Antalya hosts COP31 climate talks with Australia leading negotiations and Turkey pushing electrification

Opening and format

The UN climate conference, known as COP31, opens on Monday, 9 November, in Antalya, Turkey, and runs until 20 November. Representatives of nearly 200 countries are due to attend. It is the first summit to start with a shared leadership model: Australia will run the formal negotiations, with climate and energy minister Chris Bowen presiding, while Turkey drives a parallel agenda of concrete actions and voluntary commitments. Bowen has said the meeting needs a tangible result that citizens can see as real. Former head of France's negotiators Paul Watkinson has called it a transition COP, and expectations are low.

Electrification at the centre

Turkey's presidency wants to lift global electrification from about 20% of final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. Since the summer, Turkey and Australia have been working on a voluntary agreement that would commit countries to meet 35% of their energy needs with electricity by 2035. The case rests on Ember data: clean generation reached 887 TWh in 2025, against a rise in electricity demand of 849 TWh. Solar alone supplied most of the growth, while solar and wind together covered almost all of it (99%) and natural gas supplied 17%. Renewables have not yet offset fossil fuels across total final energy use, which includes transport and heavy industry.

Clean electricity generation887

Rise in electricity demand849

Clean electricity generation

887 TWh

Rise in electricity demand

849 TWh

Data from the article text

Warming toward the 1.5C limit

The 1.5 degree goal is slipping out of reach. According to ABC, the world now sits at 1.43 degrees above preindustrial levels, and at current emissions the planet could reach 2.8 degrees by the end of the century. Current national pledges would trim that projection by only two tenths of a degree. Projections cited in coverage say 2026 will push global temperatures above 1.5 degrees, the second calendar year to do so after 2024. UNEP head Inger Andersen has said the window has closed, but that every fraction of a degree avoided still saves lives and ecosystems.

Current warming above preindustrial levels1.43

Paris Agreement target1.5

End-of-century projection at current emissions2.8

Current warming above preindustrial levels

1.43 °C

Paris Agreement target

1.5 °C

End-of-century projection at current emissions

2.8 °C

Data from the article text

Antalya after a wet autumn

Turkey has had an unusually wet autumn. Heavy rain in mid-October, described as the worst in 80 years, killed eight people in Istanbul and caused more than 200 million euros in damage. In the run-up to the conference, storms and tornadoes in Antalya killed four construction workers. Antalya governor Hulusi Sahin has described the tornadoes as extraordinary natural events that can throw heavy metal parts hundreds of metres. Turkish researchers say surface water in the eastern Mediterranean has warmed 1.3 degrees over the last decade, from a 1981 to 1991 average of 21 degrees, a shift they link to the heavier rainfall.

What comes next

Countries are not required to submit new climate plans at this meeting, because the current pledges were filed last year and are next due for review in 2030 under the Paris Agreement. Negotiators will focus instead on the implementation agenda, meaning the evaluation of what has already been agreed. The United States is absent from the negotiations for a second consecutive year, according to ABC. Talks are scheduled to close on 20 November, and the electrification target and the implementation agenda will be the main tests of whether the meeting produces a tangible result.