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What Trump’s Exit from the Paris Agreement Will Really Mean

One week ago, the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University published an essay I wrote for its Climate Blog. My topic was “What Trump’s expected exit from the Paris Agreement will mean.” In fact, Trump filed papers yesterday with the United Nations to initiate the process of withdrawal. Hence, my essay from last week is (unfortunately) very relevant, and so I’m reproducing it in full here for readers of my blog, An Economic View of the Environment.

What Trump’s expected exit from the Paris Agreement will mean

Jan 13, 2025

By Robert N. Stavins

At noon on Monday, January 20, Donald Trump will take the oath of office for his second term as president. It is reasonable to anticipate that one of his first actions will be to file papers with the United Nations to initiate withdrawing the United States from the Paris Agreement of 2015.

In short, it may be 2017 all over again, when Trump moved to exit the agreement – a legally binding accord requiring signatories to publish plans for reducing planet-warming emissions. As I wrote at the time, the Paris Agreement included an initial statutory delay of four years from the date of the agreement coming into force in November 2016, meaning the U.S. remained a party for almost the entirety of Trump’s first term. Dedicated staff from the State Department continued to participate in the ongoing negotiations in meaningful ways, including co-chairing with China the Enhanced Transparency Framework negotiating stream. Ultimately, the U.S. was out of the Paris Agreement for just a few months – until shortly after President Biden’s inauguration in early 2021.

Today, the statutory delay is 12 months, and so if Trump files withdrawal papers as soon as January 20, one year later the U.S. will be alone among the community of major nations as a non-party to this fundamental and path-breaking agreement (only Iran, Libya, and Yemen are non-parties of the agreement). Furthermore, it is much less likely that civil service staffers at the State Department, Environmental Protection Agency, or the Department of Energy will be able to continue their work, as Trump now seems determined to purge the upper ranks of the Executive Branch of anyone other than loyalists. At the very least, the U.S. delegation will have lame duck status for the year.

A possible – but unlikely – alternative to withdrawal

It is at least conceivable that instead of withdrawing, the Trump administration could choose to submit to the UN a revised and severely downgraded climate action plan as required under Paris – the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) – although a subsequent administration could unilaterally revise the NDC again. The option to downgrade the NDC rather than withdraw existed during Trump’s first term as well, but was obviously not chosen.

Whereas the original Obama-era NDC pledged to reduce U.S. emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, Biden updated this in April 2021 to 50-52% by 2030, and on December 19, 2024, the lame-duck Biden administration strengthened this to 61-66% by 2035. But it is highly unlikely the Trump administration would want to submit a downgraded NDC, given that such action could be interpreted as endorsing the overall legitimacy of the Paris Agreement, anathema to MAGA Republicans.

And an even more dramatic route

A more drastic action would be to withdraw not just from the Paris Agreement, but from the umbrella agreement, the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This requires only a one-year delay to become effective. During Trump’s first term, serious consideration was never given to this more significant move, perhaps because the UNFCCC was ratified by the Senate in 1992 and signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

Now, however, some of the most passionate climate skeptics in Trump’s orbit want the U.S. to pull out of the UNFCCC as well. A key question, which legal scholars can debate, is whether withdrawal from a Senate-confirmed treaty requires Senate action, including a super-majority vote, which Democrats in the chamber could easily defeat. There seems to be some uncertainty. While Senate action is required to ratify treaties, Senate involvement in terminating ratified treaties is not mandated nor even mentioned in the Constitution. Several previous presidents have unilaterally exited from Senate-confirmed treaties.

Global impacts

In the meantime, a key question is how a U.S. withdrawal will impact other key countries’ positions. We know that after Trump’s first-term pullout the EU became more ambitious; China was happy to evolve from co-leadership with the U.S. to sole leadership; India did not retrench; and although Brazil backed off its pledge, that was because of the election of Jair Bolsonaro, himself a climate skeptic.

It may be that Trump’s election need not derail global climate action, but it is too soon to make firm predictions. It does appear that Trump’s November election victory emboldened Saudi Arabia to be much more strident in its defense of fossil fuels weeks later at COP29, even more than it had been previously at this annual meeting of UNFCCC signatories. The result, largely due to Saudi Arabia fighting any negative comments about fossil fuels in the final communique, was that COP29 did not repeat a call for a transition away from fossil fuels, let alone offer something stronger. EU and the U.S. negotiators wanted language about actions to achieve any goal, but that was likewise rejected. If, beginning in January 2026, the U.S. is not even a party, the negotiating effectiveness of countries such as Saudi Arabia will, if anything, be enhanced.

