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The clean energy transition is well underway around the world, at what many experts estimate to be an unstoppable velocity. While political shifts in the United States are pulling the emergency break on clean energy policy mechanisms, the international energy sector is plowing full-steam ahead. “This is no longer a distant promise: it is happening now, at a pace and scale that was unthinkable even five years ago,” writes Reuters, “and it is being driven not just by advanced economies but increasingly by developing ones.”
As clean energy becomes cheaper, more reliable, and more decentralized, increasing adoption of renewable and clean energy technologies is a no-brainer for many countries. It’s not even about clean energy policy anymore – it’s basic economics. Take Pakistan – one of the world’s largest new adopters of solar power, at what may be the fastest rate in history. The nation’s traditional energy model based on fossil fuel imports has led to rolling blackouts and punishing energy prices for locals. As a result, citizens are increasingly turning to rooftop solar with attached battery systems to power their homes more affordably and reliably.
And Pakistan is just one example of many emerging economies that are turning to clean energy technologies to provide energy affordably, reliably, and locally. “The new generation of wind and solar power, batteries, and electric vehicles are on the verge of, or have already achieved, escape velocity, breaking free from the gravity of political capriciousness,” reads a recent article from Vox. “In a lot of places, especially in power generation, the cleanest option is also the fastest, the cheapest, and the one most likely to turn a profit. That’s true whether or not you care about the climate.”
A recent analysis from Ember shows that roughly two-thirds of the world’s emerging and developing economies are now leapfrogging the United States and Europe in their shift to clean energy. And it’s clear why – the Ember report also calculates that 91 percent of new solar and wind developments are even cheaper than the cheapest fossil fuel plants when accounting for fuel cost. As a result, last year a whopping 87 percent of energy generation investment in emerging economies and China went to clean energy projects.
China has been instrumental in bringing clean energy to emerging economies around the globe. Through their ambitious Belt and Road international infrastructure project and well-established trade relationships, China has established itself as the central player of the global clean energy market. “Since 2018, Kenya, Yemen, Sri Lanka, and Tanzania have imported an amount of Chinese solar equal to roughly half the capacity of their entire power grid,” reads a recent report from Yale Environment 360. Recent United States policy has only served to solidify those trade relationships and incentivise closer ties between China and many emerging economies who have been targeted by steep tariffs.
However, developing nations still need a leg up in terms of climate financing if global targets are to be met. A coalition of rich and poor governments around the globe has prepared an open letter for this week’s U.N. General Assembly in New York this week urging global leaders to act swiftly in what is to be a “decisive decade” for the climate.
“Stark disparities in access to energy and investment remain,” the statement warns. “Much more needs to be done to ensure the transition not only advances globally but also benefits the people and economies that need it most.” Africa, which has some of the greatest clean energy production potential in the world, has received only a fraction of global climate financing, despite the fact that its people are already suffering the impacts of climate change brought on by emissions from the Global North.
While the clean energy transition makes good economic sense, and has reached “escape velocity” in some contexts, scientists say that it needs to be significantly hastened to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. While clean energy projects are ramping up internationally, so too are fossil fuel developments.

The European Commission considers allowing European Union countries more flexibility in reaching a 90% emissions cut target by 2040, diplomats told Reuters on Friday, amid growing backlash against the too stringent EU climate policies.
In early July, the European Commission is set to propose a 2040 climate target that would include cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040 compared to 1990 levels, according to Reuters’ sources with knowledge of the talks. But the 90% target could be made more flexible by allowing EU member states to buy carbon credits to reach it or easing the targets for some industries, the sources added.
The EU has a target to become carbon neutral by 2050 with intermediate targets for 2030.
The climate target for 2030 is to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
The 2040 climate target is the EU’s next intermediate step on the path to climate neutrality. In July, the target will be proposed at 90% reduction in emissions relative to 1990, but it will be more flexible than originally proposed, according to the EU diplomats who spoke to Reuters.
