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U.N. climate conferences almost never end on time. Indeed, insiders at the talks often like to guess how many hours—or days—they will go over. 

This year’s summit, known as COP29, is no exception. With the official end time—Friday afternoon Baku time—now in the rear view, negotiators say much work remains to be done to come to an agreement on how to finance climate efforts in developing countries, the lynchpin of this year’s talks. Many fear that the conference is headed for collapse.

I’ll write again when the conference concludes, but for now I wanted to share with you some of my work from my time in Baku. To begin, it’s worth just understanding the madness of U.N. climate talks. They are always a hectic experience, but this year felt especially surreal with the recent U.S. election hanging over the talks. In a dispatch from the halls of the conference center, I explained how a new age of climate geopolitics is upon us as a result of the election and broader uncertainty. 

Speaking of geopolitics, in another story I homed in on one issue that has hovered over this year’s talks: the intersection of climate and trade. At the outset of COP29, a group of countries that included China and Brazil protested trade measures from western countries that would penalize high-carbon imports. The fight was kicked down the road, but it’s not going away. With President-elect Donald Trump promising to tear up the trade status quo, we can expect the conversation at the intersection of climate and trade to heat up.  

In recent years, much of the action at U.N. climate summits has happened outside the conference halls. In the first days of the negotiations, we published our second annual TIME100 Climate list of people shaping the business of climate change, and hosted a dinner in recognition of the honorees. In the issue, I wrote about World Bank President Ajay Banga’s mission to remake the 80-year-old international financial institution. He is working to integrate climate throughout the bank’s programming and looking for achievable ways to increase its lending capacity. Crucially, he has engaged the private sector, hoping that the bank will catalyze private investment in climate initiatives. While many climate advocates are calling on the World Bank to do more, efforts like Banga’s play an important role getting money out the door sooner rather than later. 

Back in Baku, I also moderated a TIME panel discussion on the role of SMEs in the climate transition. To me, it was a hopeful reminder of how small businesses in communities across the globe can continue to work on climate change even amid global uncertainty about the future direction of climate policy. 

I’m now back in the U.S., watching the final hours of COP29 remotely which will surely make for an interesting story. But for me COP is about more than just the handful of stories I publish on the ground. It’s both the capstone to the previous year in climate and the starting point of the next year. In short, expect to hear more from me in the coming months about what transpired at COP and what it means for the future.