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a senior official from united arab emirates At a meeting on Monday, it called on the international community to do more to embrace renewable energy, arguing for a 7% annual reduction in emissions while eliminating all methane emissions.
“Houston, we have a problem and failure is out of the question,” said Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the UAE’s minister of industry and advanced technology, who will lead international climate talks later this year as president-elect. COP28 Climate Summit.
Jaber spoke at CERAWeek in the southern US city of Houston. Organized by US financial information giant S&P Global, the event featured hundreds of attendees from the energy sector.
Jaber is a key figure in the UAE’s energy sector, as well as the head of the UAE’s renewable energy company Masdar and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
The senior UAE official said the oil and gas industry needed to “do more” to promote the use of renewable energy.
“The oil and gas industry needs to be more competitive,” Jaber said, adding that they “play an important role in decarbonizing customers and net zero emissions.”
Jaber specifically addressed the importance of carbon capture and hydrogen technologies.
“We have to … equip facilities with carbon capture and storage,” he said. “Now is the time to commercialize carbon capture and scale it up across all industries.”
Regarding hydrogen as an energy source, Al-Jaber noted that the UAE “extends an open invitation to those who wish to turn the dream of hydrogen into reality”.
The UAE envoy highlighted electricity, cement, steel and aluminum as targets for cleanup and called for greater investment to speed up the transition to clean industries.
“According to the International Energy Agency, the world has invested $1.4 trillion in the energy transition by 2022,” he said. “We need more than three times that amount.”
Investment must go to developing countries, he said.
“Only 15 percent of cleantech investment goes to developing economies in the global south, where 80 percent of the population lives,” he stressed.
Why it matters: Al Jaber’s comments make sense in the context of the UAE’s entry strategy. Oil, especially natural gas, remains an important part of the UAE’s economy, but the country is also investing heavily in renewable energy and green energy technologies.
Most recently, ADNOC announced in January a carbon capture program to injecting carbon into rock.
Last December, UAE sustainable development company BEEAH announced plans to build a waste-to-hydrogen facility.
Although Jaber used his time at CERAWeek to discuss the importance of renewable energy, in the past he has touted the continued importance of conventional energy.In October, Jaber warned against Underinvestment in oil and gas.
“Now is not the time to point out that chronic underinvestment in oil and gas has made a difficult situation worse,” he told the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition.
What’s next: The UAE will host COP28, the United Nations’ annual climate change conference, this November.
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