Hi, it's ukshot.

Among the many fights that happened at COP thirty, there was an unusual one between Turkey and Australia to host COP thirty one.

In this bonus episode from Bloomberg Australia, managing editors Rebecca Jones and David Stringer tell you how the fight played out and what it means for next YEAR'SCOP zero.

Will be back with a fresh episode soon.

There's been some big climate news and a bit of a plot twist.

That's sane and disappointed.

That's the premiers reaction to Australia's fouls bited hosting next year is COP Climate summat hero in Adelaide.

It's a major blow to the state and its budget.

The Liberal Shadow Ministry has agreed to dump net zero by twenty fifty from the party's platform.

The group agreed to scrap net zero from the Climate Change Acts and repeal Labour's twenty thirty emissions reduction target.

The Liberal Party has just taken a huge gamble in a weekenned political position, and under pressure from the Nationals, the net zero target is now gone.

Hello.

I'm Rebecca Jones and this is the Bloomberg Australia podcast, where each week we go behind the biggest stories shaping Australia's place in global business.

Well, there was a time not too long ago in Australia that climate was a hot button topic, dominating both politics and business.

Not so much lately.

So you would be forgiven for thinking the climate question had been somehow quietly resolved.

But you would be wrong, and for two reasons.

Last week we saw the Coalition opposition finally making up its mind about net zero, and as that was happening, the Australian government made a bid to host the next big Climate cop summit and failed to lassu in these two news events from the headlines and explained to us what they mean for the future of Australia's position on climate and what it might mean for our energy bills.

This week, I'm delighted to welcome David Stringer to the podcast.

David is the managing editor of ESG and Climate Coverage in Asia for Bloomberg News.

David, Welcome to the pod.

Thanks for having me again, appreciate it.

So where do we even start?

You know, politicians meet all the livelong day to discuss stuff, right, what was so important to Australia about being the host of this COP summit next year.

Well, first of all, we start with lots and lots of acronyms in the climate space, and the chief among them COP.

You know what even is COP.

Yeah, it's the Conference of the Parties, or essentially the decision making body of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.

And so what does that mean?

Well, in short, it's the process through which almost two hundred countries try and make progress in tackling climate change.

And it's perhaps best known for these two week long summits each Novem, but certainly in the at the end of the year, the most famous example of which was in Paris ten years ago this year when nations actually agreed to the Paris Accord, that legally binding treaty to take action to limit global warming.

So, as you mentioned, we just saw the most recent conference wrap up in the Amazonian city of bellm in Brazil, you know, and there were lots of big ticket items on the agenda, pushing nations on more ambitious emissions reduction and various other things.

But there was this major and somewhat unexpected subplot.

Who would host the talks this time next year in November twenty twenty six.

And right, and that's not us because we bid, but we failed.

What happened quite I mean, it's important to stress this has been really unusual.

This is usually a very dare i say, dull, orderly process, but for next year, in for Australia's case, it simply wasn't.

So.

We saw shortly after the Labour part government was elected in twenty twenty two, they signaled they wanted Australia and the Pacific Island Nations to bid for COP thirty one, the thirty first edition of COP the twenty twenty six meeting.

Why did they do that, Well, the Labor government was trying to reprioritize climate action, to sort of reassert Australia as a positive force in climate diplomacy.

You know, this was seen as a big opportunity not only for Australia but for the Pacific, you know.

And two reasons.

They're really one to highlight the experience of Pacific nations who are really at the front end, you know, they're at the front line of experiencing climate change.

They also want much more funding to help them mitigate those impacts and to build their resilience, and of course the Pacific is also a real political battleground.

You know.

For Australia, this was an opportunity to win favor with the Pacific at a time when China is seeking to build its alliances there.

So the process should have been simple.

Within cop Within the UN convention process, there are regional groupings.

Typically one country puts themselves forward, they're rubber stamped, and they become the host of whatever year's meeting.

Very unusually this time around, Australia and Turkey, both members of here's another acronym, WEOG, the Western European and Others group, both put themselves forward and they wouldn't compromise.

Really, this is dragged on, not for months, but years, you know, since roughly twenty twenty two.

We've even seen Australia's Prime Minister Albanesi, Turkey's President Urdigan.

They've exchanged letters.

Every effort made essentially to us one side to back down has failed.

Why is that important because this needs to be a unanimous decision.

And so it dragged on even into Brazil, even into those two weeks in Belem, we even saw Australia and Turkey they had rival national pavilions.

Imagine a giant trade fair, huge trade show, and would you know it, Australia and Turkey virtually facing each other, both handing out coffee, Australia with you know, a barista handing out latised Turkey with with with good strong Turkish coffee, trying to woo delegates.

They needed essentially one of the countries to pull out, to withdraw because the compromise option was going to default to bond where the un F Triple C, the decision making body is based.

