What Can COP28 Achieve?

COP season is almost here. For the climateconscious, the annual Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a fixture of the late-year calendar and an opportunity to take stock of our goals, needs, and achievements. We spend two weeks preoccupied with a distant event hoping that negotiators will make meaningful progress toward mitigating the climate threat. But to keep our expectations for COP28 realistic, we must understand what a COP can and cannot do.

We are steadily decarbonizing our economies. Within a decade, wind and solar power will be the major sources of electricity, and sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are likely to overtake those with internal combustion engines. According to the International Energy Agency, the world’s fossil-fuel consumption will start falling by 2030. Though this is probably too late to limit the global temperature increase to 2° Celsius, let alone 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels, it is sooner than one would have expected only a short time ago.

But little of this progress is directly attributable to COPs, including COP21 in 2015, from which the Paris climate agreement emerged. In fact, the Paris agreement specifies nothing about EVs or wind or solar power. Instead, it is Tesla that is responsible for the growth of EV sales: the commercial success of the company’s Model S drove other high-end automakers to develop the competitive products which are now debuting.

Is there any connection between COPs and Tesla’s success? If there is, it is not direct. During its early growth stages, Tesla benefited greatly from the United States’ Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations, which enabled it to sell zeroemissions credits to other manufacturers. The revenues from ZEC sales sometimes surpassed those of car sales.

The CAFE regulations date back to 1975, two decades before the first COP was held. They have, however, been tightened over time, a process that might partly reflect increased awareness, fostered by the COPs, of the climate challenge. Similarly, the COPs might have encouraged the subsidies, in both the US and the European Union, from which Tesla has benefited more recently, after it had already become a major force in the auto industry.

As for solar and wind, the sharp decline in costs has