Climate Clubs' role in phasing out fossil fuels and implementing the Paris Agreement

This paper contributes to the vibrant conversation about climate clubs’ role in global climate governance. Phasing out fossil fuels is key to limiting global warming to below 2°C (IPCC, 2022). More recently, groups of states with shared phase-out commitments have emerged in the context of increasingly "polycentric climate governance" (Ostrom, 2014). This new category of climate clubs focused on phase-out has yet to be empirically assessed. Which role do these phase-out clubs play in global climate governance? Drawing on global climate governance and climate club literature, this paper develops an analytical framework for empirically assessing the six existing phase-out clubs. Analytical criteria used are: 1) membership size and composition; 2) effectiveness in raising members’ climate ambition; 3) Relationship with and contribution to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process and 4) phase-out approach. The findings reveal that membership varies in size and composition, from 12 to 155 states and from states only to broad multistakeholder coalitions. Regarding the effectiveness in raising members’ climate ambition, a mixed picture emerges as clubs’ phase-out targets cover only part of the emission reductions required in line with the Paris Agreement targets. With regards to phase-out clubs’ relationship with and contribution to the UNFCCC, the findings suggest a close relationship. Some phase-out clubs use climate conferences for governance meetings and to attract new members. Vice versa, phase-out clubs act as indicators of support for certain items under negotiation and some even seek to directly influence the negotiating text by making press statements similar to established negotiating coalitions. Others have raised awareness on items not on the agenda, yet, and in the case of methane have successfully put it on the negotiating agenda at COP28. Phase out clubs present a means to create momentum across traditional actor divides in negotiations (state vs. non-state) as well as across the boundaries of established negotiating coalitions. With these findings, this paper contributes to ongoing debates in a number of ways: by constructing an analytical framework for climate clubs, providing empirical insight and a deeper understanding of phase-out clubs and their role in global climate politics as well as broader contributions to debates about the increasingly polycentric nature of global climate governance and its relationship with the UNFCCC process. References: IPCC. (2022). Climate change 2022: Mitigation of climate change (Working Group III). https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_FullReport.pdf Ostrom, E. (2014). A Polycentric Approach For Coping With Climate Change. Annals of Economics and Finance, 15 (1), 97-134. https://econpapers.repec.org/article/cufjournl/y_3a2014_3av_3a15_3ai_3a1_3aostrom.htm