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Sultan Al Jaber, chief executive of the UAE’s state-owned oil company and chair of the upcoming UN meteorological conference, at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi in October. Credit: Ali Al Shehabi for TIME
For a taste of the UAE, try cappuccino at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi. For around $25, it’s a quality cup of coffee, but the gold flakes sprinkled over it are its main promotional appeal. Each nook and cranny of the Palace, one of the most expensive hotels ever built, exudes opulence: floor-to-ceiling marble, more than 1,000 crystal chandeliers, gilded ornaments, and a selection of Michelin-starred restaurants on-site.
Across the street is the source of the immense wealth that created this position and transformed the UAE from a desolate desert to a country with a GDP consistent with capital capita (adjusted for purchasing power) higher than that of the United States: Abu Dhabi National Oil. . Enterprise, or ADNOC. Unlike the sumptuous hotel, the glass skyscrapers are polished but efficient, and the corporate offices almost austere. Employees and visitors dress modestly, according to the 13-page dress code manual I earned prior to my visit.
I flew to Abu Dhabi at the end of October, not for golden cappuccinos, but to interview Sultan Al Jaber, an economics doctor, turned head of renewable energy and now executive director of ADNOC, which chairs the United Nations meteorological convention. in Dubai in December. The convention, known as COP28, comes as the end of the year calls for a clinical consensus that we reduce fossil fuel use now. At the same time, money continues to flow into fossil fuels; More than $1 trillion in new financing has been invested this year alone, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Al Jaber, as president of COP28 and one of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, is tasked with reconciling those realities. Sitting in a function room at the Emirates Palace hotel, dressed in the classic white robe and sneakers, he is the target of complaints and a symbol of possibility. “The slow easing of fossil fuels is inevitable, it is essential,” he told me. “We have to make do with it. ” At the same time, he says, the world is not in a position to completely abandon oil and gas. “We have to be realistic,” he says. “We cannot disconnect the global from the existing energy formula before we build a new energy formula. »
Most of the time, the COP president plays a largely functional role, going back and forth between member countries to find not unusual ground in unstable spaces of climate policy. Al Jaber took a very different approach. He extended an invitation to oil and fuel corporations and priority climate solutions for the personal sector. According to Al Jaber, the good fortune of COP28, not to mention broader efforts to fight climate change, depends as much on the acceptance of the personal sector and the conversion of market situations as unstable negotiations. a paradigm shift,” he says. The political procedure will need to be well complemented by personal capital and entrepreneurship. ‘
Success is far from assured. A “trade mindset” does not necessarily correspond to diplomatic negotiations between two hundred countries. And companies, especially those in the oil and fuel sector, don’t have an excellent track record in meeting their climate commitments. Critics of Greta Thunberg say Al Gore’s Al Jaber is just a workhorse for the fossil fuel industry’s ongoing efforts to block the global climate agenda. Al Jaber says he is uniquely positioned to reconcile the many interests in the fight against climate.
This debate will mark the next COP summit. We want to begin phasing out oil and fuels while managing our economic system’s continued dependence on fossil fuels. Al Jaber rarely says very often that this calls for bloodless realism, but no one knows where An edition of realism will take him. In Abu Dhabi, I met with John Kerry, the former US Secretary of State, now President Biden’s weather envoy. He has supported Al Jaber from the beginning, but recognizes the difficulties. It probably won’t work,” Kerry says. Some might call it an experiment in having an oil and fuel generating entity host the COP. That’s the big question.
Looking out the window of the Bell 412 helicopter taking me from Abu Dhabi, I can glimpse the ancient vision of the Arabian Desert: a sea of rolling sand dunes stretching as far as the eye can see. Through the other window is a science-style array of solar panels, covering an area larger than Manhattan. Following the boundary of the solar farm, we descend to take a closer look at the nearly 900 feet. A tower loaded with molten salt that absorbs and stores the power of the 70,000 mirrors that surround it.