Finally, some may wonder what a U.S. exit will mean for the world of climate finance (who pays for climate damages and the energy transition – and how). It is helpful to recall that COP29 was labeled the “Finance COP,” because it was intended to focus on augmenting developed countries’ commitment made in 2009 (at COP15 in Copenhagen) to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to support developing countries in addressing climate change, both for mitigation and adaptation. That commitment was eventually reached two years late. At COP29 developing countries received pledges of $300 billion annually, less than 25% what they sought. Will other donor countries fill a void created by U.S. withdrawal, or will it weaken others’ resolve to supply climate finance to developing countries? It will be some time before we know.

Bottom line

All in all, the real-world implications of the expected, forthcoming withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Agreement under Trump 2.0 may turn out to be less consequential than some observers have feared, despite the clear abdication of global leadership, and the great disappointment that will surely be felt by many in government, environmental advocacy, academia, and private industry. By far, the greater climate policy consequences will be in terms of extensive and severe downgrading of U.S. domestic climate and energy policy, whether via legislation, regulation, or both.

Hope and Expectation for Bottom-Up Climate Progress

Vijay Vaitheeswaran, whom I have known and worked with for over 30 years, is the long-time global energy and climate innovation editor at The Economist. In the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Conversations on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” he expresses his appreciation for bottom-up climate approaches. The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. You can listen to our complete conversation here.

Visionary entrepreneurs and the private sector will play increasingly important roles in driving climate progress, Vijay Vaitheeswaran argues, particularly in an era of what he calls “slowbalization,” during which nations will attempt to regionalize and even nationalize supply chains, and establish industrial policies, a trend he says “will have some deleterious consequences” on climate policy. However, he also notes that there could be some longer-term positive effects.

“From the perspective of emissions, I worry. Making very expensive solar panels at home in America or very unattractive and expensive electric cars that nobody wants to buy because you’re reliant on domestic technology or energy storage [is inefficient]. Another example where we have at scale with quite a lot of innovation embedded cutting edge technologies that are available quite inexpensively because China invested and got them to scale and is making them available, but very high tariffs will keep them out of markets like the U.S. And what will happen?,” he asks. “My prediction is that a number of those technologies will be redirected to the emerging world. If that happens, that would be a good thing. It might even help with a green leapfrog in India or certainly in Africa, Latin America. It doesn’t matter to the planet where the emissions cuts are made in the long term.”

Vijay observes that much of current-day green energy solutions are driven by the private sector, and that trend, he says, shows no signs of slowing.

“I have a great deal of appreciation for bottom-up forces, understanding that whatever the cycle and rhythm of international negotiations… and the vicissitudes of domestic policy, that in fact the momentum often builds from the bottom-up, from markets, from the role of business, from the opportunities that are created from technology innovation advancing,” he remarks. “That’s where I keep my eye on both – what’s happening from the top-down… The framework matters, but oftentimes the longer-term trends are determined by what comes from the bottom-up.”

He also notes the trend toward increased use of alternative fuels in several important industrial sectors.

“I think the long game for oil is already in sight that in the long term we know how to electrify transport. That’s a problem that we have a pathway for, certainly in passenger transport. With freight we have to see which technology wins out, whether it is indeed electrification, which is making gains even with freight, even though batteries are heavy and cannot go as far,” he states. “There is an argument for hydrogen or some other kinds of synthetic fuels as well. So, there’s an open competition, but we have pathways to alternatives there. We’re seeing shipping as well moving quite rapidly, in fact, towards some alternatives… to petroleum-based fuels.”

As these alternative fuel technologies come to scale, Vaitheeswaran says, they will help the world lessen its reliance on oil, thereby reducing global CO₂ emissions.

“The way we should work for change faster is to develop these alternatives, make them attractive, make them affordable, keeping in mind energy poverty is still a significant problem for 800 million to a billion people around the world [who have] little or no access to modern energy and to accommodate a world that’s going to use much more energy in future, and rightly so, in developing countries. And in developed countries, of course with the AI surge, we will certainly use more energy for that purpose – to make it clean and firm,” he remarks. “So, I think those are the kinds of outlines of… [a] future that probably calls for fossil fuels to be with us for some time and for more thought in how we think about the emissions from those fuels.”

Vijay also addresses the challenges posed by upstream methane, an issue which has become front and center in recent climate negotiations.

