EU strives for common position ahead of COP28

LUXEMBOURG, Luxembourg — EU environment ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday were working on setting a common position for the bloc on fossil fuels and carbon-capture tech ahead of the COP28.

Brussels is looking for tripling the amount of global renewable energy used by the end of this decade and doubling energy efficiency in line with the goals of the COP28 presidency.

The 27 EU countries have already set for themselves a horizon of 2050 to abolish "unabated" fossil fuels -- meaning those reliant on coal, oil and gas that do not have mechanisms to capture or store carbon.

That issue is expected to be bitterly fought over at the UN climate conference in Dubai, and is already the subject of strained debate between EU countries.

The negotiating mandate has to be unanimously adopted and will be the one the European Union will throw its weight behind when officials and leaders gather in Dubai from late November to mid-December for COP28.

Some European governments want the "unabated" label withdrawn or have strict conditions attached to the use of carbon capture technology, to prevent them being used to as justification for continued fossil-fuel burning.

"There's no alternative for driving down emissions across the board," the newly appointed EU commissioner for climate matters, Wopke Hoekstra, said.

"However some sectors are extremely hard to abate" and thus carbon-capture technology was needed "as part of the total solution space," he said.

France's energy transition minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher called such tech "of interest" but added that they should be reserved for sectors that were unable otherwise to decarbonise.

"The goal is to have a strong mandate where one has a strong opening negotiating position to obtain concrete results to reduce emissions in the oil sector, on coal, on financing," she said.

Spain's ecological transition minister Teresa Ribera, whose country was chairing the Luxembourg meeting, said carbon-capture technologies should be linked "to some sectors" only.

Hoekstra said a global commitment to eliminating fossil fuels entirely would be "very complicated" as there is "a lot of tension" in a number of regions.

And, when it comes to an