Jeffrey Beyer, Managing Director of Zest Associates, provided a sector-by-sector overview on the outlook for decarbonisation across the Middle East at the TXF Middle East & Africa conference earlier this month.
The conference, which was held on March 16th and 17th, focused on the role of Dubai as a potential trading hub for the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, and the burgeoning trade corridor between the two regions.
As a speaker, Jefferey discussed the strength of innovation and cost reductions that have been seen across renewable energy and electric vehicles. He also highlighted the challenges that remain, especially in shipping and aviation, the heavy industrial sector, and in decarbonising the built environment, and outlined potential solutions in each sector.
On the Just Transition, Jeffrey highlighted the risk of energy subsidies, which tend not to deliver the social benefits they promise in a cost-efficient way, while also supporting excess energy consumption and associated emissions.
He also described how the purpose of carbon pricing is to improve justice by 'internalising the externalities' of pollution, essentially making polluters pay for costs of environmental damage otherwise borne by society.
Jefferey also focused on exciting technologies on the horizon, specifically mentioning nature-based solutions as an underrated but hugely important and emerging field to boost biodiversity whilst reducing emissions.
Additionally, he indicated the complementarities of hydrogen, carbon capture, utilisation and storage, sustainable aviation fuels, and carbon dioxide removals, pegging this ecosystem of technologies as ripe for innovation and scale in the Middle East.