The EU, which has the strictest climate goals of all regions, is trying to reconcile boosting its competitiveness with staying on course to be able to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
Europe’s goal to pursue a net-zero agenda is depriving citizens of reliable and affordable energy in a choice made by politicians, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last month.
The energy transition policies imposed by the UK government and the EU institutions have reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but Europe accounts for just 8% of global emissions anyway, said Wright, the founder and former CEO of fracking services company Liberty Energy.
The “top-down imposition of mandates for the energy system” actually impoverishes the countries choosing to pursue net-zero emissions. It’s unlikely to spread globally because it has created “two highly undesirable factors”—deindustrialization and more expensive energy for consumers and businesses, the top U.S. energy official said in Poland in April.

The operator of the largest gas-fired electricity generation fleet in America believes that renewables will be vital to meet the rise in power demand driven by AI and the reshoring of manufacturing.
NextEra Energy – whose 72 gigawatts (GW) operating portfolio consists of 55% renewables, 36% gas, and 8% nuclear power generation – says that America will need all forms of energy to meet the expected surge in demand. And wind, solar, and battery storage can act as the “bridge” energy source until new natural gas and nuclear capacity comes online.
For years, natural gas was touted as the “bridge fuel” between coal and renewables.
Now, renewables should be viewed as the energy source to help meet demand until new gas and nuclear power plants are commissioned, NextEra’s chairman, president, and CEO, John Ketchum, said on the company’s Q1 earnings call this week.
All forms of power will be needed in the coming years, and the U.S. shouldn’t pick winners and losers among the various sources capable of delivering the necessary power generation increase, the executive noted.
“We should be thinking about renewables and battery storage as a critical bridge” until other technology is ready at scale, like new gas-fired plants, Ketchum said.
NextEra expects more than 450 GW of cumulative demand for new generation between now and 2030 in the United States.
“To meet this demand, we believe it’s important to exercise what I described as energy realism and energy pragmatism. Energy realism is about embracing all forms of energy solutions and understanding the demand for electricity in the United States is here now, and it’s not slowing down,” Ketchum added.
As many as 75 GW of gas-fired capacity is set to come online by 2030, according to NextEra’s estimates. While significant, this increase is nowhere close to meeting the over 450 GW of total generation that NextEra believes is needed.
“Bottom line, don’t take this as picking winners and losers. It’s not nor can it be,” Ketchum said.
NextEra’s top executive stressed the importance of the U.S. Administration’s policy in encouraging all forms of energy in America.
“We cannot isolate ourselves to just a couple of technologies like gas and nuclear, which are much more expensive than they’ve ever been and take far longer to build. We say all this as a company in our space that does it all,” Ketchum told analysts during the earnings call.
As early as in March, Ketchum warned the audience at the CERAWeek event in Houston not to overlook renewables as a vital source of electricity in the United States.
Renewables should be part of the equation, NextEra’s CEO said last month, noting that “There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. We’re going to need all forms of generation- renewables, gas, and nuclear.”
AI data centers and the reshoring of some manufacturing will drive U.S. electricity demand growth over the coming decade.
The world’s biggest economy will need all energy sources to ensure power demand is met. Natural gas is the biggest near-term winner of AI advancements, but renewables will also play a key role in powering the data centers of next-generation computing, analysts say.
Policy and regulation “will need to reflect the reality that there is a need for all generation technologies,” according to Wood Mackenzie’s analysts, as the natural gas boom alone cannot meet the soaring electricity demand.
AI data centers are set to account for almost half of U.S. power demand growth by the end of the decade, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Energy and AI report earlier this month.
Driven by AI use, America will consume more electricity for data centers than for the production of aluminum, steel, cement, chemicals, and all other energy-intensive goods combined, according to the agency.

Many countries across Europe are investing heavily in the development of green hydrogen projects to help decarbonise hard-to-abate industries in support of a green transition. Europe has been highly competitive with other emerging green hydrogen regions, such as the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. However, while Europe’s green hydrogen capacity expands, the region continues to face a significant implementation gap, which could make it miss decarbonisation targets in the coming decades.
