Climate summit host country misses own clean power target – but ‘continues to embrace’ transition. Like any country hosting a COP climate summit, the United Arab Emirates is facing intense scrutiny of its own track record.

The oil-rich country hosting the next UN climate summit missed its own green energy target, Sky News can reveal. The UAE this year said it was “running towards” a clean power future,

The United Arab Emirates, which will host COP28 in Dubai in December, pledged in 2015 to generate 24% of its electricity from clean sources by 2021.

Clean energy includes both renewable and nuclear power.

But analysis by Sky News has found that in 2021, the hot and sunny nation had only reached 11% clean power, though that figure jumped to 17.5% in 2022.

The findings are “not a good look”, said Gareth Redmond-King, international lead at energy and climate thinktank ECIU.

Climate summit host country misses own clean power target – but ‘continues to embrace’ transition

“If you’re hosting COP, it’s important you’re setting up a leadership position,” he said.

COP hosts aren’t expected to be a “paragon of virtue”, but the UAE’s targets were “set quite low,” he added.

COP26 host the UK has also missed climate targets. But the UK “has been historically a climate leader, it has delivered huge emissions reductions,” he said.

A spokesperson for the UAE’s COP28 team said the country has set itself “ambitious targets” against which it is making “significant progress”.

They added that the UAE is “on track to meet its clean energy goals in line with its [climate action plans].”

But they said “some nuclear power” had been delayed due to the COVID pandemic and the introduction of “additional safety measures” after the Fukushima incident in 2011.

“We continue to embrace the energy transition and develop sustainable energy capacity,” they added.

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