The European Union, United States and other wealthy countries at the COP29 climate summit have agreed to raise their offer of a global finance target to $300 billion per year by 2035, sources told Reuters on Saturday.

The COP29 summit in Azerbaijan is being extended as difficult negotiations over climate finance continue. The talks in Baku had been scheduled to end at 6 pm (1400 GMT) on Friday. Financial pledges to poorer countries to help them cut emissions have been at the centre of intense discussions,

UN climate talks looked set to overrun into the weekend as a deep gulf formed between richer and poorer countries over cash to help those most vulnerable in a warming world. Wealthier nations offered to more than double to $250bn a year the cash they give developing countries annually to fight climate change.

The COP29 climate summit ran into overtime on Friday, after a draft deal that proposed developed nations take the lead in providing $250 billion in annual climate finance by 2035 drew criticism from all sides.

COPs have been getting progressively longer; the excellent team at Carbon Brief extrapolated the trend line, which suggests COP29 will end in the small hours of Sunday morning. Even that may be optimistic.

The COP29 UN climate summit released a first draft deal Thursday which puts at least $1 trillion of financing on the table, yet key details on where that money will come from still need to be ironed out.

The COP29 presidency on Friday released a new draft climate finance deal that would have developed nations take the lead in providing $250 billion per year by 2035. The draft also set a broader goal to raise $1.