Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I'm Aaron Rudkoff, the editor of Bloomberg Green.
Speaker 1: This week we published a profile of salt and Al Jabber,
Speaker 1: president of COP twenty eight, the year's biggest climate summits,
Speaker 1: set to happen in the United Arab Emirates at the
Speaker 1: end of November. A shot spent months working on this article.
Speaker 1: I think it's a really important story, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to him about how he got the story
Speaker 1: on this episode. These summits have been growing bigger and
Speaker 1: gaining an importance, just as climate impacts are striking with
Speaker 1: greater ferocity and global emissions continue to hit new records.
Speaker 1: That's why Al Jobber's appointment has attracted so much attention
Speaker 1: and criticism. He isn't just leading a pivotal UN climate forum,
Speaker 1: but among his many many jobs, he's also the head
Speaker 1: of ADNOC. That's the state owned oil company that's the
Speaker 1: source of wealth in the United Arab Emirates. But you
Speaker 1: know it's complicated. The UAE is the first country in
Speaker 1: the Middle East to set in at zero goal, and
Speaker 1: it's the only country to build any significant amount of
Speaker 1: renewable energy capacity in the region. And Al Jobbers behind
Speaker 1: all that. He isn't just an oil boss cut from
Speaker 1: the classic mold. He spent much of his career as
Speaker 1: a renewables executive with a grand plan to build a
Speaker 1: zero carbon city in the desert. Those contradictions are worth exploring,
Speaker 1: especially because al Jabber is now the one who gets
Speaker 1: to decide the limits of how much progress will be
Speaker 1: made at this year's big climate summit, So a shot.
Speaker 1: This article is partly a profile of who this guy is.
Speaker 1: And there's also this philosophical question that we're asking of
Speaker 1: where does oil belong in the climate negotiations? So let's
Speaker 1: start there with trying to understand why there's a big
Speaker 1: UN climate summit happening inside of a very big oil monarchy. Well. So,
Speaker 1: a feature of these annual Cup summits, which, as the
Speaker 1: number says, have been happening for about twenty eight years,
Speaker 1: is that they are hosted in a different country on
Speaker 1: a different continent every year, and the countries that want
Speaker 1: to host the summit have to run a campaign to
Speaker 1: gather support from other countries, typically from the same continent,
Speaker 1: and win the bid. So the country that runs an
Speaker 1: effective campaign wins, which is how the UA, one of
Speaker 1: the largest oil producers in the world won the bid.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that COP twenty eight is only
Speaker 1: the second time in nearly three decades that a COP
Speaker 1: meeting is happening in an economy that is highly dependent
Speaker 1: on income from oil and gas. COP eighteen and katar
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve was the last one. Of course, between
Speaker 1: then and now, we've had the Paris Agreement and all
Speaker 1: the major economies of the world are aligned with a
Speaker 1: net zero goal. So COP events have become this really
Speaker 1: important place to figure out how the world as a
Speaker 1: whole will meet climate goals, and for the UAE to
Speaker 1: get there, they also had to set a net zero
Speaker 1: goal by twenty fifty to show that they are serious.
Speaker 1: Sultan all Job has been announced as the new president
Speaker 1: of COP, and it's fair to say there was a
Speaker 1: pretty big freakout right. He becomes a kind of litmus
Speaker 1: test for how seriously you take country like UAE and
Speaker 1: its trajectory towards night zero. So who lines up on
Speaker 1: the anti l Jabber camp A huge number of people.
Speaker 1: We got a letter that was signed by more than
Speaker 1: four hundred green groups around the world that said that
Speaker 1: he threatens the legitimacy and efficacy of the summit. We
Speaker 1: even got US lawmakers, more than two dozen of them,
Speaker 1: putting diplomatic pressure to force him out of this role.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, the very people who have
Speaker 1: to work with him, climate diplomats from the European Union,
Speaker 1: from the US, even from climate vulnerable countries like the Maldives,
Speaker 1: came to his support, saying that he is a person
Speaker 1: with a different background running a COP event and maybe
Speaker 1: that is a good thing. The critics fear, and you
Speaker 1: talk to a number of people who were worried about
Speaker 1: his appointment, is that you're essentially bringing the oil business
Speaker 1: inside of a process that's meant to limit how much
Speaker 1: burning of fossil fuels will be doing in the future.
