US “strongly supports” Azerbaijan's COP29 presidency

US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt has said that the US strongly supports Azerbaijan's COP29 presidency.

"I had very good discussions in Houston with the deputy energy minister. I also had excellent discussions a few weeks ago when the energy minister himself was here in Washington. I underlined the United States very strong support for the Azerbaijani presidency of COP29 <...> I’m confident that there’s a strong degree of alignment between the goals that President Ilham Aliyev set and the goals that the US is going to bring to that – the next COP and then also as we head towards Brazil in 2025," he said at a briefing, according to Trend.

Pyatt also emphasized the US' support of the Troika mechanism that UAE, Azerbaijan, and Brazil have developed to manage the agenda for COP28.

"My focus is on the issues around the greening of our energy system, working to ensure that the fossil energy that the world is going to continue to use is delivered in the least climate-damaging way possible, which means sustaining our efforts on methane abatement – we are very, very supportive of the announcement that President Ilham Aliyev made in terms of Azerbaijan’s adherence to the Global Methane Pledge, and we’re working now with companies like bp and Chevron and ExxonMobile that are active in the Caspian region to look at opportunities to capture more of the methane and associated gases that have come from the countries that have recently signed the Global Methane Pledge in the region, so Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan," he said.

This November, Azerbaijan will host COP29. This decision was made at the COP28 plenary meeting held in Dubai on December 11 last year. Baku will become the center of the world and will receive about 70-80,000 foreign guests.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an agreement signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 to prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. COP- the Conference of the Parties - is the highest legislative body overseeing the implementation of the Framework Convention on Climate Change. 198 countries are parties to the Convention. Unless the parties agree otherwise, the COP is held annually. The first COP event took place in March 1995 in Berlin, and its secretariat is located in Bonn.