UAE

The UAE submitted an updated NDC for 2030 in July 2023 after having already strengthened its NDC target in 2022. With the UAE’s emissions still set to increase by 2030, we estimate it will not be able to meet this updated NDC target, nor the former one.

The NDC from 2023 has an unconditional and economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions reduction target of 182 MtCO₂e (including emissions from land use and forestry, or LULUCF) by 2030 (Government of the UAE, 2023a). The CAT rates this target, excluding LULUCF, as “Almost sufficient” compared to modelled domestic pathways and “Insufficient” when compared to the UAE’s fair share.

In October 2021 the UAE announced its intention to reach net zero emissions as part of the UAE Net Zero 2050 strategic initiative. In January 2024, the UAE submitted its LTS to the UNFCCC, confirming its commitment to reach net zero by 2050 (Government of the UAE, 2024b). The LTS includes several details on the UAE’s net zero target, such as its planned emissions reductions and removals, and sectoral pathways to achieve net zero.

The UAE submitted a 2035 NDC target to the UNFCCC on 06 November 2024. The CAT’s analysis of the UAE’s 2035 NDC target can be found here.

The UAE submitted a stronger 2030 NDC target to the UNFCCC on 11 July 2023. While the UAE needs to put forward substantially improved climate policies to reach the NDC, it is an improvement on the former NDC in the following ways:

• It includes strengthened emissions reduction target—to limit emissions to 182 MtCO₂e by 2030 (including LULUCF), down from 208 MtCO₂e (Government of the UAE, 2023a).
• The target is now expressed as an absolute emissions limit. The previous target was a reduction below a business as usual (BAU) scenario.
• The NDC provides sectoral targets for the electricity and water generation, industry, transport, buildings, waste and agriculture sub-sectors.
• It includes details of the policies and measures planned to achieve the sectoral targets, a step forward in transparency.

We have estimated this new unconditional target will result in an emissions level of 185 MtCO₂e by 2030 (excluding LULUCF), a 12% improvement compared to the previous target of 211 MtCO₂e (excluding LULUCF). The target covers all sectors of the economy and major greenhouse gases—CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O.

The CAT’s calculation of the UAE’s 2030 NDC target also includes PFCs, sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆) and HFCs which are not covered by the target. For this calculation, the CAT assumes that F-gases remain constant from the last available historical data point (2021). In its latest National Communication to the UNFCCC, the UAE reported its latest GHG inventory covering the years 1994, 2000, 2005, 2014 and 2021. The F-gases value for 2021 is 0.15 MtCO₂e in AR4 (Government of the UAE, 2024a).

This new target represents a targeted decrease in emissions of 14% below 2022 levels (excl. LULUCF).

The NDC mentions many of the policies and strategies that underpin the 2030 target. This includes the UAE’s National Energy Strategy 2050, which aims for 44% of renewable and 6% of nuclear energy in installed electric capacity by 2050, while reducing final electricity demand by 42–45% (Government of the UAE, 2023b).

This strategy was recently updated to remove its previous target of 12% of coal capacity by 2050, which is now replaced by an increased fossil gas capacity from 38% to 50%. This updated strategy continues to be inconsistent with the need to reach net-zero CO₂ emissions globally by 2050, due to the continued long-term reliance on fossil gas (Government of the UAE, 2023b).

The UAE reserves the option to use carbon credits for emission reductions abroad under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement to offset its own domestic emissions to achieve its NDC target (Government of the UAE, 2023a). Although it has not yet announced any firm details of how it will secure carbon credits towards its climate targets (either the NDC or net zero), a privately owned Emirati company called Blue Carbon has recently made headlines for its carbon credit deals. Since its inception in 2022, the company has signed MOU's with the governments of Liberia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe to acquire conservation rights for around 60 million acres of their forests, to generate carbon credits from projects avoiding deforestation, and sell them on the market (Pearce, 2023).

Details on how the government of the UAE intends to purchase credits from Blue Carbon or other similar providers to support claims to offset its own emissions are unclear. This ambiguity presents major risks that the UAE will seek to use carbon credits with questionable integrity as a smokescreen to justify continuing its trajectory of maintaining high levels of domestic emissions. The use of credits under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement should complement and not serve to distract from or displace critically needed mitigation efforts domestically.

