Today's Edition
Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi
Chief Executive Officer at Masdar
As 2023 draws to a close, much will be written about the many challenges that this year has brought. Inflationary pressures stifled economies across the globe, the tragedy of war continued to rage on, and record-shattering droughts and wildfires blazed an alarming new path of destruction.
For many, it can be difficult to remember a time when the world seemed more fractured or divided. But as COP28 concluded in the UAE this month, it reminded us that the world is more united than we may sometimes believe.
Despite the challenges the past year has presented, the global community has shown that it still considers climate change to be the greatest threat to our collective future, joining together and taking unprecedented steps to combat it at COP28.
Under the leadership of H.E. Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, COP28 President and Chairman of Masdar, COP28 has delivered a new era of climate action through the UAE Consensus. It has secured a global commitment to triple renewables and double energy efficiency by 2030, mobilised billions of dollars in climate finance, operationalised loss and damage, and achieved language on transitioning away from fossil fuels for the first time in history.
As the UAE's clean energy pioneer, Masdar is already hard at work actioning these historic outcomes, accelerating the deployment of renewable energy and driving the energy transition forward all around the world. With ambitions to grow our capacity to 100 gigawatts of clean energy capacity and 1 million tonnes of green hydrogen production globally by 2030, we will more than triple our renewable energy capacity.
We are on a mission to help the world do the same, but it will require all of us to raise our ambitions. Tripling global renewable energy capacity will require us to triple our efforts – increasing annual installed renewables capacity to 1,000GW per year to reach 11,000GW by 2030, three times more than the current rate.
The unity that was on full display at COP28 will be exactly the vehicle we need to get there.
By building on this unity, Masdar forged significant strategic partnerships with governments and like-minded partners at the climate summit to advance the global energy transition, particularly in the global south. These include a 10GW implementation roadmap in Malaysia and our 10GW Africa growth plan, a combination of agreements signed with six sub-Saharan nations.
We also partnered with fellow clean energy giants RWE and Iberdrola to drive clean energy growth and investment in the global north. With RWE, we are joining forces in an £11 billion investment into the UK's renewable energy sector, purchasing a 49% stake in RWE's 3GW Dogger Bank South (DBS) projects - which form one of the world's largest planned offshore wind farms. And with Iberdrola, we formed a €15 billion strategic partnership agreement to evaluate the joint development of offshore wind and green hydrogen projects in key markets, including Germany, UK, and the USA.
These partnerships reflect the fundamental premise behind a successful energy transition; it cannot be achieved by working in silos. An ancient proverb tells us that "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together".
But if COP28 has proven anything, it's that we can go both faster and further when we are united.
