A kingdom built on oil now controls the world’s climate progress

on this episode. These summits have been growing bigger and gaining an importance, just as climate impacts are striking with greater ferocity and global emissions continue to hit new records. That's why Al Jobber's appointment has attracted so much attention and criticism. He isn't just leading a pivotal UN climate forum, but among his many many jobs, he's also the head of ADNOC. That's the state owned oil company that's the source of wealth in the United Arab Emirates. But you

know it's complicated. The UAE is the first country in the Middle East to set in at zero goal, and it's the only country to build any significant amount of renewable energy capacity in the region. And Al Jobbers behind all that. He isn't just an oil boss cut from the classic mold. He spent much of his career as a renewables executive with a grand plan to build a

zero carbon city in the desert. Those contradictions are worth exploring, especially because al Jabber is now the one who gets to decide the limits of how much progress will be made at this year's big climate summit, So a shot. This article is partly a profile of who this guy is. And there's also this philosophical question that we're asking of where does oil belong in the climate negotiations? So let's start there with trying to understand why there's a big

UN climate summit happening inside of a very big oil monarchy. Well. So, a feature of these annual Cup summits, which, as the number says, have been happening for about twenty eight years, is that they are hosted in a different country on a different continent every year, and the countries that want to host the summit have to run a campaign to gather support from other countries, typically from the same continent,

and win the bid. So the country that runs an effective campaign wins, which is how the UA, one of the largest oil producers in the world won the bid. It's also worth noting that COP twenty eight is only the second time in nearly three decades that a COP meeting is happening in an economy that is highly dependent on income from oil and gas. COP eighteen and katar

in twenty twelve was the last one. Of course, between then and now, we've had the Paris Agreement and all the major economies of the world are aligned with a net zero goal. So COP events have become this really important place to figure out how the world as a whole will meet climate goals, and for the UAE to get there, they also had to set a net zero goal by twenty fifty to show that they are serious. Sultan all Job has been announced as the new president of COP, and it's fair to say there was a

pretty big freakout right. He becomes a kind of litmus test for how seriously you take country like UAE and its trajectory towards night zero. So who lines up on the anti l Jabber camp A huge number of people. We got a letter that was signed by more than four hundred green groups around the world that said that he threatens the legitimacy and efficacy of the summit. We even got US lawmakers, more than two dozen of them, putting diplomatic pressure to force him out of this role.

But at the same time, the very people who have to work with him, climate diplomats from the European Union, from the US, even from climate vulnerable countries like the Maldives, came to his support, saying that he is a person with a different background running a COP event and maybe

that is a good thing. The critics fear, and you talk to a number of people who were worried about his appointment, is that you're essentially bringing the oil business inside of a process that's meant to limit how much burning of fossil fuels will be doing in the future. So in our reporting, did you find anything to back up those anxieties of people who are worried about the oil business coming too close to what's supposed to be

a un process. We did. For this story. We talked to more than four dozen people, and one of the things that we found out from multiple people is that Adnock, the oil company, is actually directly paying some consultants and even some staff working on COP twenty eight related issues

in the UAE. One of the people we spoke to, who is the co president of the Club of Rome, said that she has heard about the reach of Adknox money going to some very senior people, and that has caused her to tell her colleagues that if this goes too far, maybe we shouldn't go to COP at all. Representatives for al Jabbers said in a statement that the budget for COP twenty eight comes from the UAE government and quote strict rules of governance and quote ensure separation

from the state oil company. Okay, so that's the backdrop, and now I want to go to the man himself, right, because for us talking about this story over the past couple of months, I think one of the things that stood out is that here you have somebody in an immensely public role running COP twenty eight. He's also obviously running what is the defining industry of the United air memorates. But it's not like you could look up and read a profile of him the way that you would find, say,

like a profile of the CEO of XON or BP. Right, talk to me about what we had to learn, what we didn't know before we set out to sort of figure out where Sultan al Jabber came from. So one thing I quickly learned when I started on this story was that al Jabbert plays a very strong part in shaping local media in the UAE, and that level of control that you can have in a country like the UAE means that some very basic biographical details of al