Speaker 1: So in our reporting, did you find anything to back
Speaker 1: up those anxieties of people who are worried about the
Speaker 1: oil business coming too close to what's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a un process. We did. For this story. We talked
Speaker 1: to more than four dozen people, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that we found out from multiple people is that Adnock,
Speaker 1: the oil company, is actually directly paying some consultants and
Speaker 1: even some staff working on COP twenty eight related issues
Speaker 1: in the UAE. One of the people we spoke to,
Speaker 1: who is the co president of the Club of Rome,
Speaker 1: said that she has heard about the reach of Adknox
Speaker 1: money going to some very senior people, and that has
Speaker 1: caused her to tell her colleagues that if this goes
Speaker 1: too far, maybe we shouldn't go to COP at all.
Speaker 1: Representatives for al Jabbers said in a statement that the
Speaker 1: budget for COP twenty eight comes from the UAE government
Speaker 1: and quote strict rules of governance and quote ensure separation
Speaker 1: from the state oil company. Okay, so that's the backdrop,
Speaker 1: and now I want to go to the man himself, right,
Speaker 1: because for us talking about this story over the past
Speaker 1: couple of months, I think one of the things that
Speaker 1: stood out is that here you have somebody in an
Speaker 1: immensely public role running COP twenty eight. He's also obviously
Speaker 1: running what is the defining industry of the United air memorates.
Speaker 1: But it's not like you could look up and read
Speaker 1: a profile of him the way that you would find, say,
Speaker 1: like a profile of the CEO of XON or BP. Right,
Speaker 1: talk to me about what we had to learn, what
Speaker 1: we didn't know before we set out to sort of
Speaker 1: figure out where Sultan al Jabber came from. So one
Speaker 1: thing I quickly learned when I started on this story
Speaker 1: was that al Jabbert plays a very strong part in
Speaker 1: shaping local media in the UAE, and that level of
Speaker 1: control that you can have in a country like the
Speaker 1: UAE means that some very basic biographical details of al
Speaker 1: Jabber weren't known. So, for example, we know that he
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen seventy three, but we didn't know
Speaker 1: until now that he came from Umal Coin, which is
Speaker 1: one of the smallest of the emirates in the UAE,
Speaker 1: and that matters because the ruling elite the country has
Speaker 1: had only presidents from the al Nayan family from Abu Dhabi,
Speaker 1: is quite removed from umal Coin. A spokesperson for al
Speaker 1: Jabber said, and I quote, the suggestion of editorial interference
Speaker 1: is not supported by any evidence. Here. We're already seeing
Speaker 1: another way that his background sets him apart. Right, So
Speaker 1: we're talking about him as someone who has a renewables
Speaker 1: background working at fossil fuel, But if you peer in
Speaker 1: his biography, you see somebody who's coming from far outside
Speaker 1: of power and is rising up an almost you know,
Speaker 1: meritocracy basis inside of a pretty close society where power
Speaker 1: is kept apart from a lot of people. So can
Speaker 1: you talk to me about how he came up through
Speaker 1: the system in the UAE. So when he was growing up,
Speaker 1: there were you know, less than a million people in
Speaker 1: the UAE, and if you're a bright student, you get noticed.
Speaker 1: And he won scholarships from ADNOC. The oil company was
Speaker 1: growing quite rapidly and needed engineers to do the work.
Speaker 1: And so he went and studied engineering and then business
Speaker 1: administration in California and came back and worked on oil
Speaker 1: and gas projects. That is a well trodden path for
Speaker 1: many Emirati engineers. He ends up getting a PhD because
Speaker 1: everyone calls him doctor Sultan, Is that right? That's right.
Speaker 1: He also went on to study for a PhD in
Speaker 1: economics at Commentary University a little bit later in his life.
