The Journal. - The Oil Giant Hosting This Year’s U.N. Climate Summit

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Dubai, a city known for private jets, giant yachts and other symbols of carbon-heavy living, is an awkward location for a conference on climate change. The man organizing the COP28 summit also runs the country’s national oil company. WSJ’s Ed Ballard digs into the contradictions at the heart of this month’s climate summit and why they may not be that unusual.  Further Reading: - Welcome to COP28, the U.N. Climate Conference Hosted by an Oil Giant  - What’s at Stake at COP28 in Dubai  Further Listening: - The Fight Over Climate Change's Price Tag  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, world leaders are gathering to kick off a major global summit. A conference known as COP28 begins Thursday and will go until December 12th. This follows a year of extreme weather events in which many climate records have been broken. It's the UN's annual climate change conference, COP28 And our colleague Ed Ballard is watching it closely Every year there is a big summit where all the world's countries pretty much get together And try and progress the rules of the international response to climate change And also come up with sort of new commitments and try and raise the

ambition for what governments are going to be doing. And what does COP stand for? It's the conference of the parties. So the parties is everyone who's signed up. And 28, presumably that means this is the 28th such convention? This is the 28th one. Yeah, they've been doing this for a long time. The goal of the conference is accelerated action to limit global temperature rise, including significantly reducing emissions from fossil fuels. But the place where the summit is happening is best known for producing those same fossil fuels. The surprising thing on the face of it is the location. It's happening in a big oil state, the United Arab Emirates. It's the seventh largest oil producer in the world.

So essentially everybody is being gathered in this place, whose wealth rests on fossil fuels, while at the same time everyone there is saying, OK, we've got to stop burning these fossil fuels. The announcement that the United Arab Emirates was going to host, what sort of reaction did that generate from people? I think the bigger part of the reaction was more than the location. It's probably the identity of the person in charge.

You know, they could have selected somebody who worked for, I don't know, some green organization or a diplomat who wasn't associated with the country's oil industry. But instead, they picked this establishment figure called Sultan al-Jabbar, who is very much of the oil industry. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, November 30th. Coming up on the show, the oil state leading the UN climate talks. We'll see you next time. Very flavorful. Yodeling with them. Ooh, must be mating season.

And hiking with them. Is that a squirrel? Bear! Run! Collect more moments with more ways to earn. Air Mile. Can you tell us about the person chosen to lead COP28 this year? Who is Sultan al-Jabr? Yeah, so he's something of an outsider in Emirati society. He's from a lesser-known emirate called Umm al-Qawain.

He wasn't born into royalty. He was Western-educated. He went to the University of Southern California. He's an engineer. And then he did a PhD in the UK, where he wrote his thesis on foreign direct investment into the United Arab Emirates. Jabir is an important figure in energy in the UAE.

He's currently a government minister, but he also serves as CEO for the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, or ADNOC. Jabra has worked there for years. One of his early jobs there, he worked on projects to sort of extract more value, to squeeze more oil out of certain wells using new techniques. And that's in a funny way, that's what he's been doing in a kind of grander way in his career, right? He's been someone who's charged with maximizing the value of the UAE's natural resources, of its oil wealth. But Jobber's background is not just in oil.

He also founded the state-owned company Mazdar, which focuses on sustainable energy. He was plucked to set up what was called a future energy company, Mazdar, which has now become the main sort of renewable energy investor in the United Arab Emirates. And the original idea actually was that it was going to be this sort of utopian project where everybody was going to live sustainably. There's going to be no waste. And that didn't really, it's fair to say that didn't really work out. But since then, it's just been this kind of roll call of high status jobs for Sultan al-Jabbar. So he was an advisor to the UN on climate in the first decade of the century,

2009. And he was picked to run AdNoc itself in 2016. He's got innumerable sort of chairmanships, honorary positions at universities. And he's also the Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology. So he's the consummate insider, deeply involved in the UAE's government, economic strategy. And yeah, I think about a newcomer to the very fraught politics of climate change. So would you say he was an obvious choice for the UAE? Honestly, I think given everything I've just said, he must have seemed like a no-brainer, right? I mean, he's an insider. He knows everybody in the energy world. He runs a giant energy company.

