By Emilie Rutledge & Aiora Zabala*
The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the world’s seventh largest oil producer, will host the 28th UN climate change summit (COP28) in Dubai from November 30 to December 12. Presiding over the conference will be the chief executive of the UAE state-owned oil company Adnoc, Sultan al-Jaber.
Given fossil fuels account for nearly 90% of the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change, many have argued that there is a clear conflict of interest in having oil and gas producers at the helm of climate talks. The UAE is alleged to flare more gas than it reports and plans to increase oil production from 3.7 million barrels a day to 5 million by 2027.
Some contend that the oil and gas industry could throw the brake on greenhouse gas emissions by investing its vast revenues into plugging gas flares and injecting captured carbon underground. But independent assessments maintain that the industry will need to leave at least some of its commercially recoverable reserves permanently underground to limit global warming. No oil-exporting country but Colombia has yet indicated it will do this.
Dubai appears determined to undermine even this small victory. An investigation has released documents showing the UAE hosts planned to advise a Colombian minister that Adnoc “stands ready” to help the South American country develop its oil and gas reserves.
The UK invited ridicule by expanding its North Sea oil fields less than two years after urging the world to raise its climate ambitions as summit host. The UAE seems destined for a similar fate – before its talks have even begun.
Oil consumption & dependence
The UAE’s fast-growing population of 9.9 million (only 1 million are Emirati citizens) has the sixth highest CO₂ emissions per head globally.
Citizens are used to driving gas-guzzling cars with fuel priced well below international market rates and using air conditioning for much of the year thanks to utility subsidies. Visiting tourists and conference-goers have come to expect chilled shopping malls, swimming pools and lush golf greens that depend entirely on energy-hungry desalinated water.
Despite decades of policies aimed at diversifying the country’s economy away from oil, the UAE’s hydrocarbon sector makes up a quarter of GDP, half of the country’s exports and 80% of government revenues. Oil rent helps buy socioeconomic stability, for instance, by providing local people with public-sector sinecures.
This state of affairs is a central tenet of the Arabian Gulf social contract, in which citizens of the six gulf states mostly occupy bureaucratic public sector positions administering an oil-based economy with expatriate labour dominating the non-oil private sector.
Tech-fixes, targets and the future
How does the UAE plan to cut its own emissions?
Adnoc and other international oil companies are banking on select technologies (to sceptics, “green cover” for further climate damage) to preserve their core business model: extracting oil.
Adnoc, along with the wider oil and gas industry, has invested in carbon sequestration and making hydrogen fuel from the byproducts of oil extraction. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such measures, even if fully implemented, will only have a small impact on greenhouse gas emissions.
The UAE was the first in the Middle East to ratify the Paris climate agreement and to commit to net zero emissions by 2050. With near limitless sunshine and substantial sovereign wealth, the UAE ranks 18th globally per capita and first among Opec countries for solar power capacity. Solar now meets around 4.5% of the UAE’s electricity demand and projects in the pipeline will see output rise from 23 gigawatts (GW) today to 50GW by 2031.
The Barakah nuclear power plant (the Arab world’s first) started generating electricity in 2020. While only meeting 1% of the country’s electricity demand, when fully operational in 2030, this may rise to 25%.
The oil sector is inherently capital-intensive, not labour-intensive, and so it cannot provide sufficient jobs for Emiratis. The UAE will need to transition to a knowledge-based economy with productive employment in sectors not linked to resource extraction.
In the UAE, sovereign wealth fund Mubadala is tasked with enabling this transition. It has invested in a variety of high-tech sectors, spanning commercial satellites to research and development in renewable energy.
But even if the UAE was to achieve net zero by some measure domestically, continuing to export oil internationally means it will be burned somewhere, and so the climate crisis will continue to grow.
Self-interest
Is disappointment a foregone conclusion in Dubai?
Already one of the hottest places in the world, parts of the Middle East may be too hot to live within the next 50 years according to some predictions.
Rising temperatures risk the UAE’s tourism and conference-hosting sectors, which have grown meteorically since the 1990s (third-degree burns and heatstrokes won’t attract international visitors). A show-stopping announcement to further its global leadership ambitions is not out of the question.
At some point, one of the major oil-exporting countries must announce plans to leave some of its commercially recoverable oil permanently untapped. COP28 provides an ideal platform. A participating country may make such a commitment with the caveat that it first needs to build infrastructure powered by renewable energy and overhaul its national oil company’s business model to one that supplies renewable energy, not fossil fuel, globally.
