The Climate and Energy Transition Nest of the College of Europe in Natolin organised a lecture on "COP29 and Beyond: Climate Finance, Fossil Fuels, and the Future of Global Climate Action" by Dr James HENDERSON, distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES), and Honorary Professor at Warwick University.
The UN Climate Change Conferences (or COPs), which take place every year, and are the world’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change that brings together almost every country on Earth.
COP29 was held in Baku, Azerbaijan this year and the location itself, in a hydrocarbon producing country, is causing controversy and debate about the future of fossil fuels in the energy transition. Even more important than this issue, however, was and still is the topic of climate finance, which is at the heart of this year's negotiations and which could lead to significant friction between developed and developing countries.
On top of this, the questions of loss and damage, adaptation, carbon markets, methane emissions and the need for new and more ambitious mitigation targets in 2025 have been also on the agenda. During the lecture, Dr HENDERSON discussed the COP process, reviewed the results of the COP29, highlighted the critical conclusions and set out the challenges going forward before welcoming a discussion on the issues of most interest to students.
About the speaker:
Dr James HENDERSON has been writing for and working with the Institute since 2010. He is a Visiting Professor at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and at the College of Europe in Natolin, and has lectured on energy economics and security of supply at a number of universities in Europe and the US.
Dr HENDERSON worked in the oil sector for US company Amerada Hess, as well as spending time as a consultant and investment banker. He obtained a PhD in Social Sciences from London University in 2010. With OIES he initially published a monograph on “Non-Gazprom Gas Producers in Russia” before contributing numerous working papers on the Russia oil and gas sectors and their connection with the global energy economy.