World must break its dependency on fossil fuels – Sharma

RUSSIA’S invasion of Ukraine throws into “stark relief ” the dangers of energy systems powered by foreign fossil fuels, Cop26 President Alok Sharma has said.

Returning to the Glasgow venue for the UN Cop26 summit to mark six months since delegates agreed upon new efforts to tackle climate change, he called for countries to step up the pace on action.

Mr Sharma acknowledged in his speech that the world had changed since the summit, and climate change was no longer on the front pages as war returned to Europe, inflation spiked, energy prices climbed and people continued to deal with the pandemic.

“Yet the current crises should increase, not diminish, our determination to deliver on what the world agreed here in Glasgow, because they show with devastating clarity why it is imperative to do so, and to do so now,” he urged.

He warned that climate change was a “chronic danger” that the world had to deal with even as countries tackled the other crises in the present.

Mr Sharma said the “brutal and illegal invasion” of Ukraine would define this year and many years to come, and said: “The actions of the Putin regime have pushed up fossil fuel prices globally.

“That has thrown our situation into stark relief. We see clearly the dangers of energy systems powered by foreign fossil fuels.

“We see the benefits of low-cost home-grown renewables, the price of which cannot be manipulated from afar.

“In short, we see that climate security is energy security and that we must break our dependency on fossil fuels.”

He admitted countries were taking action to deal with immediate supply issues of fossil fuels but also pointed to increases in renewable deployment, and said the UK would be able to get 95% of its power from low-carbon sources by 2030 and be fully decarbonised by 2035.

Mr Sharma called for more action to shift towards a clean future, warning that food security – already under pressure because of famine and now the invasion of Ukraine – would worsen with climate change.

The Met Office has warned that the world has a 50-50 chance in the next five years of temporarily exceeding the 1.50C global warming limit which countries pledged to pursue efforts to meet in the Paris Agreement in 2015 and confirmed in Glasgow.