Green hydrogen is produced using renewable electricity to power an electrolyser, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The gas is then burned to produce power, emitting only water vapour and warm air, which makes it carbon-free. This contrasts with the grey hydrogen production process, which is powered using natural gas and produces carbon emissions. Hydrogen is a versatile carrier that can be used for a range of applications and is expected to be used to fuel hard-to-abate industries, such as transport and manufacturing.
In Europe, several countries are developing their green hydrogen capacity in pursuit of a green transition. Germany has some of the most ambitious green hydrogen targets in Europe, introduced in its National Hydrogen Strategy. It sets out a production target of 5 GW by 2030 and an additional 5 GW to be developed between 2035 and 2040. The government also aims to establish 1,800 kilometres of new and refurbished pipelines for a “hydrogen start-up grid” in Germany by 2027/2028.
In February, Finland’s first green hydrogen plant commenced production. Finnish company P2X Solutions is among the first companies in Europe to begin commercial production. The new facility in the west of the country has a production capacity of 20 MW and will also include a methanation facility, which will launch at a later date. The plant uses wind energy to power operations, making for carbon-free hydrogen production. The Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment provided a $27.6 million grant for the development of the facility, while the Finnish Climate Fund provided a $10.6 million loan.
The P2X CEO Herkko Plit said that the regulatory restrictions on emissions in air and marine traffic and industrial production that are expected to take effect could drive demand for green hydrogen. “Our company strategy has been to scale up, bearing market and technological risks in mind,” said Plit, adding it was easier to find sufficient customers for a smaller plant and scale up production incrementally as demand shifts. “I also see this as an opportunity for Europe to (…) increase competitiveness, which perhaps was not as strong when the IRA was attracting investments to the United States,” Plit stated.
In February, Spain announced almost $425 million in investment from its post-Covid recovery fund for the European Hydrogen Bank’s Auction-as-a-Service (AaaS) scheme. The funding aims to boost the development and deployment of green hydrogen across the EU and support the decarbonisation of Spain’s industry and transport sectors.
Despite several positive moves by European countries aimed at developing the region’s green energy capacity, a significant implementation gap persists in deploying green hydrogen policies. One 2025 report, which tracked 190 green hydrogen projects over three years, showed that only 7 percent of global capacity announcements were completed on schedule. The announced project pipeline tripled to 422 GW within three years, however, the $1.3 trillion in subsidies expected to be needed to achieve this development greatly exceeds the already announced subsidies for the sector.
The significant implementation gaps of the past and insufficient designated funding make it unlikely that the projected green hydrogen capacity will be developed in the anticipated timeframe. Therefore, policymakers will need to prepare for prolonged green hydrogen scarcity, as well as seek greater funding to achieve their capacity goals.
Several companies have reined in green hydrogen ambitions due to spiralling costs and regulatory hurdles faced during project development. The oil majors British BP and Spanish Repsol, as well as Norway’s aluminium and energy company Norsk Hydro, have all either cancelled or delayed green hydrogen projects.
In October, Repsol announced it would be pausing green hydrogen development projects in Spain due to the country’s unfavourable regulatory regime. Repsol has a project pipeline of 350 MW. However, the firm does not plan to ditch its green hydrogen ambitions altogether, instead stating plans to develop its next electrolyser in neighbouring Portugal.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the uptake of low-carbon hydrogen is slow at present due to “unclear demand signals, financing hurdles, delays to incentives, regulatory uncertainties, licensing and permitting issues and operational challenges.” Therefore, the IEA recommends the introduction of policies that stimulate demand in key sectors such as heavy industry, refining, and long-distance transport to speed up deployment. Meanwhile, the successful launch of early commercial-scale projects, such as the Finnish P2X Solutions facility, will likely encourage more companies to develop green hydrogen projects.

