The UAE Launders its International Reputation through the COP28 Machine. In November of this year, Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., is to preside over the United Nations COP28 climate talks in 2023 as President-Designate. It will take place in Dubai, UAE. Al Jaber will be directing the COP’s narratives on the benefits of a gradual but unavoidable global decarbonization process. This while working for a corporation that is likely to increase its daily output from about four million to five million barrels of crude oil. As the head of Dubai’s renewable energy initiatives, which invest billions of dollars in green technology worldwide, he was chosen to serve as the country’s envoy for climate change expertise.

It makes for a supremely arrogant and primary example of hypocrisy. This attempt by the UN to greenwash a petrostate that is also considered substandard in terms of civil liberties and human rights should be called out for what it is: a disaster.

Overall, there is a concern among degrowth environmentalists and eco-socialists everywhere that the influence of private fossil fuel companies on climate conferences is growing. Al Jaber will be the first CEO to ever hold the role of COP President. This makes a mockery of the entire ethos and integrity that the UN proclaims to have around genuine climate concerns and their supposed wish to move away from fossil fuels. Last year, the UAE sent 1,000 delegates to COP27, the largest amount from any one country.

UAE Launders its International Reputation through COP28 Machine

The delegation included representatives from public relations, AI, and real estate companies. 70 of these delegates represented oil and gas firms. They addressed an audience, promising to reduce carbon emissions. They are pointing out that, by the very virtue of their geology, the UAE’s gas and oil are the least carbon-intensive in the world. Did they mean that sand is easier to drill through than rock? Who knows, but the transition away from fossil fuels appears highly unlikely given their current lobbying and expansion activities.

As CEO of UAE Oil, aka ADNOC, Al Jaber seems to be mainly campaigning to make UAE oil and gas recognised internationally as a form of clean energy by promoting bogus solutions to his emissions problem through ‘carbon capture technology.’ While he sits on the board of Emirates Global Aluminium and, for good measure, is also chairman of Emirates Development Bank, on the world stage he advances ADNOC’s carbon capture and storage facility.

This captures CO2 produced in steel manufacturing and then pumps the gas back into the oilfields to extract more oil. According to the claim, the system would automatically balance the growth in oil and steel output. This will be done by storing and capturing more carbon. The carbon will be recycled back into oil production (5 million metric tons by 2030). This is the equivalent of an imagined forest, about one-third the size of the United Arab Emirates.

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