Exclusive: As countries meet at key climate crisis meetings, Australia's Chris Bowen says war underlines need to move away from fossil fuels
The fallout from the Iran war is driving countries to boost homegrown energy reliability and opens an opportunity for progress on clean generation at the next UN climate summit, says the lead negotiator at the talks.
Chris Bowen, the Australian climate change minister and new president of negotiations at the Cop31 conference in Turkey in November, said the energy market disruption should be seen as a global fossil fuel crisis - the second in four years, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 - and it was having an acute impact in Asia.
But he said Asian leaders and ministers, among others, had stressed in private meetings that the upheaval in liquid fuel supply underlined the need to shore up short-term needs and transition to renewable energy and electrification to reduce reliance on imported oil.
"No one has said this crisis is a reminder that we need to be more reliant on fossil fuels," he told the Guardian in his first interview in the role.
"There's a real appetite to emphasise reliability and energy sovereignty this year, and I think that does open up more opportunities for Cop31."
Bowen's comments align with those from the head of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol, who argued the war is turning countries away from oil to secure energy supplies and would change the fossil fuel industry forever.
They came as countries gathered for two separate national meetings aimed at injecting momentum into faltering efforts to act collectively on the climate crisis - the annual Petersberg climate dialogue hosted by the German government, and the first international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels, which began in the Colombian Caribbean port city of Santa Marta on Friday.
Co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, the Santa Marta event was announced as a response to frustration with petrostates, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, for opposing a clear statement on the need to phase out fossil fuels at the Cop30 summit in Brazil in November.
Australia - a leading coal and gas exporter that continues to approve new fossil fuel developments even as it installs household solar panels and batteries at record rates - backed a Colombian-led declaration in Brazil on the need to transition away from fossil fuels and is represented in Santa Marta by officials. Other fossil fuel producers at the conference include Canada, Nigeria, Mexico, Brazil and Turkey.
The biggest national emitters - China, the US, India and Russia - are not attending. The US under Donald Trump has also pulled out of UN climate summits.
Bowen, a former mayor and western Sydney Labor party MP for more than 20 years, said he believed consensus was still possible at climate talks in an increasingly chaotic and war-torn world, and every summit was partly about keeping the negotiations alive while claiming the best progress possible. He said commitments made since the Paris agreement in 2015 had lowered projected global heating from 4C to about 2.5C above preindustrial levels if existing promises are fulfilled.
"You can keep the process alive and hope for a big step forward," he said. "I think Cops are unlikely now to be Paris or Copenhagen - you know, outstanding successes or heart breaking failures. Cops are more likely to be incremental progress. The question is how big that progress is."
Bowen said he had spoken with Colombia's environment minister, Irene Velez Torres, and agreed the results of the Santa Marta would be considered as part of the UN process. He said the more than 50 countries attending the conference had taken a "perfectly sensible" approach in trying to accelerate their goals.
"It is saying, one, we want to push for a strong Cop outcome and, two, if consensus is not possible we want a fall back position where the rest of us can agree on something," he said. "My job as president of negotiations is to try to steer as strong results as possible through consensus."
Cop31 faces the additional challenge of being run by two countries with potentially differing views on what should be achieved. After a long standoff between Turkey and Australia over the presidency, an unusual compromise agreement was struck under which the former would host the conference and accompanying green trade fair in the Mediterranean city of Antalya and the latter would lead the formal negotiations between delegates from nearly 200 countries.
The Turkish government is ultimately in charge under the UN framework, but the two countries have said any disagreements would be resolved through consensus. Pacific countries, which were partners in Australia's bid, were given hosting rights for a pre-Cop meeting to be held in Fiji and Tuvalu in October.
A draft action agenda for the conference released by Turkey in February, covering areas of focus outside the formal negotiations, sparked criticism for not mentioning fossil fuels, the overwhelming cause of climate breakdown. Its 14 priorities included a focus on improving waste management - a campaign focus of the wife of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Emine Erdoğan.
The Turkish climate change minister and Cop31 president, Murat Kurum, did name fossil fuels in an address to the Petersberg dialogue in Berlin on Tuesday, saying the current crisis showed "relying solely on fossil fuels means walking towards volatility, insecurity and climate collapse".
Bowen's early plans as president of negotiations have been disrupted by his responsibility for Australia's supply of liquid fuels. He cancelled a planned trip to Berlin; instead addressed the dialogue by video.
He said his focus would include implementation of a 2023 commitment for renewable energy to be tripled and energy efficiency doubled by 2030. He also nominated areas of focus for Pacific countries: access to finance for developing countries; keeping alive the increasingly tenuous goal of limiting heating to 1.5C; and the importance of protecting oceans.
Bowen said he and Kurum spoke regularly and had a "very good working relationship" that he hoped could become an "innovative" hosting model in which middle powers with different international spheres of influence worked to build broad agreement.
"We had tense negotiations to get the outcome. We've moved on," he said. "I'm very upbeat about the relationship. I think it's in very good working order, and potentially can lead to the sort of breakthrough Cop that we need."