Cop28 president and oil and gas executive Sultan al-Jaber urged energy conference participants in Houston to do more faster to limit global warming
A top oil executive from the United Arab Emirates has urged the energy industry to join the fight against climate change, borrowing a famous line from a U.S. astronaut aboard a damaged spacecraft during the Apollo 13 mission in 1970.
“Houston, we have a problem,” Sultan al-Jaber, chief executive of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and president-designate of the COP28 climate summit, said to loud applause from the nearly 1,000 attendees of at the CERAWeek energy conference.
“Energy leaders in this room have the knowledge, experience, expertise and the resources needed to address the dual challenge of driving sustainable progress while holding back emissions,” Jaber said in his speech to an audience that included OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais and U.S. climate envoy John Kerry.
Jaber and Kerry, who strode to the stage and shook Jaber’s hand when the speech ended, left the room together. The two held a meeting ahead of the conference on Sunday.
“Look forward to working together to deliver ambitious action on clean energy transition and align the oil and gas sector w/ 1.5C imperatives,” Kerry later tweeted.
UAE’s Cop28 boss calls for “course correction” on climate change
Jaber was a controversial pick to lead the COP28 climate summit because his country is an OPEC member and major oil exporter. The United Arab Emirates is only the second Arab state to host the conference, after Egypt in 2022.
He called on his peers to get behind efforts to limit global warming. “Alongside all industries, the oil and gas needs to up its game, do more and do it faster,” Jaber said.
The UN-backed climate change conference’s recent
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