Source: AFP
Armed with satellite images of pipelines, former US vice president and climate champion Al Gore singled out the United Arab Emirates’ emissions at COP28 talks in the oil-rich monarchy on Sunday.
Gore and Climate TRACE, an independent emissions tracker, had a message in Dubai to countries and industries around the world: no one can hide their emissions anymore.
Using a network of 300 satellites and artificial intelligence, Climate TRACE can now monitor emissions from more than 352 million locations from 10 industries.
Its data showed the UAE’s greenhouse gas emissions rose 7.5 percent in 2022 from the previous year, compared with a 1.5 percent increase for the world as a whole.
“In large areas of the world, it’s very unusual to have self-reporting” of emissions, Gore said.
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Speaking in the main plenary hall of the COP28 site, Gore pointed to huge screens showing satellite images of the major broadcast sites in the UAE.
Another map showed leaks from pipelines.
“Abu Dhabi National Oil Company still claims it has no emissions from methane or anything else from transporting oil and gas,” Gore said.
“Well, actually, they do. We can see them from space,” he said.
The oil company, known as ADNOC, is run by Sultan Al Jaber, whose appointment as COP28 president has angered climate campaigners.
ADNOC declined to comment when contacted by AFP about Gore’s comments.
Gore praised the commitment of 50 oil and gas companies, including ADNOC, to achieve “near-zero” methane emissions.
“That was a wonderful promise,” Gore said. “But we will measure whether they comply with it or not.”
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“We’ve seen commitments in the past and we’ve seen bad behavior from oil and gas companies in the past,” he added.
The release of Climate TRACE data on Sunday showed that global greenhouse gas emissions rose by 8.6% between 2015, the year the landmark Paris climate agreement was signed, and 2022.
Just five countries — China, the United States, India, Indonesia and Russia — accounted for 75 percent of those emissions.
China alone was responsible for almost half of the global increase.
Gore — who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — warned that for COP28 to be considered a “historic” success, countries needed to commit to phasing out fossil fuels.
At the conference which is due to end on December 12, tough negotiations began on the issue.
“Phase out fossil fuels,” Gore thundered, drawing applause from the audience. “This is the solution to the climate crisis.”
Source: AFP