The UAE has the private capital and sovereign wealth required to build a post-oil economy. But will it risk being the first mover?
*This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
20 Comments
'The UAE has the private capital and sovereign wealth required to build a post-oil economy.'
No, it doesn't. Nor does anyone - including the bunch of Muppets we've just voted in.
It actually requires energy to do work (in Adam Smith's time, known as labour economics hasn't moved on) and renewables don't supply nearly what fossil energy did.
Yes, we will end up on renewables - whether voluntarily, via a collapse, or via fossil-resource depletion. No, we won't be doing as much work as we've been doing - not by some orders of magnitude. Humanity will continue to abandon carbon targets, because it cannot exist in present form without present amounts of grunt.
The joke is - that it cannot continue in present form, irrespective. Hence Muppets.
Nobody really cares PDK, its human nature and its a greed driven world. Sure its all going to turn to shit one day, but its decades away so nobody gives a rats. The COP thing is a joke, they all turn up on jet planes and have a great time and as it turns out are all doing business deals in the background.
Exactly, holding a so called climate meeting in a massive oil producing nation when they are the supposed enemy would be as dumb has funding criminal gangs to behave and not sell drugs....that would be really dumb, but hey, we did that too. Look how well that worked. Nothing happens at these meetings. Last year they discovered that their calculations from their previous meetings were completely wrong. Good effort, most right thinking people could have told them that via email, it was obvious their calculations are wrong and becoming more wrong by the day. I think COP will be a thing of the past in a few years time.
Not listening? Thats kind of dumb. As the quality of life declines and the extractors drone on about it being because extraction rates aren't fast enough, surely the the penny will drop among those with at least some intellectual functionality?
Reversing tobacco restrictions? A sign of how destructive and one dimensional the worst government in NZ history promises to be. The next three years promise to be a time warp journey to the worst practices of the last century.
Why are you talking about the reversal of tobacco restrictions ? As a non-smoker I think it is excellent policy. The policy that was enacted by the useless last government was about dividing the adult population into different categories with different rules (sound familiar). That should never have even been part of the solution. It should have either been an outright ban, or not. Now, it is being reversed the detractors suggest that 5000 Maori will die every year as a result (I have no idea whether this statistic is true or not, it comes from the media so who knows). Anyway, who cares, it is their choice as much as anyone else, if more of one group die than another due to choices of their own...who cares. There will be many more of these stupid rules reversed in the coming months and years and people mostly feel positive and relieved about it. Many people will complain about, particularly those currently getting paid for work but not doing any in Wellington who are about to lose their jobs. There will be lots of complaining, but again....who cares.
I think the UAE does have the capital to build a post-oil economy, although the more likely outcome is one resembling Norway today where the local economy is largely decarbonised but still supported by revenue generated from massive oil and gas exports. Dubai itself of course has been a post-oil economy for many years, though Abu Dhabi is a different story
Not because it isn't happening - which is the inverted bow you're trying to draw for yourself.
A combination of religion and the tendency to believe, coupled with having only one saleable resource, probably.
Yes, they're goners if they stay. Look to ever-more refugee-streams...
The argument is that if we are going to avoid the worst of climate change - eg 1.5 - 2.0 temp rise - then all countries including oil exporters need to engage and change. And of the major OPEC nations the one most likely to get on board would be the UAE. Although a gamble, I can see the rationale for hosting in Dubai. Let’s hope genuine outcomes occur and not more greenwashing and platitudes
To answer the question posed, then of course disappointment will be the result of COP28, as with all the previous 27. I think something like 75,000 will converge on this talkfest, many promises will be chucked around like confetti and little or nothing will actually happen.
In survey after survey, people say that they want to see measures taken to reduce the effects of climate change, but not, at least as yet, if that means any changes to their current standard of living. Politicians including the Greens tell us that we can decarbonise the economy and carry on pretty much as before. Is that really possible? I doubt it, though I could of course be wrong. Perhaps technology will somehow act as a Deus Ex Machina. Nuclear fusion for all in say 20 years?
I won't be around to find out, but I think that we will have to do less with less, but would that be a bad thing? Most of us, me included, have much more 'stuff' than we need to live perfectly well and when change is forced on us, we will adapt.
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