New goals should be set for climate change financing at COP29, Samantha Gross, Director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative at the Brookings Institution, said in an interview with Report.
According to Gross, everyone is thinking about climate finance: “I also want to think about what happens outside the negotiation room in Baku. The negotiations are always really, really hard. This COP process is very dependent on consensus, whereas a lot of what happens at COPs these days happens in the giant trade show outside the negotiation room, where people meet, make deals, and think about ways to move forward. So, I'll look for an ambitious financial goal to come out of the negotiation room, but I'll also look for more side deals, more agreements like the Global Methane Pledge or the agreements with wealthy countries in Indonesia and South Africa to decarbonize. Some of these smaller side deals are important and help move the ball forward.”
Samantha Gross said that, as a representative of the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan research group in the United States, they don't have an agenda, but they support the general goals of the Paris Agreement: “We want an energy transition that is good for people, good for the economy, and provides secure energy. These are our fundamental goals,” she noted.
Samantha Gross underlined that “Including private sector money is absolutely crucial to achieving the energy financing goals of COP29. When we think about the amount of financing available from concessional finance, aid finance, etc., it is tiny compared to the overall amount of money that will be needed for the energy transition. So, the key is to use this concessional money, or aid money, to de-risk investments, buy down interest rates, make the rest of the project bankable, and bring in private capital. Because private capital is where the real money is. Therefore, to boost the energy transition, one of the important tools is attracting private sector money.”
When it comes to the long-lasting impact of renewable sources of energy, the Director of the Energy Security and Climate Initiative thinks that the US is today the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas, and it’s likely to stay that way for a while. Yet once we reach a point where we have more green projects and are using more green energy in the economy, we'll naturally phase down our oil and gas production. But for right now, we're going to keep it because we still use it, still need it, and it contributes considerably to our economy.