“We now understand, although scientists have known this for a very long time, but much more in the political consciousness, that methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas in the short term in the 10-to-20-year timeframe because it does have a shorter life than CO₂,” he says. “And global accords were reached at Dubai, at the COP Summit, and reaffirmed in Baku, to try to dramatically reduce the methane footprint of oil and gas companies during their production process.”

For this and much more, please listen to my complete podcast conversation with Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the 65th episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month. You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

Gina McCarthy, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Nick Stern of the London School of Economics discussing his career, British politics, and efforts to combat climate change
Andrei Marcu, founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition
Paul Watkinson, Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
Jos Delbeke, professor at the European University Institute in Florence and at the KU Leuven in Belgium, and formerly Director-General of the European Commission’s DG Climate Action
David Keith, professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
Joe Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
Scott Barrett, professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
Richard Schmalensee, the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Kelley Kizier, Associate Vice President for International Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
David Hone, Chief Climate Change Adviser, Shell International.
Vicky Bailey, 30 years of experience in corporate and government positions in the energy sector.
David Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
Lisa Friedman, reporter on the climate desk at the The New York Times.
Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for The New York Times from Washington.
Spencer Dale, BP Group Chief Economist.
Richard Revesz, professor at the NYU School of Law.
Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environment and Law at Yale University.
William Hogan, Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard.
Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
John Graham, Dean Emeritus, Paul O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
Gernot Wagner, Clinical Associate Professor at New York University.
John Holdren, Research Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.
Larry Goulder, Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Stanford University.
Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund.
Sheila Olmstead, Professor of Public Affairs, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin.
Robert Pindyck, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management.
Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University.
Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT.
Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
Jonathan Wiener, the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
Daniel Yergin, founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
Jeffrey Holmstead, who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.
Billy Pizer, Vice President for Research & Policy Engagement, Resources for the Future.
Daniel Bodansky, Regents’ Professor, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.
Catherine Wolfram, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, currently on leave at the Harvard Kennedy School.
James Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.
Mary Nichols, long-time leader in California, U.S., and international climate change policy.
Geoffrey Heal, Donald Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School.
Kathleen Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut.
Meredith Fowlie, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, U.C. Berkeley.
Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University.
Nathaniel Keohane, President, C2ES.
Amy Harder, Executive Editor, Cypher News.
Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Kimberly (Kim) Clausing, School of Law, University of California at Los Angeles
Hunt Allcott, Professor of Global Environmental Policy, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
Meghan O’Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
Robert Lawrence, Albert Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School.
Charles Taylor, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Wolfram Schlenker, Ray Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System, Harvard Kennedy School.
Karen Fisher-Vanden, Professor of Environmental & Resource Economics, Pennsylvania State University
Max Bearak, climate and energy reporter, New York Times

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

What Happened at COP29 in Baku?

Having recently returned from the 29^th Conference of the Parties (COP29) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Baku, Azerbaijan, I want to offer my personal summary and assessment of the major takeaways from COP29, briefly summarize Harvard’s participation, and offer some thoughts about the path ahead to COP30.

Why Azerbaijan?

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the setting for this COP in the oil-rich, authoritarian state of Azerbaijan was not conducive to a productive let alone an enjoyable Conference of the Parties. Azerbaijan feels like exactly what it is – a former Soviet republic – the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic – from 1920 until 1991, when the Soviet Union was dissolved, and now an “independent” country that remains firmly within the Russian sphere of influence. So, why was it held in Azerbaijan? The reason is simple: Vladimir Putin said it could be held there. Let me explain.

The COPs rotate among five regional groups of United Nations member states to ensure geographical diversity and equity in hosting the conferences. These regions, in alphabetical order, are: (1) Africa; (2) Asia-Pacific; (3) Eastern Europe; (4) Latin America and the Caribbean; and (5) Western Europe and Others. This was the turn of Eastern Europe. The specific location of the COP within a given region depends on which country from the region volunteers, as long as no country from the region objects. Poland volunteered (they have held three remarkably successful COPs in the past), but Russia objected to any (Eastern European) country that supported Ukraine in the current war being the host. The result was Azerbaijan volunteering to host, and Russia approving. This was not an auspicious beginning to the process of Baku following Dubai.

Five Major Takeaways from COP29

I can identify five significant takeaways – important phenomena or negotiating outcomes – from the two-week Conference in Baku: (1) the counter-productive leadership of COP29 by Azerbaijan’s president; (2) the lame duck status of the U.S. delegation; (3) the outcome of negotiations on “finance;” (4) the evolution of language about the future role of fossil fuels; and (5) the completion of the “carbon-market article” in the Paris Agreement. I take these in turn.

