Summary
- Russia’s war on Ukraine prompted a frenzy of energy deals between EU member states and countries in the Middle East and North Africa, but their implementation is slow.
- The EU needs a new approach to energy cooperation with states in the Middle East and North Africa that serves both its energy security imperative and its climate goals.
- The Gulf monarchies represent a good test case for such an approach, due to their green ambitions, abundant resources, and significance to the fight against climate change.
- Political and ideological differences are currently the greatest obstacle to long-term, strategic energy cooperation between the regions. But this year’s COP28 in Dubai is an opportunity for both sides to focus on practical ways to accelerate the green transition.
- Europeans should emphasise four promising areas of energy cooperation with the GCC states: energy efficiency and electrification, renewable energy, and the circular carbon economy.
Floods in Italy, landslides in Pakistan; ice storms in Texas, wildfires in Canada. The climate devastation of 2023 is a reminder, as if another were needed, that time is running out to address global warming. Yet, the March 2023 report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that current emissions reduction pathways and technologies remain insufficient to limit…