COP28: ‘We will not go silently to our watery graves’

A specific commitment to a fossil fuel phase-out has been cut from the final draft of the agreement being debated at the COP28 climate negotiations in Dubai.

Vaguer language replacing it could still achieve similar aims, some experts believe; and it could survive efforts to block it from fossil fuel nations adamantly opposed to any restrictions on their activities.

That appears to be the trade-off that the President of COP28, Sultan Al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, a petrostate, has made in drawing up the final draft. It will now be subjected to intense debate over the next day or so as some 200 nations seek to achieve the consensus agreement required by the UN’s roles for COPs.

However, the draft triggered rapid and fierce criticism, particularly from small island states which are by far the most vulnerable to rising sea levels cause by the escalating climate crisis.

The key text reads: “Reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science.”

While that does not explicitly name the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN’s climate science body, it implies a rapid phase down since the IPCC says a sharp cut to fossil fuels by 2050 is critical to keeping the rise in temperature to 1.5C.

Including consumption also shifts some of the reduction burden to users rather than solely placing the onus on fossil fuel producers. The text avoids specifically naming oil, gas and coal.

“It is not good enough to use weak language or to permit loopholes for the fossil fuel industry to continue to contribute to the very problem countries are meant to be committed to tackling here in Dubai,” said Mary Robinson, chair of the Elders, a group of former political leaders, started by Nelson Mandela. Her sharp exchanges with Al-Jaber before COP28 began raised questions about his commitment to fossil fuel reductions.

“Adequate time and opportunity still lie ahead, provided that nations promptly return to the negotiating table, equipped with the resolve required for a crisis of this magnitude and a readiness to undertake the necessary measures. This current version of the COP28 text is grossly insufficient,” she added.

John Silk, head of delegation for the Republic of the Marshall Islands said: “The Republic of the Marshall Islands did not come here to sign our death warrant. We came here to fight for 1.5 C and for the only way to achieve that: a fossil fuel phase-out. What we have seen today is unacceptable. We will not go silently to our watery graves. We will not accept an outcome that will lead to devastation for our country, and for millions if not billions of the most vulnerable people and communities.”

As President of COP28 and thus its chair, Al-Jaber is under intense pressure to land an agreement to cut fossil fuels and on the long list of other initiatives in the final agreement which are urgently needed to accelerate nations’ climate responses.

He is the one person above all others at COP28 who embodies the acute conflict between past and future – that is, between fossil fuels and clean energy. In large measure the ambition of the final agreement will hinge on his powers of persuasion and diplomacy.

He had long lived the conflict in his business life too as chief executive of Adnoc, the Emirates’ state-owned oil and gas producer, and chairman of Masdar, a renewable energy company he founded in 2006.

Is he playing to the past? “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” he told Robinson, a former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, in an online conference shortly before COP28 started.

Or the future? “I have no red lines” and the “phase-down and the phase-out of fossil fuels…is essential. It needs to be orderly, fair, just and responsible.” He’s repeated the messages in multiple ways as he’s urged nations to be bold and ambitious in their demands to ensure the COP28 final agreement gets humanity closer to keeping to a 1.5C rise in temperatures.

Or both? That’s a very big ask of individuals and institutions in the diehard fossil fuel industry. Two of my seminal experiences in recent days here at COP28 have reinforced that judgment.

On Sunday, I walked past a group of young-adult delegates who were having an earnest and energetic discussion with an Arab gentleman. He was fiercely defending fossil fuel so I paused to listen. His COP access badge identified him as Hasan Alhamadi from OPEC. He is its Head of Administration, I learned later from LinkedIn. 

The young delegates, I heard after their encounter, were American and Canadian Christian climate activists. Earlier that morning one of them, Michael Matchell, had tried to get into a public session at the OPEC pavilion but was denied entry. So he gathered some colleagues and they went back to OPEC. They were let in for a “youth discussion” with other delegates hosted by OPEC’s Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais and other senior officials. But the activists said the lines OPEC was pushing were unbelievable.

Indeed, a few days before a leaked letter to OPEC member nations signed by Al-Gahis warned them that “pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point with irreversible consequences” at COP28. He urged them to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy, i.e. fossil fuels, rather than emissions.”

Afterwards, near the OPEC pavilion, the young climate activists recognised Alhamadi from the earlier encounter inside and began asking him more questions. Three of his striking assertions were:

– Fossil fuels are the only energy source some 800 million of the poorest people in the world can access for the likes of transport, industry, light, cooling and cooking. Deny them those, and they have no hope for a better life, let alone economic development.

– If one of your relatives is in hospital and needs intravenous medication, doctors rely on plastics to deliver it. Ban fossil fuels, and there’d be no more oil to make plastics for IVs.

Alhamadi was challenged on both of those completely false narratives. A relatively orderly and rapid phase out of fossil fuels would stimulate an equally speedy transition to clean energy. And it would leave abundant oil for plastics. If they are fully recyclable and environmentally compatible, they pose no threat to the planet.

“We’re reducing emissions” was his third assertion.

No, was the rebuttal. OPEC member nations, and indeed all oil and gas companies around the world, are only reducing emissions from their own operations. They are not even trying to reduce emissions from their customers burning the fuels. Anyway, the necessary carbon capture and technology is still a distant dream for all but a few minor applications.

Alhamadi seemed genuinely puzzled by the proposition that OPEC and its members had any responsibility for their customers’ emissions. Pressed on the subject he became perturbed, halted the discussion and strode off.

On Monday, I followed up by visiting the OPEC pavilion. Its visual messaging includes logos of some of the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals such as 1. No poverty, 2. Zero hunger and 3. Good health and well-being. But not others such as 13. Climate action and 15. Life on land.

Seeking information on OPEC’s clean tech strategy, I had to settle instead for that of Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company. It is the world’s largest oil and gas producer with Exxon Mobil a distant fourth.

Dr. Abdulrahman Alsuhaibani, a researcher at Aramco, took me through the interactive display on Aramco’s cleaner tech projects. These included low carbon hydrogen reformed from methane, and synthetic petrol using waste carbon dioxide captured from refining and petrochemical production processes. It’s aiming, for example, to supply some to Formula One motor racing by 2025.

“We’re spending more than half our R&D budget on such products,” he said. Later, I looked up the number in Aramco’s 2022 Sustainability Report. That year, Aramco’s total R&D spend was just US$1.2 billion out of net income of US$161 b. Moreover, capital expenditure was US$38 b. No breakdown was given. But all the signs point to Aramco defending its past rather than making this future.

It is possible Al-Jaber is a rarity among his fossil fuel colleagues in industry and politics. On one hand he believes fossil fuels are vital. But on the other he believes a rapid phase out of them is essential, and practical if it is twinned with an equally rapid ramp up of renewables. Maybe he believes humanity has to do this as the key way to forestall the climate crisis.

COP28’s final agreement within the next few days will give us some clue of his role. But we’ll have to await a deeply researched history of this COP for a definitive answer.