President Donald Trump has been busy reversing the Biden administration’s so-called climate policies from the moment he was sworn in. He declared a national energy emergency, revoked the Biden ban on new LNG export capacity, and suspended some $300 billion in funding for transition projects in the country. With that, he has made one unlikely group angry: Big Oil executives.
The 47th president’s political agenda is nothing if not oil and gas friendly. In fact, oil and gas are among Trump’s top priorities, and he has wasted no time in making life easier for the industry players after four years of extra regulatory and political pressure under Biden. Yet oil executives’ apparent frustration with Trump’s reversal of Biden policies is unlikely and perhaps surprising on the surface.
Below this surface sits all the money that Big Oil invested in its own transition, under pressure, indeed, but quite a lot of money. The projects this money has been invested in may well become stranded assets now, in an ironic twist of environmentalists’ warnings that oil and gas fields are about to become stranded assets in a transitional world.
Reuters reported this week that some in the oil industry were unhappy about Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement. This is the second time Trump has done it and, again according to Reuters, it would jeopardize global efforts to reverse global climatic trends. Not only that, but the withdrawal would reduce the availability of cash for transition investment and confuse investors as the paths of the U.S. and Europe diverge.
According to the report, some executives in the energy industry believe that they could have a greater say over the energy transition if the United States is in the Paris Agreement. Yet industry players have more immediate priorities, and these have nothing to do with any climate pacts.
“While we prefer that the U.S. government remain engaged in the UN climate process, the private sector is committed to developing the solutions necessary to meet the energy needs of a growing global economy while addressing the climate challenge,” Marty Durbin, president of the Global Energy Institute at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce told Reuters.
There is a rather practical reason energy executives would prefer the U.S. government to remain engaged in the UN climate process: those transition investments. Every large oil company has been forced to devise a transition strategy in the recent past, and every large oil company has done so. They have been pushed to invest in low-carbon alternatives to their core products and they have invested, often heavily—and they have received subsidies to pursue these alternatives further.
Occidental Petroleum’s direct air capture plans are a case in point. The oil major back in 2023 bought a company developing technology that can suck carbon dioxide straight from the air. Oxy spent $1.1 billion on that purchase, eyeing a market that BloombergNEF said could grow into a segment worth $150 billion annually. And the Biden administration was shouldering part of the costs with subsidies. Now, these are gone, threatening the very survival of direct air capture—and more conventional carbon capture investments. No wonder Occidental’s chief executive approached Trump directly during a campaign event to argue the case for leaving IRA funding for carbon capture untouched. Oxy is far from the only one spending big on the transition and carbon capture. Exxon has also spent heftily on developing a carbon capture business.
“It’s critical that any conversation about addressing climate change must be global in nature, and also recognize that America is the world leader in both energy production and emissions reductions,” the president of the American Exploration and Production Council, Anne Bradbury, told Reuters.
Indeed, after so much money spent on transitioning, even partially, it must be frustrating for oil executives to be thrown back into an industry-friendly environment, positive as it is for their business. This is, in fact, the uncertainty that analysts—and industry executives—have been talking about for years. All industries like certainty, even if this is the kind of certainty that would affect their industry negatively, like Biden’s climate policies. They were harmful to oil and gas, but they were certain, so companies could take steps to mitigate the impact.
Now, with Trump, it’s back to normal, but companies could never know what would happen in four years, so they will be wary of reversing their current priorities too suddenly. The good news is that most of them are already walking back their transition targets after those targets proved quite unrealistic. Even European Big Oil is going back on transition promises after discovering these promises could not be fulfilled—not at a profit, at least.
So, what many hoped would happen during Trump’s presidency may indeed happen: Big Oil protecting its transition investments and pressuring Trump into not completely doing away with Biden’s climate laws, at least until there’s hard proof carbon capture does not make money, but loses money.

Producers in the Permian basin, America’s top oil producing region, have made a lot of progress in reducing methane emissions, a recent report suggests, but the incoming Trump Administration could undo some of that progress, environmentalists warn.
