Senior Saudi, UAE officials say energy storage a global priority for decarbonization

Apart from a commitment to carbon capture, or being touted as the leading means to decarbonize the world’s economy, energy storage has to be a priority globally, a senior official from energy giant Saudi Aramco told the Abu Dhabi Climate Forum.
“One of the biggest commitments is carbon capture. There’s a lot of technology needed to displace the remaining energy of electricity. Energy storage has to be a priority for the world, at grid scale. That’s a big focus for us. Hydrogen is the only real option for carbon capture,” Ahmad al-Khowaiter, the Executive Vice President and CTO of Aramco said.

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He called for “less words, more action” as he addressed the audience.
“In the last two years, we’ve focused on a solution that is scalable, practical, so we focused on technologies. It’s the key solution for the world to address climate challenge,” he said, also recognizing that technology cannot answer all the issues.
“It’s not easy to completely decarbonize the world’s economy because of technological challenges we don’t yet have solutions for. We need to accelerate the solutions we do have, and renewables is the best solution we have today, so we must accelerate that,” the official said.
His comments mirrored those made by the UAE’s Special Envoy for Climate Change and CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Dr. Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber. He also called on global leaders to harness technology to combat climate change. The UAE will host the UN climate change conference COP28 later this year, of which al-Jaber is the president-designate.

What is 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.
Saudi Arabia hopes to be home to the world’s largest planned Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) hubs as it works towards generating at least 50 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2030 as part of the Saudi Green Initiative.
The center in Jubail Industrial City is expected to start operating by 2027 and be able to extract and store nine million tons per annum (mtpa) of CO2 in its first phase, supporting Saudi Arabia’s aim to extract, use and store 44 mtpa of CO2 by 2035.
At the summit, global energy leaders and stakeholders argued that sustainable practices are good for both the planet and profit.
Steve Kelly, President of 1PointFive, a carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) platform, gave an example of its first large-scale Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant in the US state of Texas, which will be one of 100 megaton plants the company intends to build.
Once fully operational in 2025, the plant is expected to capture up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year and will not only help mitigate emissions but is economically viable as it uses existing supply chains, he said.
Musabbeh al-Kaabi, Executive Director, Low Carbon Solutions & International Growth from the Abu Dhabi energy giant ADNOC, pointed out that clean tech investments broke the $1 trillion barrier for the first time in 2022. He also said ADNOC is heavily investing in the “huge” potential of green and blue hydrogen and will continue to commercialize opportunities that strengthen the UAE’s position in the clean energy sector – including its recent project – the world’s first fully sequestered CO2 injection well as part of its $15 billion plan to decarbonize operations.
Last year, ADNOC, oil major BP, and Abu Dhabi future energy company Masdar joined forces to develop clean hydrogen and technology hubs.
“I have been in the industry for 25 years and there is one thing that never lets you down – and that is technology,” al-Kaabi told the summit. “Technology will play a big role in lowering emissions.”
Even as the technology to capture carbon claims a front and center position in the fight against emissions, Peng Xiao, group CEO of the Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing firm, recognized the need to monitor the technology.
“As a technologist and an AI practitioner, there is a problem we’re not talking about here – technology in itself can be a challenge,” he said.
The most significant disruption in recent times is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has revolutionized the world of AI.
“We all know the power of it and it’s incredible what it can do. But to get to that point, to train GPT, what’s the cost of that technology?” he asked rhetorically, citing the huge energy inefficiencies of training GPT to the latest, most capable-yet version four.
“When we look at this problem, we are becoming huge energy consumers. We are building huge models to solve energy problems, but along the way, we are at the root of the problem. We have to ask how we build more energy-efficient technology.”
Mohamed al-Hammadi, managing director and CEO of ENEC, which is partly responsible for the Barakah nuclear plant, agreed with Xiao, adding that data centers consume around five percent of the world’s energy.
“In emissions, that’s equivalent to all the airplanes flying with fossil fuel,” he said, and with AI coming faster and faster, it continues to pose equal challenges. “That’s a small part of the puzzle we need to work on.”

An alternative to alternatives

On Saudi-neighbor UAE’s energy goals, which include becoming the first Arab state to have a nuclear power plant, ENEC’s al-Hammadi said: “A decade ago, we launched multiple fronts to decarbonize the [energy] sector with a priority on energy security.”
Nuclear energy has transformed the sector since the UAE opened its plant in Barakah in 2020, al-Hammadi stated. When fully operational, the plant’s four reactors will reportedly offset 22.4 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually.
“Today, we have three reactors, producing electricity… and next year we will have four reactors… generating 25 percent of the UAE’s electricity which is a major transformation,” he added, creating a model that other countries can replicate, which is clean, provides energy security, and allows the country to navigate between energy sources such as gas, nuclear and renewables.
The UAE, in 2022, increased its targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 31 percent by 2030, even as it remains one of the world’s biggest oil producers.
It launched 11 environmentally friendly energy projects worth AED 159 billion ($43.2 billion) in 2022 and has earmarked $15 billion for energy transition projects for the next ten years.
The Gulf state, part of the group of oil-producing countries OPEC+, also reiterates that crude is indispensable to the global economy and is needed to finance the energy transition.

Tech to permanently mineralize CO2

The CEO of Oman-based environmental organization 44.01, Talal Hassan, discussed the details of their first-of-its-kind partnership with ADNOC to use technology that permanently mineralizes carbon dioxide (CO2) within rock formations found in the UAE emirate of Fujairah.
“Climate change is happening. It is an urgent challenge. And it is time sensitive. This is why projects with strategic planning structures are really useful because it helps us execute quickly,” Hassan said.
Sophie Hildebrand, the CTO of ADNOC said that it has a “global responsibility” to supply energy but also needs to “decarbonize every unit of energy” in line with its goal to be Net Zero by 2050.
The challenge is paving the way for innovative new technologies, she said.

Capitalizing on this means “nurturing and supporting start-ups with new and emerging ideas,” pointing to ADNOC’s research and development arm deploying billions of dollars in investment into projects that show sustainable growth, such as recyclable batteries that can power remote desert locations.
What is good for the environment can also be profitable, she said.
“Sustainability is good for the bottom line – we do these things to decarbonize… but they are good for the bottom line also.”

Additional reporting by Jennifer Bell

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