United Arab Emirates | Al Gore criticizes COP28 hosts for their carbon footprint

(Dubai) “Here are major emissions sites”: invited to make a presentation in the plenary room of COP28 in Dubai, former American vice-president Al Gore highlighted on Sunday the climate record of the United Arab Emirates, host country , going so far as to denounce the carbon footprint of ADNOC, the national oil company headed by the president of the conference, Sultan Al Jaber.

“These are major sites of greenhouse gas emissions. All of these are significant emissions sites in the United Arab Emirates,” he said in the same room where delegates are meeting for two weeks of climate negotiations.

Behind him then appears a map of the United Arab Emirates, with its main emitting sites: oil fields, desalination plants, etc.

Al Gore, a great climate activist, was invited to present the latest data from the Climate TRACE site, the first to estimate, from a network of 300 satellites aided by artificial intelligence, the true emissions of more than 352 million sites around the world, in ten sectors: heavy industry, energy, agriculture, transport, waste, etc.

While the greenhouse gas data usually cited for countries is statistical, Climate TRACE literally “sees” CO₂ or methane escape, the latter often through leaks from gas pipelines or wells.

These new data, published on Sunday for the year 2022, also show that the United Arab Emirates’ greenhouse gas emissions increased by 7.54% compared to 2021.

“The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) still claims to have no methane or other emissions from its oil and gas transportation,” continued the former vice-president of Bill Clinton.

“But in fact there are! We can see them from space,” he says in front of the image of a blue spot above a hydrocarbon field, projected on the room’s giant screen.

ADNOC, led like the COP by Sultan Al Jaber, announced last year a target to reduce its methane emissions by 2025.

However, Al Gore also congratulated the COP28 presidency for the commitment made on Saturday by 50 major oil and gas companies to reduce their methane leaks.

Unsurprisingly, new data from Climate TRACE shows an increase in global emissions, to 58.5 billion tonnes of CO equivalent₂ last year, up 1.5% compared to 2021.

Since 2015, the year of the Paris climate agreement, the increase has reached 8.6%, with only five countries responsible for three-quarters of the increase: China, the United States, India, Indonesia. and Russia.

At the start of his presentation, Al Gore was widely applauded by calling for “an exit from fossil fuels”.