Jabber weren't known. So, for example, we know that he was born in nineteen seventy three, but we didn't know until now that he came from Umal Coin, which is one of the smallest of the emirates in the UAE, and that matters because the ruling elite the country has had only presidents from the al Nayan family from Abu Dhabi, is quite removed from umal Coin. A spokesperson for al Jabber said, and I quote, the suggestion of editorial interference

is not supported by any evidence. Here. We're already seeing another way that his background sets him apart. Right, So we're talking about him as someone who has a renewables background working at fossil fuel, But if you peer in his biography, you see somebody who's coming from far outside of power and is rising up an almost you know, meritocracy basis inside of a pretty close society where power is kept apart from a lot of people. So can you talk to me about how he came up through

the system in the UAE. So when he was growing up, there were you know, less than a million people in the UAE, and if you're a bright student, you get noticed. And he won scholarships from ADNOC. The oil company was growing quite rapidly and needed engineers to do the work. And so he went and studied engineering and then business administration in California and came back and worked on oil and gas projects. That is a well trodden path for many Emirati engineers. He ends up getting a PhD because

everyone calls him doctor Sultan, Is that right? That's right. He also went on to study for a PhD in economics at Commentary University a little bit later in his life. And so when you meet him, where are you meeting him when you finally get your long sought interview, and how does it go? It was the end of February and we met in Abu Dhabi in the COP twenty

eight office. You know, it was a pleasant meeting. He's a very tall guy, soft spoken, also very happy to be interrupted as we spoke through his career and many of the questions that green groups have raised about his presidency at COP. SO in this conversation, one thing that he brings up is that he's often felt misunderstood. Right, the reaction of critics after his appointment to the cop presidency is in the first time, he feels like people

are judging him because of where he comes from. That's right. Shaik Mohammad, who is now the President of the UAE but at the time had just become the Crown Prince of Abu d Abbe, took an interest in al Jabber's career. But also it was a time when there were real fears of oil production peaking, which is that the world

might run out of oil altogether. It might seem quaint today when we are now talking about when we'll all consumption peak, but those fears were quite real in the early two thousands, and Shake Mohmed wanted to find out whether the UAE can invest in clean energy and maybe become an exporter of energy without the emissions, and so he asked Al Jabber to go on a world tour.

He told me that he into fifteen countries in three months and came back with an idea that you renewable energy is actually much more mature than people think it is, but that there are many different parts of the industry that do not work together, and thus if he can make that happen, say in the form of a sustainable, zero carbon city, that would train Emiratis on these technologies and push the industry forward. So I want to get

back to the Shake in a second. But on this tour, that's when he first feels people's misunderstanding for his motivations. That's right. He said that when he went on a tour, he got opposite reactions. Some were excited and some were puzzled. Why is this guy who's coming from an oil producing

nation talking about clean energy? And that misunderstanding is something he is used to for decades now, all right, So he returns from his tour, he has a dream of building a zero carbon city in the desert, and he gets the Shake to put in a significant money. You went to see this city. It's been under construction for what fifteen years? Now? What does it look like? What does a zero carbon city in the desert look like?

And is it actually zero carbon? So two thousand and eight is when construction roughly began and he was given almost fifteen billion dollars of support to create this city. The initial deadline to complete it was twenty sixteen. That has come and gone. I went there in February and there are still large parts that are quite empty. The new deadline to finish it is twenty thirty. The city itself, the core of it, is beautiful. It's an experiment in

sustainable architecture. There are shaded streets and there's a big tower that brings in cool air onto these streets. There's a ten megawatt solar field at the corner of the city that was supposed to provide all the power that the city needed. But the UA's electricity mostly comes from natural gas, and when the sun goes down and when there's need for more electricity, some of it is from this natural gas powered grid, all right. So that's Mazdar,

that's the renewables company that Sultan al Jabber runs. This covers about a decade and gets us right up to twenty fifteen in the months right before the Paris Agreement is going to be signed. And this is actually where your profile begins. We talk about Shake Mohammed and the Shaik's imagination of what a future post Paris for his oil dependent economy will be like. What was the Shaik's vision for what the day that oil ends would be

like in his kingdom. So this is a quote that is often cited if you are in the UAE, and it's a quote from Shaik Mohammed's speech given at this government summit in Dubai in early twenty fifteen, months before the Paris Agreement is signed, and it says, after we have loaded this last barrel of oil, are we going to feel sad if our investment today is right? I think we will celebrate that moment. So the Shaikh is looking for someone to make his dream of a happy

end oil come true. And who does he turn to? To Al Jabber. Within a year of giving the speech, Al Jabber is handed the oil company ADNOC, which is the crown jewel of the UAE, and one of his mandates is to decarbonize adnox oil and gas production. And that's no small feat. Let's really put a pin in this for people listening. How much wealth left untapped are we talking about when you're looking at the UAE's oil reserves.

