Including energy leaders made COP28 climate summit more meaningful, says Jaber

DUBAI (Reuters) -COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber said on Monday that bringing the energy sector to the table at the U.N. climate summit that was hosted by Dubai in December made the action agenda more meaningful.

“History will remember that this was the first COP that agreed to transition away from fossil fuels,” Jaber said at the World Government Summit in Dubai.

Representatives from nearly 200 countries had agreed at the COP28 climate summit to begin reducing global consumption of fossil fuels to avert the worst of climate change.

Jaber said that in order for the UAE consensus agreement to get traction, serious action was needed.

“We need to show that an unprecedented agreement can be turned into unprecedented action. We are what we do, not what we say.”

Climate activists had criticised the summit being held in the United Arab Emirates, a leading oil exporter and member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

Jaber, who is also chief of state oil giant ADNOC, said his background in all forms of energy was ultimately beneficial.

“My experience across all forms of energy turned out to be an asset,” he said, stressing that ADNOC had a net zero goal for 2045 and was increasing new energies investments to $23 billion.

The UAE is increasing its oil capacity to five million barrels per day (bpd) by 2027, but Jaber stressed this was not an increase in actual production.

“We produce less than one-fifth of the largest producer of oil in the world, the United States,” he said.

Jaber also said the UAE would be launching the COP Presidencies’ Troika, along with Azerbaijan the host of COP29 and Brazil the host of COP30 ,to maintain momentum.

“We must use every milestone on the road from Dubai to Baku to Belem to double down on action and turn rhetoric into results.”

The government of Azerbaijan appointed its ecology and natural resources minister Mukhtar Babayev as the president of COP29 to be held in Baku in November.

(Reporting by Maha El Dahan, Editing by Michael Georgy and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)