Outside the formal negotiations, COP31 president Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment minister, is spearheading a side agenda, including two informal initiatives that will be worth watching. These wouldn’t be part of the official agreement text, but countries could sign on to signal support.
One is a pledge to make AI more sustainable; this is almost comically squishy, even as voluntary COP pledges go. The text includes explicit wording that it creates no new obligations for countries, so don’t expect anything resembling enforcement there.
The COP leadership is also pushing to make electricity a larger part of member countries’ energy use. Today, only about 23% of global energy is used in the form of electricity. Fossil fuels, like gasoline in vehicles or natural gas for heating, make up the bulk of the rest. Shifting to more electricity use, and relying on cleaner sources for that electricity, could help drive down emissions. The new pledge’s target is for electricity to make up 35% of total energy consumption by 2035.
With leadership billing this as an “implementation COP,” it would be great to see some real, tangible progress on the global challenge of addressing climate change. I’m not expecting anything groundbreaking, but we’ll be tuned in to see what the final agreement shapes up to be.
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