ShareBONN: The head of the upcoming COP28 climate summit, who also is the chief executive of the UAE’s national oil company, acknowledged that a reduction in the use of fossil fuels is inescapable. “The phase down of fossil fuels is inevitable,” Sultan Al-Jaber said on the sidelines of technical climate talks six months ahead of the summit. “The speed at which this happens depends on how quickly we can phase up zero carbon alternatives, while ensuring energy security, accessibility and affordability,” added Al Jaber, who runs the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).
Al-Jaber defended a COP28 roadmap that includes a “global goal to triple renewable energy, double energy efficiency, and double clean hydrogen, all by 2030.” His comments came as numerous participants and observers in the UN climate negotiations have called on Al-Jaber to explicitly acknowledge the importance of ending the use of fossil fuels, an objective no COP summit to date has been able to put down in writing. ‘Need to kick the habit’ Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, an African climate and energy think tank, told AFP that al-Jaber is right to acknowledge the inevitability of the phaseout of fossil fuels
“Like a drug addict, we need to kick the habit if we’re going to heal and start getting better,” he said. After coming close to getting a COP resolution to phase out fossil fuels in Glasgow in 2021, and again in Sharm-El-Sheikh in 2022, Adow said this was the year to get it done. Alden Meyer, a senior policy analyst at climate think tank E3G, called the acknowledgement of the need to phase down fossil fuels “a useful first step”. However he added that the vast majority of emissions reductions to be achieved by 2030 “needs to come from cutting use and production of oil, gas, and coal,” rather than from carbon capture or hydrogen.
Ross Fitzpatrick, Policy and Advocacy Officer at Christian Aid Ireland, said it was great to see the COP28 chief “waking up to the inevitability of phasing out fossil fuels”. “The UAE would be a very fitting location to mark the end of the fossil fuel age,” he added. On Wednesday, Al-Jaber signed a statement with European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen calling for “a transition towards energy systems free of unabated fossil fuels,” meaning fossil fuels without carbon capture systems, hinting at a possible compromise in the coming months between different camps in the negotiations.
“We must be laser-focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero carbon alternatives,” Al-Jaber said at an event in Germany last month. The statement was interpreted at the time as a defense of oil and gas, on the condition that it is used with carbon capture technologies that are still not mature and remain uncertain. At the talks in Bonn, the exit from fossil fuel use dominated the talk among activists and experts who pointed to the fact that burning fossil fuels is by far the main driver of global warming. Activists have organized protests at the Bonn talks calling for energy firms to be kicked out of the climate negotiations.
Fuel emissions lower Meanwhile, carbon dioxide emissions from energy use in the European Union fell by 2.8 percent last year, thanks to reduced use of natural gas following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Eurostat reported on Friday. The European Union’s statistical agency said in a report that CO2 emissions from the 27 EU nations was almost 2.4 billion tons last year. Carbon dioxide emissions from energy use are a major contributor to global warming and account for around 75 percent of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions in the EU.
While natural gas use was down, by around 13 percent, emissions from coal and oil were up slightly “reflecting, among other things, the efforts invested by EU countries to achieve the voluntary gas demand reduction target introduced in August 2022,” as the conflict in Ukraine hit supplies. According to Eurostat, the fall in energy-related emissions also varied greatly from country to country.
The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium saw the biggest falls, with the Netherlands leading the way with a 12.8 percent reduction. At the other end of the scale, Bulgaria registered the biggest increase in CO2 emissions of 12 percent, followed by Portugal and Malta. The European Union has ambitious plans to become a “climate neutral” economy by 2050, with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.- AFP
