Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Energy sector myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
Sultan al-Jaber is planning a final flourish as president of the UN COP28 summit by calling the heads of the world’s largest energy and tech companies for climate talks in Abu Dhabi days before COP29 begins in Azerbaijan.
Jaber — who is also head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) — said he will invite chief executives from Silicon Valley and Big Oil for a “Change Makers Majlis”, or special gathering, at the start of November to discuss artificial intelligence and the energy transition.
“My message to the tech sector is this: AI needs energy and energy needs AI,” said Jaber, who is also the UAE minister for industry and advanced technology. “Let’s collaborate to drive down the emissions of the conventional energy you will still need, and on ways that AI can drive energy efficiency,” he told the Financial Times.
The Abu Dhabi event — mirroring the majlis held during the COP28 negotiation — will take place immediately before Adipec, an annual conference also held in the capital that is typically attended by most of the chief executives of global oil majors.
The International Energy Agency has estimated that electricity consumed by data centres globally will more than double by 2026 to more than 1,000 terawatt hours, an amount roughly equivalent to what Japan consumes annually. This has also raised concerns about the effect on the environment.
Ahead of last year’s COP28 negotiations, some questioned whether Jaber, as head of Adnoc, was a suitable president for the world’s most important climate negotiations.
António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, said after the COP summit that tougher action was needed on fossil fuels.
But in recent months, ahead of passing over the COP presidency to Azerbaijan’s ecology minister Mukhtar Babayev, Jaber has occupied the limelight for his climate role, making speeches at climate conferences. He is due to speak about energy and AI at the Microsoft CEO Summit next week.
The UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil, host of COP30, have formed a troika aimed at ensuring progress from one COP to the next.
The agreements made in Dubai included the first global undertaking to move away from fossil fuels and a commitment to triple renewable energy generation by 2030.
However, there has since been little implementation of the pledges. The issue of how to finance the shift to a green economy is still being fiercely debated and is expected to dominate talks at this year’s COP29 in Baku in November.
Jaber said he thought AI would be “the bridge” for how the world could simultaneously “reduce emissions while also driving social and economic value everywhere”.
Abu Dhabi has positioned itself as a regional AI hub as it seeks to diversify beyond oil.
“I know that AI is making grids much smarter by simply predicting peaks and dips and usage, it is also helping optimise the flow of electrons, to where they need to be. There are also exciting new developments happening in material sciences. AI is modelling the ideal molecular structures to absorb CO₂,” Jaber added.
