Urgent Decarbonization: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the Fossil Fuel Industry

2023-07-06 14:34:47

The Emirati President of COP28, Sultan al-Jaber, on Thursday in Vienna appealed to oil and gas companies, especially national ones, to commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, as long as the world consumes fossil fuels.

For the president of the next UN climate conference in November-December in Dubai, the fossil fuel industry must “decarbonize its operations urgently”. In this video address, Sultan al-Jaber stresses that “the demand for energy will only increase, as half a billion more people will join our planet”. “Therefore, the critical challenge of this century is to drastically reduce emissions, while maintaining robust sustainable development”, repeats the President of COP28, who is banking on still immature carbon capture technologies to reduce emissions linked to hydrocarbons.

Industry must “take collective action to eliminate operational emissions” of greenhouse gases (so-called “scopes” 1 and 2), said al-Jaber, who is responsible for coordinating and influencing negotiations without be a decision-maker himself.

These emissions represent 15 to 20% of the carbon footprint of the companies concerned, the vast majority coming from the combustion itself of products such as gasoline or gas consumed by customers (so-called “scope 3” emissions). “The whole industry – the international majors and the national companies – must align to reach net zero by 2050 or before,” said Mr. al-Jaber, who also serves as CEO of the Emirati national company ADNOC, during a seminar of OPEC, the cartel of oil-producing countries.

His call is aimed specifically at national companies (“NOC” in English), which are wholly or partly owned by States, as in the Gulf countries, China, Iran, and which are the lowest bidders in terms of objectives. climatic.

Western private majors such as Shell, BP and TotalEnergies generally already have greenhouse gas reduction targets, and represent “only” 15% of world oil and gas production, national companies counting on the other hand for at least half of the production.

He also called for “allocating large-scale capital because the energy system of the future will not and cannot build itself.” “The reduction of fossil fuels” is not only “inevitable” but also “essential”, he reiterated in echo of a previous intervention in Bonn a few weeks ago.

The Emirati President of COP28, Sultan al-Jaber, on Thursday in Vienna appealed to oil and gas companies, particularly national ones, to commit to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, as long as the world consumes fossil fuels.

For the president of the next UN climate conference in…

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