The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) updated NDC sets an emissions reduction target of up to 23.5%, below business as usual by 2030. This translates to emissions of around 246 MtCO₂e/yr (excluding LULUCF) in 2030, which is 13% above its 2015 levels.1 Under current policies, GHG emissions are projected to increase to 29-40% above 2015 levels, which equates to 279-303 MtCO₂e/yr by 2030. This is far from the emissions reductions required to be compatible with 1.5°C pathways.

Conversely, to be 1.5°C compatible the UAE should reduce its GHG emissions by 36-49% below 2015 levels to reach 111-138 MtCO₂e/yr by 2030. The majority of emissions reductions should take place in the energy sector, followed by industrial processes and waste.

Long term pathway

The UAE does not have a net zero GHG emissions goal. To be aligned with 1.5°C compatible pathways, GHG emissions (excluding LULUCF) would need to decline to 18-39 MtCO₂e/yr or 82-92% below 2015 levels by 2050.⁸ This would require stringent and ambitious policies in the power, industry, transport sectors and the halting of oil and gas exploration.

On the road to net zero emissions, the UAE will need to balance its remaining GHG emissions through the development of carbon dioxide removal approaches, either from the land sector or technological approaches. Analysed pathways show that the power sector would be contributing negative emissions of up to -40 MtCO₂/yr in 2050 mostly based on bioenergy from carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Higher shares of renewables would allow the country to rely less on CDR technologies, which are not yet available at scale and entail high investment costs.

¹ Climate Action Tracker. CAT Climate Target Update Tracker: UAE December 2020 Update. (2020).

² Government of UAE. Second Nationally Determined Contribution of the United Arab Emirates. (2020).

³ IEA. World Energy Balances 2019. (2019).

⁴ International Energy Agency. Energy data and statistics. (2021).

⁵ US.Energy Information Administration (EIA). Country Analysis Executive Summary: United Arab Emirates. (2020).

⁶ International Renewable Energy Agency. Statistics Time Series. (2021).

⁷ Power Technology News. Barakah nuclear plant’s first unit begins operations. (2021).

⁸ While global cost-effective pathways assessed by the IPCC Special Report 1.5°C provide useful guidance for an upper-limit of emissions trajectories for developed countries, they underestimate the feasible space for such countries to reach net zero earlier. The current generation of models tend to depend strongly on land-use sinks outside of currently developed countries and include fossil fuel use well beyond the time at which these could be phased out, compared to what is understood from bottom-up approaches. The scientific teams which provide these global pathways constantly improve the technologies represented in their models – and novel CDR technologies are now being included in new studies focused on deep mitigation scenarios meeting the Paris Agreement. A wide assessment database of these new scenarios is not yet available; thus, we rely on available scenarios which focus particularly on BECCS as a net-negative emission technology. Accordingly, we do not yet consider land-sector emissions (LULUCF) and other CDR approaches which developed countries will need to implement in order to counterbalance their remaining emissions and reach net zero GHG are not considered here due to data availability.

⁹ In some of the analysed pathways, the energy sector assumes already a certain amount of carbon dioxide removal technologies, in this case bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS).