The United Arab Emirates is treating Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, which incorporates the World Future Vitality Summit, as a trial run earlier than the nation hosts the COP28 local weather talks in November.
The theme of 2023’s Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week (ADSW) is “United on Local weather Motion In direction of COP28,” and judging by the convention’s world attendance and speaking factors, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is treating the occasion as a trial run earlier than Dubai hosts the United Nations Local weather Change Convention (COP28) from Nov. 30, 2023.
UAE Minister of Business and Superior Know-how Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who can be CEO of the Abu Dhabi Nationwide Oil Firm (ADNOC Group) and the chairman of the state’s renewable power agency Abu Dhabi Future Vitality Firm (Masdar), offered the occasion’s opening deal with.
The UAE’s choice to call Jaber the chair of the upcoming COP28 discussions just lately attracted criticism as a result of potential battle of curiosity seen in an oil boss heading the local weather summit. Nevertheless, if Jaber’s opening deal with is something to go by, the ADNOC CEO and Masdar chairman is able to sporting many hats, however can be below no phantasm as to the urgency of the transition to scrub power.
Picture: Hamad Al Kaabi / UAE Presidential Courtroom
“We now have a full and clear understanding of what’s at stake,” stated Jaber, including that local weather motion was on the coronary heart of UAE’s improvement technique. “For us, sustainable improvement is about by no means settling for the now. It’s all the time concerning the subsequent … As a result of subsequent by no means stops.”
Jaber went on to state the emirate’s ambition for COP28 to be a “COP of motion. A COP the place the worldwide north and world south actually pay attention to one another. A COP the place we transfer from objectives to getting it accomplished … And a COP the place we ship a brand new deal on local weather finance.”
Whereas ADNOC is without doubt one of the world’s main oil firms, it additionally has a 24% stake in Masdar, and thru Masdar the UAE Jaber is overseeing one of many area’s most pragmatic approaches to transitioning a fossil-fuel based mostly economic system to a inexperienced power economic system.
“The highway to web zero represents the most important market transformation with the best financial promise because the first industrial revolution,” continued Jaber. “As we put together to host COP28 in November, I ask myself: can the world come collectively to fulfill the urgency of this second? Can the world minimize emissions in half within the subsequent seven years? My reply is sure.”
The choice to call an oil boss as head of the COP28 summit was all the time going to courtroom controversy. However amongst attendees of ADSW there are not any scarcity of people that see Jaber as uniquely succesful for the function. In spite of everything, with a hand in each the fossil gas and renewable power pots, Jaber could show a practical middleman between the waning days of oil and a extra sustainable future.
The writer attended ADSW as a visitor of Masdar.
