One Bright Spot to COP29 in Baku

The outcome of this year’s U.N. climate conference was depressing. But there was some notable news regarding global methane emissions commitments.

A giant, fake beached whale reeking with the stench of rotten fish served as public art commentary in Baku. Photo: Cara Horowitz

Some have described the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku as “challenging,” “ineffective,” and “disappointing.” On the one hand, global greenhouse gas emissions have reached an all-time high, and the temperature for 2023 is the highest ever recorded. On the other hand, President-elect Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement again. Meanwhile, President Javier Milei withdrew the entire Argentine delegation from the summit, covering everything with a cloak of doubt and pessimism.

Having been on the ground in Dubai last year and now in Baku for side talks on advancing methane regulations as part of the UCLA Emmett Institute’s delegation, I can confirm the atmosphere at COP29 was strange. When we encountered an art installation of a fake whale stranded on land, it was easy to see the metaphor for the climate talks as a whole.

The United States delegation tried to convince attendees with a hardly believable motto: “America is All In.” The truth is that America will likely be “all out” from future negotiations.

Yet, all is not lost. There was some promising news regarding methane emissions. More countries have joined the Global Methane Pledge, and nearly 100 countries have developed national methane action plans. Governments and philanthropies mobilized over $2 billion in grant funding for methane reduction, and new policies and regulations have been implemented to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas and waste sectors.

This COP was also the place for impressive announcements of significant progress on methane emission monitoring.

One of these examples comes from the Californian-based conglomerate Carbon Mapper, which launched its first methane-detecting satellite. During COP, CM released over 300 initial global detections across diverse sectors to its public data portal. Additionally, Carbon Mapper is the first third-party notifier applicant to the U.S. EPA’s Super Emitter Program –a program that we hope will survive the current political turbulence.

These breakthroughs were made possible by unprecedented support from private philanthropy, which reached an all-time high for methane abatement projects.

Satellite-borne methane monitoring devices have proven their value in detecting methane emissions. However, it is crucial to consider incorporating these technologies into formal legal and regulatory frameworks that extend beyond inventory reporting and voluntary commitments. Due to the absence of robust regulations, many detected emissions have yet to translate into effective methane abatement measures.

In response to this challenge, the Emmett Institute participated in COP29 with its “Advancing Methane Regulation” project. Our goal was to present an updated summary of methane regulations to understand how methane emissions are regulated worldwide and a science primer draft, which aims to explain the science of remote methane monitoring to policymakers so they can effectively comprehend and –hopefully- create or improve methane regulations by incorporating these technologies into their regulatory frameworks.

Maybe the main contribution of this COP –ironically, the place for climate diplomacy- could be the certainty that relying on politics as the only solution is no longer possible. Advancements in the fight against methane emissions are a clear example that people, philanthropy, and committed organizations remain the hope against global warming. Civil society and the private sector have the greatest possibility (and responsibility) to implement significant climate actions without waiting for international agreements and push governments -national or subnational- to act accordingly.

Fully private or public-private breakthroughs in methane monitoring are challenging how GHG emissions have been regulated to date; now, it’s time for governments to make their share by allowing new alternatives to help solve old problems — like methane emissions — with new tools. In at least this respect, the future may not look so grim after all.

One Reply to “One Bright Spot to COP29 in Baku”

I guess that’s where we are, looking for bright spots.

Climate is still going to take ongoing political effort. Nothing else will work at scale, in time.

Progress can be made outside broad-scale politics. Methane abatement, as the author points out, will be aided by new satellites.

There’s a big intrinsic difference between methane and CO2, though. The only people who want methane emissions to go uncontrolled are those who drill for oil in remote areas where there aren’t any gas pipelines. Abatement can be expensive for them. For those close to pipelines, that’s salable product they’d prefer to capture, unless for some other reason it’s prohibitively costly.

Part of that is the underlying price of NG itself, which is very low, and is likely to remain so under a drill-baby-drill regime. Without direct controls, it’s more cost-effective to waste or flare the methane than to capture it.

While methane is a salable product. CO2 is a waste product. Outside a carbon price, there’s no financial incentive to abate it. As long as there’s no politically durable carbon price, we’ll remain reliant on the very slow (multi-decadal) displacement process that depends on ever-cheaper renewables. And there’s a risk that regulations could be introduced to retard even that progress. Look at all the political antagonism being visited upon ESG.

Getting a socially just carbon price in place in the US, with a carbon border adjustment, is a big rock to push up a big mountain. But it only has to be done once, if the price mechanism is correctly designed. All other efforts will be a constant, never-ending rear-guard battle.

The Washington state cap-and-invest program survived a plebiscite despite it’s regressive design. That can work in blue states (sometimes–apparently, third time’s the charm in Washington). It won’t work in red ones.

We need to pay people to reduce carbon emissions. Tax the fossil fuel companies for the privilege of selling a polluting product, and use the revenue to fund equal-share carbon-cashback dividends to taxpayers, to not only offset any costs the FF cos pass on, but to provide the opportunity to make money through personal effort. That will resonate in red states.

What about Canada and “axe-the-tax”? Another case of botched design and rollout. The consumer payout was buried in tax forms for the first years. A rebate needs to be marketed as explicitly as Donald Trump marketed his 2017 tax cut. He sent out physical checks with his giant, spikey signature on them. A carbon cash-back needs similar treatment, starting with issuing the rebate before the tax goes into effect, and clearly labeled “Carbon Cashback” or something similar.

What’s probably going to happen, though, is that the renewal of those 2017 tax cuts is going to suck any cash from any domestic federal carbon pricing that might be put in place in response to the EU CBAM going into effect in 2025 into the general federal budget, where it’ll be out of public view. Then we’ll get “axe-the-tax” here.

Of course, this assumes that the Trump administration won’t just retaliate against the EU CBAM with simple tariffs. Trump and his loyalists are all about confrontation, coercion, and keeping money for themselves.