Oil and gas giants are paying tens of thousands of dollars in order to sponsor events at this year’s flagship climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. 

This year’s conference began on Monday (11 November). Over the course of the 11-day summit, known as COP29, negotiators and leaders across the globe will put in place commitments to address the climate crisis and assist the worst-hit countries.

The International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), a business lobby comprised of some of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers and greenhouse gas emitters, is hosting a series of events in its COP29 BusinessHub pavilion, sponsored by oil and gas giants including Chevron, ExxonMobil, SOCAR, and TotalEnergies. 

The IETA pavilion is located in the Blue Zone, the formal COP29 conference and negotiation space.

According to a sponsorship registration form released by IETA, Chevron, the third largest oil and gas company in the world by market capitalization, appears to have paid $25,000 to be an IETA COP29 “supporting partner”. In exchange, the fossil fuel giant will receive access to an events room, office space, branding both online and in written materials, and “facilitated access to onsite media”.

Exxon, SOCAR, and TotalEnergies each appear to have paid $10,000, which also allows them to use an events room, to have their branding splashed across IETA materials, and to access the media.

TotalEnergies appears to have paid an additional $5,000 to sponsor a “private lunch” in the IETA’s events space.

Azerbaijan’s hosting of COP29 has already been mired in controversy after the summit’s CEO Elnur Soltanov was recorded using his role to discuss “investment opportunities” in the country’s state oil company SOCAR. 

Alongside fossil fuel giants, the sponsors of the IETA’s COP29 events include several other major corporations and non-governmental organisations, including the World Economic Forum, Amazon, Bayer, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The German Ministry of Economic Action and Climate Affairs appears to have paid $50,000 in order to be one of the IETA’s primary COP29 partners.

The IETA said: “Our members and allies often sponsor IETA’s climate events. COP is a keystone event for sharing information on developments in carbon markets around the world. We have a broad mix of over 360 members. It includes emitters who are committed to a just transition, and solution providers who will help them on the journey. It is a broad group of financiers, technology innovators, infrastructure providers, project developers, law and accounting specialists – and yes, energy companies who are subject to cap-and-trade laws.”

Chevron, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, and SOCAR were approached for comment.

The IETA’s Influence

The IETA says that its COP29 events are designed to “promote business cooperation on carbon market solutions, technology innovation and climate finance”, as well as to “discuss and analyse the current state of play”. 

Carbon markets limit or place a cap on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted by applicable entities, such as major corporations. These entities are then able to buy and sell emission allowances, in theory encouraging them to find ways to reduce their emissions and potentially profit from doing so.

On the first day of COP29, diplomats approved key rules governing the trade of “carbon credits”. These rules have been criticised by climate groups for allowing richer countries and corporations to offset their emissions by planting trees or spending money on carbon capture technologies. 

Myriam Douo, a false solutions expert at the advocacy group Oil Change International, said that the decision was “a gift” for big oil and gas companies.

“Under these sham guidelines, speculative so-called ‘carbon removal’ technologies and ‘carbon capture’ [CCS] schemes led by oil and gas companies could be counted as carbon offsets – even if in reality they increase climate pollution,” she said.

The IETA’s COP29 programme features sessions on national climate targets, carbon removal technologies, and CCS.

CCS in theory works by capturing carbon dioxide from industrial sites before the gas is released into the atmosphere. But, as DeSmog has shown, the majority of existing large-scale CCS projects underperform or fail to meet their capture targets.

The IETA has attempted to influence the outcome of climate talks for several years. The lobby group told DeSmog at COP24 in 2018 that its proposals had found their way into the negotiation text.

Speaking at a COP24 fringe event, Shell’s then chief climate change adviser David Hone boasted about the fact that Shell, through IETA, could also “take some credit” for the fact that carbon unit trading had been adopted in the Paris Agreement, the flagship international accord that established a goal to limit global warming to 1.5C.

COP29 Controversies

COP29 is being hosted by Azerbaijan, a petrostate that relies heavily on its domestic fossil fuel industry. 

Oil and gas production accounts for almost 50 percent of Azerbaijan’s GDP, and 90 percent of its export revenue, while its president today used a speech at COP29 to call fossil fuels a “gift of God”. 

The country’s climate action plan was rated “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) in September, while SOCAR and its partners are set to raise the country’s annual gas production by more than 30 percent by 2033.

Meanwhile, companies linked to the oil and gas industry have a presence in the UK’s COP29 programme. As revealed by DeSmog, the UK’s pavilion is being co-sponsored by AVEVA, an industrial software firm that has worked for some of the world’s biggest polluters.

AVEVA has over 600 oil and gas customers, including some of the world’s largest and highest-emitting fossil fuel companies: Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). 

Last year, the host of COP28, the UAE, used the climate summit to strike a dozen fossil fuel deals, according to the campaign group Global Witness. Adnoc either negotiated or closed oil deals with 12 countries, including the UK, while its chief executive Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber was president of COP28.

At least 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to the Dubai summit – nearly four times more than any previous year.

Despite being the world’s flagship climate change event, many leaders have snubbed this year’s conference in Baku. Among those not attending are U.S. President Joe Biden, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave an address in Baku today, during which he said that the UK had a “crucial role to play” and an “opportunity to grasp” in helping to tackle climate change.