Egypt climate envoy sees international funds helping developing industries decarbonise

A financing scheme that draws on funding from Western donors to help developing countries shift to cleaner power generation could be mirrored for heavy industries and other hard-to-abate sectors, Egypt's climate champion said.

Extending a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) structure to sectors including steel, aluminium, cement and fertilisers made sense because of new European Union rules that would otherwise penalise developing world exporters, U.N. Climate Change High-Level Champion Mahmoud Mohieldin said in an interview.

The rules, under the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), would have "serious implications" for countries exporting to Europe, said Mohieldin.

"I'm checking countries including mine, and we see the significance of those four sectors including fertilisers during the last couple of years, they constitute a very significant share of trade of exports actually to the EU."

CBAM is the world's first system for CO2 emissions tariffs and would be imposed from 2026 on imported iron and steel, aluminium, cement, electricity, fertilisers and hydrogen, in an effort to encourage greener production worldwide.