Promise COP28 will be a "summit for action and action"
Bloomberg: Climate needs an ally like Sultan Al Jaber
The last COP27 climate summit was held in Egypt in Sharm el-Sheikh. A.B
Al-Jaber stressed that this year's summit will move the world "from just talking about goals to achieving these goals."
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When the United Nations announced that the UAE would host the 2023 climate summit, known as COP28, many environmentalists were surprised. Does it make sense to hold an environmental protection conference in an oil state? When the UAE announced that the president of the conference would be the head of the country's national oil company, Sultan Al Jaber, the astonishment grew even greater. But activists must stop complaining, as Al Jaber is exactly the kind of ally the environment needs.
During his recent visit to India, Al Jaber summed up the gravity of the challenges facing the world. He conveyed the UAE's desire to help India achieve its ambitious goals of access to clean energy. He called for more investments in decarbonization technology, including nuclear and hydrogen energy. He supported an inclusive society approach that called for the mobilization of all sectors and asked for more development banks and financial institutions.
The Elephant Case
Al-Jaber spoke about the issue of the elephant in the room: the need to mitigate the effects of fossil fuels on the climate, during the transition to clean energy. "It's not a conflict of interests," al-Jaber said, alluding to the criticism against him, saying "it's in the interest of all of us to make the energy industry work alongside everyone." There is no escape from the fact that the world still needs oil and gas, and will remain so until a period of time to come, a fact that some environmental activists are trying to ignore. In fact, fighting climate change is not about ending oil and gas production immediately, but developing enough clean energy to phase out fossil fuels gradually, as quickly as possible, and doing so in a way that strengthens economic systems and raises the standard of living, through policies that "support growth and clean the environment, at the same time," according to Al-Jaber.
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To be sure, Al-Jaber has a financial interest in oil production, but he has an interest in the clean energy industry as well. He is the founder and current CEO of Masdar, which aims to produce 100 GW of renewable energy by the end of the decade, a goal that exceeds those set by some of Europe's largest countries. If each country aims to produce the same amount of renewable energy per capita within the next seven years, as is the case with the UAE, the fight against climate change could have paid off. Most of the world's leaders supported Al Jaber's appointment and the U.N. decision to host the COP28 summit, including John Kerry, U.S. President Joe Biden's special representative for climate.
Doubling the pressures
In the run-up to the November summit, it is important that Al Jaber redoubles pressure on wealthy countries to meet their commitments to world development, push development banks and sovereign wealth funds to expand their ambitions, and help overcome barriers to greater private sector investment in clean energy projects, especially in the developed world. Al-Jaber can dispel public doubts about the feasibility of holding these summits by targeting the biggest obstacle to progress in keeping the climate clean: coal-fired power plants. Clean energy is now cheaper than coal-fired energy in most countries of the world. Where coal still retains a price advantage (usually because of subsidies), new public-private partnerships, such as those put forward by the G20 at its summit in Indonesia last year, can help countries accelerate the transition to clean energy.
Of course, there is a difference between giving a good speech and rallying the world to work hard. That is why it was encouraging to hear Al-Jaber assert in his speech that this year's summit should be the "Cobb Summit for Action and Action" that will move the world "from just talking about goals to achieving these goals."