The United Arab Emirate’s environment minister Mariam bint Mohammed Almheiri has called for “phase out” of oil and gas ahead of the Cop28 climate summit scheduled to hold in Dubai later in November.
Attempts to get governments to agree to “phase out” fossil fuels were unsuccesful at Cop26 and Cop27 and that battle is likely to be re-fought at Cop28. If agreed, it would be a landmark achievement in the fight against climate change and global warming as governments failed to agree on this wording at previous climate talks.
“We need the oil and gas sector to be with us. We need to shift the way they are doing business and we need to decarbonise what they are doing. We need to then phase out oil and gas in a just way,” Almheiri told the Munich Security Conference.
The first time a fossil fuel was mentioned in a Cop decision was in 2021 when all governments agreed to commit to a “phase down” of coal. A broad coalition of nations including India, rich nations and vulnerable islands pushed for an agreement to phase out fossil fuels, which would include oil and gas as well as coal at the talks in Egypt in 2022, but they were opposed by a handful of oil and gas producers who opposed that language, and the hosts Egypt did not include it in the final text until the coalition pushing for it eventually decided not to block the agreement over the issue.
Discussion to phase out oil and gas is expected to continue at Cop28. While hosts are supposed to be neutral, they have a lot of power over which requests from governments make it into the Cop draft decisions and there have been worries that the talk this year might end the same way it did in Egypt as the host is an oil-rich nation and was silent on the fossil fuel issue at last year’s conference.
Concerns about the UAE’s hosting of this year’s climate talks was further aggravated by the appointment of Sultan al-Jaber, the head of state oil giant Adnoc as president of the summit and campaigners believe his appointment has sent the wrong signal as they accuse the fossil fuel industry of hijacking the world’s response to the global warming crisis.
However, minister Almheiri said al-Jaber had been placed in Adnoc to change the company and guide it throughout the energy transition.
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“We’re always going to be an energy exporter, but the type of energy we export is changing already and will change in the future,” she said regarding the criticism that has come al-Jaber’s way as he himself had taken to the stage at the Munich Security Conference on a panel discussion with US Climate envoy John Kerry where he said the UAE would focus on promoting an “inclusive” climate agenda, which does not exclude fossil fuel players.
Al-Jaber was keen to highlight the UAE’s push for renewable energy happening under his watch. On top of his Cop28 and fossil fuel jobs, al-Jaber is the chairman of Masdar, the UAE’s renewable energy company.
With its abundance of sunshine, the UAE boasts some of the world’s cheapest solar power and the government is expected to install more than 9GW of solar capacity by 2030, tripling current levels as the UAE was the first country in the region to set a 2050 net zero goal. And at Cop27, it became the first to announce absolute emission cuts, instead of from a hypothetical business-as-usual baseline.
Story was adapted from Climate Change News.