(1) COP29 Leadership by Azerbaijan

As the President of COP29, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev sought to position his country and his leadership at COP29 as a bridge-builder between the Global North and the Global South. In practice, it did not turn out that way. Indeed, I would say that geopolitical tensions at COP29 between rich and poor countries were greater than ever before.

Aliyev started things off with a defiant opening presentation at the beginning of COP29, in which he characterized his country’s oil and gas reserves as “a gift of God,” maintained that it is “not fair” to call his country a petrostate, and then accused Western countries of “double standards” and “political hypocrisy.” Then, the next day, he attacked France and the Netherlands for their overseas territories, which he described as “colonies” which don’t have seats in the climate negotiations. In addition, the Azerbaijani government and its state company, SOCAR (the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic, the national oil and gas company), finalized several natural gas deals at COP29 to increase natural gas exports to Europe.

This perspective on fossil fuel use from an autocratic ruler made it challenging, to say the least, for Azerbaijan to preside over the talks and find compromise on some very delicate climate topics. I cannot say exactly how Aliyev’s leadership resulted in the COP29 outcomes, but in the hallways, delegates from a diverse set of countries complained vociferously about the host country’s leadership of the Conference.

(2) The Lame Duck Status of the United States

Donald Trump’s election as the next U.S. president pervaded everyone’s thinking, at least during the first week in Baku. In particular, expectations that Trump will follow through on his promise to pull the USA out of the Paris Climate Agreement, as he did in 2017 during his first term in office, fueled concern that this would have profound, negative impacts on multilateral climate action. (See my previous blog essay, Looking Back, Looking Forward: Implications of Trump 2.0.)

The chief U.S. climate envoy, John Podesta, tried in vain to reassure his various audiences – other countries’ negotiators, climate activists, and the press – that the U.S. remains on track at the U.N. climate talks. I will note that there is merit to his claim that the global energy-transition trend will not be stopped by a change in U.S. administration, because much of it, in my view, is driven by markets and exogenous technological change. After a few days, the significance of the U.S. election may have faded somewhat in the negotiators’ minds, but it remained the starting point for discussion in every meeting in which I engaged – with a diverse set of people from governments, NGOs, industry, and the press.

The key question, of course, is whether Trump’s election and the anticipated withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement – or more broadly, the election results and the promise of Trump 2.0 – has on other countries’ climate stances, pledges, and policies. It was clear that the U.S. delegation was more muted than usual, and that there would be no effective pressure from the USA (as there was during the Obama years) for China to become more ambitious in its pledges.

It was striking that during the first week of COP29, right-wing populist leader Javier Milei threatened to withdraw Argentina from the talks altogether, which led some delegates to fear that Trump’s win might precipitate a global chain reaction of far-right governments withdrawing from the Paris Agreement. But the Argentinian government subsequently clarified that it was not leaving Paris Agreement, and those fears dissipated.

It may be that Trump’s election need not derail global climate action, but it is too soon to make firm predictions. For one thing, it does appear that Trump’s victory emboldened Saudi Arabia to be much more strident in its defense of fossil fuels at COP29, even more aggressive than it has been in previous COPs.

(3) The Center-Stage Outcome: Finance

COP29 was labeled the “Finance COP,” because it was intended that the focus would be on augmenting developed countries’ commitment made in 2009 (at COP15 in Copenhagen) to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020 to support developing countries in addressing climate change, both for mitigation and for adaptation (that target appears to have been met about two years late).

The debates on this continued for the entire two weeks of COP29 (and then some), ranging from heated discussions to acrimonious arguments, with developed countries on one side, and, on the other side, developing countries plus China, which insists it is a “developing country” under UN rules from 1990. China’s position remains that it supports developing country demands for very high levels of financial transfers, but as a developing country itself, it will not contribute, despite the fact that it has been the world’s largest emitter since 2006, and is now second only to the United States as a contributor to the stock of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs).

The developing countries at COP29 insisted on $1.3 trillion/year as the new level of commitment, but the rich countries offered a new goal to deliver to poor countries $300 billion/year by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead and some developing countries (that is, China) encouraged to contribute on a voluntary basis. The developing world wanted all of the funds to come from public sources (that is, foreign aid), but the final deal allows some money to come from private sources, such as foreign direct investment, which (in my opinion) makes abundant sense.

