Turkey is heading into COP31 with a clear message for the nearly 200 nations gathered in Antalya: make electrification a headline commitment in the summit’s final deal — even as critics warn the push could fall short on emissions without cleaner power.
Before the two-week United Nations conference opened yesterday in the Turkish Mediterranean city, Ankara said it wanted governments to back a pledge to electrify 35% of the global economy by 2035, up from about one-fifth today.
Now, Turkey is working to build wider support for embedding that target in the talks’ formal outcome, according to a person familiar with the matter.
A spokesperson for Turkey’s COP31 President Murat Kurum did not respond to a request for comment.
The conference’s leaders called on the nearly 200 countries represented to move faster to stem global warming
The aim is to curb planet-warming emissions by accelerating the shift away from fossil fuel-dependent cars, home heating systems, industrial boilers, cookstoves and other equipment that releases greenhouse gases — replacing them with electric alternatives.
But climate advocates, along with some Turkish villagers living near one of the country’s coal mines, have criticised the pledge for leaving a central question unanswered: whether the added electricity must come from low-carbon sources.
“If the grid is not clean, electrification does not remove emissions: it moves them from the exhaust pipe to the power plant smokestack,” said Alexis Normand, CEO of Greenly, a Paris-based carbon accounting company.
Turkey and Australia rely on coal
The dispute has also drawn attention to the energy mix of the two countries steering COP31.
Turkey, hosting the summit, and Australia, leading negotiations, both generate substantial power from fossil fuels.
Coal produced roughly a third of Turkey’s electricity last year and more than 40% of Australia’s, according to government data.
Australia’s COP31 team, led by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, did not provide comment in response to a Reuters request.
South Pacific island nations, among the countries most exposed to sea-level rise, are among those broadly pressing for a clearer roadmap for moving away from fossil fuels.
Turkey and Australia both rely on fossil fuels for electricity
Portugal — one of Europe’s leaders on renewable energy — said it would push to tie any electrification benchmark to cleaner supply.
“Our proposal is not simply electrification, but clean electrification. That means electricity from renewable sources rather than fossil fuels,” Portugal’s Environment Minister Maria da Graca Carvalho told reporters in Lisbon.
As COP31 got underway, conference leaders urged the nearly 200 participating countries to accelerate efforts to rein in global warming, pointing to rising temperatures and intensifying climate-driven disasters.
An October report from the United Nations Environment Programme said the world is already on track to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above pre-industrial levels — the threshold set at the 2015 Paris climate conference — and called for steep emissions cuts to bring temperatures back down.
