Why phasing out fossil fuels remains a challenge

At present, half the electricity generating capacity in India is non-fossil-fuel based —a significant achievement by all counts.

- Somit Dasgupta

But how smooth will the path be to completely phasing out dirty fuels? That remains a difficult question to answer.At COP30, India managed two things. First, the mention of a phaseout plan for fossil fuels was avoided and second, some sort of a commitment was extracted from the developed world to triple adaptation funds. For the former, India was supported by China and Russia and, of course, the petro-rich States. The US, whose “persuasive power” would have ensured no text on tripling of adaptation funding entered the final document had it been present at COP30, is on the same page as India, China, Russia and the oil-rich states on fossil fuels.

About 80 countries had protested against the non-mention of fossil fuels in the final communique. They wanted some phaseout plan to be indicated. Such a plan must be linked to an outcome for it to be meaningful but, unfortunately, this link is missing. To illustrate, it can be linked to the Paris agreement of limiting a temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The final communique of COP30 still swears by the Paris agreement, but therein lies the disconnect: To achieve the target, carbon emissions must fall by about 55% by 2035. The reality, though, is that carbon emissions are still rising across the globe.