Cop28 hosts United Arab Emirates (UAE) misses its own renewable energy target.
The UAE will be hosting the UN climate summit in Dubai in December 2023. In 2015, the oil-rich country pledged to generate 24% of its electricity from clean sources by 2021.
But Sky News found that in 2021, the Cop28 hosts had only reached 11% clean power – though that figure jumped to 17.5% in 2022.
The investigation found the UAE generated just 4.5% of its power from renewables last year, with the rest coming from gas – a figure that is much less than the 41% in the UK.
Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) international lead Gareth Redmond-King said the figure from the Cop28 hosts is “fairly shockingly low.”
“But it doesn’t take account of the fact that they are using fossil fuels for lots of their transport and industry as well, separate from all of that,” he added.
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Redmond-Kind says the overall findings are “not a good look.”
“It doesn’t matter how ambitious a target is if you’re not delivering against it,” he said.
“If you’re hosting Cop, it’s important you’re setting up a leadership position.”
He highlighted however that Cop hosts aren’t expected to be a “paragon of virtue.” For example, Cop26 host UK also missed its climate targets but Redmond-King argued that the nation “has been historically a climate leader, it has delivered huge emissions reductions.”
A spokesperson for the UAE’s Cop28 team said the country has set itself “ambitious targets” against which it is making “significant progress”.
They added that the UAE is “on track to meet its clean energy goals in line with its [climate action plans].”
But they said “some nuclear power” had been delayed due to the Covid pandemic and the introduction of “additional safety measures” after the Fukushima incident in 2011.
“We continue to embrace the energy transition and develop sustainable energy capacity,” they added.