The Biden Administration has enacted rules on reducing emissions from oil and gas operations, including a recently finalized methane fee that has been opposed by the industry.
Last year, emissions from the Permian fell by 26%, according to a recent study by S&P Global and Insight M Inc. Methane intensity declined even more, by over 30%, as absolute emission volumes fell while Permian oil and gas production continued to rise, the study found.
The results are encouraging, but with incoming President Donald Trump some progress could be undone as the President-elect has vowed to roll back Biden-era rules burdening the oil and gas industry, climate advocates say.
Trump’s transition team is said to be preparing radical changes to U.S. policy toward electric vehicles and tailpipe emissions. These could include axing the EV incentives and the government mandate for federal EV fleets, and rolling back the Biden Administration’s rules on tailpipe emissions and fuel economy standards, Reuters reported earlier this month, citing a draft document it has seen.
In a sign of what the energy industry can expect, Trump last month picked a shale boss, Chris Wright, chief executive of Liberty Energy, as his nomination to lead the Department of Energy.
However, analysts say that the companies are now unlikely to swerve from the path of cutting emissions as they continue to promote their efforts in producing more oil and gas with fewer emissions.
“They’ve made commitments to their shareholders, they’ve set a plan in place, they’ve allocated capital,” Kevin Birn, an analyst at S&P, told the Financial Times, commenting on the findings of the study on the Permian methane emissions trends.

The price of carbon dioxide on the European Union’s emissions trading markets, ETS, has taken a bad tumble. On the face of it, this is good news—it means industries covered by the scheme are emitting less. But in this case, fewer emissions mean less money for the transition.
Earlier this year, the price per carbon permit on the ETS dropped to the lowest in over two years, at 55 euro, equal to some $58. The drop came as a surprise to ETS architects and supporters in Brussels, who had plans for much higher emission prices with a view to filling up the funds meant to pay for the transition away from emitting sources of energy.
Reuters reported this week that the continued decline in carbon prices on the ETS has, since the start of this year, erased over 4 billion euro, or $4.36 billion, from that market. This means there is over 4 billion euro capture, and other transition tech. The kicker? There was no other way this could have played out.
When the ETS was being devised, its purpose must have seemed simple enough. Power-generating companies produced emissions of carbon dioxide during the course of their normal operations. Because that carbon dioxide was selected as enemy number-one of modern Europe, they were obliged to pay for their emissions by buying so-called carbon permits at market prices. Market prices meant demand and supply would determine how much emitters pay to continue emitting.
This idea would, on the one hand, secure money for advancing the transition away from carbon dioxide-emitting sources of energy such as coal and gas and towards presumably non-emitting sources such as wind and solar. On the other hand, by making it expensive to emit, the mechanism would also stimulate emitting businesses to invest in alternatives that reduce their emissions. And this is exactly what happened.
Solar and wind installations in Europe have been on a tear, at least they were until last year. As a result, the EU is sourcing a record amount of its electricity from these two. But this means that coal and gas generators are producing less electricity—and fewer emissions. And this, in turn, means they need fewer emission permits, which, in its own turn, means less money available to go into the transition funds. Demand and supply at their finest—only no one in Brussels seems to have thought about it.
This is quite surprising given the simplicity of the idea and, more than that, this idea’s essentially paradoxical nature. The people who devised the ETS believed it would stimulate more wind and solar—which it did—while also encouraging emitters to keep emitting, so the EU could pay for even more wind and solar. And they made that assumption based on the notion that the supply of carbon permits would be gradually squeezed, pushing prices higher.
Another thing that the authors of the ETS believed was that the carbon market would reduce emissions—and it did. Last year, emissions covered by the ETS fell by a substantial 15.5%, which was a record. This was a result of the growing share of wind and solar electricity, which also hit a record and, it bears repeating, led to lower output from gas and coal generators. The fact that carbon permit prices also fell was in no way a coincidence, yet it seems no one thought about it at the time, and now many are concerned about the falling prices. Not only that, but it seems that no lessons have been learned.
