Cop31 in Antalya spotlights a 35% clean-electricity-by-2035 push amid coal-heavy hosts and geopolitical strain
Cop31, the UN climate summit opening next week in Antalya, Turkey, will try to steer talks toward clean electricity even though it is co-led by coal exporter Australia and coal-consuming Turkey. A proposed target would have electricity cover 35% of final energy demand by 2035, shifting attention from fossil fuels. The dual presidency is a last-minute compromise from Cop30 in Belém: Australia had sought a Cop since 2021, when Anthony Albanese made hosting a pledge before the climate-focused election he won the next year, while Turkey said the UK, hosts of Glasgow’s Cop26 in 2021, had agreed 2026 would be its turn. Under UNFCCC rules dating to 1992, both sit in the same regional group as western Europe for rotating presidencies, with no treaty mechanism or majority vote to settle rival bids.
Australia will chair formal negotiations, including a just transition for fossil-fuel workers, the loss-and-damage fund after Nepal’s glacier collapse, climate finance, and emissions cuts. Turkey will run the action agenda of voluntary pledges, centred on electrifying the global economy plus waste and methane cuts favoured by first lady Emine Erdoğan. The geopolitical setting is among the worst for a recent conference of the parties: fighting linked to Ukraine, Iran and Gaza, an unpredictable White House, and anxiety over artificial intelligence. An El Niño pattern intensified by fossil-fuel heating is already causing havoc and has yet to peak. Cop31 is the first major international meeting after US midterms that delivered a pummelling to Donald Trump and Republicans, and Brazil’s presidential vote won by Lula da Silva, seen as a relief for the Amazon versus Flávio Bolsonaro. It is also António Guterres’s last such outing as UN secretary-general. UN reports say overshoot of 1.5C is now inevitable and holding warming below 1.8C would require massive, urgent greenhouse-gas cuts, even as global carbon emissions have yet to turn.
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