The climate emergency, at its heart, is very simple. Most existing fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground to prevent catastrophic impacts across the globe. But the plans of the fossil fuel industry to find and exploit new fields remain huge. Time is desperately short, with intensifying heatwaves and floods already taking lives and impacting livelihoods.
The UN climate summits are the key forum to drive action and the latest, Cop28, starts on 30 November in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Putting a major petrostate in charge of the negotiations seems counterintuitive, to put it politely. Furthermore, the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, is the CEO of the UAE’s state oil company, Adnoc.
Al Jaber’s argument is that it takes someone from the fossil fuel world to change the fossil fuel world. He is also chair of Masdar, a renewable energy company, and the UAE’s climate envoy. He believes he is uniquely positioned to reconcile the many different goals of the 197 countries attending Cop28.
I have been examining the UAE’s climate record in the run-up to Cop28. Frankly, the omens are not good. First, Adnoc has the largest net-zero-busting expansion plans of any company in the world, according to the latest data. I have also revealed that state-run oil and gas fields in the UAE have been flaring gas virtually daily despite having committed 20 years ago to a policy of zero routine flaring.
The UAE has also failed to report its emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane to the UN for almost a decade. And Adnoc was able to read emails to and from the Cop28 office until I raised the issue. As Politico mildly puts it: “Success [at Cop28] may depend on the oil-rich nation setting aside its own interests.”
My colleague Fiona Harvey interviewed Al Jaber at length this year. He told her: “Never in history has a Cop president confronted the oil industry, let alone the fact that he’s a CEO of an oil company. Not having oil and gas and high-emitting industries on the same table is not the right thing to do. We need this integrated approach.”
One of Al Jaber’s key Cop28 initiatives is the Global Decarbonization Alliance, through which he is urging oil and gas companies to sign up to firm climate pledges. The details are yet to be officially revealed, but from what we know so far the GDA appears to fall well short of a pivotal moment when, for example, companies commit to zero new exploration or development, as scientists say is necessary.
Many have long dismissed the fossil fuel industry as a good faith actor in the climate crisis. Christiana Figueres, who as UN climate chief delivered the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, was not one – until recently. She finally lost patience in July, having watched them splurge their trillion-dollar profits on more exploration and huge shareholder dividends, rather than funding a switch to clean energy.
Cheap renewable energy is simply a superior technology, she said, meaning fossil fuel companies are ultimately doomed – the question is how quickly: “The transition will occur despite them, but it will likely be too late for humanity. The fossil fuel industry will have powered human development in the 20th century and then destroyed it in the 21st.”
“Their moment to decide is now,” Figueres said.
Cop28 will be a moment of final judgment for the fossil fuel industry and until it is over, the jury is out. Can the gamble of putting Al Jaber and the UAE in charge produce an unlikely looking climate victory?
“It may or may not work,” said US climate envoy John Kerry recently. “Some might call it an experiment to have an oil-and-gas-producing entity host Cop. That’s the big question.”
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