TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanné was one of the few prominent business leaders to attend the COP30 climate change summit in Belém, with sustainability executives leading the corporate attendees.
The French businessman attended an event co-hosted by the Brazilian COP Presidency this Friday (14th) to support the decarbonization efforts launched by 50 companies, including BP and ExxonMobil, at COP28 in Dubai in 2023.
Members of the so-called Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter, representing more than half of global production, who attended this Friday’s event pledged to work until 2030 to achieve the goal of reducing emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, to “near zero”.
Total’s CEO was accompanied by executives from Brazilian state-owned company Petrobras, the country’s oil and gas exploration and production partner.
Occidental Petroleum CEO Vicki Holub was also registered to attend COP30, but the Houston-based company declined to comment on her participation. Her presence would have made her the only prominent US CEO to attend the climate change summit, following the country’s withdrawal from the Paris climate change agreement under President Donald Trump.
Global commodity traders also featured prominently among COP30 attendees, including representatives from Cargill, Mercuria and Louis-Dreyfus.
BNP Paribas, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank, which are involved in developing carbon markets and investing in natural capital, sent representatives to COP30, and Bank of America was headed by carbon trading expert Abid Karmali.
Brazil has secured about $5 billion in commitments to a planned $125 billion forest conservation fund managed by the World Bank, but its expansion will require contributions from bankers and asset managers.
The two-week event was plagued by logistical problems, with the United Nations’ preliminary list of 56,000 participants not reflecting the final number of participants.
At last year’s COP in Azerbaijan, 65,000 people registered to participate, of which 40,000 participated. By comparison, around 70,000 people attended COP28 in Dubai, one of the most physically accessible conferences in recent years.
The Chinese delegation is by far the largest in Belem. According to preliminary United Nations data, 789 participants registered, more than any other country except host Brazil.
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