More than 130 companies, including Volvo Cars, Ikea, Unilever, Nestlé, and AstraZeneca, signed a letter calling on governments to adopt a global plan to phase out fossil fuels without carbon capture during upcoming international climate negotiations. “Our businesses are feeling the impacts and cost of increasing extreme weather events resulting from climate change,” the letter says.
A hot topic at the summit: whether countries can agree to a plan to leave behind fossil fuels. For context, the Paris climate accord adopted by nearly 200 nations in 2015 commits them to limiting global warming to around 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the preindustrial era. And while UN climate reports have found that greenhouse gas emissions need to drop to net zero by the middle of the century to achieve that goal, the Paris agreement doesn’t explicitly mention fossil fuels.