% of new power plants are renewable. Twice the investment into renewables as into fossil fuels and actually seeing a peak going down because the demand is dropping, because we’re seeing the electric vehicles, we’re seeing more efficiency coming in.

Alex Thomson: That’s the demand for oil?

Jennifer Morgan: Yeah, exactly. So if you don’t have combustion based engines that need oil and you’re shifting to electricity that needs to be powered by renewables, that demand for oil goes down. So economics are moving here and geopolitics of energy is shifting a lot.

Alex Thomson: So all of that is true. Trillions going into renewable energy, as you rightly point out. So we don’t need to worry about a COP. We don’t need a COP because business is going where the money’s made and they’re going to solve it, right?

Jennifer Morgan: I think COP has played a very important role in this transformation because it’s been sending the signals about where we need to go. Countries have to put in place their national climate plans, but it’s not enough. We know we’re on a pathway for temperature rise that’s linked with those floods that we’re seeing in Spain, with the droughts that we’ve seen in Zimbabwe and other places. So that’s why we’re here, is to accelerate that, to intensify it, because we need to get emissions down. And the good news is that the cost of renewables has come down and we can move forward with that so that we can hand-in-hand be growing our economy and reducing emissions at the same time.