The final round of talks at the 27th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh are ramping up as ministers across the world aim to reach agreement on a spectrum of issues before the two-week conference concludes on Friday.

A number of key areas are seeing slow progress, however, including talks over a ‘loss and damage fund’ to help developing nations recover from the effects of climate change.

“The difficulties have to do mostly with the compensations that developing countries are requesting. So it’s the whole question of loss and damage. We think developed countries, for sure, should make an effort in terms of finding ways, finding avenues for those compensations to take place,” said Jorge Paradela, Counselor of Industrial Policy and Energy, Andalusia Autonomous Community, Spain.

Elsewhere, several days of discussions to boost green hydrogen fuel production have yielded positive results, according to attendees.

Developing countries are seeing European bids to produce green hydrogen. Egypt, for instance, has so far secured 83 billion U.S. dollars’ worth of investments in green energy alone during the conference.

“We want to give our industry new momentum and to do that electricity is very important, but electricity is not enough. So we will need green hydrogen to make that happen. The challenge we face together is whether we can ramp up the production of green hydrogen in sync with the demand. I believe Egypt is ideally placed because I believe this development will take place in the wider Mediterranean area,” said Frans Timmermans, Executive Vice President of European Commission.

If the talks in Sharm El-Sheikh do not produce a concrete agreement, parties will have to put the vital climate issues on hold until COP28 next year in Dubai.

The possibility of extending the climate negotiations beyond the conference’s schedule indicates that there are more differences between countries than agreement, as the time for a major breakthrough to be reached runs out.