The towering Emirati, 50, was beaming in his grey dishdasha after he brought down the hammer on the first United Nations agreement calling for a transition away from fossil fuels.
It ended a Conference of the Parties (COP) of contradictions in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, which is one of the world's biggest producers of crude.
Jaber is CEO of oil giant ADNOC as well as being the UAE's climate envoy and minister of industry and advanced technology. He is also chairman of renewable energy company Masdar.
His naming as COP28 chief drew conflict-of-interest concerns at a time of increasingly stark warnings about the urgency of transitioning away from hydrocarbons to have a hope of keeping climate targets in view.
Dozens of US and European lawmakers said Jaber's oil and gas links should disqualify him from the job. Hundreds of climate campaign groups called for him to quit either COP or ADNOC.
"COP28 is beset by a dark cloud of -- entirely warranted -- public scepticism," US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said at the time.
But Jaber will now claim vindication after presiding over a deal described by UN climate chief Simon Stiell as the "beginning of the end" for fossil fuels.
"Together, we have confronted the realities and we have set the world in the right direction," Jaber told the cavernous auditorium on the outskirts of Dubai.
"We have given it a robust action plan to keep 1.5 within reach."
- High stakes -
Before COP, Jaber was in less jubilant mood, bristling at accusations of a conflict of interest.
"I'm someone who spent the majority of his career in sustainability, in sustainable economic development and project management, and renewable energy," he told AFP in July.
Indeed, he founded state-owned renewable energy company Masdar a decade before he took the helm of ADNOC with a mandate to "decarbonise" and "future-proof" the gas and petrol giant.
The stakes were exceptionally high for COP28.
The most ambitious goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement was to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, although UN climate experts warned this year that we are hurtling towards breaching that guardrail in the 2030s.
During months of frenetic travel that saw him criss-cross the planet, Jaber managed to win over some sceptics.
Harjeet Singh, of the influential coalition Climate Action Network International, said a turning point came in July, when Jaber wrote that "phasing down demand for, and supply of, all fossil fuels is inevitable and essential".
"He's very straightforward, he's open to listening," Singh told AFP, though the pair "agree to disagree" on several issues.
Those disagreements included the prominence given to fossil fuel lobbyists, whose accreditations numbered a record 2,456 in Dubai, according to campaign groups -- more than every national delegation apart from the UAE and Brazil.
- Strong start -
Another point of difference was Jaber's endorsement of controversial carbon capture technologies that trap emissions and store them permanently.
ADNOC made a commitment in July to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 for its own operations.
But that target does not include emissions produced by the oil and gas burned by its customers, which account for the vast majority of its carbon footprint.
Jaber's COP started strongly when he passed a landmark loss and damage fund on day one, when the two-week meeting had barely started.
Several pledges followed, including the UAE's $30 billion private investment fund focused on climate projects in developing countries.
Talks then went into overtime, after a dispute over including "phasing out" or "phasing down" fossil fuels, before a compromise was struck and hastily passed on Wednesday.
Hasty gavel and standing ovation bring down COP28 curtain
Dubai (AFP) Dec 13, 2023 -
The proud president of COP28 had no time left to lose.
After two nights of fraught final negotiations, it took just five minutes for Sultan Al Jaber, with the nervous bang of his gavel, to adopt a historic deal calling for a transition from fossil fuels.
"I hear no objection? It is so decided," he announced at 11:15 am (0715 GMT) on Wednesday, to applause and a standing ovation from delegates, despite the disappointment expressed by some small island states about the final language.
The delegates gathered in the oil-rich UAE since November 30 barely had time to sit down before the deal was declared adopted.
"It is the UAE consensus," Jaber proclaimed from the podium, visibly relieved at the result, after months of promising to secure a "historic" deal and weathering criticism for his dual roles leading the key climate conference while helming national oil company ADNOC.
"We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement, for the first time ever," he said, prompting even more vigorous applause.
Moments earlier, negotiators could be seen chatting happily in the enormous plenary room of the gigantic expo park in Dubai, where discussions ran a day longer than scheduled.
The relaxed atmosphere among the exhausted delegates, just four hours after the publication of the latest draft text, had suggested a favourable outcome despite the furore a day earlier over a draft that proposed reducing rather than abandoning fossil fuels.