Speaker 1: And so when you meet him, where are you meeting
Speaker 1: him when you finally get your long sought interview, and
Speaker 1: how does it go? It was the end of February
Speaker 1: and we met in Abu Dhabi in the COP twenty
Speaker 1: eight office. You know, it was a pleasant meeting. He's
Speaker 1: a very tall guy, soft spoken, also very happy to
Speaker 1: be interrupted as we spoke through his career and many
Speaker 1: of the questions that green groups have raised about his
Speaker 1: presidency at COP. SO in this conversation, one thing that
Speaker 1: he brings up is that he's often felt misunderstood. Right,
Speaker 1: the reaction of critics after his appointment to the cop
Speaker 1: presidency is in the first time, he feels like people
Speaker 1: are judging him because of where he comes from. That's right.
Speaker 1: Shaik Mohammad, who is now the President of the UAE
Speaker 1: but at the time had just become the Crown Prince
Speaker 1: of Abu d Abbe, took an interest in al Jabber's career.
Speaker 1: But also it was a time when there were real
Speaker 1: fears of oil production peaking, which is that the world
Speaker 1: might run out of oil altogether. It might seem quaint
Speaker 1: today when we are now talking about when we'll all
Speaker 1: consumption peak, but those fears were quite real in the
Speaker 1: early two thousands, and Shake Mohmed wanted to find out
Speaker 1: whether the UAE can invest in clean energy and maybe
Speaker 1: become an exporter of energy without the emissions, and so
Speaker 1: he asked Al Jabber to go on a world tour.
Speaker 1: He told me that he into fifteen countries in three
Speaker 1: months and came back with an idea that you renewable
Speaker 1: energy is actually much more mature than people think it is,
Speaker 1: but that there are many different parts of the industry
Speaker 1: that do not work together, and thus if he can
Speaker 1: make that happen, say in the form of a sustainable,
Speaker 1: zero carbon city, that would train Emiratis on these technologies
Speaker 1: and push the industry forward. So I want to get
Speaker 1: back to the Shake in a second. But on this tour,
Speaker 1: that's when he first feels people's misunderstanding for his motivations.
Speaker 1: That's right. He said that when he went on a tour,
Speaker 1: he got opposite reactions. Some were excited and some were puzzled.
Speaker 1: Why is this guy who's coming from an oil producing
Speaker 1: nation talking about clean energy? And that misunderstanding is something
Speaker 1: he is used to for decades now, all right, So
Speaker 1: he returns from his tour, he has a dream of
Speaker 1: building a zero carbon city in the desert, and he
Speaker 1: gets the Shake to put in a significant money. You
Speaker 1: went to see this city. It's been under construction for
Speaker 1: what fifteen years? Now? What does it look like? What
Speaker 1: does a zero carbon city in the desert look like?
Speaker 1: And is it actually zero carbon? So two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight is when construction roughly began and he was given
Speaker 1: almost fifteen billion dollars of support to create this city.
Speaker 1: The initial deadline to complete it was twenty sixteen. That
Speaker 1: has come and gone. I went there in February and
Speaker 1: there are still large parts that are quite empty. The
Speaker 1: new deadline to finish it is twenty thirty. The city itself,
Speaker 1: the core of it, is beautiful. It's an experiment in
Speaker 1: sustainable architecture. There are shaded streets and there's a big
Speaker 1: tower that brings in cool air onto these streets. There's
Speaker 1: a ten megawatt solar field at the corner of the
Speaker 1: city that was supposed to provide all the power that
Speaker 1: the city needed. But the UA's electricity mostly comes from
Speaker 1: natural gas, and when the sun goes down and when
Speaker 1: there's need for more electricity, some of it is from
Speaker 1: this natural gas powered grid, all right. So that's Mazdar,
Speaker 1: that's the renewables company that Sultan al Jabber runs. This
Speaker 1: covers about a decade and gets us right up to
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen in the months right before the Paris Agreement
Speaker 1: is going to be signed. And this is actually where
Speaker 1: your profile begins. We talk about Shake Mohammed and the
Speaker 1: Shaik's imagination of what a future post Paris for his
Speaker 1: oil dependent economy will be like. What was the Shaik's
Speaker 1: vision for what the day that oil ends would be
Speaker 1: like in his kingdom. So this is a quote that
Speaker 1: is often cited if you are in the UAE, and
Speaker 1: it's a quote from Shaik Mohammed's speech given at this
Speaker 1: government summit in Dubai in early twenty fifteen, months before
Speaker 1: the Paris Agreement is signed, and it says, after we
Speaker 1: have loaded this last barrel of oil, are we going
Speaker 1: to feel sad if our investment today is right? I
Speaker 1: think we will celebrate that moment. So the Shaikh is
Speaker 1: looking for someone to make his dream of a happy
Speaker 1: end oil come true. And who does he turn to?
