Dubai, UAE - At least 2,456 delegates linked to fossil fuels are attending the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, according to analysis of the provisional participants list.

The Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition – a group of environmental non-governmental groups and businesses – studied the list of attendees after it was published on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) website on November 30.

The coalition said it used a strict methodology, credible open sources, and specific definitions to establish whether an individual was linked to a fossil fuel company or organization.

The analysis suggests significantly more fossil fuel-linked delegates are attending COP28 than almost every individual country delegation, except for the 3,081 people brought by Brazil – which is expected to host COP30 – and this year's host, the UAE, which listed 4,409 people.

They have also received more passes to COP28 than all the delegates from the 10 most climate vulnerable nations combined (1,609) and official indigenous representatives (316), the coalition said.

The analysis found that a vast number of fossil-fuel linked delegates are attending COP28 as part of a trade association, with nine out of the 10 biggest of these groups coming from the Global North.

The Geneva-based International Emissions Trading Associations (IETA) brought 116 people including representatives from Shell, TotalEnergies, and Equinor, according to the findings.

France brought fossil fuel giants such as TotalEnergies and EDF, Italy brought a team of Eni representatives, and the European Union also brought employees of BP, Eni, and ExxonMobil.

KBPO said its estimate of the number of fossil fuel-linked delegates at COP28 – which is led by Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, the head of the UAE's state oil company – is likely to be conservative as it only counts people who openly disclose their connection to fossil fuel interests and not those who access the talks using a different professional affiliation.

This COP saw changes to the registration procedure, which included making public all types of badges – not just those relating to contained delegations and observer organizations, which came after years of sustained pressure from civil society.

Still, there have been growing calls from many quarters, including Global South countries, public officials, UN constituencies, and wider civil society, to bar polluters from the international climate talks.

Alexia Leclercq, co-founder of environmental justice organization Start:Empowerment, said: "Big Polluters’ poisonous presence has bogged us down for years, keeping us from advancing the pathways needed to keep fossil fuels in the ground."

"They are the reason COP28 is clouded in a fog of climate denial, not climate reality."

Caroline Muturi, from sustainability group IBON Africa, said: "These findings tell us that the dynamics within these spaces remain fundamentally colonial."

"It comes as no surprise that the majority of the corporations influencing these talks are from the Global North."

"In years past, COPs have become an avenue for many companies to greenwash their polluting businesses and foist dangerous distractions from real climate action."

"This hinders the meaningful participation of African communities and the rest of the Global South in shaping climate policies that will primarily affect them."

Hwei Mian Lim, from the Women and Gender Constituency, said: "If governments had required oil and gas groups to decarbonize from the outset, in line with what science says is needed to limit climate change's worse impacts, we would not be in our current state of all-out emergency."

"We are where we are because of years of denial, delay, and false solutions from the very groups that are responsible for the problem."