Big business mixes with geopolitics at expanded UN climate summit

Scores of major companies have flocked to Expo City on the outskirts of Dubai for the world’s biggest UN climate summit, to rub shoulders with some of the near-200 governments and tout their business.

The attendance of prominent bank and energy bosses has risen, including the first-time visit by ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods, but the leaders of a host of other enterprises are also present for the first time after the COP28 agenda was expanded for health, food, water and nature.

Speaking from Dubai, Reckitt chief executive Kris Licht said he was “delighted” that health had finally been given a formal place on the agenda. Reckitt came to prominence at COP26 in Glasgow, where it supplied its Dettol disinfectant to the organisers in the middle of the pandemic.

“By collaborating to unpack how climate impacts health and how healthcare impacts the climate, we can find solutions to both problems,” he said, about the event that has also drawn drug companies such as AstraZeneca.

From the oil and gas industry, UAE guests included Oxy chief executive Vicki Hollub, ENI head Claudio Descalzi and German energy group RWE’s Markus Krebber.

But the wider range of corporate attendees this year includes EY chief executive Carmine di Sibio, Microsoft president Brad Smith, Lloyd’s of London boss John Neal, and Volvo deputy chief executive Javier Varela.

“Business has an integral role to play in both finding and implementing the solutions to climate change,” said Varela.

He added that COP28 was “an invaluable opportunity” for Volvo, which has begun sourcing “green” steel for its vehicles. It was a chance “to listen and learn from other companies and experts that like us” believe that limiting global warming to “1.5C above pre-industrial levels is a limit rather than just another target.”

Power company bosses were also well-represented as talks took place about the shift from coal and methane emission cuts, bringing French group’s Engie’s chair Jean-Pierre Clamadieu and chief executive Catherine McGregor, as well as NextEra’s Rebecca Kujawa.

Bobby Banerjee, professor of management at Bayes Business School at City University in London, said oil and gas companies had been attending the COP for years despite being on the sidelines of the agenda. “But it’s become a lot slicker now,” he said, likening it to a “trade show”. 

In many cases, he says, the “real stuff” happens away from the official climate negotiations at the COP, with businesses meeting each other or with officials from countries or states.

“What really happens is the backroom deals,” he says. “They have these side events. That’s where you will find the oil companies talking about [technology like] carbon capture and storage.”

For smaller businesses or those with interesting technology, the COP was a big opportunity to showcase their products, he said.

The cohort of senior bankers at the summit has also swelled, as finance for climate-related projects moves into the front lines, growing since Glasgow’s COP26 when the financial alliance was launched with Bank of America boss Brian Moynihan and Standard Chartered’s Bill Winters.

Steven van Rijswijk, chief executive of ING, who is also in Dubai, said the Dutch bank was keen to be part of the financing of the energy transition.

“[COP] is always the place where all relevant players come together, so it is good to be there too, to be part of the conversation, to hear what the developments are, what everyone thinks about it and to make clear what we can contribute and what we expect,” Rijswijk said. 

But Paul Morgenthaler, managing partner at venture capital group CommerzVentures, says COP is little more than “a business conference where oil deals are struck”. 

Concerns about the fossil fuel industry’s roles at the summit have been amplified this year, because host country the United Arab Emirates is one of the world’s largest oil and gas producers. COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber is also the boss of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. 

The UAE has been linked to about $200bn in deals, largely in green energy, in the run-up to COP28, according to Financial Times analysis. At the start of the summit, it announced a £30bn climate-focused investment vehicle, working with asset managers including Brookfield and BlackRock. Both Brookfield’s Connor Teskey and BlackRock’s Larry Fink were in Dubai.

The size of the COPs has ballooned in recent years, with registered attendees upwards of 80,000 not including a large support staff at the venue.

Some have called for COP to be slimmed down, refocusing on the climate negotiations. Morgenthaler believes the present format has “proven ineffective at addressing the challenge we are up against”.

Others, including Jaber, argue the business world should be at the annual climate summit, because it has a chief role in shifting economies to become greener.

The private sector will need to provide trillions of dollars in financing for the shift to greener economies if the world is to meet its goals of limiting global temperature rises. 

Lloyd’s Neal said he would welcome an agreement between countries on whether to phase out fossil fuels as this would provide more “certainty” to the business world. The leading insurance market sent Neal along with its chair Bruce Carnegie-Brown.

“They’re going to have that conversation at some point, so why not have it now?” he said, describing the climate transition as “the biggest single opportunity we will have ever seen”.

Acknowledging that Lloyd’s does not require its own members to stop underwriting new oil and gas projects, he said this type of decision was best left to politicians and negotiators.

“I don’t think the private sector should say ‘we will stop insuring fossil fuels in 2035’. That’s for governments to determine.”

“In a strange sort of way, it’s trying to get the government and leadership to think, ‘why don’t you just get in front of the story?’” he added. “Because you’ve got a private sector that will help with the financing, help with the transition.”

Banerjee said that businesses play a role in influencing whatever agreement countries reach.  

“The COP people love to say: ‘Oh look, a small country can veto an agreement’. Sure they can. But those agreements are pointless because the real deals are happening somewhere else.”

He added: “There is a geopolitics, but the geopolitics is always being influenced by big business.”