Just a few miles from the site of the next UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a district that for more than a century was known as Black City. Every house and factory was thickly stained with soot, from the oil that was extracted and refined here, by the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Baku was the world’s first oil town: pioneering wells were dug in the 1840s, followed by refineries from 1859. Alfred Nobel and his brothers came in that decade and established what became a major industry, contributing a sizeable portion of their fortune to establishing the Nobel prize. People take pride that oil produced here helped win the second world war, supplying the Soviet army fighting Adolf Hitler on the eastern front.
There are still oil wells in Baku, their piston pumps nodding in rhythm while the flares of refineries stand out clearly against the night-time skyline. Today, fossil fuels make up 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports: the petrostate pioneer is still one of the top 10 most oil- and gas-dependent economies in the world.
Gone, though, are the black-stained buildings that gave the city its nickname. In the past two decades, an intensive cleanup operation has turned central Baku into White City. Soviet-era blocks have been reclad in gleaming beige facades. So convincing is the 19th-century styling that it is hard to believe most of it is barely 10 years old – the only clues are on a few streets where the transformation has yet to be completed, and the neat new fronts contrast with a back view of flaking concrete.
Azerbaijan is hoping to effect the same transformation in the energy sector, first on its own, and then on the rest of the world’s oil-drenched economies. President Ilham Aliyev has declared his country “in the active phase of green transition”, with targets to generate 30% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030, up from about 7% today. The government is building vast solar farms in the plains near Baku, and has ambitious plans for an interconnector to export low-carbon power to Georgia, and then under the Black Sea to Romania and Hungary.
“We cannot deny the existence of the fossil fuel industry, because it is a major source of income for many countries. And it’s not something that can be abandoned overnight,” Yalchin Rafiyev, Azerbaijan’s lead negotiator at Cop29, told the Guardian.
“The most important thing is how the fossil fuel countries and companies perceive the real challenge related to the climate, and how do they act in a responsible manner?”
Azerbaijan is already making a shift – oil now accounts for a declining share of its exports. However, gas exports have more than made up for the shortfall, and vast investment is now turning an oil country into a gas giant. Azerbaijan plans to increase its gas output by a third in the next decade.
Aliyev has presented this as his contribution to saving Europe from Vladimir Putin’s aggression in nearby Ukraine, telling EU ministers this spring that it was a “gift from the gods” and that Azerbaijan had a “responsibility” to help Europe.
For an oil-producing country to host a Cop is not unusual. Last year’s host country, the United Arab Emirates, home to the world’s seventh largest gas reserves, raised many eyebrows by appointing Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive of its national oil company, Adnoc, as Cop28 president.
Many other fossil fuel-producing countries have held the presidency: the UK in 2021, Qatar in 2012, Canada in 2005, and Brazil in 1992 when the UN framework convention on climate change was forged. Next year, Brazil will hold Cop30 in Belém in the Amazon. This is despite recently becoming a member of the oil cartel Opec+ and setting a target of increasing output from 3.7m barrels a day to 4.8m by 2028.
Laurie van den Burg, a public finance lead at the campaign group Oil Change International, said there was a “cognitive dissonance at the heart of international climate diplomacy” that was exemplified by the host nation. “One on the one hand, pledging to submit national climate plans in line with the 1.5C limit, while at the same time ramping up fossil fuel production,” she said. “Unless the Cop troika [UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil] recognises that there is no such thing as 1.5C-aligned climate plans with more coal, oil and gas infrastructure, it risks making a mockery of the unprecedented mobilisation that led to the Cop28…
Read More: How ‘world’s first oil town’ is wrestling with fossil fuel legacy | Cop29