Policies & action
We rate the United Arab Emirates’ policies and actions as “Insufficient” when compared with modelled domestic emissions pathways. The “Insufficient” rating indicates that the United Arab Emirates’ policies and action need substantial improvements to be consistent with the 1.5°C temperature limit. If all countries were to follow the UAE’s approach, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C.
Current policies are still set to lead to increasing rather than decreasing emissions in 2030, due to a continued expansion of fossil fuel production and use. The UAE is also currently developing both nuclear and solar power and is well on track to meet its 30% “clean” energy capacity target by 2030 and its 50% target for 2050, but these developments will not reverse the emissions increase.
Emissions appear to have decreased between 2015 and 2020, notably due to efficiency increases in the use of gas in the electricity sector and more recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are significant uncertainties when it comes to historical emissions. The UAE’s last GHG inventory dates from 2014, and there are large discrepancies in historical emissions reported by other sources, particularly for energy-related CO2 emissions. Using other data sources with higher historical emissions would also lead to an upwards revision of the projections under policies and action.
Policy overview
The CAT estimates that the UAE’s 2030 emissions under current policies are set to increase to 252–263 MtCO2e, or 18–23% above 2021 levels.
In July 2023, the UAE revised its 2050 Energy Strategy, a plan first launched in 2017, which aims to diversify the energy mix and improve energy efficiency (WAM, 2017). The revised strategy no longer includes its previous 12% “clean coal” target by 2050. Because its “clean energy” target of 50% of installed capacity in 2050 has not been increased, we interpret that the fossil gas power capacity target was increased from 38% to 50%. (Government of the UAE, 2023b).
With its current policies, the UAE will miss its new NDC by a large margin. It would need to implement more policies and reduce its 2030 emissions by a further 27–30% in order to reach its NDC target. We have slightly revised our current policy projections to reflect both the removal of the UAE’s coal capacity target, as well as its new target for power installed capacity in 2030. The reduction in emissions estimated from the intended switch of coal to gas is partially offset by the new information about the UAE’s 2030 targets, which show that total installed capacity in 2030 will be higher for all technologies (including gas) than previously thought. Overall, the change leads to only slightly lower emissions (~1%) compared to our previous estimate.
The UAE is planning to significantly increase its oil production in the next years and it is pushing to reach “gas self-sufficiency”, with major investments in offshore gas production. In November 2022, ADNOC announced a USD 150bn investment plan to expand its oil and gas business in the next five years (The Guardian, 2023). In parallel to this, the UAE is also making substantial investments in nuclear and renewable energy. For more details, see the energy supply section.
The developments and the investment going towards new fossil fuel infrastructure are not consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, instead are likely to lock the UAE into a high-emissions trajectory and undermine its transition towards renewable energy. Instead of ramping up its gas production towards self-sufficiency, the UAE should set out an ambitious plan to phase-out its dependency on gas for electricity and switch to renewables, which would reduce prices and price volatility for consumers, and avoid the risk of stranded assets (CAT, 2022).
Emissions in the UAE appear to have decreased significantly between 2015 and 2020, notably due to efficiency increases in the use of gas in the electricity sector and more recently due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there are significant uncertainties when it comes to historical emissions. The date of the UAE’s last full GHG inventory is 2014, and there are large discrepancies in historical emissions reported by other sources, particularly for energy-related CO2 emissions.
Our current policy scenarios are based on the implementation of the UAE’s Energy Strategy 2050. We present a range based on how the UAE will implement this strategy: the upper bound shows emissions in 2030 if the UAE only implements its 2030 installed capacity targets, and the lower bound shows emissions in 2030 if in addition, the UAE implements its 40% efficiency target.
For more information, please see the assumptions tab.
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