The EU’s climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, recently said that he would aim for a 90% reduction in emissions across the bloc by 2040. London Stock Exchange Group researchers calculated that this would mean ETS prices would soar to 400 euro per ton by that year, according to a Euractiv report from October last year. But would they really? Judging by what happened last year, the answer is “Hardly.”
Theoretically, limiting supply for a necessary product or service while essentially mandating demand should have done the trick. But what the mandate-issuers appear to have forgotten is that they can’t really force generators to keep operating on a business-as-usual basis when this business-as-usual costs ever more to keep going. So, they are curbing output because it’s increasingly harder to compete with heavily subsidized wind and solar. And because they are curbing output, they are emitting less and need fewer carbon permits.
Now, the EU is planning to expand the ETS to other industries as well, including transport. The hope is that this would bring in more money for the transition. What it would likely achieve as a side effect would be a repeat of what happened with power generators: higher costs would kill demand, ultimately failing at achieving one of the two primary purposes the EU had assigned them. But the extension would probably succeed at achieving the second primary purpose: demand destruction would definitely lead to lower emissions.

If you’re expecting South Africa will make a quick shift away from coal-fired power in favor of green energy, prepare to be disappointed.
Expecting South Africa to quickly give up on coal-fired power would be “very wrong,” South Africa’s energy minister Gwede Mantashe told Bloomberg this week.
Instead, South Africa will continue to rely on coal and other fossil fuel-generated power, even as richer nations push the country towards greener forms of energy, because it is less intermittent than green energy, Mantashe said, and the country is already grappling with electricity shortages.
“This belief that you can leave coal and move to renewables: there’s a technical mistake, very wrong, it will never work,” Mantashe told Bloomberg.
South Africa’s coal-fired power isn’t without problems, however. It’s state-run electric company, Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, is already struggling with electricity outages because the country’s coal-fired power stations aren’t all operating 24 hours a day like they could be. Breakdowns and extended impromptu maintenance have put a serious crimp in the country’s power generation thanks to load shedding for as much as 12 hours a day in some cases.
Nevertheless, coal-fired power will have a long life in South Africa, Mantashe has vowed.
Mantashe acknowledged the errors the country has made in its power industry, citing delays in building out new power plans and a critical design flaw in the current plants.
“That is one of those mistakes and we are learning out of it,” Mantashe explained.
South Africa has been reluctant to jump onto the green energy transition train for quite some time, saying last October that the country had no plans to curtail its oil and gas operations in favor of green energy, and even announced plans to boost its oil and gas exploration activity in the future as it tries to shore up energy security and reduce its energy imports.
Coal currently accounts for roughly 80% of the country’s energy mix and is the world’s fifth-largest coal exporter.

Al Gore told the Hankyoreh on Thursday he’s confident that expanding renewable energy is where countries are headed, no matter which government may be currently in power.
The 75-year-old climate crusader and former US vice president acknowledged in a Zoom interview with the Hankyoreh that there may be bumps in the road when a new administration takes power through elections in South Korea or the US.
Gore had been asked to comment on the fact that nuclear power’s share of the Korean energy mix will rise from 23.9% to 32.4% and renewable energy’s share will fall from 30.2% to 21.6% by 2030, in line with Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s pledge to roll back his predecessor’s nuclear phase-out. While energy policy varies depending on who’s in office, in other words, all governments will have to make the shift to renewable energy if they want to reach carbon neutrality and overcome the climate crisis.
It was Gore, as a US House representative, who organized the first congressional hearing about climate change. In 2006, he wrote “An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming,” bringing the climate crisis into the spotlight. The next year, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on responding to climate change.
The former vice president continues that work with the Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit he established to pursue advocacy and education related to climate change.
