The world’s gone green - but the West is still stuck on fossil fuels even as COP30 happens

I remember the days when editors would laugh at wind turbines when they burst into flames.

That was ten years ago since when huge advances in technology mean the renewables industry is no longer an object of ridicule.

Quite the opposite as this month’s report by the global energy think tank, Ember, demonstrated.

Latest data shows the growth in solar and wind has been so strong that it met 100% of the global extra electricity demand, even driving a decline in coal and gas use in the process.

Ember identified a growing divide between developing countries, especially China, which is leading the clean energy charge, and richer countries in the West which continue to rely on planet-warming fossil fuels for their electricity.

The report coincided with a warning from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) for the UK to get ready for weather extremes that will result from at least 2C of global warming by 2050.

It said Britain has ‘not yet adapted’ to worsening weather occurring at current levels of warming, ‘let alone’ what’s around the corner.

This followed confirmation by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) that 2024 saw a record rise of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

So despite the 2015 Paris Agreement, COP29 and the 28 summits preceding it over the past 30 years the planet is still seeing unprecedented levels of the gas mainly responsible for human-caused climate change which is released when fossil fuels are burned.

Now, as the world gathers for COP30, we are sleep-walking to a future which will include significant sea level rises along with major disruptions to ecosystems and food and water supplies.

The East-West divide between renewables and fossil fuels is getting more pronounced thanks to the Trump Effect, and his ‘drill, baby, drill’ mantra.

The contagion has already spread to the Conservative Party whose leader Kemi Badenoch has now pledged to ditch the UK’s climate change legislation which has enjoyed cross-party support since 2008.

Both she and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party blame the costs of meeting net zero targets which in the short term will hit families and businesses in the pocket.

What about the long-term cost of doing nothing? The heatwaves, droughts, flooding and wildfire seasons extending into autumn, which the CCC warned of?

This short-termism has now reached Europe, once considered to be the gold standard of how to prevent global warming but now unable to get key legislation to cut global deforestation by 10% off the ground.

Under the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) suppliers would have to show that products such as coffee, cocoa, palm oil, rubber, timber and soy were not linked to any forest degradation since 2020.

ts implementation has repeatedly been delayed, most recently because the trading bloc’s IT system can’t cope with all the paperwork.

There’s also been opposition from member states objecting to a classification they were of ‘low risk’ of deforestation, a ranking that would incur minimal due diligence reporting which, yes, would involve some costs.

There have also been threats from the White House that it would cancel its trade agreement with the EU if it wasn’t awarded a unique status of posing ‘negligible risk of deforestation’ which would absolve the entire US timber and soy industries of any checks.

Were this to happen the EU would have to, under law, award the same status to all non-EU countries.

So bang goes the EU’s sustainability and due diligence measures for its supply chain across the world.

Thanks to Trump, there is now a campaign by Republicans in the US, backed by the fossil fuel lobby, against ‘woke capitalism’, in reference to environmental, social and corporate governance – or ESG – criteria to screen investments based on their environmental and social implications.

This anti-ESG drive could be the reason for this month’s market survey by Opimas forecasting years of double digit growth in global spending on ESG coming to an end in 2026, following an all time high of 43% in 2021.

But take a closer look and the numbers tell a different story.

The global value of ESG assets is still expected to hit somewhere between £26 and £37 trillion by 2030.

Europe and Asia remain ambitious about ESG, aided by a tech revolution which will help with the monitoring of supply chains and automated sustainability auditing.

A survey by Morgan Stanley in July found nine out of ten companies across North America, Europe and APAC saw sustainability as a value-creation opportunity.

With investors, consumers and industry peers behind them businesses can set their own net zero targets and stick to them.

The quest for profits, the quarterly earning cycle where you are judged every quarter on what you earned the previous quarter has to stop. Because all that measures at the end of the day is profits and gives no value to good behaviour.

Sustainable development is about business balancing this need for profits with long-term benefits for the planet.

It’s time we recognised the two are not mutually exclusive, before it’s too late.

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Anthony Harwood is a former foreign editor of the Daily Mail

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