Speaker 1: To Al Jabber. Within a year of giving the speech,
Speaker 1: Al Jabber is handed the oil company ADNOC, which is
Speaker 1: the crown jewel of the UAE, and one of his
Speaker 1: mandates is to decarbonize adnox oil and gas production. And
Speaker 1: that's no small feat. Let's really put a pin in
Speaker 1: this for people listening. How much wealth left untapped are
Speaker 1: we talking about when you're looking at the UAE's oil reserves.
Speaker 1: Right now, UAE is sitting on something like one hundred
Speaker 1: billion barrels of oil, which is today worth more than
Speaker 1: eight trillion dollars, and taking this stuff out of the
Speaker 1: ground makes the UAE as a country and ADNAC as
Speaker 1: a company a colossal emitter. Compare them to some stuff
Speaker 1: that people would be familiar with. One way to think
Speaker 1: about how big ADNOX emissions are is to compare it
Speaker 1: to either a country or to the combination of other
Speaker 1: oil companies. So ADNOX emissions from all the oil and
Speaker 1: gas that is produced and then burned is approximately the
Speaker 1: same as Iran, which is among the top ten emitters
Speaker 1: in the world. Or another way to think about it
Speaker 1: is ADNOX emissions are approximately the same as combining BP
Speaker 1: an EXON. One of the challenges that you had to
Speaker 1: tackle in the story is trying to assess whether or
Speaker 1: not al Jabber, in his role as the CEO of ADNAC,
Speaker 1: has been able to begin to carbonization in any measurable way.
Speaker 1: It's a hard challenge because there is very little data available.
Speaker 1: ADNOC does not disclose emissions the way many of its peers,
Speaker 1: including Saudi Aramco, egx on Mobile or BP reveal those emissions.
Speaker 1: Though Al Jaber did say he's very proud that ADNOC
Speaker 1: is now being powered by nuclear power and solar power
Speaker 1: that are both generated in the UE, but it's not
Speaker 1: really possible to say how much of an impact that's
Speaker 1: had on emissions because we don't have those numbers. And
Speaker 1: so this gets us back to where we were in
Speaker 1: the beginning about the people who are frustrated by him
Speaker 1: or who he feels misunderstood by The UN process is
Speaker 1: one where countries disclose and come up with plans to
Speaker 1: deal with their emissions. Al jabers running a company that
Speaker 1: doesn't disclose its emissions, do they have a plan? Yes,
Speaker 1: So when we ask these questions about not disclosing emissions, representatives,
Speaker 1: al Jabber told us that Adnock is currently working on
Speaker 1: building its books and will reveal at least some of
Speaker 1: its emissions in the near future. ADNOC as the company
Speaker 1: has set on net zero by twenty fifty goal to
Speaker 1: match with the country goal. There is also a short
Speaker 1: term goal of being able to spend money on clean
Speaker 1: energy something like fifteen billion dollars by twenty thirty, but
Speaker 1: that pales in comparison to the money that Adnock is
Speaker 1: planning to spend on oil in gas production something like
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty billion dollars by twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1: And if you put the renewable energy that al Jaber
Speaker 1: creates in his role as the head of Mazdar and
Speaker 1: you weigh that against the emissions that ADNOC makes, you
Speaker 1: know where do the scales net out. So Mazdar claims
Speaker 1: that based on the renewable energy projects that has built,
Speaker 1: things like solar panels in Uzbekistan, wind farms in the US,
Speaker 1: or waste to energy plant in the UAE, they avoid
Speaker 1: on an annual basis seven point five million tons. But
Speaker 1: if you take just two subsidiaries of Adknock, the Adnock
Speaker 1: Gas Company and ADNOC Distribution, those alone produce something like
Speaker 1: forty five million tons of emissions annually according to Bloomberg estimates.
