Companies are once again waiting for politicians to take the lead

The market must do its job, also in the field of climate. At COP28, the climate summit in Dubai, this sound is more emphatic than ever. Without efforts from the business community, it will not be possible to halt global warming. Feike Sijbesma, chairman of the supervisory board of Philips, puts it this way: “Even if climate agreements are concluded by governments, it is the business community that must stand up and speak out to make emission reductions a reality.”

Sijbesma belongs to the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders, a group of around 120 large companies from 26 countries with a total of more than nine million employees, that advocates more climate policy. “Be open about your emissions, report on them, set goals and work with others to achieve them,” was Sijbesma’s positive message in a promotional video prior to COP28. “The technology is there, the solutions are there. Let’s implement them.”

A large part of this alliance also works together in the We mean business coalition, a club of more than two hundred companies with a combined annual turnover of $1,500 billion. In a open letter to government leaders the companies express their concerns about the lack of action to tackle “the main cause of climate change: the combustion of fossil fuels”. This is unnecessary and undesirable, they say, now that there is an “exponential growth of solutions that have made clean energy cheaper and more accessible than ever before.”

Half-hearted attitude

But these optimistic sounds cannot disguise the fact that the majority of companies in Dubai do not belong to this vanguard.

The independent climate think tank published Influence Map this week an extensive data analysis of companies active at the COP and their position in the debate. Only 10 percent have climate goals that match the Paris Climate Agreement (2015).

Others take a half-hearted position: they support more ambitious climate goals, but not restricting fossil fuels. According to Influence Map, more than half of the companies present do not have a strategy that is in line with the climate policy of the countries in which they operate.

At the initiative of UN chief António Guterres last year, a climate summit in Sharm-El-Sheikh High Level Expert Group created to assess the credibility of climate neutrality plans. This week they published their findings in Dubai in the report Integrity Matters. They write that the time of “voluntary initiatives of early adopters” is more or less over. It now concerns ‘regulated requirements for climate neutrality that guarantee accountability and a level playing field’.

This means that the floor is once again given to ministers and country delegations, who must create the conditions for the ‘regulated requirements’. Help from the business community to prevent dangerous climate change is necessary. But the major social changes required for this will have to be enforced through legislation and regulation.

In the first week, the climate summit moved in all directions. With great initiatives from industry, banks and even oil companies. With smart solutions by tech companies and start-ups to make countries less vulnerable to climate extremes, with good ideas about using nature, oceans and forests to prevent climate change, with warnings about the risks of warming for the public health and with generous financial promises to help realize many of these proposals. “What we have achieved together in just one week is nothing short of historic,” said COP President Sultan Al-Jaber. “In just seven days we have shown that multilateralism really works and is alive and well.”

The real negotiations

Whether this is still the case now that the real negotiations have begun – the political discussions about taking responsibility – remains to be seen. “COP28 must bring about a major change,” said Simon Stiell, chairman of the United Nations climate agency, on Friday morning. “Not only about ‘what’ governments should do, but also ‘how’ they should get the job done. The technologies and tools all exist. This week, negotiators must agree on its use.”

Some climate scientists have little confidence in this, they say in a warning in the British newspaper The Guardian. They contribute to the reports of the United Nations scientific climate panel, the IPCC. These reports are ‘policy relevant’, but it is taboo to tell governments what to do. “As climate change gets worse and worse, it is increasingly difficult to remain policy relevant without dictating what should be done,” says one of the scientists in The Guardian.

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The warning was not heeded by the Saudi Energy Minister, Abdulaziz bin Salman. In an interview with Bloombergan economic news website, he said his country will “absolutely not” agree to a final text in Dubai that advocates reducing the use of fossil fuels (phase down) – let alone phasing it out (phase out). His message: those in favor of this should first explain how they want to do that.

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