Abu Dhabi – The oil chief of the United Arab Emirates, the country to host the next United Nations Conference on Climate Change, UNFCCC COP28, said this Wednesday (10) the world should “get serious” about emission-capturing technology rather than focusing exclusively on replacing fossil fuels to fight global warming.
Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind “cannot be the only answer,” especially in steel, cement, and aluminum production, whose carbon dioxide emissions are challenging to reduce, said Sultan Al Jaber (pictured above), who is CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and president-designate of COP28.
“If we are serious about curbing industrial emissions, we need to get serious about carbon capture technologies,” added Al Jaber at a press conference in Abu Dhabi.
In January, the executive was appointed president-designate of COP28, which this year will be held in the Gulf country from November 30 to December 12.
Major oil exporters in the Gulf, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, tout more attention to technologies for capturing and storing carbon dioxide, the leading cause of global warming.
Still, many experts believe this nascent technology is costly, with no proven results, and could not replace environmental policies aimed at progressively reducing the use of hydrocarbons. This promises to be one of the central debates at COP28, to take place from November to December in Dubai.
The nearly 200 signatory countries of the 2015 Paris Agreement pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to contain global warming “well below 2°C” and, if possible, limit it to 1.5°C.
But the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in March that global warming caused by human activity could reach 1.5°C compared with the pre-industrial era as early as 2030-2035.
Any reproduction of this content is prohibited.
