The UAE and US are to cooperate on a range of energy issues including carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS).
UAE minister of energy, Suhail bin Mohammed Faraj Faris Al Mazrouei, and his US counterpart Rick Perry, US secretary of energy, agreed to expand cooperation related to development and trade in oil, gas and coal.
The two parties also agreed to cooperate on greener energy issues including CCUS, nuclear energy and renewables.
Speaking at a press conference, Al Mazrouei said CCUS needed to be scaled up 100-fold globally if the world is to meet existing environmental challenges, Gulf News reported.
“The UAE, the US and Saudi Arabia are already doing their best to scale up this technology. But we need to go for exponential growth [globally] if we are to achieve [the target of] reducing carbon emissions,” he said in a press conference with Perry.
The press conference was held on the sidelines of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, an international initiative to develop CCUS, held last week.
In a separate dialogue with Perry, the UAE and US reinforced commitments to develop safe and responsible nuclear power. The two countries also discussed the importance of using public private partnerships to address energy security challenges, and the importance of investing in developing and deploying energy technology.
The UAE is currently constructing its first nuclear power station, which it expects to come online in 2020.
As part of the discussions, the two countries also launched a dialogue on “clean coal”, a concept US president Donald Trump has been pursuing.
Separately, Abu Dhabi’s only carbon capture company, Al Reyadah, is planning a joint venture with the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, alongside the Masdar research institute, to divert around 12.2m tonnes of CO2 from UAE industries for re-use by the oil sector, the National reported.
The CO2 will replace the natural gas oil producers inject into reservoirs to maintain oil well pressure, freeing up natural gas for energy use.
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