The cascade of shocks to the global economy over the past few months has offered a glimpse of our new reality. The Gulf conflict has taken an extraordinary—and dangerous— amount of oil, gas, and fertiliser off the market, and now a possible “super” El Niño cycle could bring more extreme weather. That means this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference—COP31 in Antalya, Turkey—will come just as millions of people have been pushed deeper into energy and food poverty, forced to suffer truly terrible conditions as they endure more severe natural disasters.
These perils underscore the danger of continuing to depend on imported fossil fuels. Around 80% of the global population lives in countries that remain net importers of fossil fuels, and we have just witnessed how vulnerable this reliance leaves our economic security. Around the world, but especially in developing countries, the prices of essen tials have spiked, fi nancial con ditions have deteriorated, and debt distress has spread.
This latest global crisis fur ther reinforces the need for cleaner, more resilient sources of energy. Three years ago, at COP28 in Dubai, governments agreed that a just, orderly, equitable transition away from fossil fuels is a top priority. Now, we must come up with a roadmap to turn that high-level vision into a day-to-day reality.
To that end, my goal as pres ident-designate of COP31 is to spark a global conversation about electrifi cation. We must move from abstract debates to address the real decisions that ordinary people face. Think of the family considering whether to buy an electric car; the land lord installing solar panels, bat teries, or heat pumps; the city planner investing in electric buses; or the paper producer electrifying its heating process.
This topic is critical, be cause while 45% of global direct emissions come from buildings, transportation, and industry, only around 20% of energy demand is met by elec tricity rather than direct fos sil fuels. Thus, one of our core objectives at COP31 will be to forge an agreement on how ev eryone can contribute to a new global electrifi cation target of 35% by 2035.
These targets are not pulled out of thin air. The data show that they can be reached if policymakers heed the as sessments by the International Energy Agency and the Inter national Renewable Energy Agency of the steps needed to limit global warming to 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as set out in the Paris agreement. That overarching ambition is now over a decade old, and this new target is an important stepping stone.
But simply electrifying daily life is not enough. We also must rapidly scale up renewables, so that electrifi ed economies are powered by clean energy. We need expanded and resilient grids to manage the new load. And we need more fi nancial support for developing coun tries to bring them along.
Previous COPs have set tar gets for each of these needs. At COP28, everyone committed to tripling the world’s renew able-power capacity by 2030. At COP29 in Baku, 74 coun tries recognized the need to boost energy-storage capacity sixfold, and to add or refurbish 80 million kilometers of grids by 2040. And donors commit ted to mobilizing at least $300 billion annually by 2035 for developing countries.
All these targets matter. To gether, they form the architec ture for the energy transition. They send strong market sig nals and provide a shared basis for rallying global collective action in a fractured world. They are meaningful precisely be cause they are “stretch goals”— ambitious but achievable.
In 2026, two additional devel opments give us hope. The first is the extraordinary collapse in the costs of essential ingre dients like batteries and solar panels. Owing to this trend, Turkey has now provided per mits for more battery storage than any EU member.
Second, historic events like the war in the Gulf can lead to historic movements, as the 1970s oil crises did by driving unprecedented energy-efficiency gains. The current crisis has unleashed powerful market forces that we can harness, at COP31 and beyond, to acceler ate electrifi cation.
There is no one-size-fi ts all model. Each country will make a different contribution, and each sector will map out its own pathway. Africa’s challenges and opportunities are not the same as Europe’s. Electrifying transportation is not the same as electri fying industrial processes and buildings. No one can or should try to impose solutions on anyone else. But everyone must recognize that electrify ing daily life is how we move away from fossil fuels. It is how we can make these vola tile commodities superfl uous. And it is how we can shield families from the effects of spiraling energy prices.
We will use the convening power of the COP presidency to focus minds, forge stronger partnerships, and move into implementation mode. Our world is in peril, and electrification is our salvation.
The writer, Turkey’s Minister of Environment, Urbanization, and Climate Change, is President-designate of COP31.
