To move from ‘billions to trillions’ will require greater involvement from the private sector along with a shift in mindset from sharing burdens to embracing opportunities.
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which in turn help us “to see the wood for the trees”. Shuan Sadreghazi, one of the authors of the UNESCO Science Report 2021, warns: “What we need to identify and understand is the bottleneck: the lag between starting climate-friendly initiatives and seeing the impact on the ground.” Impact in the field was very much the goal the OPEC Fund set itself during its first full participation at the COP27 conference in Sharm El-Sheikh in November 2022. Addressing the question of how to mobilize climate financing the OPEC Fund played a key role in putting together the US$24 billion climate facility launched at the event by the Arab Coordination Group (see pages 42-47). Echoing the results of the IIASA research project, OPEC Fund Director- General Dr. Abdulhamid Alkhalifa said:
Climate Action Plan in September 2022 with the “ambitious, yet realistic” target of increasing the share of climate financing to 40 percent of all new financing by 2030. This does not mean the end of financing energy projects, of course. Energy has long been and remains the key driver of growth and development. Instead, it means financing different projects such as renewables and massively strengthening energy efficiency and savings. After all, the greenest – and cheapest – form of energy is the one that stays in the tank, or indeed, the battery.
“The energy transition will only succeed if it is also just, inclusive and sustainable.” The OPEC Fund is playing its part with an increasingly pro-active approach. “If your focus is development, everything now has to be climate-focused,” its Assistant Director-General Financial Operations Tarek Sherlala states (see page 14). The Fund adopted its first
We wish you a successful new year and an interesting read.
Axel Reiserer, Editor
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