The Al Jaber team organized the trip to the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, one of the largest in the world, to showcase the UAE’s meteorological work. As impressive as the solar park is, I’m just as intrigued during the trip up to the site. We take off from a helipad in Abu Dhabi and enjoy a stunning, if brief, view of the skyscrapers that have emerged from the desert that 60 years ago was a flawed net suffering from the decline of the pearl fishing trade. From there, we fly over the Persian Gulf, where I can see in the distance some of the UAE’s offshore oil rigs, which contribute to the nearly 3 million barrels of oil the country produces each day.
Read more: Why renewables are key to COP28 success
Al Jaber sits in the middle of this energy ecosystem. The bespectacled 50-year-old executive runs ADNOC and is chairman of Masdar, the state-owned company he co-founded that now manages renewable energy projects in more than 40 countries. He sits down, addresses me warmly, and jumps straight to his resume. He appointed ADNOC director in 2016, he says, months after the world signed the Paris Agreement, as part of “preparing the company for the future” amid a global transition away from fossil fuels. They were looking for smart, slow disruption,” he says.
Progressive is a relative term. Al Jaber did not dedicate ADNOC to reducing its oil production, nor did it chart a path toward a renewable energy company. Instead, the company is investing more than $1. 5 billion in expansion projects, including expanding its crude oil production capacity to 5 million barrels a day through 2030. A fraction of that money, $1. 5 billion, is aims to reduce related emissions. to oil extraction. trigger. That said, it has led to some improvements: offshore oil platforms now run on electricity, and virtual equipment allows the company to map spaces where energy is wasted. And the company has begun building big-budget carbon capture projects.
As president of COP28, he called on other oil corporations to come to Dubai with similar commitments to tackle leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and decarbonize their own operations. “If it wasn’t for what I was able to do and prove to everyone in this industry, I wouldn’t be able to convince them,” he says. The talks have not been easy, with some state-owned oil corporations specifically resisting competing proposals.
Al Jaber describes his technique as “realism. ” Oil is the main draw and even in the most competitive decarbonization scenarios, we will still need some source until mid-century. He argues that it is preferable for the oil we use to have the lowest carbon content available. This happens specifically in the United States. United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, where oil is so cheap that it is more likely to remain in global power longer than oil from any other country.
The decarbonization of oil and fuels is insufficient, and some argue that this represents a fig leaf for the industry. The sector’s operations account for 15% of global energy-related emissions, but the real challenge lies in the product they sell. In September, a UN assessment said that “phasing out all fossil fuels” would be “indispensable” to keeping the goals of the Paris Agreement within reach.
So it’s no surprise that Al Jaber’s complaints, as the head of a fossil fuel company, have been unrelenting. More than 100 members of the European Parliament and the U. S. Congress said in May that al-Jaber had “seriously compromised” the COP procedure and called on him to resign. This summer, Gore said in a TED statement that fossil fuel interests “have blatantly hijacked the COP process. “Of Al Jaber, Gore said, “He’s a great guy. He’s a wise guy. But a clash of interests is still a clash of interests.
To paraphrase Al Jaber, let’s be realistic for a minute: Is a petrostate oil and fuels chief executive the ideal candidate to lead a transition away from fossil fuels?The considerations are legitimate, to say the least. But seeing Al Jaber as an agent of the resurgence of fossil fuel corporations makes no sense. Since the COVID-19 crisis, markets have revalued fossil fuels. The war in Ukraine has prompted some climate advocates to call for more oil and fuel extraction infrastructure to combat Rusia. La President Biden’s signature weather legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, provides a lifeline to oil corporation subsidies for a diversity of industry-friendly technologies such as hydrogen, geothermal energy and carbon dioxide removal. Of the latter, Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, said at an industry convention earlier this year, “It gives our industry a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think will be very needed. “
Read more: Big oil deals impede the green transition
The truth of a thriving oil industry at this critical juncture has propelled the climate movement toward new decarbonization strategies. Activist organization 350. org, which rose to prominence through opposing pipelines, has changed its strategy “to unite around the banner of advancing solutions, just fighting,” said Executive Director May Boeve. This means advocating for renewable energy, hoping to exclude fossil fuels from the mix. An organization of more than 130 companies, including Ikea and eBay, have signed a letter pressuring policymakers “to eliminate the use and production of fossil fuels”, a measure that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago . “When you reach out to the industry, they say, well, the call is still there,” says Maria Mendiluce, president of the We Mean Business Coalition, which wrote the letter. “We’re mobilizing to show that demand is actually declining. ” . »
So far, COP28 negotiators seem to agree on one part of this issue: they have found common ground with a commitment to triple renewable energy capacity, but discussions on a deal that would allow countries to phase out fossil fuels have failed to find consensus.
