Research published on Tuesday showed global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are set to hit a record high this year, exacerbating climate change and fuelling more destructive extreme weather.
A draft of what could be the final agreement from COP28, published by the UN climate body, kicks off negotiations around what is considered the summit's defining issue: whether countries will agree to eventually end the use of fossil fuels.
The draft text includes three options, which delegates from nearly 200 countries will now consider.
The first option in the draft is listed as "an orderly and just phase-out of fossil fuels". In UN parlance, the word "just" suggests wealthy nations with a long history of fossil fuel burning would phase out faster than poorer countries that are developing their resources now.
The second option calls for "accelerating efforts towards phasing out unabated fossil fuels". A third option would be to avoid mentioning a fossil fuel phase-out.
The United States, the 27 countries of the European Union and climate-vulnerable small island states are pushing for a fossil fuel phase-out to drive the deep CO2 emissions reductions scientists say are needed this decade to avert disastrous climate change.
"We're not talking about turning the tap off overnight," German Climate Envoy Jennifer Morgan said. "What you're seeing here is a real battle about what energy system of the future we are going to build together."
Major oil and gas producers including Saudi Arabia and Russia have resisted past proposals for a phase-out.
Russia's energy ministry and Saudi Arabia's government communications office did not respond to requests for comment on their positions.
Meanwhile an independent consortium has collected data showing that none of the world's major oil and gas-producing countries have laid out any plans to eventually stop drilling for those fuels.
Net Zero Tracker says its findings lay bare the gap between the targets countries have set to avoid disastrous levels of climate change and their real-world plans to continue producing CO2-emitting energy.
Only three minor producers - Denmark, Spain and France - have set out plans to eventually stop drilling, the researchers said. Denmark and Spain are also alone among gas producers in planning a production phase-out.
Countries with a net zero emissions target but no plans to rein in production include the UAE, which has faced heavy criticism from climate campaigners and some European and US lawmakers for its appointment of state-owned oil company ADNOC's CEO, Sultan al-Jaber, as president of the COP28 talks.
ADNOC plans to expand oil production capacity and grow its gas output.
The Global Carbon Budget report, published on Tuesday said that CO2 emissions from coal, oil and gas are still rising, driven by India and China.
China's fossil fuel emissions rose after it lifted COVID-19 restrictions, while India's rise was a result of power demand growing faster than its renewable energy capacity, leaving fossil fuels to make up the shortfall.
The year's emissions trajectory pulls the world further away from preventing global warming exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.
"It now looks inevitable we will overshoot the 1.5C target of the Paris Agreement," said Exeter Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, who led the research.
"Leaders meeting at COP28 will have to agree to rapid cuts in fossil fuel emissions even to keep the 2C target alive," he said.
