OPEC head Barkindo says 2050 net-zero unrealistic, climate finance lacking

Quantum Commodity Intelligence – The head of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said Tuesday that plans to decarbonise the energy sector over the next 28 years were "unrealistic" and overlooked the fact that climate finance to help poorer countries build green energy systems was not forthcoming.

Speaking at the Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference in Abuja, Mohammad Barkindo, who is also Nigeria's chief delegate to UN climate talks, said Nigeria would prioritise energy poverty and hunger before trying to achieve zero emissions.

"In terms of scale and timing, the 28-year period from now until 2050 is not adequate to achieve net-zero emissions, considering the scale of investments required, the availability of land, the required massive expansion of the electricity grid and a host of nearly 400 milestones that would need to be reached to achieve the net-zero goal," Barkindo said.

"The last transition took nearly 200 years to cycle through, and now we want to achieve an even more ambitious transition in less than 30 years. This is simply not realistic," he said.

The lengthy lead time on mining and the vast number of minerals and metals needed for the green revolution would be a big hurdle, he said, as well as the need for climate finance from rich nations, which, so far, has been sluggish.

In May, the IEA released its net-zero by 2050 pathway, which stated that both rich countries and developing countries would need to meet tough emission reduction goals by the middle of the century if the world was to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

While Barkindo said this was an ambitious goal, he said a priority would be to focus on the 790 million people worldwide who did not have access to electricity and, currently, fossil fuels were much cheaper to tap into to alleviate fuel poverty.

At UN climate talks this year, the issue of climate finance will be debated and the target of producing $100 billion per year in green financing to help the developing world decarbonise has still to be met, he said.

"And another issue of concern is that climate financing is increasingly being administered as loans, which means that developing countries are required to borrow at interest rates that can sometimes be prohibitively high, effectively leading them to defer or cancel their clean energy projects."

Barkindo's statement comes as the EU is set to announce its green package to cut emissions 55% by 2030 and become the "first climate neutral continent" by 2050.

Among the measures is the bloc's "sustainable finance strategy" – namely how to funnel hundreds of billions of euros in investments away from fossil fuels and into clean energy in a way that avoids "greenwashing."

And funds are responding, with Bloomberg reporting Tuesday that private equity is ditching fossil fuel investments over climate change concerns.

The head of Nigeria's national oil company said Tuesday, that the rate at which banks are moving away from financing fossil fuels, coupled with the absence of climate finance, could prolong fuel poverty in developing nations.