By Tommy Wilkes and Simon Jessop
LONDON (Reuters) – Critics should stop “carping from the sidelines” about the United Arab Emirates hosting the COP28 climate talks and give the oil producer a chance to show it can lead on decarbonising the energy sector, a senior JPMorgan banker told Reuters.
The UAE’s incoming COP28 president, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, who also runs the UAE’s state oil giant, has been criticised by climate activists for what they see as a soft stance on fossil fuels ahead of the United Nations summit beginning in November.
More than 100 members of Congress and the European Parliament in May urged the U.S. president and European Commission president to push the UAE to oust al-Jaber from the COP job, saying his dual position could undermine negotiations.
Chuka Umunna, JPMorgan’s Head of EMEA ESG (environmental, social and governance) & Green Economy Investment Banking, said critics in richer countries should “give the presidency a chance”.
“It’s a really bad look. Yes, the UAE is an oil-producing nation, but both Egypt and the UK are oil-producing nations, and people weren’t saying that should preclude them from hosting [the last two COP summits]. Indeed, the world’s biggest oil producer, the U.S., is home to the U.N. headquarters,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Umunna, a former politician for Britain’s opposition Labour Party, said he had met the UAE presidency team and was impressed.
“They (the UAE) understand the oil and gas sectors perhaps better than many others, they know what it takes to decarbonise those industries. Surely that means that they’ve got a really important role to play in the world finding a solution to perhaps our biggest challenge,” he added.
JPMorgan was the biggest financier to the fossil fuel industry between 2016 and 2022, providing a total of $434 billion, yet slipped to second biggest in 2022, according to the ‘Banking on Climate Chaos’ report compiled by a group of NGOs.
Scientists warn that planet-warming emissions from burning fossil fuels continue to rise, despite the need for them to fall sharply if the world is to have any chance of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average.
JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. lender by assets, has pledged to provide or help others to raise $1 trillion for green initiatives by 2030, and has set targets for cutting the emissions associated with its loans to oil and gas clients.
About 70% of market-wide venture capital and private equity climate investment has gone to low-carbon energy and transport-related technologies since 2021, Umunna noted, calling them “the low-hanging fruit”.
Going forward, he said, more money will begin to flow to areas like plastic, steel and food, as policymakers focus on other drivers of fossil fuel demand. “For other green economy verticals, their time is about to come,” he said.
(Reporting by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes and Simon Jessop; Editing by Christina Fincher)
