"Oil and Renewable Energy Collide: UAE Appoints Controversial Leader as President for Upcoming Climate Summit"

image source: (unsplash: zbynek Burival)

The United Arab Emirates has appointed Sultan al Jaber, the head of the national oil company ADNOC, as the president for the upcoming COP28 climate summit set to take place in Dubai later this year. 

Al Jaber is also the UAE's special envoy on climate change and plays a crucial role in the country's goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, which makes him a highly controversial choice for the role. As the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., Al Jaber oversees the pumping of nearly all the crude oil in the UAE, which produces about 3.2 million barrels of oil per day. 

However, it should be noted that Al Jaber is also the chairman of the UAE's largest renewable energy company, Masdar, which has the capacity to produce 20 gigawatts of clean power and plans to invest billions of dollars to increase its capacity to 100 gigawatts globally this decade, which is about double the renewable energy that the U.K. can produce today. 

The COP28 summit will take place from November 30 to December 12 and the president plays a crucial role in setting the agenda and forging a consensus among different nations.

What is Cop?

The COP (Conference of the Parties) climate summits are annual meetings organized by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to discuss and negotiate international agreements on climate change. 

The first COP summit was held in 1995 and since then, COP summits have been held annually, except for the years when a "review" summit is held, which occurs every five years. 

The main objective of these summits is to review progress in dealing with climate change and to negotiate and implement measures to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. 

The summit's decisions are made by consensus among all participating countries. The outcome of each summit is a set of agreements, known as COP decisions, which lay out action plans and targets for reducing emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. 

The most notable agreement reached at COP21 was the Paris Agreement, which was adopted in 2015, and aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

source: (Bloomberg, world oil)

#UAE #Cop28 #ClimateChange #Oil #Renewableenergy