Good evening from Baku. We’re expecting some heavily bracketed draft documents overnight from the COP presidency. We’ll bring you more on what’s been said on the main finance deal, carbon markets and mitigation work in the morning. Meanwhile, keep up with all of our COP29 coverage — which is free for the entire summit — on Bloomberg.com. 

By Siobhan Wagner

There’s a magic number now at COP29: $1.3 trillion. But as one disillusioned delegate told us, it could involve “sleight of hand accounting” to get there. 

Developing countries say they need trillions of dollars a year to grow greener economies and prepare for the impacts of global warming. Yet there are worries that a deal struck in Baku this week may only offer poorer nations as little as $200 billion a year from rich country coffers. The rest would need to come from all sorts of new sources — from carbon markets to voluntary contributors like China. 

If you add up all those funding channels, along with multilateral development banks and private finance, then “it’s not impossible” to reach $1.3 trillion, Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, told us this morning.

While a trillion-plus figure sounds good, developing countries are likely to balk if financial support comes mostly through market-rate loans or other barely discounted finance. As we’ve reported before, some climate vulnerable countries are already spending more on servicing their debt than on education or health.

Moreover, many developing countries feel like they’ve seen this show before. Even the current $100 billion annual climate finance pledge already counts lots of contributions in addition to public sources to get up to a magic figure.

The Azeri presidency’s next act will be to reveal a draft of the deal by early Thursday. What number are you thinking of? Let’s see if that’s the one COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev pulls out of his deck of cards.

Coal re-entered the conversation at COP.  A total of 25 countries and the European Union pledged to commit to no new unabated coal power in their next round of national climate plans. Signatories to the agreement, outlined during the ongoing COP29 climate talks in Baku, include Canada, the UK and Germany, according to a statement published Wednesday. China and India, the world’s largest coal consuming nations, aren’t among backers so far, and neither is the US. 

More progress is being made on Article 6. Negotiators already secured a breakthrough on day one of the summit by agreeing on rules, dubbed “Article 6.4,” for a UN-administered global carbon market. This helps open up access for multinational corporations wanting to use offsets to meet their climate goals. Now the focus has turned to “Article 6.2,” which would enable country-to-country trades. There’s still options in the text that could lower the standards of credits, but negotiators are eager to find a resolution. “The mood in the room has been very positive,” said Grace Fu, Singapore’s environment minister, who is leading the discussions on Article 6. “There are a few issues in 6.2 right now. A critical one is actually on registry. There are some discussions going on, some divide in the room, but we have some proposals on bridging solutions.”

At COP29 in Baku, Akshat Rathi is joined on stage at Bloomberg Green’s live event by Ali Zaidi, President Biden’s National Climate Advisor. Zaidi argues that it would be “economic malpractice” for the Trump administration to abandon the energy transition. Plus, veteran climate diplomat Jonathan Pershing explains why he believes global competition will result in an “acceleration of action” on green policy. Listen now, and subscribe on Apple,  Spotify, or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday. 

So much is happening inside Baku Olympic Stadium, and yet few delegates are getting a chance to see what most people normally expect when they come to the venue. Our reporter Akshat Rathi managed to snap a photo outside the corridors of the Blue Zone on a recent sunny day. Despite the stadium’s name, it has never hosted any Olympic events. Gold medal for trying to win a future consideration, though!  

Photographer: Akshat Rathi/Bloomberg