The Economist said, “The UAE has invested heavily in decarbonization,” and specifically mentioned the “Habshan” project, one of the largest carbon capture projects in the Middle East and North Africa region, which was announced by the UAE company ADNOC last September.
This project will have the capacity to capture 1.5 million tons per year of carbon dioxide, inject it and store it permanently in deep geological formations.
These amounts are equivalent to the annual emissions of half a million gasoline cars.
Not only that, in late July, ADNOC adopted a plan to accelerate its efforts to reduce carbon emissions and contribute to achieving its goal of climate neutrality by 2045 instead of the previously announced 2050.
The company also stopped routine methane venting and flaring (a method used to get rid of unwanted gas), long before its energy peers.
ADNOC is spending about $4 billion on constructing undersea cables to connect its marine fields to TAQA’s onshore electricity network.
The project, which was announced in late 2021, aims to reduce the carbon emissions of ADNOC’s marine operations by more than 30 percent, by replacing the current electricity generators that rely on gas turbines with more sustainable sources of electrical power generation.
Masdar Renewable Energy also operates large solar farms that produce the cheapest renewable energy in the world.
Masdar is the second largest clean energy developer in the world.
The company has committed to increasing its total global production capacity to 100 gigawatts by 2030, with an increase of 15 gigawatts in 2021.
The British magazine asked: How did this green giant appear in a land rich in oil resources?
The Economist answers that this dates back to 2006, that is, before the start of what is known as the solar energy revolution, and before climate technology became a mainstream trend, noting that this happened at the hands of Sultan Al Jaber, the UAE Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology, the appointed president of the Conference of the Parties (COP28).
Dubai will host the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP28) on November 30, where about 70,000 experts, diplomats, decision-makers and others will participate.
The magazine said that three main issues will dominate the conference’s work, requiring a lot of work. The first is to take strict measures on methane emissions, the second is the need to fill the huge shortfall in climate financing, and the third is intellectual and relates to how to end dependence on fossil fuels.
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