Although the new $300 billion/year target is three times the size of the previous target (see above), it is less than 25% of the $1.3 trillion/year sought by developing countries. So, not surprisingly, developing countries were not happy, with the complaints led vocally by India’s lead negotiator, Chandni Raina, who called it “a paltry sum” and a “travesty of justice.”

(4) The Future of Fossil Fuels

One year earlier, at the 28^th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, the closing statement (officially the “Decision of the First Global Stocktake”) endorsed “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner …”. That statement received more attention than any other outcome of COP28, although I wrote at the time that it was not of great significance (What Really Happened at COP28 in Dubai). However, many governments, NGOs, and the press hailed that compromise statement as making COP28 a success.

So, when it came to the conclusion of COP29 in Baku, all eyes were turned to the question of whether COP29 would endorse, indeed strengthen that language about transitioning away from fossil fuels. The result, largely due to Saudi Arabia fighting aggressively and effectively against any negative comments about fossil fuels in the final text, was that the COP29 text simply references the Dubai outcome, but does not repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels, let alone offer something stronger. The European Union (EU) and the U.S. negotiators wanted something to be included about actions to achieve any goal, but that was likewise rejected.

(5) What About Article 6 of the Paris Agreement?

As some of you may know, I’ve worked on and written about Article 6 (more specifically, Article 6.2) of the Paris Agreement, which deals with “international cooperation,” since long before the Paris Agreement and Article 6 were even developed, via my extensive work on international linkage of heterogeneous policy instruments (Jaffe and Stavins 2008; Ranson and Stavins 2013; Ranson and Stavins 2015). And once the Paris Agreement began to take shape, I turned to examining how international policy linkage could be facilitated by its Article 6.2 (Bodansky, Hoedl, Metcalf, and Stavins 2015; Mehling, Metcalf, and Stavins 2019), as well as numerous essays at this blog.

So, what happened in this regard at COP29? Remarkably, despite the very contentious debates on finance and the future of fossil fuels, there was finally (eight years after the Paris Agreement came into force) agreement on the adoption of Article 6, which can facilitate international GHG trading. Unfortunately, as I will write about in some future essay at this blog, the ways in which countries are interpreting Article 6.2 and exploiting it do not bode well for it living up to its great promise.

So, that’s my summary and assessment of five meaningful takeaways – significant phenomena and negotiating outcomes – from the two-week Conference in Baku. I leave it to readers to decide whether this indicates that COP29 was a success or not.

I now turn to a very brief summary of the work our Harvard delegation was doing at COP-29, and then conclude with some thoughts about the path ahead to COP30.

Harvard Participation

Once again, I led our Harvard delegation, which was severely limited in size at COP29 due to the low allocation of badges we were awarded by the host country. Nevertheless, we held a couple of dozen meetings over three days with governments, industry representatives, NGOs, and the press, largely focused on the work of the Harvard Salata Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions, which I’m directing.

In addition, we hosted two official side events. The first was on New Horizons in Methane-Emissions Abatement, co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD), on Tuesday, November 12, 2024.

Speakers included: Zerin Osho, Director, India Program, Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD); Sarah Smith, Program Director – Energy, Global Methane Hub; Ole Sander, Senior Scientist for Climate Change, International Rice Research Institute; and myself, as moderator and presenter.

Our second side event was on Industrial Policy, Trade, and the Political Economy of Decarbonization, co-sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, the Enel Foundation, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Foundation Environment – Law Society, on Thursday, November 14, 2024.

This second panel, which I moderated, featured: Daniele Agostini, Head of Energy and Climate Policies, Enel Group; Chantal Line Carpentier, Head of the Trade, Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainable Development Branch at UNCTAD; Michael Mehling, Deputy Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, MIT; and Joyashree Roy, Distinguished Professor and Director SMARTS Center, Asian Institute of Technology. A background paper, “Good Spillover, Bad Spillover? Industrial Policy, Trade, and the Political Economy of Decarbonization,” and its 2-page summary can be downloaded here.

The Path Ahead

There is some consistency between COP28 (Dubai), COP29 (Baku), and next year’s COP30 in Brazil, as that country is Latin America’s largest oil producer (Petrobras now surpasses the production of Mexico and Venezuela). But expectations are very high for COP-30, which will take place November 10-21, 2025, in Belém do Pará in the Amazon region of Brazil, because that is where countries’ updated targets under the Paris Agreement are scheduled to be finalized. Those revised Nationally Determined Contributions are due to be submitted by February 2025. Stay tuned.

Whether I will maintain my streak next year in Brazil of annual COP participation is, as always, an open question, particularly after having spent several days this year in Baku, Azerbaijan.