Among those so pledging are some of the world's largest users of nonrenewable energy, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Representatives from a few of those countries appealed for the agreement to be included in the summit's final overall statement. Such a commitment would need to coincide with a drop in costs for the transition to renewable energy, something that the industry has struggled with in recent months.

Accompanying that pledge was a declaration signed by nearly two dozen countries that aims to triple nuclear power capacity by 2050–all in a drive to decrease the dependence on coal and on other fuels that elicit greenhouse gas emissions that are warming global temperatures to what many say are worrying rates.

Representatives from countries around the world are meeting in Dubai for COP28, the United Nations' annual climate summit, which this year runs until December 12.

Climate officials have repeatedly warned that world temperatures are rising too quickly and, as a result, catastrophically. The nations that signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 set a target of a 1.5°C rise by 2100. Current estimates are that that number will actually be 2.4°C or even 2.7°C by the end of the century.