Environment Correspondent, BBC World Service
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The UN climate summit in the United Arab Emirates in 2023 ended with a call to “transition away from fossil fuels”. It was applauded as a historic milestone in global climate action.
Barely a year later, however, there are fears that the global commitment may be losing momentum, as the growth of clean energy transition is slowing down while burning of fossil fuels continues to rise.
And now there is US President Donald Trump’s “national energy emergency”, embracing fossil fuels and ditching clean energy policies – that has also begun to influence some countries and energy companies already.
In response to Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” slogan aimed at ramping up fossil fuel extraction, and the US notifying the UN of its withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, Indonesia, for instance, has hinted that it may follow suit.
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‘If US is not doing it, why should we?’
“If the United States does not want to comply with the international agreement, why should a country like Indonesia comply with it?” asked Hashim Djojohadikusumo, special envoy for climate change and energy of Indonesia, as reported by the country’s government-run news agency Antara.
Indonesia has remained in the list of top 10 carbon-emitting countries for years now.
“Indonesia produces three tons of carbon [per person a year] while the US produces 13 tons,” he asked at the ESG Sustainable Forum 2025 in Jakarta on 31 January.
“Yet we are the ones being told to close our power plants… So, where is the sense of justice here?”
Nithi Nesadurai, director with Climate Action Network Southeast Asia, said the signals from her region were concerning.
She said the “richest country and the largest oil producer in the world” increasing its production gives other states “an easy excuse to increase their own – which they are already doing”.
In South Africa, Africa’s biggest economy and a major carbon emitter, a $8.5bn foreign-aided transition project from the coal sector was already moving at a snail’s pace, and now there are fears that it may get derailed further.
Wikus Kruger, director of Power Futures Lab at the University of Cape Town, said there was a “possibility” that decommissioning of old coal-fired power stations would be “further delayed”.
However he said that while there was some “walk back” from transition to renewables, there was still growth in the clean energy sector that was expected to continue.
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Argentina withdrew its negotiators from the COP29 climate meeting in Baku last November, days after Trump won the US presidency. It has since followed Trump’s lead in signalling it will withdraw from the Paris Agreement of 2015 – which underpins global efforts to combat climate change.
“We now expect our oil and gas production to go up,” Enrique Viale, president of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers, told the BBC.
“President Milei has hinted that he intends to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and has said environmentalism is part of the woke agenda.”
Meanwhile, energy giant Equinor has just announced it is halving investment in renewable energy over the next two years while increasing oil and gas production, and another oil major, BP, is expected to make a similar announcement soon.
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