Gore will be visiting Korea on Aug. 19-20 for Seoul Climate Reality Leadership Training, a free program that’s available to young people who are interested in the climate crisis.
In the interview, Gore emphasized that the transition to renewable energy has gained momentum around the world. The US passed its biggest ever climate change bill (the Inflation Reduction Act) 10 months ago, Australia passed the Climate Change Act under a new government that’s eager to tackle climate change, and Brazilian voters elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the presidency, where he has promised to take action on climate change. Meanwhile, the EU has accelerated its shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy, standing up to Russia’s energy blackmail, Gore added.
Gore emphasized that among the various kinds of renewable energy, solar power and wind power will become even more important. “Solar and wind will gradually become more attractive because of falling costs,” he said.
The International Energy Agency recently projected that offshore wind and solar (US$65 per megawatt hour) and onshore wind (US$85/MWh) would become the cheapest sources of energy in Europe by 2040, compared to nuclear (US$110/MWh), gas (US$115/MWh), and coal (US$145/MWh).
Gore explained that while he isn’t opposed to nuclear power, which doesn’t produce carbon emissions, many countries, including the US, are ambivalent about nuclear energy because of its high cost. In connection with that, he called on Korea to boost solar and wind generation, which only make up 5.4% of the country’s energy mix — less than half the global average of 12%.
In the interview, Gore was also asked about the decision by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea to ask the Korean Constitutional Court to review the constitutionality of Korea’s Framework Act on Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth.
“While I can’t express a personal opinion about the lawsuit, I would like to express my respect for the National Human Rights Commission for its position,” he said. “I think it was a wise decision.”
Gore also noted that lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry have been attending the UN climate meeting over the past few years and their political sway appears to be growing, adding that it’s unfortunate that the head of an oil company will be chairing this year’s conference.
Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), which is owned by the United Arab Emirates, has been named chair of the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference, also known as COP28, which will be held in Dubai in November.
Gore noted a potential conflict of interest since Al Jaber is the head of a state-run oil company. “I think he ought to step down either as chair of COP28 or as CEO of ADNOC,” he said.
“The CEO’s company has announced plans to crank up crude oil production by 50% over the next seven years. It seems ridiculous for the CEO to boost emissions at his own company by 50% while calling on the world to cut emissions by 50% [as COP28 chairman],” Gore said.
To keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050, as set forth in the Paris Agreement, the world must reduce greenhouse emissions to 43% of 2019 levels by 2030 and to 60% of those levels by 2035.

Australia and India on Wednesday pledged to work closer to advance renewable energy, increase cooperation in the critical minerals sector, and study green hydrogen development during a visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Australia.
“Renewable energy was once again a focus and an important topic in our discussions,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
Australia and India also signed an agreement to create an Australia-India Green Hydrogen Taskforce, which will comprise Australian and Indian experts in renewable hydrogen and report to the Australian-Indian Ministerial Energy Dialogue. The task force will identify opportunities for the countries to cooperate in renewable hydrogen, Albanese added.
“Investments like the taskforce will help power our industries in the future, and ensure that Australia and India meet our energy targets in the interests of both our respective countries, but also in support of reduction of global emissions,” the Australian PM noted.
India’s Modi, for his part, said, “We had constructive discussions on strengthening our strategic cooperation in the sectors of mining and critical minerals. We identified concrete areas for cooperation and in renewable energy sector.”
Australia’s government has recently allocated $1.33 billion (AUS$2 billion) in the 2023- 24 budget to accelerate large-scale renewable hydrogen projects, aiming to become a world leader in green hydrogen production. Australia is also a major producer of lithium, the key mineral in the current leading battery technology globally.
This weekend, Australia signed with the United States a clean energy manufacturing pact with a focus on the energy transition and emissions reduction. Under the agreement, U.S. President Joe Biden will support Congress taking action to treat Australian suppliers and activity as domestic activity in the United States for the purpose of the Defense Production Act and to open tax incentives for green energy in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to Australian companies.