Germany said, no way, We're not hosting.

We don't want to have that burden, and essentially it was left in the in the final hours really of this most recent cop for Australia to back down and to put forward a pretty unusual arrangement to UH to settle this issue, which leaves Turkey and in fact the Turkish resort town of Antalia, as the host, and it leaves Adelaide, which would have hosted it here, as the loser.

I have so many questions, not least of which is how the heck does Australia and Turkey, geographically not close to one another, end up in the same bracket.

But maybe that's more to be filed away with my why is Australia a participant in the Eurovision song contest one for another day.

Australia's Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bow and at least another of the Pacific nations is going to be taking roles in these upcoming climate talks next to you, under this deal that's been struck with Turkey, can you tell us how they will be involved in this very unusual situation.

And it really is unprecedented, And we had this curious sight in these sort of early hours on Sunday here in Australia, sort of in the afternoon on Saturday in belm of Chris Bow and the Australian minister is Turkish counterpart, and then three Pacific ministers from there's a whole crowd of people on stage, all of whom are supposed to have a role here.

And you know, to any observer you couldn't help thinking, well, goodness me, how on earth is this going to work?

Well, here's how it's going to.

Turkey will host the event.

It will you know, physically have not only a meeting of world leaders, which to you know this year took place slightly in advance of the negotiations themselves.

It will then host the two weeks of actual technical negotiations.

Chris Bowen, as Australia's representative, will essentially be in charge of those negotiations.

He will be the appointee, the person trying to corral nations to decide on text, to work out what are they going to commit to in terms of achieving the objectives they've outlined on climate action.

You know, the very difficult task of wrangling these incredibly long winded, detailed texts that nations eventually adopt, really difficult, never goes to plan.

It always ends up in negotiations that last into the very early hours of the final day.

Happened again last week in Brazil.

So Chris Bowen Australia will be in charge of the actual substance of the meeting.

Turkey will host the event.

It'll get all of the benefit in terms of potential more investment, tourism, a focus on Turkey and its own plans for the Pacific region as an still to be decided Pacific nation will host an additional meeting.

Essentially, they'll host an event ahead of cop in November where the issues the experience of the Pacific will be brought to the fore and it may well end up being some kind of vehicle through which other nations can pledge additional funding.

Anthony Albanesi has insisted he'll invite other world leaders to attend that event, so it raises the prospect that it could be quite high profile.

That seems unlikely, but clearly there's a desire within Australia to make this a really serious, a serious mechanism to highlight the experience of the Pacific.

And do we have any idea what Pacific nations would be in the running for that?

And it sounds to me like some sort of rehearsal dinner of sorts to the main event.

Absolutely, absolutely a great analogy.

No we don't.

I mean, what we do know is the Solomon Islands, Palau, Vanuatu, you know, they're all they've all been nations that have been very involved in this process in the past.

You know, we've seen Fiji not physically host a cop event but actors in a way, as Bowen's going to do, act as a kind of president of negotiations.

But at this point we don't know where that will take place.

And you know, even with these concessions.

I'm interested in, you know, digging a little deeper into what extent this is seen as a missed opportunity for Australia, you know, both for the efforts to accelerate climate action, but also for the great state of South Australia.

No quite, and I think South Australia will be you know, bitterly disappointed.

You know, they had done their own calculations and forecast that at a minimum they expected to receive about another five hundred million Australian dollars of investment in the state.

That's through increased trade, through tourism.

Having the spotlight, having the global attention for that two week period on South Australia would almost inevitably have helped catalyze more investment and more investment into the state and into Australia's energy transition.

And so that is clearly a downside now that opportunity has been lost, you know, and there were lots of ambitions to help use the event in Australia to push for things like a global solar rooftop initiative where the experience of Australia and as we've talked about on this podcast before, one in three rooftops has solar panels in Australia, you know, to try and push that and to see some benefit from there.

There was also going to be a focus probably on things like greener supply chains for critical minerals, something of course Australia could have taken advantage of, so for South Australia, for Australia more broadly, it will definitely be seen as a missed opportunity.

And one of the other things I imagined that it would have brought into focused is, you know, a renewal of this political divide that we have here as it relates to climate.

I want to ask you how the Albanese government has really been going on its own zero ambitions, because, as you mentioned earlier, this was the horse they rode in on in twenty twenty two.

It was touted by some as the climate election for their party.

How have they performed so far.

In terms of making commitments.

They've done what they said they would do.

You know, they led very soon after taking office, the Albanese government legislated and at zero target.

As recently as September.

You know, we've seen Australia pledge additional action.

This was the year when under the cop process, all of those countries that were signatory to the Paris Agreement were supposed to come forward with more ambitious plans to cut their emissions by twenty thirty five.

