From promises to results: OPEC Fund at COP31

- In Antalya, The OPEC Fund is turning climate commitments into investments

ANTALYA, Türkiye – As world leaders gather in Antalya, Türkiye, this week to advance the goals of the Paris Agreement, the OPEC Fund is bringing partners together at the UN climate summit to turn climate commitments into investments. President Abdulhamid Alkhalifa summed up the institution’s approach: “The OPEC Fund has long held that climate and development are inseparable.”

Speaking at the official UNFCCC side event “Mobilising finance for country-led climate action”, the president stressed the links between climate action and basic development needs:

“There is no climate security without energy, water and food security, and without the ecosystems that sustain them.” He set out three priorities for making climate finance count: countries must set the direction, partnerships multiply impact, and results define success.

The president expands on these themes in his article Financing resilience must also advance development.

He was joined on the panel by Odile Renaud-Basso, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); Serhat Köksal, president of the Black Sea Trade and Development Bank; and Stefan Wintels, chief executive officer of KfW Group.

Asked about his expectations for the conference, the president said: “I hope that Antalya will be remembered as the COP where we moved from promises to results.”

The stakes are high. The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned that the world is on course for 2.8°C of warming by the end of the century, while the Paris Agreement aims to keep warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. One proposal from the COP Presidency, held jointly by Türkiye and Australia, would raise electricity’s share of global energy use from 23 percent today to 35 percent by 2035. The Energy Transitions Commission estimates that meeting this goal with clean electricity could reduce projected warming by 0.3°C.

In Antalya, president Alkhalifa signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Asian Development Bank to deepen the strategic partnership between the two institutions. The OPEC Fund has earmarked up to US$1 billion over a five-year period to advance sustainable development and climate action. The two institutions are also partners in the Nature Solutions Finance Hub and aim to turn projects already in the pipeline into investments.

The president also signed the OPEC Fund’s first MoU with the New Development Bank on institutional cooperation, as well as a joint MoU with EBRD, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the government of Kazakhstan to support the Central Asian country’s energy transition. He met with government ministers, including from host country Türkiye, and with representatives of UN agencies and development finance institutions. On a panel about clean cooking, he described the issue as “a question of health, of dignity and of opportunity.”

Throughout the summit, the OPEC Fund is hosting and co-hosting a wide range of events with partners at its COP31 pavilion, covering topics from making climate projects bankable in emerging markets to accelerating the energy transition and building climate resilience through water infrastructure.