Speaker 1: So there's a massive gap between what MASDA does and
Speaker 1: what Adnock do does. So of all the amorads, y
Speaker 1: choose al Jaber. One reason is because he is the fixer.
Speaker 1: He gets difficult jobs done. One of the things we
Speaker 1: learned from our reporting is that in twenty fifteen al
Speaker 1: Jaber was managing the UA's aid to Egypt he flew
Speaker 1: often to Cairo and spoke to President Abd al fata LCCI,
Speaker 1: who had just overthrown the democratically elected Mohammad Morci. One
Speaker 1: of the academics told us that al Jaber was like
Speaker 1: the viceroy of Sheik Mohammad in Egypt for many years.
Speaker 1: Then when he was made the chief of Adnok, he
Speaker 1: laid off thousands of people. And that might seem like
Speaker 1: something that a CEO does, but in the UAE, where
Speaker 1: Adnak is seen as the place where you get a
Speaker 1: job for life, that was a difficult decision to make
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of backlash, and so he
Speaker 1: is seen as this guy who gets difficult things done,
Speaker 1: and COP twenty eight is certainly going to be a
Speaker 1: difficult task. So that's how al Jaber gets to this moment.
Speaker 1: Now let's look ahead at his future running COP twenty eight.
Speaker 1: One thing that I think attracted us both to examining
Speaker 1: him in all of his contradictions is that he and
Speaker 1: the people who are kind of the most against him
Speaker 1: right now share a point of view about how useful
Speaker 1: the CARP process has become. Eight years after the signing
Speaker 1: of the Parents Agreement, what's his view and sort of
Speaker 1: what's the general sense of people who are a little
Speaker 1: frustrated with the CARP process at this point. That's right.
Speaker 1: COP process is bureaucratic and given that emissions are hitting
Speaker 1: new records, it's not producing the kind of progress that
Speaker 1: is needed. So there's a whole contingent of people who
Speaker 1: are calling on reforming the COP process. The COP summits
Speaker 1: have been getting bigger and bigger in size. The UAE
Speaker 1: is expecting something like seventy thousand people to come in
Speaker 1: that two week period. One of the suggestions is to
Speaker 1: make it smaller, to make it focused, to make it
Speaker 1: people who will come and decide how to move things forward.
Speaker 1: Another one is around fossil fuel phase out. It continues
Speaker 1: to be shocking and surprising that the first time fossil
Speaker 1: fuels as a term was mentioned in a COP summit
Speaker 1: agreement was in twenty twenty one when COP happened here
Speaker 1: in Glasgow, and ever since that wall was broken, there
Speaker 1: is more demand to make it clear that the science
Speaker 1: says to be able to tackle climate change, we have
Speaker 1: to phase out fossil fuels altogether, and there was an
Speaker 1: attempt to try and get that language into the agreement
Speaker 1: at COP twenty seven in Egypt, but that failed, and
Speaker 1: this time around, activists are very focused, and not just
Speaker 1: activists but also countries like the European Union India are
Speaker 1: very keen to make sure that that phase comes through
Speaker 1: in the CORP agreement. All right, so now let's be
Speaker 1: very specific. Would the success at COPP look like for
Speaker 1: Sultan al Jaba. There are as many desires of what
Speaker 1: COPS should produce as there are people attending it, but
Speaker 1: there is a consensus forming around the types of things
Speaker 1: that will really move the ball. We spoke to Jennifer Morgan,
Speaker 1: who is Germany's Climate envoy, and she said three things
Speaker 1: will make a real difference. Stronger commitment to curb emission,
Speaker 1: so something like a fossil fuel phase out, language, really
Speaker 1: putting money to work from rich countries to developing countries
Speaker 1: who are both suffering the impacts of climate change more
Speaker 1: and who need help to be able to build the
Speaker 1: green technologies that will allow them to leap frog from
Speaker 1: fossil fuels to a clean energy future. And finally, because
Speaker 1: these impacts are here and now, they want a fund
Speaker 1: for loss and damage caused by climate change, something that
Speaker 1: was agreed at COP twenty seven, but there's no real
Speaker 1: money attached to it, and Morgan basically said that COP
Speaker 1: presidencies are judged by the outcomes. So, in talking to
Speaker 1: al Jabber and his advisors, is there anything that sort
Speaker 1: of characterizes his approach as a as a businessman that's
Speaker 1: kind of different than what's come before COP. So one
Speaker 1: thing that became apparent is he is going to try
Speaker 1: and speak to his speers, the CEOs of other oil
Speaker 1: companies who have in previous corps felt like they weren't welcome.
