COP29 – Outcomes and CCS Activities

High Level Outcomes

This was intended to be the finance COP. The aim is that countries would agree a new climate finance goal, called a New Collective Quantified Goal (with a new acronym, NCQG), at a level higher than the current $100bn goal. This proved to be a contentious area of negotiations, with different requests from different groups of developing countries. The text document grew large to include more topics and then reduced again. A late draft had an important clause relevant to CCS and engineered CDR, that the NCQG should “uphold the principle of technology neutrality in provision of climate finance”. In the end the COP overran, and agreements were reached at 03:00 on Sunday 24^th, with Civil Society providing their statements up to 05:30am. The final agreement on NCQG was for $300bn annually by 2035, lower than many developing countries wanted, but three times higher than current. At least the countries reached an agreement, there was a risk of no agreement. To note, in the final document, the technology neutral text had gone.

In terms of mitigation, there were significant achievements from the last COP, COP28, on transitioning away from fossil fuels (in keeping with the science), tripling renewables, doubling energy efficiency, accelerating CCUS, etc, in the negotiation area called the Global Stocktake (GST). However, at COP29, countries could not improve on this, actually they could not even agree to just reference this. The document on implementing the GST got kicked down the road to the next Subsidiary Bodies meeting in June 2025. Many countries were disappointed in this poor outcome.

On Article 6, International Cooperation, the COP plenary adopted two important documents. Article 6.4 is a new carbon market mechanism for creation and exchange of carbon credits from project activities across countries, and has a new name, the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM). The two documents were the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body’s Standard on Development and Assessment of Methodologies, and their Standard on Requirements for Activities Involving Removals. The Supervisory Body at its last meeting in October decided to approve these standards by itself. They had worked hard on these for more than two years but they had not been approved at the last COP. So it could have been contentious in COP29 that they had done this, but it was approved in plenary on the first day. So more certainty is created in the international compliance carbon markets. The Standard on Removals is important for CCS as well as engineered CDR, as although it isn’t in the title, it explicitly includes “emission reduction activities with risk of reversal”, and that will include CCS. The risk of reversal for all techniques, nature based as well, will be managed primarily with a buffer pool of credits. The level of contribution to the buffer pool by project participants will be determined on a risk basis, and in the event of a reversal of a removal (i.e. forest fire or CO₂ leakage) the buffer pool credits (6.4ERs) will be replaced by project participants at an amount equal to the reversal event. The Supervisory Body will also consider use of insurance or comparable guarantees. IEAGHG has put a lot of effort into inputting evidence base on geological storage into the 6.4 considerations on removals, especially drawing from the hard work we and others put into Clean Development Mechanism’s modalities and procedures for CCS which were agreed in 2011 at COP17 and from the IPCC GHG Inventory Guidelines (2006). So it is satisfying to see the Standard on Removals being finally adopted and not excluding engineered removals (which some were calling for earlier in the 6.4 process).

The final high level text on 6.4 did include encouragement for the Supervisory Body to develop further guidance on areas including non-permanence, post-crediting period monitoring, reversal risk assessments, and remediation measures. But essentially this area of work is completed, and it is now a bottom-up process for applicants to develop end submit methodologies for their particular activity type or project.

A second carbon markets part of Article 6 is Article 6.2 which is around transfer of credits between countries, “Internationally Transferred Mitigation Options” (ITMOs). Although already operational through bilateral agreements, this final text provides further clarity and guidance on authorisations and registries and relationship between registries, to ensure avoidance of double counting.

Very many countries and observers were pleased with the positive conclusions on Article 6, creating more certainty for international compliance carbon markets.

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) updates (the third update of these, some calling them NDC 3.0) are due by early 2025. The UK was quick in with announcing theirs at COP29, with an 83% emission reductions by 2035, which was positively received and hopefully will set a benchmark for other countries to follow.

All of this was achieved under the shadow of the recent US election results the week before, and many discussions and briefings on potential implications were held in the first week. Many interesting facts were shared. For example the bipartisan support for the IRA, with 57% of it going to Republican areas. Also, the Rhodium Group found that for every 1 tonne of CO₂ reduced in the US from the IRA, spillover, technology learnings, cost reductions, resulted in 2.9 tonnes of CO₂ reduced in the rest of the world. It was also noted that the CEO of the US’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, attended COP for the first time, and afterwards sent a message to the forthcoming administration to not leave the Paris Agreement.

