Iran war must trigger fresh resolve for fossil fuel withdrawal at COP31 – German env min

The energy crisis caused by the war on Iran must be a wake-up call showing that phasing out fossil fuels and acting on climate change can strengthen supply security and competitiveness, Germany’s environment minister has said. “The collective experience of the Strait of Hormuz - that most of us are vulnerable to fossil price shocks - can make a decisive difference,” minister Carsten Schneider said at the Bonn climate negotiations, a preparatory forum for the upcoming UN climate conference COP31 in Antalya, Turkey, at the end of the year. 

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping lane in the Persian Gulf, since early March has cut off a significant share of global fossil fuel supplies, causing price rises for oil and gas worldwide. 

Geopolitical tensions must not prevent progress on climate action or finding joint solutions, Schneider said, urging all countries to present ambitious national targets at COP31. The upcoming conference could be the one “at which agreements turn into investments, targets into concrete projects and political promises into measurable progress,” he added. 

At the talks in Bonn, however, little progress was made on binding targets for ending fossil fuel use, according to NGO Oxfam. “The long-agreed worldwide fossil fuel phase-out has unfortunately not come any closer,” Oxfam climate expert Jan Kowalzig said. He argued that rich industrialised countries and newly industrialising ones are reluctant to commit to concrete climate measures, while fossil fuel exporters are actively exploiting the difficult political environment to obstruct progress. A global roadmap presented on the sidelines of the official UN negotiations by last year’s COP host Brazil, however, was received well by many participants, he added. 

NGO Germanwatch also said the Bonn talks left much work to be done ahead of COP31. “The talks were too slow and too conflict-laden to lay the groundwork for a successful global climate conference,” said the NGO’s climate policy expert Laura Schäfer. While the Iran energy crisis had delivered the strongest push for climate action since the Paris Agreement in 2015, the Bonn negotiations failed to reflect this, she argued. 

The stance of the US under president Donald Trump of scaling back international climate finance, echoed by other wealthy countries, poses a particular threat to the talks, Schäfer added. “Commitments made only a few years ago are likely not to be honoured,” she said, adding that the joint Turkish-Australian COP31 presidency now faces the task of finding a way through this impasse. “Many countries from the Global South are right to ask where the funds will come from for electrification, just transition and climate adaptation. The Bonn negotiations did not provide answers to this question.” 

In reaction to the slow progress on phasing out fossil fuels at the UN climate conferences, a group of more than 50 countries launched parallel negotiations aimed at producing concrete plans to end the use of coal, oil and gas in line with international climate targets. While the first meeting, held in Colombia in April this year, did not yield concrete commitments, German government representatives called the event a “milestone” that demonstrated significant momentum among many countries to advance on the fossil fuel phase-out.