Cop28 ended in achievement and relief, tinged with some disappointments. The final text twice mentions “hard-to-abate” sectors, usually considered to include vital but carbon-intensive heavy industries such as steel, cement and aluminium.
But what turns hard-to-abate into easy-to-abate into abated? The decarbonisation road map of the UAE’s Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology seeks to answer that question.
The strategy was unveiled during Cop28.
Abdulla Al Shamsi, assistant undersecretary for Industrial Growth at the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology told the Middle East Economic Survey: “This road map is going to be practical … These are not only things that you need to do in terms of lower emissions, but these are also opportunities, because if your production has a lower carbon footprint, you will get access to markets, you will pay less on carbon taxes.”
Although the UAE’s non-oil industrial sector is not a huge emitter on the global scale – about 70 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, barely 0.1 per cent of the global total – its plan is important for answering three conundra.
Who will pioneer the technologies and policies required to decarbonise these challenging assets? Where will global hubs for clean industries site themselves? And how can major oil and gas exporters hasten to a lower-carbon future, not with fear but with optimism?
Dubai is not all about Mission Impossible and climate conferences.
Driving to Abu Dhabi along Sheikh Zayed Road, after Dubai Marina, you have on your right hand one of the world’s largest electricity and water production complexes. After that comes the sprawling Dubai site of Emirates Global Aluminium (EGA), which, from 1975, has performed the alchemy of turning natural gas, not into gold, but into the silvery, light metal, via the electrolysis of alumina. But since 2021, EGA has learnt a new feat – making aluminium from the sun.
EGA, the country’s largest non-oil industrial player, accounts for about 4 per cent of the world’s output of aluminium via the plants at Jebel Ali, and Taweelah in Abu Dhabi. It began using solar power two years ago.
The UAE is also an important maker of steel, cement, fertilisers and chemicals, and seeks to develop downstream chemicals and plastics. And it wants to grow new industries: hydrogen, AgriTech, space technology, drones, additive manufacturing, nano materials.
The UAE’s latest Paris Agreement commitment sets its road map to midcentury net-zero: industrial emissions should drop 5 per cent by 2030, 63 per cent by 2040, and 93 per cent by 2050. Without action, emissions could instead more than double to over 180 million tonnes.
There is no silver bullet – but there is a silver magazine with seven shots.
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