The world is investing twice as much in clean technologies as in fossil fuels this year. Investment is a leading indicator of economic change, from which emissions reductions follow.
We all know there is a long way still to go. But from meetings at and around COP30, the agenda for diplomacy to speed up progress in eliminating emissions is increasingly clear. In short, the priorities are to spread the zero-carbon transition globally in the sectors where we’re ahead, and to start it in the sectors where we’re behind. A stronger collective focus on these priorities could be transformative.
Spreading out
Renewables accounted for over 90% of power generation capacity added globally in 2024. Special Envoy Liu Zhenmin and other Chinese representatives spoke at COP30 not only of China’s progress in its own deployment (meeting its 2030 renewables target 6 years early), but also of how the cost reduction it has brought about is enabling faster deployment worldwide.
The explosion of solar PV deployment in Pakistan is an example. Pakistan’s imports of solar panels over the past 6 years exceeded its total installed generating capacity, driven mainly by the actions of households and farmers seeking access to cheaper energy.
The fact that only a small fraction of global clean energy investment – around 15% – goes to developing countries other than China, and the ways in which high costs of capital block further investment, are well documented. Addressing this is an obvious priority for diplomacy. The EU and China agreed to work together to accelerate global renewable energy deployment in their joint statement on climate change of July this year. Experts in the investment and think tank communities on both sides are already working together on proposals to put this into practice, aligning China’s interest in clean tech exports, Europe’s interest in global emissions reduction, and developing countries’ interests in access to low-cost energy.
A similar priority is emerging in road transport, the sector that is doing more than any other to destroy demand for oil and erode the political power of fossil fuel interests. Electric vehicles have gone from 2% to over 20% of global car sales in the past 6 years. Global sales of electric medium- and heavy-duty trucks increased by nearly 80% last year. As the lead markets of China, the EU and California bring down the technology costs, other countries are motivated to follow by their interests in lower transport costs, and manufacturing jobs. The countries working together in the Zero Emission Vehicles Transition Council are increasingly aligning their practical cooperation initiatives with these objectives.
As technology develops, confidence increases. At COP30, Brazil and Mexico announced they were joining the coalition of countries committed to making all new truck sales zero emission by 2040, bringing the membership of this group up to a quarter of the global market.
Starting up
The contrast between these sectors where transitions are speeding ahead, and the energy intensive industrial sectors that account for about a fifth of global emissions, is stark. Only 0.1% of global steel production last year used near-zero emission technologies.
The overriding challenge in these sectors is to deploy clean technologies that cost more than fossil fuel alternatives in a context of competitive international trade. Joint research by a network of think tanks across Europe, China, India, Brazil and Africa (of which my organization is one) suggests that this is less difficult than governments generally assume, and could be greatly accelerated by targeted international cooperation on trade.
Away from the mud-slinging of the formal negotiations, steps towards cooperation of this kind were being taken. Brazil, with support from China and Australia, launched an ‘Integrated Forum on Climate Change and Trade’, to begin a long-overdue strategic dialogue on these issues. Chinese and European steel industry bodies, together representing 60% of global steel production, agreed to work together to establish interoperable standards and advance trade in low- and near-zero emission steel. Brazil, China, the EU and others agreed to work towards shared standards across carbon markets. While the EU needs a way to reconcile market conditions with its near-term decarbonization objectives, Brazil and other countries in the global ‘sunbelt’ see an opportunity for clean-tech-based industrialization.
Agriculture and land use is the other set of sectors where progress has been slow. Deforestation rates globally have fluctuated but not fallen. Brazil’s Tropical Forests Forever Facility, launched at the COP30 leaders’ summit with support from over 50 countries including Indonesia, China, Norway, DR Congo, Malaysia, Ghana, and the UAE, is a serious effort to address this problem. With more contributions, its investment fund could for the first time provide a strong and reliable financial incentive to keep forests standing.
The other half of this challenge is to weaken the incentives for deforestation created by unregulated trade in agricultural commodities. Brazil has suggested deforestation will be on the agenda of the new climate change and trade forum. The major commodity producer and consumer countries that have been working together on these issues in the Forest, Agriculture and Commodity Trade dialogue are developing a shared understanding on how to move forward, aligning interests in food security, exports, and economic diversification. An agreement last month by an association of Chinese beef importers to buy deforestation-free Brazilian beef is an indicator of the direction of travel.
Prioritizing political capital
Global goal-setting and practical cooperation are not mutually exclusive forms of diplomacy, but political capital, time and attention are limited. Governments should think hard about which of these forms of diplomacy, in the current context, can better serve their objectives.
If COP30 had agreed a ‘roadmap to phase out fossil fuels’, what would it ideally have contained? The most useful content would have been practical, problem-solving steps of the kind described above, harnessing countries’ differing strengths and interests to produce change on a scale that no country can achieve alone.
There is no need for such an agenda for cooperation to be agreed among 198 parties. Why wait for the plan to be signed off by Saudi Arabia? There is already enough alignment of interests for influential countries to work together effectively on each of these challenges. China, India, Brazil, the EU and a few others can together achieve a critical mass for change, in most sectors.
Equally, there is no need to wait for agreement on the end of the road before taking the first steps along it. The Australian and Chinese scientists who collaborated on solar PV technology in the 1980s had no certainty on where their efforts would lead. Neither did the Californian policymakers and Norwegian activists who pioneered measures to deploy electric vehicles in the 1990s. It has not taken many years for the reality of the energy transition to diverge spectacularly from the predictions of economic models.
The road towards a clean economy does not yet exist in its entirety. The technologies, economic systems, and political interests of the future will emerge from our actions now.
Antonio Machado said it best:
Traveller, your footprints
are the only road, nothing else.
Traveller, there is no road;
you make your own path as you walk.
As you walk, you make your own road,
and when you look back
you see the path
you will never travel again.
Traveller, there is no road;
Only a ship’s wake on the sea.
Global consensus is a lagging indicator of economic change. By the time the UN talks agreed at COP26 that the use of coal power should be reduced, coal’s share of global electricity generation had been falling for eight years. The way for diplomacy to speed up change is not to haggle more over words to describe the destination. It is to focus on the most effective steps that can be taken now.