Fossil fuel companies must not hide behind “the illusion” that large-scale carbon capture will meet climate goals, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned, only a week before the COP28 UN environmental summit kicks off in Dubai.
The United Arab Emirates, which is hosting COP828, has begun capturing carbon dioxide emissions through state-owned oil major Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Bloomberg reported Tuesday. The captured carbon will be turned into rock over three or four months after it is dissolved in seawater and injected into the Hajar Mountains, chief technology officer Sophie Hildebrand told the news agency.
Although ADNOC, whose CEO Sultan Al Jaber was controversially appointed president of COP28, plans to capture 10 million metric tons of carbon a year, the company has been expanding its oil and gas production capacity. NGO Global Witness estimated that the energy giant will emit 684 million metric tons of CO2 by 2030. Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company Aramco, the world's biggest corporate polluter, also has large carbon capture targets, but relatively speaking, they are a drop in the ocean compared to the energy giant's total emissions.
In a new report published on Thursday, IEA chief Fatih Birol warned that large carbon capture targets were not enough on their own to help the world meet net zero goals.
