Dubai (dpa) – The Climate Club initiated by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been launched at the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 in Dubai. More than 36 countries are seeking to take pioneering action by jointly developing strategies and standards for a climate-neutral industry. Scholz founded the club a year and a half ago at the G7 summit in Elmau, Bavaria, as a group of particularly ambitious countries dedicated to taking action in response to climate change.
The common goal is to reorganise industrial processes on a greenhouse-neutral basis so as to decouple economic growth from emissions that are harmful to the climate. “Most countries in the world are looking to achieve a CO₂-neutral economy in just a few years – by the middle of the century. It will only be possible to do this if we work together and not against each other, and that’s the basic idea behind the Climate Club,” said Scholz at a press conference in Dubai. A provisional secretariat has been jointly established, said the Federal Chancellor, adding that numerous countries from the Global South were involved as well.
At COP28, Scholz also said he was in favour of tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030. At the UN Climate Change Conference, Scholz will also take part in events focusing on cooperation with Africa in the transition to renewable energies and on a stocktake eight years after the conclusion of the Paris Climate Agreement.