CCS Activities

There were a number of events on CCS at this COP.

The most significant event was from the Carbon Management Challenge (CMC) which held its first Ministerial meeting at COP29 after being launched at COP28. This is a coalition of governments aiming to scale CCS and CDR by 2030 to having projects leading to 1Gt scale. It was great to see the room full with governments and supporting observers. Sixteen governments gave statements of support and updates on the meeting’s theme of “Collaborate to Accelerate”, and the CMC secretariat gave an update. There are now 22 countries plus the EC as participants, with Mauritania, Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya and Bahrain joining since last year. There are now three workstreams: Finance for Developing Countries (led by Indonesia, Kenya, and US); Project Deployment and Tracking (led by Brazil); and Communication and Engagement (led by UK and Saudi Arabia). This Ministerial was well organised by the secretariat (now provided by Global CCS Institute). IEAGHG had a seat at the table again to offer our support. 

Another significant event was titled “Is here Climate Finance for CCS, especially in emerging economies? This was the question we addressed in our UNFCCC Side-event in COP29, organised by IEAGHG, University of Texas, CCSA, International CCS Knowledge Centre and Bellona. Great talks, presentations and perspectives were given from Brad Crabtree , Katherine Romanak , Olivia Powis , James Fann , Olav Øye , Clarine Ovando-Lacroux , Donneil Cain, and myself.  As well as funding and incentives in US, UK, EU and Canada, the GCF Readiness funds for Trinidad and Tobago were described and are precedent setting being the first for CCS. The answer to the title question was some good incentives/finance in some countries do exist, but much more is needed. The Article 6.4 result will help as well. Thanks to all the panellists, and thanks to the audience for great questions. The COP media, IISD, covered the event, and their article can be seen at https://enb.iisd.org/climate-finance-carbon-capture-storage .

CCS in the Caribbean Region was the title of our second side-event. Organised by IEAGHG, University of Texas, University of Trinidad and Tobago and University of the West Indies. We heard more detail and updates about the work underway in Trinidad and Tobago on their storage atlas, capacity building, national symposiums, a perspective on Guyana’s potential, the regional context of establishing a centre of excellence, the Green Climate Fund funding to enable some of these activities, and the potential of the Carbon Management Challenge for the region. Many thanks to the excellent panelists Brad Crabtree, Professor Raffie Hosein, Professor Donnie Boodlal, Donneil Cain, Adiola Walcott, and Professor Katherine Romanak . Thanks to the pavilion hosts CARICOM. And a very special thanks to Brad Crabtree at this, his last speaking event in COP29, for his leadership and tireless support to CCS.

It was interesting to participate in a panel at COP29 organised by the Global CCS Institute on “Scaling up CCS in the Global South”. Fellow panelists Zhang Xian of China, Nabil Al-Bulushi of Oman, and Sadesh Sookraj of IFC provided interesting insights and updates. I provided insights from IEAGHG activities with countries in the Global South, also the latest news and implications on Article 6.4. All nicely moderated by Ellina Levina.

I was invited to participate in an Oman pavilion event on Engineered Carbon Reduction and Removal Technologies. Sharing the panel with Nabil Al-Bulushi, Hamed Al Mamari of PDO , Sulaiman Al Mani of 44.01, and nicely moderated by Mohammed Al-Ghareebi. We talked about scaling up CCUS worldwide, CCUS developments in Oman, decarbonising LNG with electrification, storage by mineralisation, CCUS policies, cost reductions, and international collaboration and sharing of learnings. There is a lot of carbon management underway in Oman.

Other side-events on CCS included several focussing on CCS for the cement industry, held in the Global Cement and Concrete Association’s pavilion. The Global CCS Institute organised several more events, including on financing CCS and on the Carbon Management Challenge. There were also several side-events on engineered CDR, including on why the aviation industry is so interested in DAC projects.

IEAGHG also participated in a roundtable meeting organised by CATF and US DOE to provide inputs on the Carbon Management Challenge’s future work. 

IEAGHG also joined in with UT, CCSA, and the International CCS Knowledge Centre to provide a UNFCCC Booth on CCS information in the second week. This was very popular, with a constant flow of delegates seeking it out to learn about CCS, indicating the continuing high level of positive interest in CCS.

Overall, a very busy COP. Thanks to Azerbaijan for hosting this COP in Baku. The logistics worked well, even with 65,000 attending, and Baku was a friendly and safe city.