Speaker 1: He spoke at an energy conference in Houston, the heartland
Speaker 1: of US energy, and he said that he hopes oil
Speaker 1: and gas companies will go faster and do more to
Speaker 1: cut emissions, and that they should feel welcome to COP
Speaker 1: twenty eight. Another thing that his advisers said they are
Speaker 1: likely to do is to create an agenda that goes
Speaker 1: beyond what is in the formal COP process. One example
Speaker 1: they gave is of the Energy Transition Accelerator. This would
Speaker 1: be a place where governments will make commitments to buy
Speaker 1: green technologies like green cement, green steel, or sustainable aviation
Speaker 1: fuels to try and push that industry forward, even though
Speaker 1: those products are expensive today because you have to work
Speaker 1: on reducing the emissions attached to them, and the more
Speaker 1: you deploy them, as we've learned with wind and solar,
Speaker 1: the cheaper they are likely to get. But at every
Speaker 1: COP event we do get many, many such initiatives coming through.
Speaker 1: What the COP team wants is that this time around
Speaker 1: there will be ways to keep a track of these
Speaker 1: commitments and to make sure that progress actually happens. How
Speaker 1: exactly that will really done is not quite clear yet.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not going to ask a climate reporter
Speaker 1: on a climate podcast to talk about the stakes. You
Speaker 1: know what's at stake at COP for the world, But
Speaker 1: I do want you, after thinking a lot about Sultan
Speaker 1: al Jabber and it's patriot Shaik Muhammad, to tell us
Speaker 1: about what the stakes are for the UAE, In particular,
Speaker 1: they're bringing the whole climate world into the oil monarchy
Speaker 1: for the biggest climate of end of the year. What
Speaker 1: does a good outcome look like for the UAE and
Speaker 1: what does a disappointing outcome look like. Already, the UA
Speaker 1: feels like it is a regional leader, having set in
Speaker 1: at zero by twenty fifty goal, having all these renewable
Speaker 1: energy projects, but from a global standard, it's very far behind.
Speaker 1: It has one of the highest per capita emissions, even
Speaker 1: though it has renewables projects. We found out that it
Speaker 1: actually generates less solar power than Belgium, which is far
Speaker 1: less sunny, and its own climate plan, according to Climate
Speaker 1: Action Tracker, is highly insufficient. So one thing that would
Speaker 1: help the UAE succeed, according to many of the diplomats
Speaker 1: we spoke to, is if it can burnish its own
Speaker 1: climate credentials, and we learned that the UA's Environment ministry
Speaker 1: is working on submitting new commitments to the UN and
Speaker 1: making its plan a bit stronger. But as Romina Purmatari,
Speaker 1: the Swedish Climate minister, told us, if al Jaber isn't
Speaker 1: able to manage those delicate negotiations, then it is the
Speaker 1: UE who are the ones who are going to lose internationally,
Speaker 1: reputation wise, prestige wise. Thanks for listening to Zero. If
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate
Speaker 1: and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You
Speaker 1: can email us at zero pod at Bloomberg dot net.
Speaker 1: Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and the senior producer is
Speaker 1: Christine driscoll Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special
Speaker 1: Thanks this week to Gilda Da Carli, Stacy Wong and
Speaker 1: Kira Beandrum for their help on this episode. We've put
Speaker 1: a link to the article The Oil Shakes Climate Fixer
Speaker 1: in the show notes