TITLE: COP28: UAE planned to use climate talks to make oil deal
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331
EXCERPT: The [leaked briefing ] documents - obtained by independent journalists at the Centre for Climate Reporting working alongside the BBC - were prepared by the UAE's COP28 team for meetings with at least 27 foreign governments ahead of the COP28 summit, which starts on 30 November.
They included proposed "talking points", such as one for China which says Adnoc, the UAE's state oil company, is "willing to jointly evaluate international LNG [liquefied natural gas] opportunities" in Mozambique, Canada and Australia.
The documents suggest telling a Colombian minister that Adnoc "stands ready" to support Colombia to develop its fossil fuel resources.
There are talking points for 13 other countries, including Germany and Egypt, which suggest telling them Adnoc wants to work with their governments to develop fossil fuel projects.
The briefings show the UAE also prepared talking points on commercial opportunities for its state renewable energy company, Masdar, ahead of meetings with 20 countries, including the UK, United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kenya.
COP28 is the UN's latest round of global climate talks. This year it is being hosted by the UAE in Dubai and is due to be attended by 167 world leaders, including the Pope and King Charles III.
These summits are the world's most important meetings to discuss how to tackle climate change.
The hope is COP28 will help limit the long-term global temperature rise to 1.5C, which the UN's climate science body says is crucial to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But that will require drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, it says - a 43% reduction by 2030 from 2019 levels.
As part of the preparations for the conference, the UAE's COP28 team arranged a series of ministerial meetings with governments from around the world.
The meetings were to be hosted by the president of COP28, Dr Sultan al-Jaber. Each year the host nation appoints a representative to be the COP president.
Meeting representatives of foreign governments is one of the core responsibilities of COP presidents. It is the president's job to encourage countries to be as ambitious as possible in their efforts to cut emissions.
The leaked briefing documents seen by the BBC were prepared for Dr Jaber - who is also CEO of the UAE's giant state oil company, Adnoc, and of the state renewables business, Masdar.
TITLE: Sultan al-Jaber: Who is the UAE oil boss steering COP28
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/sultan-al-jaber-uae-oil-boss-steering-cop28-2023-11-23/
EXCERPT: The UAE is among a handful of high per-capita income countries that are not obliged to contribute to U.N. climate funds, but face pressure from European states to do so.
The UAE is a senior member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its wealth is built on oil. It has plans to raise its production capacity to 5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027.
Jaber, born in 1973 in Umm al Quwain, one of the lesser known emirates, stands out in the UAE for the number of high positions he holds.
Nicknamed Dr. Sultan, he has a PhD in business and economics from Britain's Coventry University. He also studied in the United States.
In 2006, he was put in charge of Masdar, the UAE’s renewable energy vehicle, and set off on a global fact-finding mission to assess obstacles and opportunities.
As part of the tour, he met Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, who was then president of Iceland, which, drawing on ample geothermal reserves, has managed to more than meet its energy needs through renewable sources.
"He told me he had this vision that he wanted to make Abu Dhabi a centre for a renewable energy transformation," Grimsson told Reuters.
"On the face of it, it was almost an absurd proposition. But there was something in his eyes, and his enthusiasm that made me believe that he was serious."
Masdar has investments in over 40 countries and is still chaired by Jaber, its founding CEO, who since 2016 has also been the CEO of ADNOC.
Jaber's travels showed him the need to break down silos that separate various aspects of the renewables industry, such as research, technology and finance, to get results.
Similarly, as the president of COP28, he has backed an inclusive approach, so oil and gas representatives, including OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais, will be in Dubai.
Without the inclusion of fossil fuel leaders in the climate conversation, Jaber says there can be no orderly transition to a low carbon economy.
The approach has alarmed climate activists.
Greta Thunberg called Jaber's appointment as president-designate to COP28 in January "completely ridiculous", while former U.S. vice president Al Gore, a long time climate activist, has said fossil fuel interests have taken over the U.N. climate process.
TITLE: Former fossil fuel executive, now EU’s climate chief, insists Big Oil’s days are numbered
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2023-11-26-former-fossil-fuel-executive-becomes-eus-climate-chief-and-insists-big-oils-days-are-numbered/
EXCERPT: Speaking to a small press briefing including Daily Maverick, Wopke Hoekstra, EU commissioner for climate action, conceded that achieving an ambitious agreement at the upcoming COP28 would be tough. For starters, Hoekstra — a Dutch politician who held roles at Shell and McKinsey from 2002 to 2017 — cited the “difficult geopolitical context” as a possible stumbling block.
That is code for a rogue’s gallery of wars and simmering tensions with the potential to creep into Dubai: Hoekstra mentioned the Russians “horrible war” in Ukraine and Indo-Pacific friction.
“It is a great power rivalry between the world’s largest players,” he says, and “the backlash we face against international institutions, the rule of law, human rights, democracy itself, where I feel we need to push back on the pushback.” (He would not be drawn on the recent Dutch elections, which voted in the far-right party of Geert Wilders.)
And, just up the drag, there is the bloody, tragic Israel-Gaza conflict, which called a four-day truce on Friday.
“It is extremely difficult to come to an ambitious agreement, and yet it is also more necessary than ever because the challenge ahead of us is tremendous, and scientists are crystal clear that we have no time to waste,” says Hoekstra, who served as both Dutch finance minister and foreign minister before taking up the post as the EU’s top climate envoy in October.
In fact, if we are talking about heeding scientists, the world’s largest outdoor laboratory is down there in Antarctica, and the data whisperers of the ice have been particularly vocal, and stressed, in this polar annus horribilis.
From Australia, scientists warned that historic sea-ice lows may have hit a new normal. And, with business-as-usual, the Antarctic’s nutrient-carrying conveyor belt would probably slow by 2050 and possibly collapse. All of which has to make us wonder about Russia’s unhidden and largely unchallenged search for Southern Ocean oil and gas aboard its Akademik Alexander Karpinsky via Cape Town port — flagged in a June 2023 EU report.
Daily Maverick asked Hoekstra whether he was sanguine about the Antarctic Treaty system’s ban on mining activities, which is subject to potential review after 2048. Or was there a case in Dubai for an immediate commitment never to extract the likely large deposits off East Antarctica’s sedimentary basins — as peer-reviewed governance academia have argued?
Those reserves would not be straightforward to extract, and it is unclear how much is recoverable, but the 1970s Arab-Israeli conflict previously spawned an unratified Antarctic mining pact (signed by, among others, six EU states).
“We’re finding new oil and gas opportunities in a range of places across the world, sometimes that is on land, sometimes that is offshore,” Hoekstra concedes.
“A couple of decades ago people might have thought this is a great business opportunity — we now know this is actually very detrimental to our planet, because there is a 100% causality between pumping more CO2 and other emissions into the air and the boiling of our planet,” he says. “That is why we should actually do the exact opposite and phase out fossil fuels and coal, in particular, as quickly as possible.”
Maybe the world could not afford to pick and choose ambitions, but this is precisely what happened at recent COPs.
Here, efforts to phase out fossil fuels, especially coal, emerged as the biggest loser, but Hoekstra emphasised that “we simply do not have the luxury” of treating climate solutions like an à la carte menu.