Right now, UAE is sitting on something like one hundred billion barrels of oil, which is today worth more than eight trillion dollars, and taking this stuff out of the ground makes the UAE as a country and ADNAC as a company a colossal emitter. Compare them to some stuff that people would be familiar with. One way to think about how big ADNOX emissions are is to compare it to either a country or to the combination of other

oil companies. So ADNOX emissions from all the oil and gas that is produced and then burned is approximately the same as Iran, which is among the top ten emitters in the world. Or another way to think about it is ADNOX emissions are approximately the same as combining BP an EXON. One of the challenges that you had to tackle in the story is trying to assess whether or not al Jabber, in his role as the CEO of ADNAC, has been able to begin to carbonization in any measurable way.

It's a hard challenge because there is very little data available. ADNOC does not disclose emissions the way many of its peers, including Saudi Aramco, egx on Mobile or BP reveal those emissions. Though Al Jaber did say he's very proud that ADNOC is now being powered by nuclear power and solar power that are both generated in the UE, but it's not really possible to say how much of an impact that's

had on emissions because we don't have those numbers. And so this gets us back to where we were in the beginning about the people who are frustrated by him or who he feels misunderstood by The UN process is one where countries disclose and come up with plans to deal with their emissions. Al jabers running a company that

doesn't disclose its emissions, do they have a plan? Yes, So when we ask these questions about not disclosing emissions, representatives, al Jabber told us that Adnock is currently working on building its books and will reveal at least some of its emissions in the near future. ADNOC as the company has set on net zero by twenty fifty goal to

match with the country goal. There is also a short term goal of being able to spend money on clean energy something like fifteen billion dollars by twenty thirty, but that pales in comparison to the money that Adnock is planning to spend on oil in gas production something like one hundred and fifty billion dollars by twenty twenty seven. And if you put the renewable energy that al Jaber creates in his role as the head of Mazdar and you weigh that against the emissions that ADNOC makes, you

know where do the scales net out. So Mazdar claims that based on the renewable energy projects that has built, things like solar panels in Uzbekistan, wind farms in the US, or waste to energy plant in the UAE, they avoid on an annual basis seven point five million tons. But if you take just two subsidiaries of Adknock, the Adnock Gas Company and ADNOC Distribution, those alone produce something like forty five million tons of emissions annually according to Bloomberg estimates.

So there's a massive gap between what MASDA does and what Adnock do does. So of all the amorads, y choose al Jaber. One reason is because he is the fixer. He gets difficult jobs done. One of the things we learned from our reporting is that in twenty fifteen al Jaber was managing the UA's aid to Egypt he flew often to Cairo and spoke to President Abd al fata LCCI,

who had just overthrown the democratically elected Mohammad Morci. One of the academics told us that al Jaber was like the viceroy of Sheik Mohammad in Egypt for many years. Then when he was made the chief of Adnok, he

laid off thousands of people. And that might seem like something that a CEO does, but in the UAE, where Adnak is seen as the place where you get a job for life, that was a difficult decision to make and there was a lot of backlash, and so he is seen as this guy who gets difficult things done, and COP twenty eight is certainly going to be a difficult task. So that's how al Jaber gets to this moment. Now let's look ahead at his future running COP twenty eight.

One thing that I think attracted us both to examining him in all of his contradictions is that he and the people who are kind of the most against him right now share a point of view about how useful the CARP process has become. Eight years after the signing of the Parents Agreement, what's his view and sort of what's the general sense of people who are a little frustrated with the CARP process at this point. That's right.

