Global Update - No change to warming as fossil fuel endgame brings focus onto false solutions - Dec 2023

In 2015, as part of the Paris Agreement’s commitment to balance emission sources and sinks in the second half of the century, governments essentially agreed to ‘phase out’ fossil fuels. [...] Eight years ago, the Paris Agreement set the signal of a phase out of fossil fuels with the requirement to balance emission sources and sinks in the second half of the century. [...] One potential tactic is to attempt to claim the production of fossil fuels is “emissions free” through the capture of fugitive methane, and by employing renewables or CCS in the extraction, refining and transportation of the fossil fuels. [...] Switzerland provides the most transparency in terms of credit buyers to date, which reveals support to several projects that are close to business as usual in the host countries and therefore do not contribute to raising ambition beyond what the host countries should deliver with their own resources to align with the 1.5°C goals. [...] In the times of the Kyoto Protocol, allowing carbon credits from the Clean Development Mechanism into the EU Emissions Trading Scheme led to an oversupply of allowances and to extremely low prices, which rendered the system ineffective.