Australia's pledged to do that, to cut green ascasm between sixty two percent and seventy percent by twenty thirty five.

It's certainly kind of ambitious, you know, probably better than we might have seen before, and almost there are thereabout sort of in line with what you'd expect to put Australia on a path to meet its net zero target by mid century.

However, I think, you know, lots of opponents of the actions of this government would point to other factors.

The Australian government is one that has continued to approve coal mining projects, It's approved extensions to fossil fuel projects, you know, and most notably a big decision that was made just a couple of months ago on the Northwest Shelf, the country's biggest gas export projects, its life was extended to potentially as long as twenty seventy.

That was a huge disappointment for advocates of climate action, for campaigners who have been looking to government to limit the future role of fossil fuels rather than, as they see it, extend the life of Australia's fossil fuel export industries.

So, just as Albanese's officials were trying to woo the UN, the Liberal Party has dropped its commitment to hit net zero emissions by twenty fifty David, Why do they think that is a vote winner?

As you said, the main opposition Liberal parties sort of ditched that commitment to hit net zero.

And really the fact that we went into the last election in Australia with both the two major parties both agree great yeah on climate policy, was that was the That was the aberration, right, you know, rather than this.

You know, we've been so used to climate, climate policy, energy policy being a point of distinction.

You know, it's almost unsurprising that we're back in the situation where now the main opposition Liberal Party you know, don't support net zero.

Now why is that they do think that this will resonate with voters.

The argument that they will mounta and I'm sure we'll see this argument taken into the next national election, is that the commitments to decarbonize involve enormous investment, not only in replacing coal fire power punts with solar and wind farms, but huge commitment to upgrade Australia's energy infrastructure, transmission lines, power grids, adding giant battery storage farms that can help you know, maintain you know, the flow of electricity and to mitigate some of the intermittency issues with renewables.

So their argument is that will show up on household bills and this will add to existing cost of living pressures and that you know, their policy is by not being wedded to meet at zero by twenty fifty, by not having these very firm targets, they'll give themselves, you know, more ability to be flexible and to try and conduct the energy transition in a way that keeps costs lower.

And does that necessarily translate out to a longer timeline, right, because we're almost in twenty twenty six, so that's twenty four years to get those things done.

Surely, over that kind of length of time it's enough to absorb some of these financial shocks that will come with the transition quite and.

I think you know what we've seen from from Susan Lay, from the opposition leader and the Liberal Party is you know, they said they don't want to be tied to our specific target, specific year.

You know, they have said, you know, it's perfectly conceivable that they achieve net zero within that time frame.

It's just they think the straight jacket of meeting a particular target doesn't give them the flexibility to carry that out in a way that they would argue is cheapest.

Now, I'm sure yet again, and we will go into another election where this is a political football because on one side, you know, we will have the argument put forward that keeping inefficient aging coal and you know, to lesser degree gas infrastructure running is the thing that's adding to our energy bills.

They are less reliable, particularly the cult plants, and that's the thing that's pressuring prices, you know, along with the spikes in natural gas and coal that we saw that have nothing to do with Australia but you know, all to do with the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

On the other hand, we'll have proponents of a looser climate policy who will argue that shifting quickly to solar wind batteries an upgraded grid that's too expensive to voters will be which they you know, whether climate or energy bills, you know, are their priority, and whether they argue whether they believe an argument that the cost of faster climate action really will show up on their bill.

And just on that, David, let's bring it closer to home.

What do these renewed climate wars and you know, potential investment uncertainty that Australia is facing ultimately mean for your power bill.

I mean it's a difficult one to answer, you know, in truth you mentioned investment.

You know what we have seen and what investors tell us and big offshore global investors who put money to work in you know, whether it is renewable energy, whether it's grid infrastructure.

They want policy certainty and we've seen that reflect in the numbers.

You know, since the current Labor government have taken office and of course subsequently one another election, there has been a degree of potaty that has seen a rebound in investment into Australia's energy transition.

Now it's arguable whether that is something that has translated through to power bills.

Of course, advocates would say you have to invest now to reap the benefits in the medium and longer term.

What I think we can say with some degree of certainty is if you delay that investment.

If that investment declines because of policy tensions arising again, the impact isn't going to be positive.

We're not.

It's not going to bring our power bills down any faster by having less investment rather than more in Australia's energy transition.

If you found today's conversation insightful, be sure to follow the Bloomberg Australia Podcast wherever you listen, and check for more reading on Australia's journey to net zero, including the latest from David Stringer and his team at Bloomberg dot Com.

This episode was recorded on the traditional lands of the will Wondery People.

It was produced by Marafool Hussain and edited by Chris Burke and Ainsley Champer.

I'm Rebecca Jones and we'll see you next week.