Over,700 coal, oil and gas lobbyists granted access to Cop29, says report. Fossil fuel-linked lobbyists outnumber delegations of almost every country at climate talks in Baku, analysis finds.Guardian  Dharna Noor 11-15-2024  A least 1,773 coal, oil, and gas lobbyists have been granted access to the United Nations climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, a new report has found, raising concerns about the planet-heating industry’s influence on the negotiations. Those lobbyists outnumber the delegations of almost every country at the conference, the analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition shows, with the only exceptions being this year’s host country, Azerbaijan, next year’s host Brazil, and Turkey.

Many fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to Cop29 as part of trade associations, primarily from the global north. The International Emissions Trading Association brought the largest number, with 43 representatives hailing from oil majors like TotalEnergies and Glencore.Other lobbyists are attending as part of national delegations. Japan brought a representative from coal giant Sumitomo, while Canada brought representatives from Suncor and Tourmaline, and Italy brought employees of energy companies Eni and Enel. The UK alone brought 20 lobbyists, the report says.  “The fossil fuel industry has long manipulated climate negotiations to protect its interests while our planet burns,” said Dawda Cham of the grassroots groups Help Gambia and the Africa Make Big Polluters Pay coalition, who is also a member of the KBPO coalition.....read on    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/15/coal-oil-and-gas-lobbyists-granted-access-to-cop29-says-report   

Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year. With clean air projects receiving just 1% of aid, activists say nations ‘cannot continue polluting practices at expense of climate stability. Guardian Ajit Niranjan  Thu 10 Oct 2024 Foreign aid for fossil fuel projects quadrupled in a single year, a report has found, rising ​​from $1.2bn in 2021 to $5.4bn in 2022. “This shocking increase in aid funding to fossil fuels is a wake-up call,” said Jane Burston, CEO of nonprofit the Clean Air Fund, which conducted the research. “The world cannot continue down this path of propping up polluting practices at the expense of global health and climate stability.” International public funding “does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge” and often does not reach the most affected people, said Adalberto Maluf, national secretary of the urban environment and environmental quality in Brazil, which holds the G20 presidency and will host the Cop30 climate summit next year. 

 LNG 33% Worse for Climate Than Coal Over 20-Year Period, Groundbreaking Research Reveals Earth.Org Martina IginiOct 7th 2024 Exported gas generates far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite the fossil fuel industry depicting the former as a cleaner alternative, new scientific evidence has shown. In its new peer-reviewed study, American ecosystem scientist Robert Howarth concluded that Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) has a larger climate impact than any other planet-warming fossil fuel, including the dirtiest of all, coal. Coal, the cheapest and dirtiest fossil fuel, is the single-largest source of carbon emissions, responsible for over 0.3C of the 1.2C increase in global average temperatures since the Industrial Revolution. It is also a major contributor to air pollution.  But Howarth’s research came to the conclusion that LNG is 33% worse in terms of greenhouse gas emissions over a 20-year period compared to coal, when accounting for its life-cycle emissions. Indeed, about two-thirds of the total emissions occur before the final burning of gas to power homes and businesses. Contributing to this is the sheer amount of methane emissions associated with LNG, which is predominantly made up of methane. Methane traps around 80 times the heat carbon dioxide (CO2) does over 20 years, dropping to 28-34 times over a century. Gas venting and fugitive emissions are the main cause of methane emissions. Gas venting is a practice that pumps out unwanted gasto maintain safe conditions in the oil and gas extraction process. While gas venting is a deliberate methane release, fugitive emissions are unintentional releases of gas across the fossil fuel supply system. The majority of the methane escape comes from downstream processes, which include refining, transmission, and distribution of gaseous products. So, even though burning coal generates greater CO2 emissions than burning natural gas, the latter’s methane emissions can “more than offset this difference,” according to the study.....read on......https://earth.org/lng-33-worse-for-climate-than-coal-over-20-year-period-groundbreaking-research-reveals/?mc_cid=01865f5ca3&mc_eid=9e83f67e3f

The research, compiled from financial data services, company websites, press releases and news reports, was limited to three categories of investments – upstream, fossil gas terminals, and coal plants – and so does not represent firms’ entire emissions footprints from energy investments. They compiled their findings into a scorecard, ranking each firm by its exposure to fossil fuel emissions producing investments, transparency and alignment with the target of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5C above preindustrial levels. EIG ranked last, receiving an F grade. It had 23 fossil fuel companies in its portfolio, the majority in upstream operations, giving it the estimated upstream emissions of more than 255m metric tons of tCO2e a year – the most of all its peers......and there's more https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/01/private-equity-firms-us-pensions-fossil-fuel-projects