UAE Joins UN Secretary-General’s Panel on Energy Transition Minerals in Copenhagen

Abdulla Balalaa is UAE’s Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs for Energy and Sustainability Affairs; he attended the United Nations’ Critical Energy Transition Minerals (CETM) Panel in Copenhagen. It was attended by participants from the governments, organizations, and specialists to focus on the extremely important topic for the world – the critical minerals for renewable energy transition. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres also chaired the talks.

Presided over by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in the UAE at COP28, the CETM Panel whose key area of concern are the transitional energy minerals. The body gives members an opportunity to express themselves regarding several aspects concerning these minerals and seeks to come up with the self-regulatory codes of good practices.

Transition metals are used in the production of clean technologies like windmills, solar panels and devices, electric vehicles and battery storage. In the panel, Balalaa participated on the topics, namely, trade and investment, climate change and protection measures.

Balalaa also pointed to an added value in the form of generating business and creating opportunities for people and communities of environmentalirreversible victims of climate change. He especially warned that if the investments in the sector were not opened there would be a significant delay in the energy transition. He stressed the appropriateness of the strategic concentration of the efforts on the sectors and activities where there is a strong similar interest and overlapping within the global critical ensemble of energy minerals.

Balalaa also expressed the views on a socio-economic, climate, and environmental perspective in the energy transition materials meetings with his counterparts. Mr Deputy Chairman emphasised the need to enhance cooperation through international organizations to solve the economic and social issues affecting the needy regions and worldwide water deficit, particularly the demand for strategic critical metals. He stirred for envisioning the extractive minerals’ developmental pathway, and strategized on the equitable transition to the renewable energy for the long-term socio-economic value addition for the human persons in facilitating the sustainable standards in correspondence to the seventeen Sustainable Development goals set for the year 2030.

During the face-to-face panel meeting, Balalaa claimed that the dialogue, cooperation, and finance that will be an arena in the COP29 that will be held in Baku. He asked for the creation of broad and non-binding norms for the reasonable and fair exploitation of the materials as well as the promotion of practical, ambitious, and win-win strategies.