What Donald Trump’s Exit Indicates For Global Green Transition Efforts

Trump’s “Drill Baby Drill” not only marks the US’s departure from the Green Deal and the Paris Climate Agreement but proclaims a renewed intimacy with the world of coal, oil and gas exploration.

Energy history shows that the rise of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century and the British and American empires in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries are related to the discovery and exploitation of peat, coal and oil, respectively.

It is plausible that 2025 may see the rise of a new empire of fossil hegemony at the cost of the green energy transition.

Energy history also suggests that club arrangements—bilateral, plurilateral and other alliances where country governments join hands on climate mitigation and adaptation actions—have arisen in the global politics of energy transition with the Powering Past Coal Alliance launched at COP23 in 2017 by the UK and Canada. It gained momentum with the Beyond Oil & Gas Alliance launched by Denmark and Costa Rica at COP26 in 2021. These alliances aim to stop fossil fuel production through commitments from regional, local and city governments.

Currently, there is a financing gap in investment flow from developed to developing countries for people-centric energy transition towards attaining the net zero emission goals set by the countries. It is important that the investment push continues for countries to attain these goals. This can balance the power hegemony of coal, oil, gas and fossil fuels with the business interest of pushing green energy transition while coal production is peaked and phased down.

With the US’s withdrawal, such an investment push can persist if the club arrangements of green energy alliances dominate over the fossil fuel alliances.

Globally, within the paradigm of supply-side push of fossil fuels versus green energy transition, club arrangements and multilateral global environmental agreements are agents of change.

To realise the outcomes of the US withdrawal will take at least a year. The question is whether these non-legally binding club alliances can consolidate to strengthen the green energy transition, which can face a counter-push from the fossil fuel lobby. This can mean that globally, coal production will further increase, peaking will be delayed and people-centric phasing down of coal mines will be on the back burner for some time, owing to the strong pushback effects of the US withdrawal.

It can also mean that investments in electric vehicles, solar and wind can face a downturn, reducing the aggressive demand for critical minerals as the world decides what it wants for the future: fossil fuel-driven energy or green energy.

Club alliances can maintain the momentum of the green energy transition amidst strong resistance from the fossil fuel supply side. However, a legally nonbinding agreement cannot sustain such a fight in the long term. It needs to be translated to a larger movement across various governments at the regional, national, subnational, city and municipality levels.

For such movements to succeed, ambitious first-mover countries of club alliances such as Denmark have to mandatorily set bold targets to encourage others to follow suit. This has to be done tactfully to avoid potentially becoming legally liable for missed targets.

In the recent phase-down history of coal, Denmark formed a club alliance in 2020 to phase out coal and fossil fuels through supply-side policies by 2050. Danish ambitions started from the shockwaves of the 1973 oil crisis.

The question is whether the US withdrawal will create new shockwaves in the form of an oil or green energy crisis from which new club alliances to reduce fossil fuel will emerge. Such crises can emerge from new forms of oil and green energy protectionism. An ‘America First’ push towards coal, oil and gas increases the chances of coal, oil or gas nationalism. On the renewables front, the Inflation Reduction Act in the US is testimony to that.

Energy transition history indicates that broader systemic factors decide fossil fuel phaseouts rather than individual decisions, standouts and withdrawal. This can mean that in spite of Trump’s withdrawal, the rise of systemic factors to sustain the global green energy transition can challenge fossil fuel growth.

Work on pervasive petroculture shows that historically, the persistence of the fossil fuel regime continues through the creation of bottom-up collective power. For Appalachian coal communities in the US, the development of petrocultures which are self-inforced over time have created a “carbon lock-in“. Companies and communities are locked in carbon-intensive production processes and future investments get directed towards carbon-intensive production chains and systems.

Historically, carbon lock-in effects have persisted in the US and other developed countries, which has resulted in failure of the global climate deal and led to the climate crisis of today.

To counter this, Europe and developing countries need to form an alliance through supply side policies. Inspiration can be found in Ecuador’s Yasunì-ITT (ultimately failed) proposal to keep oil from the Yasunì field in the Amazon in the ground, Britain’s and Chile’s coal phaseouts, Greenland’s pre-emptive ban on oil and gas exploration and extraction, and Quebec’s wholesale ban on oil and gas production.

Europe has to play a key role in this. However, with the rise of right-of-centre politics, the continuing Russia-Ukraine War, complex struggles between EU states, and the interplay between finance capital and labour, it is uncertain how Europe can unite faster to create a counter pressure.

Today’s energy and transition policies are not only decided by new-age green finance capital but also by exogenous factors such as war, sanctions and global production fluctuations. The 1970s oil crisis was a turning point in the energy transition policy of Denmark and France. The US’s withdrawal could become another turning point for the history of people-centric energy transition.

This will be crucial as the COP28 stocktaking in December 2023 indicated that global efforts have been insufficient to meet the Paris Agreement’s objective of limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5°C. The stocktaking created a consensus for more aggressive green energy transition measures by all countries.

If the world has to thrive on green energy transition despite “Drill Baby Drill”, the European Green Deal has to reach the ambitious goals it set: the REPowerEU plan to rapidly reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels and fast forward the green transition has to be successful. This would entail achieving the ten-year National Energy and Climate Plan and the Fit for 55 goal of reducing net emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990.

Europe, which is warming at the fastest rate of all continents, must become the first climate neutral continent by 2050 under the European Green Deal to keep the hope of green energy transition alive. Other countries can gradually join the deal and create a stronger alliance.

However, global uncertainties related to geopolitical tensions, trade disputes, resource availability, supply chain disruption, technological advancements, digitalisation and AI, among other systemic factors, will establish whether 2025 will be a turning point for fossil fuel survival or people-centric green energy transition.

India can take this opportunity to become a global voice on climate change and sustainability by bringing like-minded countries together and attracting greater investments towards a people-centric cleaner transition.

(Published under Creative Commons from 360info. Read the original article here)