COP28 boss says he was misinterpreted, fossil fuel phase out is ‘inevitable’

Dubai: The oil boss shepherding COP28 says he has been misrepresented, misinterpreted and taken out of context, bemoaning international press coverage he believes has overlooked early progress at the UN climate summit.

Dr Sultan Al Jaber held a snap press conference on Monday afternoon addressing the reporting of remarks he made last month suggesting there was “no science” to support the need to phase out fossil fuels to cap global warming.

Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, chief executive officer of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and COP28 president.Credit: Bloomberg

Visibly exasperated, the COP28 president referred to the comment as “one statement taken out of context with misrepresentation and misinterpretation that gets maximum coverage,” while urging that he believed polluting industries needed to do more.

Jaber, who also heads up the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company and its renewable energy vehicle, has been accused of having a conflict of interest.

Climate advocate and former US vice president Al Gore has been among high-profile critics, telling Reuters the hosting of global warming negotiations by the Gulf petrostate was an abuse of public trust.

“He should not be taken seriously. He’s protecting his profits and placing them in a higher priority than the survival of the human civilisation,” Gore said on Sunday.

Likely to be one of the most contentious areas of negotiation between nations at COP28 in Dubai is the language of the final agreement and whether it calls for a “phase out” or “phase down” of fossil fuels.

The distinction between the two is significant, with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for the conference text to back a “phase out” of fossil fuels. More than 100 countries have already indicated their support for such wording.

Australia recently had language around transitioning away from fossil fuels watered down in a Pacific Islands Forum declaration.

Listing his credentials as an engineer and economist, Jaber on Monday insisted his COP28 presidency was the first to ever actively call for parties to come forward with language about fossil fuels in the negotiated text.

“I have said over and over that the phase down and phase out of fossil fuels is inevitable. In fact, it is essential. And this transition is, in fact, essential, and it needs to be orderly, fair, just and responsible,” he said.

“I am quite surprised with the constant and repeated attempts to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency and the attempts to undermine the message that we keep repeating when it comes to how much we respect the science and how we ensure that the science is what dictates our strategy.”

He said science had been the bedrock of his career and that he was “committed and determined” to delivering the most ambitious possible response to the global stocktake of commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement.

Jaber was flanked by the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Jim Skea, who reiterated the panel’s language on the timeframes for phasing out fossil fuels.

“Looking at scenarios in which global warming is limited to 1.5 degrees with no or little overshoot, by 2050, fossil fuel use is greatly reduced, and unabated coal use is completely phased out. These are the words that we used,” he said.

“I have had a small number of one-to-one conversations with Dr Sultan and the topic has exclusively been on the science, and I can see that Dr Sultan has been attentive to the science.”

In the first four days of the conference, more than US$57 billion had been pledged to support climate priorities, while 50 oil and gas companies saying they would aim to reduce methane emissions by 2030 in order to help reach net-zero by 2050.

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