EU to back COP31 electrification target

ANTALYA, Turkey — The European Union will sign a pledge to raise the global electrification rate at the U.N. climate conference, three diplomats told POLITICO. The bloc was divided over whether to back a voluntary goal, proposed by the Turkish-Australian hosts of this year’s COP31 summit, to increase the share of electricity in global energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The share is currently around 20%. But the diplomats, who were granted anonymity to disclose details of closed-door discussions among governments, said the 27 member countries had now reached consensus on supporting the pledge. While consensus unblocks the process, the EU’s formal support for the pledge still needs to clear more bureaucratic hoops before it becomes official. Until Monday, a handful of EU countries were still reluctant to back the goal — some because the pledge did not specify that the electricity used to meet the target must be “clean” rather than generated with fossil fuels, and some because they did not want to sign up to a new target before discussions over domestic EU energy policies are settled. At COP31, countries pushing for increased climate action want to see electrification efforts tied to clean energy in order to make progress on phasing out polluting fossil fuels. Other governments, however, prefer to leave the door open to meeting new electricity demand with coal and gas. The pledge’s wording, as unveiled in September, did not include a reference to clean power.