COP28 president-designate, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, has urged the oil & gas industry to accelerate efforts to decarbonise and reduce emissions
Delivering a speech to the eighth OPEC International Seminar in Vienna, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber said, “Dramatically reducing emissions, while maintaining robust sustainable growth, is the critical challenge of this century."
To meet that challenge, COP28 will need to "leverage the skills, the project management experience, the project finance expertise and the technological knowhow of all relevant industries, including and in particular the oil and gas industry."
While the oil & gas industry has long been viewed "as the problem" the sector should "take this opportunity to step up, flip the script and show the world once again how this industry is an important part of the solutions we need. We need to rapidly build a new clean energy system, while comprehensively decarbonising the system we rely on today," he said.
Dr. Al Jaber repeated his call for the oil & gas industry to "up its game, urgently decarbonise its operations and take collective action to eliminate operational emissions," based on three imperatives. These include the entire industry aligning to achieve net zero by 2050, accelerating the industry-wide commitment to zero out methane emissions, and monitoring, measuring and validating progress every step of the way.
"Today, I would like to add a fourth imperative," Dr. Al Jaber told delegates. "And that is allocating capital at scale to clean energy solutions, because the energy system of the future will not build itself."
"Policies at the national level must set the direction," Dr. Al Jaber said, calling on all nations to update their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) "to accelerate 2030 trajectories in line with net zero by 2050."
The UAE has recently submitted a third update to its second NDC that pushes emissions reductions to 40%, and has announced a US$54bn local programme over the next seven years to triple renewable capacity and significantly expand hydrogen production, he noted.
"Government policies at the national and sub-national level need to stimulate adoption of clean energies, commercialise the hydrogen value chain, make carbon capture viable and affordable, and incentivise R&D in battery storage, energy efficiencies and other new technologies," Dr. Al Jaber said.
Applying new technologies at speed and scale will require significantly more capital to be invested, he noted, adding that capacity building and skills development to train young people for the jobs of the future will also be essential.
