With the UN climate summit less than a week away, the official leading the talks has set a single test for whether COP31 in Antalya can be called a win: an agreement to electrify the global economy much faster than it is moving today.
Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate change minister and the president of negotiations for COP31, said on the Zero podcast that his goal for the summit is a commitment to raise electricity’s share of final energy demand to 35% by 2035, a target organizers have dubbed the 35-by-35 pledge.
Why electrification is the metric that matters
The logic behind the target is simple: the more of the world’s energy that arrives as electricity, the less the world needs in total. Electric motors, heat pumps, and vehicles deliver the same work as their fossil-fuel equivalents while wasting far less energy along the way, so every unit of demand that switches to clean power shrinks both emissions and total energy consumption.
Electricity today supplies just over 20% of global final energy demand, leaving the vast majority of heating, transport, and industrial energy to be met by burning fuels directly. Closing that gap would drive the efficiency gains Bowen argues are the cheapest path to cutting emissions this decade.
The distance to 35 by 35
The jump required is significant. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimates electricity’s share at roughly 23% even in its 1.5-degree-aligned scenario today, and says renewables would need to generate about 78% of the world’s power by 2035, up from 31.7% in 2024, for that pathway to hold.
The summit itself runs from November 9 to 20 in Antalya, the first COP hosted by Turkiye, with Australia holding the negotiating presidency. The Turkish presidency's action agenda spans ten areas, including zero waste, electric mobility, and climate-resilient cities, and its flagship electrification pledge has already drawn support from outside governments, including a partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies announced earlier this year to advance renewable deployment.
What success would look like
Bowen's framing lowers the bar for what the summit must deliver: not a finished rulebook, but a shared destination. A quantified electrification goal would give grid operators, utilities, and investors a common reference point for the decade ahead, particularly in Asia, where the bulk of new power demand, new renewable capacity, and new coal investment will be decided.
Whether the final text lands on 35% or something softer, the negotiations in Antalya will be the first to put a number on the world's energy transition rather than on the emissions it is meant to avoid. For a process often criticized for promises without mechanisms, that alone would mark a change.
