COP31: Türkiye’s Opportunity, the Test of Transition

The problem with climate negotiations is not that countries cannot agree on the direction. That direction has been clear for thirty years. The real disagreement is over who will pay the bill for moving in that direction, and when.

That is what happened in Belém last year. A roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels won the support of many countries but did not make it into the agreed decision. The Brazilian presidency undertook to continue the work outside the formal negotiations. The shared goal was preserved; disagreement over implementation remained.

A simple structure lies behind this picture. The cost of climate action arises today and in a particular place: in a country’s budget, a company’s balance sheet or a household’s pocket. Its benefits, however, spread across the world and accumulate over the years. In this arrangement, every country has a reasonable justification for waiting for someone else to do more. This calculation of waiting is what keeps the wheels spinning without moving forward.

COP31’s implementation agenda can be read as a move against this. Its essence is to shift climate from a question of sacrifice to one of economically grounded coordination: setting interdependent decisions in motion together wherever economic interests and climate goals overlap.

This is where Türkiye’s approach, which connects energy security, efficiency, industrial competitiveness and access to finance with the climate agenda, matters. Economic needs can underpin the steps that climate action requires.

From waiting to moving forward

Scott Barrett, an economist who studies climate agreements, explains why cooperation sometimes stalls and sometimes accelerates by distinguishing two situations. In the first, countries want to limit their own contributions while benefiting from the efforts of others. When others take on more responsibility, they think they can do less themselves. In the second, a step taken by one country makes it easier and more rewarding for another to act. In the first, responsibility is left to someone else. In the second, one step encourages another.

Consider electrification. An industrial producer may want to run production on electricity. But if the grid is inadequate, the investment is postponed. The grid operator wants to know when new demand will arrive before increasing capacity. The bank, too, may hesitate to provide finance without seeing the timetable for the investment and the infrastructure. While everyone waits for someone else to move, an economically sound investment is delayed.

The problem here is not simply a shortage of money or technology. It is the failure to align interdependent decisions. A shared goal can break this waiting cycle if it brings industrial investment plans, grid development and finance onto the same timetable.

Getting the climate agenda out of this rut does not require waiting for the parties to trust one another more. What matters is establishing concrete conditions that show each party that the others will act too, and make taking action more advantageous than waiting.

The economic basis of the initiative

Türkiye is not making this move in a vacuum. The “35 by 35” call aims to increase electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35 percent by 2035. It is not yet a binding decision accepted by all countries, but a global target open to voluntary participation.

There is, however, a strong economic foundation behind it. According to an analysis prepared by the International Energy Agency (IEA) at the request of Türkiye and Australia, even with today’s costs and technologies, the global share can rise from around 23 percent to 33 percent. Much of the target therefore depends not on technologies yet to be invented, but on decisions that can be taken today.

According to the same report, fuel-importing economies’ annual savings on imports in 2035 exceed $400 billion in 2025 prices. This is, of course, a scenario-dependent result. But it also explains why energy-importing countries should see electrification as an economic priority.

This is also where the target’s political strength lies. A transition that affects energy costs, dependence on foreign suppliers and competitiveness has an economic basis alongside its climate rationale. Promises made solely in the name of climate can remain fragile when budgets and politics change; promises backed by interests tend to last longer. There is a whole constellation of interests here.

Türkiye’s agenda follows the same logic. Electrification addresses energy imports, green industry the future of exports, and project preparation access to finance. BRIDGE aims to turn countries’ climate and development priorities into portfolios of finance-ready projects. SURFF, meanwhile, seeks to connect cities’ needs with finance.

Türkiye defines these problems not as an outside observer, but from within the transition it is itself experiencing. This is also where the credibility of its ambition to bring developing economies’ needs to the global table comes from.

Three critical thresholds

To assess the benefits this approach can deliver, we need to see where it makes progress easier and where additional support is needed. Three points are particularly important.

