The president of the next UN Climate Conference being held in Dubai and also CEO of the national oil company of Abu Dhabi. And he tries as best he can to install an image of defender of the environment.
Sultan al-Jaber acknowledged for the first time on Thursday June 7 that “the reduction of fossil fuels was inevitable”, while the Bonn Conference (Germany), which is to prepare for the major summit in November and December in Dubai, ends next week. Coming from the conductor of the next UN climate conference, COP28, that shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary. Except that it is more surprising coming from him, because he chairs the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), one of the first oil groups in the world, while being Minister of Industry and Innovative Technology . He is expected at the turn, his every word and gesture has been scrutinized since his appointment in January.
Fake profiles and greenwashing
The English media The Guardian has just caught him in the act of “greenwashing” his Wikipedia file. An anonymous person suggested to the editors of Wikipedia to remove the reference to an article from the FinancialTimes who pointed out the contradiction with his oil activities and to explain that his company uses its profits to “investing in carbon capture technologies and green fuels”. Another anonymous withdrawal suggestion: the $4 billion deal that Sultan al-Jaber signed in 2019 with two American investment giants, BlackRock and KKR, to develop oil pipelines. The anonymous finally admitted to being paid by ADNOC.
always according to The GuardianCOP28 marketing manager Ramzi Haddad even added several quotes describing it, for example, as the “first CEO to the COP presidency who played a key role in the country’s clean energy path”. With his face uncovered in some cases, he also wrote: “He’s the kind of ally the climate movement needs”. Not a day goes by without Tea Guardian does not release information of this kind. The media revealed, Thursday, June 8, that an army of fake social network accounts would have multiplied the posts to restore the image of al-Jaber, citing this time the investigation of a specialist in the Middle East, Marc Owen Jones.
Seen as a reformer in the United Arab Emirates
It is part of its slightly “greener” journey that explains why the Emirati was chosen by the United Arab Emirates for the presidency of COP28. AThmed al-Jaber, his birth name, is considered a reformer in this country. This is undoubtedly due to his training in the United States, where he obtained a license in chemistry in California and an MBA in Los Angeles, then in England where he obtained a doctorate in economics in Coventry. His studies were also financed by a grant from the oil company ADNOC. IHe then chained various functions, at the head of the port of Abu Dhabi or even the Public Agency for Media Activities. In 2006, he founded the renewable energy company Masdar, just 33 years old. The objective of this company, which he has chaired since 2014, is toexpand its clean energy capacity to 100 GW, which would make it the second largest investor in renewables in the world, knowing that the United Arab Emirates has set a goal of carbon neutrality in 2050.
Her logic is that of many Gulf countries: decarbonize through technology, without seeking to produce less or emit less greenhouse gases, with carbon capture in particular. This did not prevent him, as head of ADNOC, from seeking to increase their crude oil production by 3 million barrels per day in 2016 and 5 million by 2030.
A privileged interlocutor with the UN
At the UN, he has long been the Emirati referent. Already in 2009, Ban Ki Moon, then secretary general, appointed him to his advisory group on energy and climate change. They had published a major report the following year. At the same time, Ahmed al-Jaber obtained permission to set up the headquarters of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) in Abu Dhabi, when he was CEO of Masdar.
When he was appointed President of COP28 last January, this double hat made all the NGOs scream. A few days ago, a hundred European and American elected officials demanded that he be dismissed. The peak: The Guardian, who had just sent an email to the organizers of COP28 to ask them about the risk of conflict of interest, realized, upon receiving a message with the oil company’s logo, that they were in fact sharing the same computer server. For French MEP, Manon Aubry, “it’s as if a multinational tobacco company were supervising the internal work of the WHO”.