Just how many fossil-fuel lobbyists did the EU take to COP29?

Out of the almost 1,800 fossil fuel lobbyists at COP29 identified, more than 120 of them were brought in by EU member states. 

Italy and Greece brought 27 and 24 respectively, followed by Belgium and Sweden with 17 each.

Ten countries in total were guilty of granting access to the same industry that has caused the climate crisis, many of them senior executives.

Including them on national delegations means allowing them into spaces ordinarily just for governments - the perfect place to grab a minister for a quiet chat.

Italy bringing the most fossil-fuel lobbyists to Baku is not surprising.

Rome is Europe’s biggest buyer of Azeri oil and gas, with Athens second for its gas. They each brought in a senior executive from SOCAR, Azerbaijan’s national oil and gas company, demonstrating just how close they are.

SOCAR is a major shareholder in the fossil fuel transport routes to Europe: the Southern Gas Corridor pipelines as well as the BTC oil pipeline, which was exposed recently for fuelling the genocide in Gaza. It is also behind Azerbaijan’s drive to increase gas production by a third to meet increased EU demand. It’s the key player in the country’s energy exports.

Italian deal-makers

Two days into the talks, the CEO of Italgas, Paolo Gallo, (brought in by the Italian government with seven colleagues), signed a deal with SOCAR to strengthen their “strategic partnership” on gas distribution.

Italian oil & gas major Eni, who had two senior executives inside thanks to its government, had already signed three Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with SOCAR months before the talks began. One aimed at expanding cooperation on the exploration and production of hydrocarbons.

COP29 was also full of lobbyists from the controversial Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), the last leg of the Southern Gas Corridor that carries Azeri gas to Italy via Greece and Albania. 

TAP was met with resistance along the entirety of its route during planning and construction (2008-2020), and the area where the pipeline makes ground in Italy was eventually transformed into a militarised zone with locals criminalised for their protest.

Greece brought three executives from the company running the pipeline, TAP AG, while Belgium’s Fluxys and Italy’s Snam, both holding a 20 percent share, were brought in by their respective governments.

Most of the oil and gas companies brought into COP by EU governments are big promoters of false solutions like carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) and hydrogen, intended to keep them in business.

Hydrogen is presented by the oil and gas lobby as key to decarbonisation as it can be produced using renewable electricity. However, 99.7 percent of hydrogen consumed in Europe last year came from fossil fuels, which explains why the industry is so keen to promote it.

The COP29 Hydrogen Declaration, presented by Azerbaijan as a way to “unlock the potential of a global market for [clean] hydrogen”, was welcomed by fossil fuel lobby groups but denounced by civil society.

Likewise, CCUS technology has been shown to be risky, inefficient and very costly, yet it is still championed by the industry. Eni and Snam are both promoting the controversial Ravenna CCS project, receiving huge public support. 

During COP29 Snam was involved in promoting and lobbying for CCUS technology.

Belgium’s Fluxys also promotes CCUS, particularly the usage and storage part, rebranding CO² as “much more than a greenhouse gas”. This is because CCUS relies on pipelines to transport CO², so traditional gas transporters like Fluxys and Snam see new business opportunities.

'Hydrogen-ready' pipelines

Same with hydrogen. Snam wants public funding to build “hydrogen-ready” pipelines like the 3,300 SouthH2Corridor, connecting Tunisia with Germany. It doesn’t care what goes in the pipeline - renewable hydrogen, fossil hydrogen, or fossil gas - as long as it’s profitable.

Thanks to ongoing campaigning, participants now have to declare who they work for (the fossil fuel industry?). But the system is not working. 

Three senior Snam executives entered the talks not as the Italian gas transporter but as the Venice Sustainability Foundation, a body funded by Snam and Eni that promotes hydrogen from fossil gas and CCUS.

The Kick Big Polluters Out campaign wants to go further, demanding a full accountability framework to protect the talks from vested polluter interests.

EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told the European Parliament he would “love to push” such an approach. But the sentiment is not yet shared by the EU governments who rolled out the red carpet for fossil fuel lobbyists and their false solutions at COP29.