Al Jaber acknowledges the discrepancy. Their strategy to overcome this challenge has focused on turning economic calculations into blank energy a major investment. He tried to galvanize everyone from the app sector to personal investment by pushing for cash flow. And it has given renewable energy corporations a central role. And their concerns are growing, such as allowing reforms and overhauling electricity markets.
Somewhat symbolically, on his stopover in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly in September, he left the confines of midtown Manhattan, where ministers and government officials hide for days, to ring the bell of the New York Stock Exchange. Investors are smart for Dubai,” said Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, one of the founding fathers of the United Arab Emirates. It turns out that Al Jaber is applying the same strategy to the climate. Along the way last year, he met with business leaders like Mike Bloomberg, as well as political leaders like German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and devoted leaders like Pope Francis.
For all his diplomacy, he doesn’t appreciate private criticism. “You asked me, ‘Is that fair?’ Surely it’s not fair,” he said, preventing him from greeting the attendees and telling them that we had run out of time. “All my adventure and experience has focused on sustainability, economic diversification, control and task delivery. “
A key question in the run-up to COP28 is whether other market players will join us. Two days after my interview with Al Jaber, I sat with Kerry in the cavern of the palace’s dining room as climate and energy ministers from around the world crowded together. We entered the room. Just as Kerry was beginning to understand how inflation had affected climate action, we heard someone shout, “John!John!”
He was Abdulaziz Bin Salman al Saud, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister and half-brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kerry asked for confirmation that the kingdom was on board for an undisclosed portion of the talks: “My smart friend,” Kerry said. “You guaranteed it, didn’t you? Abdulaziz responded, to the laughter of those around us: “It depends. . . “
Behind the scenes, it is clear that the Saudis are the key to Al Jaber’s clever fortune or failure to reconcile the divergent desires of the climate crisis and the fossil fuel industry. The country has the world’s second-largest oil reserves and has consistently sought its fossil-fuel-based economy in climate negotiations. “The degree of ambition depends on whether Saudi Aramco considers this to be a smart thing to do,” says an official familiar with the discussions between oil and fuel companies, referring to Saudi Arabia’s national oil company.
Big oil producers are not the only impediment to a broad agreement at COP28. The U. S. and Europe have traditionally resisted measures that could simply hold them accountable for the cost of their emissions. India and China have traditionally resisted calls to phase out coal. In theory, the UAE is well-positioned to fill some of those gaps, thanks to its smart relationships with almost all stakeholders. “The time has come to build on the experience we’ve gained over the years and the relationships we’ve built,” says Al Jaber.
Read more: How the Inflation Reduction Act Transformed America and the World
Those closest to the negotiations generally see Al Jaber as a genuine player. “I think he’s completely committed,” says Maros Sefcovic, the European Union’s head of weather policy. “They’re facing a challenge,” says Tina Stege, weather envoy to the Marshall Islands, “but our expectations are high. “
This is not to say that COP28 will be a success. Al Jaber’s entrepreneurial technique has led him to a series of puzzling decisions. He toured the PR agencies. He relied on McKinsey as a guide, despite the company’s lack of experience in negotiations over sensitive weather conditions. And he spent months on a listening tour, which some say delayed scheduled negotiations.
After returning from Abu Dhabi, I reflected on the question that is widely asked in the meteorological community: “Is it legit?”For all the awkwardness of his position, I find it coherent. For Al Jaber, being realistic means accepting that the shift away from fossil fuels will only happen when the economic scenario adjusts. In the meantime, it has profits to be made from oil. For our sake, let’s hope this adjusts soon.
—With information from Julia Zorthian
Write to Justin Worland at justin. worland@time. com.
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