Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber has served as Special Envoy for Climate Change for two terms and played a proactive participatory role at over ten COPs, including the historic Paris COP21 in 2015….reports Asian Lite News
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Court, appointed Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber as President-Designate for the 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28).
Shamma Al Mazrui, Minister of State for Youth Affairs, and Razan Al Mubarak, President of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), will join Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber’s COP28 UAE team as the Youth Climate Champion and UN Climate Change High-Level Champion, respectively.
The UAE will host the annual climate summit at Expo City, Dubai, from 30th November – 12th December, 2023.
These appointments come at a pivotal moment, as the world faces increasing climate impact and challenges to energy, food and water security and reversing biodiversity loss.
Dr. Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology (MoIAT), has served as Special Envoy for Climate Change for two terms (2010–2016, 2020–present) and played a proactive participatory role at over ten COPs, including the historic Paris COP21 in 2015.
“This will be a critical year in a critical decade for climate action. The UAE is approaching COP28 with a strong sense of responsibility and the highest possible level of ambition,” Dr Al Jaber said.
“In cooperation with the UNFCCC and the COP27 Presidency, we will champion an inclusive agenda that ramps up action on mitigation, encourages a just energy transition that leaves no one behind, ensures substantial, affordable climate finance is directed to the most vulnerable, accelerates funding for adaptation and builds out a robust funding facility to address loss and damage,” he added.
He noted that COP28 will undertake the first ever Global Stocktake (GST) since the Paris Agreement.
“The GST will provide the foundation to build momentum for this and future COPs and the UAE will look for an ambitious outcome in response to the GST from the negotiation process. This will be a critical moment to mobilise political will to respond to what the science tells us will need to be achieved to remain on target and limit global warming to 1.5C by 2050,” he added.
Dr. Al Jaber is the first CEO to ever serve as COP President, having played a key role in shaping the country’s clean energy path. As the founding CEO of Masdar, he has overseen its mandate to accelerate the adoption of renewables within the UAE, across the region and globally.
To date, Masdar has made substantial contributions to the UAE’s renewable energy targets, playing a key role in expanding the country’s portfolio with clean energy investments in over 40 countries, including several developing countries in Africa and Asia and in vulnerable island states.
Under a new partnership with TAQA, Mubadala and ADNOC, Masdar is set to become one of the largest renewable energy investors in the world with an ambitious target of growing to at least 100GW of renewable energy capacity globally by 2030. In 2009, under the guidance of the leadership and the ongoing support of Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, Dr. Al Jaber led the UAE’s successful bid to host the headquarters of the “International Renewable Energy Agency” (IRENA) in Masdar City, with a mission to promote clean technology and sustainable development globally.
As CEO of ADNOC since 2016, he has played a transformative role in decarbonising and diversifying the company’s operations and investments, placed sustainability at the heart of its business and spearheaded a drive to make today’s energies cleaner while investing in the clean energies of tomorrow.
Tangible actions have included sourcing 100% of ADNOC’s grid power from clean nuclear and solar energy, the first company in its sector to do so, pioneering the application of carbon capture technologies with the region’s first CCUS facility and diversifying into hydrogen and renewable energies.
Under Dr. Sultan Al Jaber’s leadership, ADNOC is investing $15 billion over five years in its decarbonisation strategy and its new low-carbon solutions business, including the expansion of its carbon capture capacity to 5 MMTPA by 2030 and its shareholding in Masdar, as it delivers on its target to reduce its carbon intensity by 25% by 2030 and its ambition to reach net-zero by 2050.
In 2009, Dr. Al Jaber was also appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon to his Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change (AGECC), which formed the basis of the Sustainable Energy for All initiative launched in 2011.
The COP28 conference is expected to convene over 70,000 participants, including heads of state, government officials, international industry leaders, private sector representatives, academics, experts, youth, and non-state actors, who will gather to discuss climate change while showcasing innovative solutions that can support multilateral cooperation and climate diplomacy.