And there are plenty of people who would say his experience, even running a conventional oil and gas company part, equips him for the job. But elevating the CEO of an oil company to the global climate stage was contentious. Just a few months after Jobber's appointment in January, more than 130 lawmakers from the U.S. and Europe called for him to step down. Jobber's office responded by saying his experience is an asset. The controversy highlighted the contradictions

of having a country with such significant oil interests be the face of the world's top climate conference. Because the UAE isn't exactly known for its environmental record. Neither is Dubai, the city where the conference is being held. I guess people would see it as a hub for fast money. It's known for a seemingly never-ending property boom. It's a place where you might go if you're an Instagram influencer on a really flashy holiday to drive beautiful cars, to visit fabulously expensive restaurants.

It's this sort of improbable city that sprung up in the desert, sort of mushrooming, expanding very quickly. You don't think, oh, sustainability. It's kind of big, lavish. And of course, in this current context, that means it's sort of carbon intensive as well, right? And so the UAE has one of the largest per capita carbon footprints in the world. The UAE's potential conflicts of interest come into even more focus given COP28's goals. Those goals include making bigger cuts to carbon dioxide emissions and moving away from using oil, natural gas and coal. One outcome that many countries and advocacy groups are hoping for from this conference

is a commitment from countries to phase out or phase down or in some way stop using fossil fuels. And it's quite possible that fossil fuels will be qualified by this word unabated, which is a kind of hazy, not really defined anywhere word, but it's widely taken to mean that if you're using carbon capture technology, then the fossil fuels aren't as bad, right? You're sort of cancelling out the damage a little bit if you're trying to capture the carbon dioxide once it's been produced. So like you're doing some mitigating efforts even as you're producing.

Exactly. The idea behind carbon capture technology is to trap the carbon dioxide from fossil fuels before it enters the atmosphere and then store it underground. The process is expensive and hard to do. Jobber is a vocal proponent of carbon capture, and the UAE is investing heavily in it. The problem with this is that carbon capture has never really been done on a very big scale.

And so people are really on the lookout for indications that Sultan al-Jabbar and the UAE presidency are seeking to sort of promote this technology as a sort of false solution to the climate problem. The UAE's response is that the world will need oil and gas for decades. And it says that its fossil fuels are cleaner than most. And so this sounds strange, the natural thought when you're considering something like COP28,

this conference about ending fossil fuels, you'd think, well, fossil fuel's bad, renewable's good. And the pitch being made by the UAE is, well, no, there's kind of shades of grey. And as they see it, or as they present it, the fossil fuels that they are selling are the greenest around. In your piece, you referred to it almost like a Jekyll and Hyde attitude. Yeah, I think that's a fair way of putting it. On the one hand, they are a big promoter of renewables and they've established a sort of profile as a big player in the effort to combat climate change. And they're

undeniably funding some big projects, right? So in Azerbaijan, they've just announced a couple of really large solar parts. So it's not like they're just trying to keep the world hooked on fossil fuels. But at the same time, the business model is fossil fuels. And right now, what they're doing is they're bringing forward this planned increase in production capacity. But the Jekyll part or the Hyde part, I can't remember which is the nice guy and which is the villain. I think Hyde is the villain. Okay, well. Gosh, I hope I'm right. But in any case, the climate villain part, as many skeptics of the UAE's climate bona fides would have it, Climate Action Tracker, which is a respected non-profit that assesses the plans that different

countries have made to reduce their contribution to climate change. It says that these two things are just incompatible. Like you can't increase your production of oil and gas while also promising to step up your response to climate change, as the UAE has done. But these criticisms aren't new, or even specific to the UAE. Because it turns out contradictions have always been a part of COP. That's next. Introducing TD Insurance for Business, with customized coverage options for your business.

