Between the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus Mountains, Azerbaijan remained little known on the international scene. It is thanks to its main wealth, fossil fuels, that it developed in the 1990s and 2000s. Supported by its Russian neighbor, the former Soviet republic welcomes in its capital, Baku, the great climate mass, the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) until this Friday.
At the opening of these negotiations, the autocrat Ilham Aliev, in power since 2003, used a striking formula, repeated in the media. Oil and gas, like other natural resources, are “gifts from God,” repeated this former manager of the Azerbaijan National Oil Company, who had already said these words in April. However, because of human activities, their combustion produces greenhouse gas emissions, which warms the climate. We are far from “the gradual exit from fossil fuels” and the carbon neutrality to be achieved by 2050, advanced in the Dubai agreement.
Oil money “vital” to finance the Aliyev regime
It must be said that this nation between Asia and Europe is one of the top ten oil and gas states in the world. In 2021, 90% of export revenues came from the oil and gas sector and financed around 60% of the government budget, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). How does such a dependent country envisage its transition? “It’s difficult to have a vision on this issue,” said François Gemenne, a specialist in environmental geopolitics and who was in Baku last week as a COP observer. President Aliyev's statements send signals of confusion. »
Especially since Mukhtar Babaev, president of COP29 and Minister of the Environment, had already announced this summer that his country would continue to increase its gas production to meet international demand, alongside investments in renewable energies. “We can clearly see that a producing country is having difficulty considering moving away from fossil fuels, despite wells that are drying up,” notes Matthieu Auzanneau, director of the think tank The Shift Projet and author of Oil, decline is near. The oil windfall is just vital to finance the regime in place. »
A classification of fossil fuels that leaves one “skeptical”
Comparing the country with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where COP28 took place in 2023, François Gemenne notes a lack of clarity in the discussion on the Azerbaijani transition. “In Dubai, the speech was: we used oil during the first phase of our development, we are inaugurating a second phase which will be mainly based on solar energy,” explains the researcher. The Emirates plan to continue to extract oil for the manufacture of clothing or plastic, while reducing this share and counting on the fact that their oil emits less greenhouse gases during extraction than in Alaska or in Russia.
“We could clearly see the plan, even if we could criticize it,” he continues. But in the case of Azerbaijan, it is much less clear. » Its transition relies heavily on natural gas. “Countries like Qatar are also banking on gas as a sort of intermediate energy between oil, renewable energies and nuclear power,” he analyzes. But I am skeptical about this classification of fossil fuels. Certainly, coal is worse than oil, which itself is worse than gas. But taking gas out of the fossil fuel basket is dangerous. »
An ambitious objective on renewable energies
In 2023, Azerbaijan revised its voluntary contribution, a commitment made under the Paris Agreement to plan for climate change mitigation and adaptation issues. And the country has postponed until 2050 its commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40%, compared to the 1990 level.
It has set the ambitious objective in its adaptation plan to increase, by 2027, the share of renewable energies to 33% of its total energy supply… When the latter was stalling at 1.5%. , including hydroelectricity, in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. The rest of the energy mix comes from fossil fuels, with for example 90% of electricity produced by natural gas.
“When we look at the reality of the installation of renewable energies, we don’t really see that anything is happening,” comments the Belgian researcher. Will the COP be a kind of shock for Azerbaijani economic forces? Maybe, but that's not what I saw. »
Vulnerable to climate change
In its report on the country's energy profile, the IEA explains that it will be “difficult” to reach the 2030 voluntary contribution target if the country “does not tackle the increase in energy demand. transportation fuels [qui n’est pas limitée par les prix ou les taxes] and the increase in natural gas consumption [qui est subventionné dans tous les secteurs] “. Although mitigation measures have been taken for the energy, residential, commercial, transport, agriculture and waste sectors, they are not legally binding, notes the Agency.
However, Azerbaijan is vulnerable to climate change and is threatened by reduced precipitation, increased droughts or the intensification of phenomena such as floods. But the reduction in its emissions is conditional on the financing of this adaptation, one of the crucial issues of COP29. Developing countries repeat that they need financial support.
Our file on COP29
For Matthieu Auzanneau, “the main issue is not with the tobacconists, but with the smokers. It would be more interesting if the oil and gas importing countries could announce an organization providing for a systematic decline in their demand, this is not the case.” However, time is running out, as IPCC scientists warned in the summary of the sixth assessment report, the window of opportunity to limit warming to +1.5°C is closing.
