Innovation plays critical role in reducing emissions: OPEC Secy Gen

OPEC Secretary General, Haitham Al Ghais, stated that the challenge before the world must be accurately diagnosed in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and not the misguided narrative of replacing one energy source with another.

''Technological innovation will play critical in realizing this objective. This is why our Member Countries invest heavily in hydrogen projects, carbon capture utilization and storage facilities, and the circular carbon economy,'' said the Secretary-General at the opening of the 30th Annual Middle East Petroleum and Gas Conference (MPGC 2023), which is taking place on 22-23 May 2023 in Dubai.

''There is no better place than the UAE that exemplifies this. The Al -Reyadah CCUS facility has an 800,000 tonnes per year of CO2 capture capacity. Work is ongoing to increase this capacity by 500% to approximately 5 million tonnes per year by 2030. The breadth of measures the UAE has deployed to tackle the climate challenge is critical because there is no panacea to address it. We need to focus on 'all-peoples, all-fuels and all-technologies' approach for the energy transitions,'' he noted.

''I stress it as a plural, as OPEC firmly believes each nation and peoples have their own energy transition pathway.''

The capacities and national circumstances of developing countries must be taken into account in all actions. We should never forget that climate change and sustainable development are two sides of the same coin.

According to the UN, 733 million people do not have access to electricity. Furthermore, one third of the world's population use dangerous or inefficient cooking systems, which causes a host of health related problems. Therefore, policy-makers need to be cognizant that even the best intentioned policies, can have unintended consequences. This increases the stakes in the 'policy-design' phase.