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Seagram 13. Dare to make your own luck. Must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Available at the LCBO. COP's purpose has always been to facilitate international conversation about climate change. That means all kinds of parties are welcome at the table, including countries with mixed track records on energy and sustainability and oil and gas companies. And that means the conference is also a place where fossil fuel deals get made. It also comes with a huge sort of lobbying effort by industries, civil society groups,

where people sort of try and influence the narrative. And at the same time, there are deals being struck between companies, new initiatives being announced by industries, as well as the main COP process. There are lots of multilateral and bilateral talks and decisions being made by different countries and sets of countries. And that's part of the reason why hosting COP28 could be valuable for a country like the UAE. different countries, successive countries. And that's part of the reason why hosting COP28 could be valuable for a country like the UAE. In fact, it's almost helpful, I think, to have

this conference set in this place where it brings these contradictions into focus. Someone said to me, the elephant in the room has moved into the spotlight. And the elephant in the room at the UN climate conferences has always been the influence of the fossil fuel lobby. So for example, you know, Western oil majors like Exxon, Shell, they will at least they'll try and quantify the emissions that are created when their products are burned. That doesn't mean they're pledging to like eliminate them, but at least saying, yeah, we get it. You want to know this information. We're going to make these estimates for you. And even a couple of the big national oil companies are doing that. National oil companies are generally seen as like a bit less eager to lean into this whole idea of an energy transition. But like the Norwegian and the Malaysian national oil companies are

sort of moving in that direction a little bit as well. And by tapping the CEO of the national oil companies are sort of moving in that direction a little bit as well. And by tapping the CEO of the national oil company to lead COP28, the UAE is signaling its desire to be part of global energy policy moving forward. It's important to present the UAE as a sort of forward-thinking, outward-looking place that is a welcoming place to do business and to operate for global companies, global investors, global policymakers. And so from that perspective, it makes sense to show that you kind of get this important agenda.

Even if you're continuing to make money from oil and gas, you can still lean into this business opportunity. How much of this is sort of a PR opportunity for the UAE? It's indisputably a large part of it is a PR opportunity. I think they wouldn't be doing it if they didn't think there was a publicity benefit. You could say it's doing it in order to sort of promote its image on the world stage and to announce to the world, look, we have convening power. We can bring world leaders. We can make stuff happen. We are a place that matters. At the same time,

you can make the same criticism of anybody who decides to host a COP, right? I mean, you don't get anything, you get paid for doing it. Right. And I guess I was going to ask, is that a primary motivator for countries applying to host COP? Like, is that unique? No, it's not unique. I mean, I think lots of countries like to put on a show for the world. Every prime minister likes to bring other prime ministers or presidents.

And so having said all of that, we started this conversation talking about, is COP important in the fight against climate change? Understanding that, you know, publicity is a big part of it for these countries that are involved. I mean, what needs to happen to actually see progress at these conferences and beyond? Oh man, that's a really difficult question.

I mean, something is, slow progress is almost baked into the structure of this, right? Because it's a very egalitarian forum. You need to have a unanimous vote on anything that happens. And what that means is everything is a fight. There are huge arguments. Progress is very slow. It's possible for commitments to be scuttled at the last minute.

But a lot of what happens at the COP is not just happening at this high level at the behest of the presidency. It's people sort of breaking off into innumerable working groups, working in silos on these very technical matters, some of which could turn out to be important. It's an opportunity, if nothing else. It's an opportunity for these countries to come together and find places where they might be able to make some change. Yeah, it's far from perfect.

It's an incredibly blunt instrument. But at the same time, it's sort of the only thing that there is on the international stage. And so it's quite important in that respect. Earlier this week, the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting published leaked briefing notes. Earlier this week, the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting published leaked briefing notes. Those documents showed that in meetings ahead of the conference, the COP28 organizing team, led by Jobber, planned to promote deals for the companies Jobber runs. Jobber has denied these allegations, saying they are not accurate.

Over the next two weeks, climate negotiators will evaluate the progress made since the 2015 Paris Agreement, among other agenda items. The summit continues until December 12th. That's all for today, Thursday, November 30th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Anna Hertenstein. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.