COP28 deal says gas to play role in energy transition

The tense week of talks in Dubai had at one point teetered on the brink of collapse, but Mr Bowen said negotiators had turned a potential breakdown into a breakthrough.

The decision could inject momentum into the private sector’s pursuit of clean energy opportunities, and lends international political support to the Albanese government’s domestic efforts to get Australia off coal and eventually gas and into renewables.

Mr Bowen said COP28 had “stepped up”, and he vowed to “take this energy home and put it into action”.

“Australia wants to be a renewable energy powerhouse, we want to create the energy for ourselves, and for our region and for the world. … The COP decision today gives us a very good ecosystem in which to develop that plan,” he said.

“It sends a signal to the world’s markets, investors and businesses that this is the direction of travel for countries right around the world.”

The conference not only gave the government some global cover for its renewables policies, but also backed up Mr Bowen’s acknowledgement that gas will be part of the Australian economy well into the 2030s.

The communique also unexpectedly made reference to nuclear energy, which is the political passion project of opposition climate change and energy spokesman Ted O’Brien.

Mr O’Brien has called for Australia to sign up to a declaration by 22 countries at COP28 to triple global nuclear energy capacity, and to step back from a similar declaration to triple global renewables capacity.

Mr Bowen rejected the Coalition’s focus.

“Twenty countries signed a nuclear page, more than 120 countries signed a renewable energy pledge, and Ted O’Brien’s big idea to get us into international good company is to join the pledge that 20 people signed and to get out of the pledge that more than 120 people signed,” he said.

The communique also recognises a role for carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) technologies, another bugbear of climate activists and the vulnerable Pacific and Caribbean islands.

But like the Albanese government’s policy, the COP28 text suggests CCUS should focus on hard-to-abate sectors and the production of blue hydrogen.

US climate envoy John Kerry said gas and CCUS would play only “a limited and temporary role in facilitating the effort to largely phase out fossil fuels in our energy systems by 2050”.

Some of the criticisms of the COP28 outcome came not just from green groups but from Pacific island leaders, who wanted a much more strongly worded communique than the one presented, which was as far as Saudi Arabia was prepared to go.

Mr Bowen sought to head off any criticism that he had not backed up the Pacific countries’ concerns.

“It is a global consensus, and consensus is difficult to reach. … This decision is not what everybody would have written themselves as they got off the aeroplane. That’s as true in the Pacific as it’s true [in] Saudi Arabia,” he said.

“But it is a clear direction of travel. And for countries that are at the frontline of climate change, their voices are being heard. And as long as we have anything to do with it, they will continue to be heard, and continue to be heard even more loudly.”