First, the source of the electricity. The “35 by 35” pledge text refers to the Paris goals, renewable energy and clean technologies. At the same time, it preserves countries’ authority to determine their own transition pathways; it does not explicitly make it a condition that all the electricity used to meet the target come from clean sources.

This flexibility may make wider participation easier. The climate outcome, however, will depend on how electricity generation changes. When a production process using fossil fuels switches to electricity, the source of that electricity becomes important for emissions. Moreover, the infrastructure built to meet new demand will be used for many years. Electrification and clean electricity generation must therefore advance together. Success should be assessed not only by the increase in electricity’s share, but also by how far fossil fuel consumption and total emissions fall.

Second, the difference between the country’s gains and the investor’s calculations. While lower energy imports create benefits for the country as a whole, the cost of new equipment, uncertainty over grid connections and loan repayments may remain with the company.

The IEA’s study shows that the cost of capital for utility-scale solar investments in developing economies is more than twice that in advanced economies. For clean technologies requiring substantial upfront investment, this difference directly affects whether the economic potential can be realised.

One important task of implementation instruments is to narrow this gap. The benefits to the country need to be connected with financing, infrastructure and support conditions that make investment easier to carry out. This requires clarity about who will take on which risk. When risk-sharing is clear, the likelihood of an investment that appears economically sound actually going ahead becomes stronger.

Third, the areas where economic benefits alone are not enough. The overlap between economic interests and climate goals can accelerate the transition. But not every necessary step generates the same level of revenue or savings.

Efficiency investments and some clean technologies can move forward on the strength of their economic returns. By contrast, closing a high-carbon facility before the end of its useful life can create financial losses. Protecting coastlines against flooding delivers substantial social benefits, but may struggle to attract private finance because it does not generate direct revenue. Supporting workers and small businesses affected by the transition also requires dedicated resources and policies.

In these areas, public support, international finance and a fair sharing of costs become important alongside coordination. Adaptation, loss and damage, and a just transition should be treated as complementary elements of the implementation agenda. Progress in these areas will also strengthen public support for the transition and its continuity.

The link between an agreed decision and implementation

At the preparatory meeting in Fiji, Türkiye and Australia announced that they would prepare a presidency-led overarching decision text for COP31. This is not a technical detail. It is a choice that will determine the shared political message around which the summit’s different strands are brought together.

Alongside decisions on specific agenda items, COPs can also produce overarching decision texts setting out the summit’s overall direction. In these texts, which negotiators call “cover decisions”, the presidency develops a shared framework based on consultations with countries. But the authority to prepare the text does not mean the authority to determine the outcome alone. Adoption still requires consensus among countries.

In Belém, it became clear in the second week that such a text would be prepared. At COP31, announcing the approach in advance will allow countries to contribute to the process earlier. The presidency’s task will be to listen to different expectations and lay the groundwork for a text on which agreement can be reached.

Antalya’s political outcome will therefore not be shaped solely by bargaining in the summit’s final days. Consultations over the coming weeks will play an important role in determining which goals can enter the shared text and under what support conditions they can be accepted. The value of these discussions before Antalya lies in their ability to bring the goal and the conditions that make it possible into the same framework.

The real test comes after Antalya

COP31 is not bringing measurable targets or economic arguments into climate diplomacy for the first time. But it has an opportunity to turn this accumulated experience into an implementation arrangement that genuinely works.

Antalya’s success will be measured not by the number of initiatives announced, but by how far it changes investment conditions afterwards. Which stalled project moved forward? Which risk was shared? Which investment accelerated? How much emissions reduction and resilience did these deliver?

Concrete answers to these questions will be evidence that economically grounded climate coordination really works. Climate diplomacy will then escape the rut of spinning its wheels in the language of sacrifice. COP31 will stand out as the summit that achieved this: a summit where, instead of turning the wheels in vain, real ground was finally covered…

For our country, the lasting gain will be for this entire agenda to become embedded in its own energy, industrial and urban policies.

First published in the Akıllı Sürdürülebilirlik column in Nasıl Bir Ekonomi on 14 October 2026.