The UAE’s 2030 NDC submitted in 2023 shows an increase in ambition and has improved its transparency by sharing sectoral targets and more details on the measures planned to achieve them. However, the UAE’s current plans for its oil and gas industry and its power sector continue to be incompatible with its ambition to reach net zero by 2050.

Comparison of 2030 NDC targets

* Before September 2021, all CAT ratings were based exclusively on fair share and only assessed a country’s target.

Target development timeline & previous CAT analysis

• 29.12.2020 The UAE submits an updated NDC with first economy-wide emissions reduction target for 2030

The CAT rates NDC targets against each country’s fair share contribution to global climate change mitigation, considering a range of equity principles including responsibility, capability, and equality. The CAT also rates NDC targets against indicative national emissions from global least-cost emissions pathways (called modelled domestic pathways). For assessing targets against the fair share, we consider both a country’s domestic emission reductions and any emissions it supports abroad through the use of market mechanisms or other ways of support, as relevant.

The CAT rates the UAE's NDC target as "Almost sufficient" when rated against modelled domestic pathways, and "Insufficient" when rated against its fair share contribution. The UAE does not specify a conditional target or an international element in its NDC, so we rate the NDC target against both fairness metrics and modelled domestic pathways.

CAT ratings are based on emissions excluding the LULUCF sector. To obtain the NDC emissions level excluding LULUCF, the CAT takes the UAE’s own sectoral target for LULUCF, presented in its 2023 NDC update.

For more details, please see the Assumptions section.

The CAT rates the UAE’s 2030 NDC target as “Almost sufficient” when compared with modelled domestic emissions pathways. The “Almost sufficient” rating indicates that the UAE’s NDC target in 2030 is not yet consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C but could be, with moderate improvements. If all countries were to follow the UAE’s approach, warming could be held below—but not well below—2°C.

The CAT rates the UAE’s 2030 NDC target as “Insufficient” when compared with its fair share contribution to climate action. The “Insufficient” rating indicates that the UAE’s NDC target in 2030 needs substantial improvements to be consistent with its fair share of the global mitigation effort to limit warming to 1.5°C. The UAE’s target is at the least stringent end of what would be a fair share of global effort and is not consistent with the 1.5°C limit, unless other countries make much deeper reductions and comparably greater effort. If all countries were to follow the UAE’s approach, warming would reach over 2°C and up to 3°C.

The UAE’s NDC rating has improved compared to our previous assessment for two reasons:

First, we have updated the UAE’s historical data, resulting in lower emissions (excluding LULUCF) compared to the previous assessment. Our new estimates come from the UAE’s latest inventory, published in its 5^th National Communication to the UNFCCC.

Second, the CAT conducted a literature update to its fair share (FS) ranges, which aligns our equity approaches with international environmental law (Rajamani et al., 2021) and therefore exclude studies based on cost-effectiveness; it also included additional studies to reflect the latest research available in the field. This update yielded more lenient FS ranges for the UAE, contributing to improve its rating.

Further information on how the CAT rates countries (against modelled pathways and fair share) can be found here.

In January 2024, the UAE submitted its LTS to the UNFCCC, confirming its target to reach net zero by 2050. The LTS includes several details on the UAE’s target, such as its planned emissions reductions and removals, and sectoral pathways to achieve net zero (Government of the UAE, 2024b). However, the measures planned by the UAE to achieve its target remain problematic, especially due to the continued use of fossil gas for power generation, and the reliance on CCS to reduce a significant share of the country’s emissions.

The UAE first announced its intention to reach net zero by 2050 in October 2021 as part of the UAE Net Zero 2050 Strategic Initiative (Reuters, 2021). At COP27, the UAE presented its “National Net Zero by 2050 pathway” with further details. In March 2023, the UAE’s member states signed the UAE Governments Net Zero 2050 Charter, further signalling commitment to reaching net zero (WAM, 2023).

We evaluate the net zero target as ‘Average’. For the full analysis click here.