UAE puts oil company boss in charge of Cop28 climate talks

Abu Dhabi National Oil Company or ADNOC is the state-owned oil company of the United Arab Emirates

Sounds like a sensible chap, on energy matters, but some ‘campaigners’ are already frothing. Pointing out that oil and gas demand is continuing to rise isn’t a crime, it’s just reality.
– – –
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government has appointed Sultan Al-Jaber to be the president of the Cop28 climate talks in November, reports Climate Home News.

Al Jaber heads the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), the twelfth largest oil company in the world, and the emirates’ much smaller renewable energy firm Masdar.

He has been a key figure in national climate and energy policy for over a decade. While Al Jaber has promoted renewable energy, in November 2021 he called for increased global investment in oil and gas.

“The oil and gas industry will have to invest over $600bn every year until 2030 just to keep up with the expected demand,” he told an Abu Dhabi oil conference.

“Renewable energy is the fastest growing segment of the energy mix but oil and gas is still the biggest and will be for decades to come. The future is clean but it is not here yet. We must make progress with pragmatism,” he said.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in 2021 that, if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5C then there should be no investment in new fossil fuels. They calculated that the supply of oil should drop by three-quarters between 2020 and 2050.

In October 2022, the IEA projected that even under existing policies, global fossil fuel demand would peak and decline steadily from the mid‐2020s.

Mixed reception

Reaction to Al Jaber’s appointment was mixed. The head of the Climate Action Network campaign group, Tasneem Essop, said it was a conflict of interest to lead climate talks at the same time as heading an oil company.

Full report here.