Leaders offered competing visions of emissions reductions at the conference where host country president Ilham Aliyev is seen as a contentious choice to lead the event, both because of his country's autocratic regime and its continued unapologetic fossil fuel production. He has dubbed oil and gas a “gift of God.” And global fossil fuel lobbyists and industry members comprise more than 17,000 of the total of an estimated 70,000 live and virtual delegates this year, according to an analysis by the Kick Big Polluters Out environmental advocacy coalition, more than delegation counts from most countries attending.

“The sound you hear is the ticking clock,” countered U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, a consistent voice on climate action. “We are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, and time is not on our side,” he said.

Noting nations’ pledges made at last year's COP28 conference to back away from fossil fuels and increase adaptation and renewable efforts, Guterres made the business case for continuing in this direction. “The economic imperative is clearer and more compelling with every renewables rollout, every innovation and every price drop,” he said. “Last year—and for the first time—the amount invested in grids and renewables overtook the amount spent on fossil fuels. And almost everywhere, solar and wind are the cheapest sources of electricity. So doubling down on fossil fuels is absurd. The clean energy revolution is here. No group, no business and no government can stop it.”

Funding is top of mind this year, according to several sources attending the meetings, which conclude on Nov. 22.

“This is the finance COP,” said Melanie Robinson, global climate, economics and finance director at the World Resources Institute, on a press call. “We’re here, above all, to agree how much external finance will be available for developing countries to adapt to climate change and get on to low-carbon development pathways" through collective and quantified goals on climate finance. 

The new finance target goals, once they are negotiated, will represent the first such update since 2009, in which developed nations pledged $100 billion annually by 2020 for emissions reduction and resilience efforts in developing countries, which bear disproportionate impacts from climate change. 

“The big question will be, how many times bigger than the $100 billion ... can this number go?” adds Robinson.

Countries Release Targets

With countries set to release updated emissions reduction and climate adaptation targets, called Nationally Determined Contributions, before a February deadline, Brazil, next year’s COP host, released its updated targets on Nov. 13. It aims for a 59% to 67% reduction from 2005 levels by 2035, or between 850 million to 1.05 billion tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent. 

Reaching the goal’s top figure “could put Brazil on a pathway to reach net-zero by 2050,” said Karen Silverwood-Cope, World Resources Institute Brazil climate director, in a statement. Sh adds that “getting there requires bold domestic policies to halt deforestation and promote restoration, decarbonize its energy sector and foster green industry.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Nov. 12 a minimum 81% emissions reduction goal by 2035 compared to 1990 levels.

Nationally Determined Contributions “have potential to put countries on a path to net zero. … but there will have to be policies to back that up,” said David Waskow, institute director of International Climate Action. 

U.S. Announces Final Methane Emissions Rule

As COP29 proceeded, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released a final rule allowing it to apply a waste emissions charge for methane emissions at oil and gas facilities where they exceed 25,000 metric tons of CO2-equivalent per year. Fees begin at $900 per metric ton and ramp up to $1,500 per metric ton by 2026. The rule, authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act, is intended to incentivize reductions. EPA estimates implementation will reduce 1.2-million metric tons of methane, or 34 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent through 2035 and generate up to $2 billion in cumulative climate benefits.

The U.S. and European Union launched at COP26 in 2021 the Global Methane Pledge—to collectively reduce by 2030 global emissions levels of methane by 30% from 2020 levels. The pledge now has 158 countries participating. But whether the EPA rule will survive under Lee Zeldin, the president-elect's pick to run the agency, is unclear, with Trump saying his nominee would “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions.”

Business groups at the meetings made the economic case for environmental action. Climate related extreme-weather events between 2014 and 2023 have caused more than $2 trillion in economic losses in 2023 dollars, said a report prepared by consultant Oxera for the International Chamber of Commerce. It analyzed more than 4,000 events to estimate the costs of physical damage and rebuilding as well as the impact of lost economic contributions due to deaths and injury.

The report calls the $2-trillion figure an underestimate for the true cost, which the group describes as “likely orders of magnitude greater,” accounting for data gaps from less developed countries and metrics the report does not cover. “The economic case for mitigating the costs of climate-driven extreme weather events is clear,” the analysis states, adding that measures can also create economic opportunity.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an international group member, released its own message before COP-29 that the U.S. should not again pull out of the Paris agreement. “The Chamber believes it is critical for the U.S. government to actively participate in the U.N. process to demonstrate continued leadership on a topic of such global significance and to ensure the business community is part of the discussion,” said Martin Durbin, president of the Chamber's Global Energy Institute.