BAKU – The CEO of Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, has quietly gained access to the flagship COP29 climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, DeSmog can reveal.

The UN’s official attendee list indicates that Christopher O’Shea is attending the conference as a guest of the African Centre for Climate Actions and Rural Development Initiative (ACCARD), an NGO focused on “sustainable green development [and] youth empowerment”. ACCARD also appears to have given a pass to Laura Harvey, Centrica’s director of public affairs.

In the attendee list, neither O’Shea nor Harvey are listed as Centrica employees. O’Shea is listed as a “partnerships specialist” in the “partnerships and climate solutions” team at ACCARD, while Harvey is listed as a member of its “partnerships and programs” team.

British Gas is the biggest supplier of gas in the UK, while gas contributes about 20 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels.

DeSmog contacted Centrica, Harvey, and ACCARD for comment. None offered an explanation for why O’Shea and Harvey accessed the COP29 summit seemingly without declaring their Centrica credentials.

O’Shea and Harvey hold a ‘blue zone’ pass, allowing them access to the main negotiating and meeting space of this year’s flagship climate conference, which runs until 22 November.

Over the course of the 11-day summit, negotiators and leaders across the globe will put in place commitments to address the climate crisis and assist the worst-hit countries.

More than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists have been approved to attend COP29, according to the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition – outnumbering the delegates from the nations most vulnerable to climate change. DeSmog revealed last week that oil and gas giants are paying thousands to sponsor events at the flagship summit.  

“Fossil fuel interference with climate talks has long been a problem,” said Alice Harrison, head of fossil fuel campaigning at Global Witness. “Oil and gas lobbyists have been swarming to the COPs for decades – this year we counted 1,773 of them. Lobbyists sit on panels, give speeches, whisper into the ears of government delegations, and the companies they represent spend millions on PR and spin. 

“Fossil fuel lobbyists are in the business of selling oil and gas and they desperately want to keep us all hooked on it. Inviting them to climate talks is like inviting arms dealers to peace talks.” 

Stark Versus O’Shea

O’Shea yesterday participated in an event hosted in the UK’s official pavilion space as part of a roundtable discussion on the public-private collaborations needed to achieve the country’s clean energy policies.

During the event, O’Shea criticised Chris Stark, who leads the government’s clean energy taskforce, for suggesting that green investments would be able to drive down people’s energy bills in the next five to 10 years.

Appearing on the panel, Stark said that he believed the government could deliver a “quite substantial fall in bills” if it is able to improve the country’s energy infrastructure and fuel the green transition.

In response, O’Shea – who was paid £8.2 million last year – claimed there is “no evidence” that bills are going to fall as renewables are rolled out more widely.

The new Labour government has committed to decarbonising the UK electricity system by 2030 – ensuring that 95 percent of the country’s electricity is generated by renewables.

Stark also used his remarks to advocate for the winding down of gas in the UK’s power system – saying that it will soon only be needed for “reserve capacity”.

As revealed by DeSmog, O’Shea appeared on a panel at this year’s Labour conference during which he said that responsibility for climate and energy policy should be stripped from democratically-elected politicians.

This is not the first time that oil and gas firms have managed to find creative ways to attend the annual climate summit.

In 2022, the then BP CEO Bernard Looney attended the COP27 summit as a delegate for Mauritania, while at least 15 people who registered for Saudi Arabia’s COP28 appeared to be undeclared employees of the country’s state oil company.

Five executives from the consultancy giant KPMG have also been given access to COP29 by ACCARD. None are labelled as KPMG employees, in the UN’s attendee list. KPMG declined to comment.

COP 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 used a speech on 12 November 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.