"The Saudis are on board, that's surprising, but the Chinese too, the Americans... it's unexpected," a European negotiator said just before the plenary began.
Nearby, the heads of the Saudi and Chinese delegations chatted and smiled. Their opposition to mentioning a "phase out" of fossil fuels had threatened to leave them isolated, with other nations demanding more ambition in a final text.
But in the end, they found a way to agree to "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner."
- 'The starting point' -
Until the last minute though, there was uncertainty.
Would India, highly dependent on coal and notably quiet during the summit, oppose the compromise?
"I have mixed feedback," the negotiator admitted, before the session opened and removed any final doubts that the text would be adopted.
Still, for all the cheers and relief, the adoption was greeted with significantly less enthusiasm by small island developing states that are among the nations most at risk from climate change.
Their representatives were not even in the room at the moment of adoption, apparently arriving late to the already delayed plenary.
"We didn't want to interrupt the standing ovation when we came into the room, but we are a little confused about what happened. It seems that you just gavelled the decisions and the small island developing states were not in the room," said Samoa's representative Anne Rasmussen.
She said the grouping was delayed as they tried to agree a coordinated position on the text, and declared the bloc unhappy with the final result.
"We have come to the conclusion that the course correction that is needed has not been secured."
Lengthy applause and shouts of encouragement followed Rasmussen's comments, from civil society groups at the back of the room, but also European and other delegates.
"By all the tears of joy we just had in our eyes, we saw also that there were some tears from some of us in the rooms who might be not only tears of joy," acknowledged Germany's Foreign Minister Anna Baerbock.
"We see you and we feel and see that for your children this might not be enough. And therefore this text is for us as the European Union, as Germany, just the starting point."
Fossil focus: key points of the Dubai climate deal
Paris (AFP) Dec 13, 2023 -
After nearly three decades of dancing around the chief driver of global warming, UN climate negotiations in oil-rich United Arab Emirates on Wednesday called for the first time for the world to "transition away" from polluting fossil fuels.
The landmark first for the UN process was laid out in a text designed to respond to the failure so far to meet the Paris deal's more ambitious -- and safer -- goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels.
The UN's IPCC climate science panel and the International Energy Agency have stressed that no new fossil fuel infrastructure is compatible with that target -- yet major coal, oil and gas countries and firms currently plan to keep increasing production.
Agreed by almost 200 countries, the COP28 decision "marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era", said analyst Dave Jones of energy thinktank Ember.
But the text contains some significant loopholes, analysts say.
Here are some key points:
- Fossil fuels -
The key paragraph calls for a "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science".
While UN climate negotiations have mentioned fossil fuels before, this was to call for a phasing out of "inefficient" subsidies.
Tackling all fossil fuels, which account for some three quarters of all human-caused emissions, is "unprecedented in this process" said David Waskow, International Climate Action Director at the World Resources Institute.
Observers said another positive was the call for acceleration "this decade" -- a crucial timeframe given that the IPCC says emissions must be slashed almost in half by 2030 to keep 1.5C in sight.
But they raised concerns that the call to move away from fossil fuels was only within the energy sector, leaving out reference to polluting plastics and fertilisers.
- Renewables -
The Dubai text calls for: "Tripling renewable energy capacity globally and doubling the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030".
At the start of the Dubai meeting, more than 130 countries signed on to a voluntary pledge to do just this, but observers say inclusion in the main COP28 decision text was key.
Momentum has been building for this target, not least because of the dramatic increase in renewable capacity over recent years.
The IEA has forecast that world demand for oil, gas and coal would peak this decade thanks to the "spectacular" growth of cleaner energy technologies and electric cars.
In September, the G20 -- accounting for some 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions -- broke new ground in endorsing the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity by the end of the decade.
"For the first time, the world has recognised the scale of ambition required this decade to build the new clean energy system: a tripling of renewables and doubling of efficiency improvements," said Jones.
"Together they are the single largest actions that can deliver rapid fossil fuel cuts this decade."
- Coal -
The first push for an agreement on stopping burning fossil fuels came at the Glasgow climate conference two years ago, where negotiators singled out coal.
That meeting ultimately agreed to "phasedown" unabated coal power -- meaning without technology to capture emissions.
Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, but it is also a mainstay of many energy systems in developing economies, including in India and China.
Negotiators in Dubai retained this language.
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