COP process is bureaucratic and given that emissions are hitting new records, it's not producing the kind of progress that is needed. So there's a whole contingent of people who are calling on reforming the COP process. The COP summits have been getting bigger and bigger in size. The UAE is expecting something like seventy thousand people to come in

that two week period. One of the suggestions is to make it smaller, to make it focused, to make it people who will come and decide how to move things forward.

Another one is around fossil fuel phase out. It continues to be shocking and surprising that the first time fossil fuels as a term was mentioned in a COP summit agreement was in twenty twenty one when COP happened here in Glasgow, and ever since that wall was broken, there is more demand to make it clear that the science says to be able to tackle climate change, we have to phase out fossil fuels altogether, and there was an attempt to try and get that language into the agreement

at COP twenty seven in Egypt, but that failed, and this time around, activists are very focused, and not just activists but also countries like the European Union India are very keen to make sure that that phase comes through in the CORP agreement. All right, so now let's be very specific. Would the success at COPP look like for Sultan al Jaba. There are as many desires of what COPS should produce as there are people attending it, but there is a consensus forming around the types of things

that will really move the ball. We spoke to Jennifer Morgan, who is Germany's Climate envoy, and she said three things will make a real difference. Stronger commitment to curb emission, so something like a fossil fuel phase out, language, really putting money to work from rich countries to developing countries who are both suffering the impacts of climate change more and who need help to be able to build the green technologies that will allow them to leap frog from

fossil fuels to a clean energy future. And finally, because these impacts are here and now, they want a fund for loss and damage caused by climate change, something that was agreed at COP twenty seven, but there's no real money attached to it, and Morgan basically said that COP presidencies are judged by the outcomes. So, in talking to al Jabber and his advisors, is there anything that sort of characterizes his approach as a as a businessman that's

kind of different than what's come before COP. So one thing that became apparent is he is going to try and speak to his speers, the CEOs of other oil companies who have in previous corps felt like they weren't welcome. He spoke at an energy conference in Houston, the heartland of US energy, and he said that he hopes oil and gas companies will go faster and do more to cut emissions, and that they should feel welcome to COP

twenty eight. Another thing that his advisers said they are likely to do is to create an agenda that goes beyond what is in the formal COP process. One example

they gave is of the Energy Transition Accelerator. This would be a place where governments will make commitments to buy green technologies like green cement, green steel, or sustainable aviation fuels to try and push that industry forward, even though those products are expensive today because you have to work on reducing the emissions attached to them, and the more you deploy them, as we've learned with wind and solar,

the cheaper they are likely to get. But at every COP event we do get many, many such initiatives coming through. What the COP team wants is that this time around there will be ways to keep a track of these commitments and to make sure that progress actually happens. How exactly that will really done is not quite clear yet. I mean, I'm not going to ask a climate reporter

on a climate podcast to talk about the stakes. You know what's at stake at COP for the world, But I do want you, after thinking a lot about Sultan al Jabber and it's patriot Shaik Muhammad, to tell us about what the stakes are for the UAE, In particular, they're bringing the whole climate world into the oil monarchy for the biggest climate of end of the year. What does a good outcome look like for the UAE and

what does a disappointing outcome look like. Already, the UA feels like it is a regional leader, having set in at zero by twenty fifty goal, having all these renewable energy projects, but from a global standard, it's very far behind. It has one of the highest per capita emissions, even though it has renewables projects. We found out that it actually generates less solar power than Belgium, which is far less sunny, and its own climate plan, according to Climate

Action Tracker, is highly insufficient. So one thing that would help the UAE succeed, according to many of the diplomats we spoke to, is if it can burnish its own climate credentials, and we learned that the UA's Environment ministry is working on submitting new commitments to the UN and

making its plan a bit stronger. But as Romina Purmatari, the Swedish Climate minister, told us, if al Jaber isn't able to manage those delicate negotiations, then it is the UE who are the ones who are going to lose internationally, reputation wise, prestige wise. Thanks for listening to Zero. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can email us at zero pod at Bloomberg dot net.

Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and the senior producer is Christine driscoll Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special Thanks this week to Gilda Da Carli, Stacy Wong and Kira Beandrum for their help on this episode. We've put a link to the article The Oil Shakes Climate Fixer in the show notes