COP28 president Al Jaber calls for ‘laser focus on phasing out fossil fuel emissions’

BERLIN – The president of COP28, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, said climate diplomacy should focus on phasing out emissions from oil and gas, leaving the door open for the continued use of fossil fuels while ramping up technologies to capture the carbon pollution produced from burning them.

“In a pragmatic, just and well-managed energy transition, we must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives,” Dr Al Jaber, who also heads Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), said at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin on Tuesday.

The meeting of 40 countries is one of several assemblies ahead of the United Nations’ COP climate summit to be hosted by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the end of the year.

The European Union and others have lobbied for countries to agree at the annual talks that

they should phase out the use of oil and gas

– language that failed to make it to the final communique from 2022’s COP27 meeting.

Ms Mariam Mohammed Almheiri, the UAE’s Minister of Climate Change and the Environment, earlier in 2023 tested a pitch to “phase out oil and gas in a just way”.

Dr Al Jaber said the UAE will “encourage smart government regulation to jump-start the hydrogen value chain and make carbon capture commercially viable”.

While the technologies are needed to mitigate emissions from hard-to-abate sectors, their deployment globally is currently far from the scale required to cut emissions quickly enough to avoid the worst impacts of global warming. 

The UAE’s presidency of COP has come under criticism from green groups, even as Dr Al Jaber has said that the global climate goals are “non-negotiable”.

That is because under Dr Al Jaber’s leadership, Adnoc is looking to expand oil and gas production, although climate scientists are clear that new fossil fuel infrastructure will ensure the world blows past temperature targets set under the Paris Agreement in 2015. 

Dr Al Jaber also called on rich nations to finally deliver on their promise made more than a decade ago to raise US$100 billion (S$133.5 billion) to help developing countries cut emissions and adapt to climate change. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Ms Annalena Baerbock, said that developed nations are on their way to reaching the goal in 2023. 

“But it is absolutely clear that this is not enough,” Ms Baerbock said. “We need to mobilise several trillions.” 

That would require mobilising large amounts of private capital, additional funds from the International Monetary Fund, as well as a restructuring of developing countries’ debts, she said. 

Europe’s largest economy is still behind on its own pledge to give €6 billion (S$8.8 billion) annually by 2025. Germany and the United States – whose climate envoy John Kerry is at the talks that will run until Wednesday – also want to make climate financing a fixed part of the World Bank’s business model to allow for more green investments, Ms Baerbock added. 

And the call for more funds will continue to grow. At COP27 in Egypt, nearly 200 countries signed off on creating a new fund to compensate countries for some of the damage caused by extreme weather events. How the fund will operate and who will contribute money towards it will be a focus of the climate conference in Dubai. 

COP28 will also see the results of a global stocktake of where countries stand on meeting climate goals, and it is already clear that most of them are not on track. With limits on emissions not working to plan, Ms Baerbock says she is open to debating whether COP28 should set new goals on renewable-energy buildout. 

“I am committed to ensuring that we also agree on a global target for renewable energies and energy efficiency,” she said. “Our ambition for the COP in Dubai must be to herald the end of the age of fossil energies.” BLOOMBERG