“Not having the word 'clean' in there at all leaves you a gas-tanker-sized loophole through which you can drive whatever you want. And it may end up being used to justify new coal plants.”
Drilled · Climate & Energy · November 2026
Context
Reporting from the COP31 climate summit, Kurmelovs explains why European countries gave a cool reception to the host countries' push for a global electrification target. The proposal never says the electricity has to be clean.
Transcript
And certain other countries might be in agreement. But the EU is taking a line saying, well, can we at least get the word clean in there? Interesting. And that seems to be a sticking point.
Although, I mean, I feel like the word clean is up to interpretation as well. So, yeah.
Yes. But then, I mean, not having it in there at all kind of leaves you get a gas tanker-sized loophole through which you drive whatever you want. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it may end up being used to justify new coal plants. So here we are.
Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. That's really interesting. What have you seen around the blue zone? Any like country booths that stand out or themes?
I can definitely say that the politics, once again, on display very clearly from how things are working out. For instance, Turkey, the host, has the biggest, tallest pavilion in the center of the room. The Australian Pavilion is across the way. China has a very large pavilion and seems to be a very…
What's the media room like? How many media people are there? Does it seem like a lot of people came?
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