Desk Report
Publish: 12 Jan 2023, 03:39 pm
The Emirati Minister of State and the CEO of Abu Dhabi's state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber talks at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Oct. 31, 2022 || Photo: AP
The United Arab Emirates on Thursday named a veteran
technocrat who both leads Abu Dhabi’s state-run oil company and oversees its
renewable energy efforts to be the president of the upcoming United Nations
climate negotiations in Dubai, highlighting the balancing act ahead for this
crude-producing nation.
Authorities nominated Sultan al-Jaber, a trusted confidant
of UAE leader Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who serves as CEO of the Abu
Dhabi National Oil Co. That firm pumps some 4 million barrels of crude a day
and hopes to expand to 5 million daily.
Those revenues fuel the ambitions of this federation of
seven sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula — as well as the production of more
of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that the U.N. negotiations hope to limit.
But al-Jaber also once led a once-ambitious project to have
a $22 billion “carbon-neutral” city on Abu Dhabi’s outskirts — an effort later
pared back after the global financial crisis that struck the Emirates hard
beginning in 2008. Even today, he serves as the chairman of Masdar, a clean
energy company that grew out of the project that now operates in more than 40
countries.
“Sultan al-Jaber has the credentials and background to lean
into trends that are already on going,” said Ryan Bohl, an Austin, Texas-based
Mideast analyst for a risk-intelligence firm called the RANE Network. “Him
being an oilman, I don’t think that will be that big of a risk for him.”
The Emirates’ state-run WAM news agency made the
announcement, noting al-Jaber’s years also serving as a climate envoy.
“This will be a critical year in a critical decade for
climate action,” WAM quoted al-Jaber as saying. “The UAE is approaching COP28
with a strong sense of responsibility and the highest possible level of
ambition.”
He added: “We will bring a pragmatic, realistic and
solutions-oriented approach that delivers transformative progress for climate
and for low-carbon economic growth.”
His nomination, however, drew immediate criticism. Harjeet
Singh, who is the head of Global Political Strategy at Climate Action Network
International, said al-Jaber holding the CEO title at the state oil company
posed “an unprecedented and alarming conflict of interest.”
“There can be no place for polluters at a climate
conference, least of all presiding over a COP,” Singh said.
Each year, the country hosting the U.N. negotiations known
as the Conference of the Parties — where COP gets its name — nominates a person
to chair the talks. Hosts typically pick a veteran diplomat as the talks can be
incredibly difficult to steer between competing nations and their interests.
The nominee’s position as “COP president” is confirmed by delegates at the
start of the talks, usually without objections.
The caliber of COP presidents has varied over the years.
Observers widely saw Britain’s Alok Sharma as energetic and committed to
achieving an ambitious result. Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry faced
criticism by some participants for the chaotic and at times non-transparent way
he presided over last year’s meeting.
In its announcement about al-Jaber, WAM said the Emirates
had invested “more than $50 billion in renewable energy projects across 70
countries, with plans to invest a minimum of $50 billion over the next decade.”
It wasn’t immediately clear where those figures came from.
Mubadala, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, has invested
some $3.9 billion since 2018 in renewable energy, according to the New
York-based research firm Global SWF. Masdar listed some $14.3 billion in
investments in a 2020 briefing. Masdar did not respond to questions about its
investments Thursday.
But at the same time, Mubadala has invested $9.8 billion
over the same period in oil and gas projects, Global SWF said.
The UAE is home to a massive solar park in Dubai, as well as
the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant, which is the Arabian Peninsula’s only atomic
energy source. But it also requires vast amounts of energy to run the
desalination plants that brought green golf courses to its desert expanses,
power the air conditioners cooling its cavernous malls in the heat of the
summer and power heavy industries like aluminum smelters.
The UAE’s clean energy policies grew in the mid-2000s as
Dubai’s real-estate boom saw it constructing the world’s tallest building and
massive, palm-shaped archipelagos off its coast. The World Wildlife Fund at the
time estimated the UAE had the world’s largest ecological footprint per capita
— meaning that each of its residents used more resources on average than those
living in any other nation. The UAE still ranks high on similar lists.
The Masdar City project grew out of that concern of being
tarnished, before being pared back.
“By us actually doing it and investing money, we had access
to lessons learned that no one had access to,” al-Jaber told The Associated
Press in 2010. “We have to learn, adjust, adapt and move forward.
We can’t be rigid.”
The UAE then pivoted Masdar City into a campus now hosting
the U.N.’s International Renewable Energy Agency and the firm itself into
investing into renewables at home and abroad. Joe Biden, just before leaving
office as America’s vice president, even visited Masdar City in 2016.
Analysts believe the Emirates is trying to maximize its
profits before the world increasingly turns to renewables. The Emirates itself
has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050 — a target that remains difficult to
assess and one that authorities haven’t fully explained how they’ll reach.
The UAE “have made no bones about being a major oil and gas
producer and presumably he is very well connected to rulers in the country,”
said Alden Meyer, a longtime climate talk observer at the environmental think
tank E3G. “I hope (al-Jaber) has good diplomatic and negotiation skills and the
ability to build consensus and compromise.”
COP28 will be held at Dubai’s Expo City from Nov. 30 through
Dec. 12.
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