Comment

This COP is already being reflected on as one of the most difficult in the history of the negotiations. And the final text has not made it all worth it. So, what was agreed? And what does it mean for addressing the climate crisis and the work to come next year on the road to COP30 in Belém?

Our experts pull out the key messages from the International Energy Agency's 2024 global update on the energy sector and its implications for the climate.

Our research found Australia’s coal and gas exports were responsible for 1.15 billion tonnes of CO₂ emissions in 2023. An additional 46 million tonnes of CO₂ were emitted domestically in the process of extracting, processing and distributing those fossil fuels purely for export. That takes the total to 1.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ attributable to fossil fuel exports.

The latest Plenary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just concluded in Sofia, Bulgaria. Despite days of deliberation, delegates were not able to agree on delivering the next round of reports in time for the second global stocktake, despite a request to do so from governments in the first global stocktake outcome agreed in Dubai last year.

"One of the key things about this whole problem is that the only way to solve it is that we need to rapidly reduce and phase out fossil fuels. That can’t wait a decade. We need to be making substantial reductions this decade," Bill Hare said in address to the Australia Institute’s Climate Integrity Summit on 20 March 2024.

Last week in Istanbul, climate scientists and governments met in the sixtieth session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to agree a plan for its seventh, and potentially most consequential report cycle. The outcome means the IPCC will most probably take a more streamlined approach to its seventh cycle.