UAE’s Sultan al-Jaber underlines need to use tech to fight climate change

Global leaders must harness technology to combat climate change, the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan al-Jaber said during an Abu Dhabi conference on Wednesday.

Speaking at the Climate Tech forum al-Jaber, president of the COP28 climate talks taking place later this year in the UAE, told spectators that the “single most critical source” in helping to fight against climate change is technology.

“By leveraging technologies, we can build a new economic development model based on putting an end to emissions while breathing new life into sustainable economic growth,” Jaber said.

Jaber, who is also the minister of industry and advanced technology, said policymakers need to incentivize technology companies to help commercialize carbon capture.

Carbon capture involves trapping carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels and other chemicals and storing them in a way that doesn’t affect the atmosphere and mitigates the effects of global warming.

The two-day Abu Dhabi Climate Forum will focus on identifying ways to reduce emissions in the energy sector by a goal set in the latest report by the IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – that said the world must reduce emissions by 43 percent by 2030. The conference will also look at how to use technology to reduce and mitigate the effects of climate change.

During the conference, Jaber also said that the world needs to “aggressively apply the latest landfall technologies such as AI, robotics and blockchain to increase the efficiency of the energies we use today across every sector.”

“We need to phase out emissions from all sectors including transportation, agriculture, and industry and of course, fossil fuels while investing in technologies to phase out all viable zero carbon alternatives,” he added.