A significant climate commitment was made by the United Arab Emirates (UAE): emitting 47% fewer greenhouse gases (GHG) by 2035 compared to 2019 levels. The new target is part of the UAE’s third NDC within the Paris Agreement, a sign that the country was shooting for something higher than what it estimated in its previous goal: 40% by 2030. Announced ahead of the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, the UAE is the first major emitter to share its revised goal before the deadline of 2025.
This commitment the UAE commits to reduce from 196.3 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (MtCO₂eq) in 2019 to 103.5 MtCO₂eq by 2035. The reduction pathway is part of the UAE’s long-term commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and marks a shift in approach, away from a “business-as-usual” metric and toward specific baseline year targets for reductions. The change is intended to bring greater strength and specificity to sectoral reductions as well as greater transparency around the metric used to measure progress.
Sector-Specific Reduction Targets
The new UAE’s NDC outlines the emission reduction goals for the following sectors:
Buildings: 79% reduction, reduce to 15 MtCO₂eq
Waste: 37% reduction, with a goal of attaining a reduction of 1.8 MtCO₂eq
Industry: 27%, reduce to 68 MtCO₂eq
Transport: 20% reduction, reaching 24 MtCO₂eq
Agriculture: 39% or reduction of 1.6 MtCO₂eq.
These goals mirror a movement away from fossil fuels and towards more sustainable renewable practices in some of the UAE’s largest sectors. As part of this transition to energy, the government is also scaling up its solar energy projects, its waste-to-energy initiatives, and civil nuclear power.
Challenges and Criticism
However, critics say that the UAE’s climate plan is not credible. It is still one of the world’s top ten oil producers, promising to expand its fossil fuel output through 2030. Significantly, ADNOC has recently committed $17 billion to developing its offshore gas reserves, raising a big question about the UAE commitment to producing more fossil fuels at the same time it promises to reduce emissions.
Andreas Sieber is associate director of policy and campaigns at climate advocacy group 350.org. He believes that the UAE’s claims on climate credibility don’t fly: “The UAE’s so-called climate target is basically a greenwashing exercise.”. It has insufficient checks on inflated accounting and offsets, claims for emissions reductions are not very convincing. Even this is overshadowed by the glaring omission of the exported emissions—the UAE exports 63% of its oil. Critics say that omitting the emissions from the exported fossil fuels undermine the effectiveness of any national climate commitment, because exported emissions increase global warming.
Critical for Global Climate Goals
The implications of an updated NDC by an oil-producing state and a key climate bargaining player, such as the UAE, are therefore colossal in the global implications thereof. The NDCs are what form the architecture of the Paris Agreement and propel global efforts to contain warming to at least 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial level. The commitment therefore represents one of the first significant tests globally of the post-COP28 exercise by nations to begin phasing out fossil fuels.
While this goal is achieved, it remains a challenging objective with the ends of balancing these through reduced emissions and renewable energy, tends to be a hard nut to crack because of its economic reliance on oil. The UAE climate plan will thus be closely watched during COP29 as it paves the way for more global discussion on how countries can calibrate ambitious climate goals with fossil fuel economic dependencies.
What commitments the UAE makes, ahead of COP29, will likely feed into the kind of dialogues around how countries, especially significant producers of fossil fuels, may strive for ambitious ends to decarbonize. As it ups the ante on its climate policies, the success or failure of such plans will be a crucial case in point for other major oil-producing states trying to do more growth and less harm to the climate.