COP28: A historic moment for climate change, a pivotal moment for the private sector

This year, we’ve been proud to grow our historic partnership with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as its built momentum toward what we predicted would be the most impactful COP since Paris. We’ve called this “The UAE Effect” for the long reaching impacts of the UAE’s “break the mold” approach to COP. Never a country to under deliver, as COP28 wraps up, it’s evident the UAE will succeed for accelerating real action toward addressing climate change and electrification.  Here are five ways we see COP28 as a game changer going forward.

“Passing the baton” to the private sector to lead

COP21 in Paris was a fundamental game changer in uniting countries around the world—the public sector—to take action toward climate change goals. In a parallel, COP28 will be remembered as a similar game changer for formalizing the role of the private sector to take the lead—in partnership with the public sector—in delivering the technology the world needs. In this way, it’s biggest impact may be something of a baton passing from the public to private sectors. 

The UAE and Dr. Sultan Al Jaber invited the private sector at the outset to engage with parity, and the private sector showed up with its own ambitions and commitments. For example, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik wrote for the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Agenda, saying “The role of the private sector—specifically around innovation and technology—has never been more crucial as we continue to electrify the world while simultaneously working to decarbonize it… Recent advancements toward decarbonization have been driven in part by policies [like the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.] that are elevating the role of business to lead the development and deployment of critical technologies at scale.” 

And in a first for the U.S. Center, we unveiled the “U.S. Innovation: Pathways toward Net Zero” exhibit, presented by the Corporate Coalition for Innovation & Technology toward Net Zero (CCITNZ), which includes GE and nine other industrial leaders. It was incredible to see dozens of initiatives and technologies that GE Vernova, GE Aerospace , and our customers and partners are deploying around the world.

Succeeding for climate and business

As the private sector embraces growing responsibility, stakeholders want to understand companies’ plans. For the first time in my COP experience, much of the conversation was not just about climate and energy, but about the strength and vitality of companies themselves, and how they plan to succeed as businesses in order to succeed for climate change. This involves a greater focus on customer needs, product reliability, and product stewardship vs. competing for the sake of competing.

For example, increasingly we are improving  not only on the carbon intensity of the electrons our technology contributes to the grid, but the sustainability of the equipment itself. That is why GE Vernova announced it is joining the First Movers Coalition, a global coalition of companies leveraging their purchasing power to decarbonize the world's heavy-emitting sectors, and making a voluntary commitment that at least 10% of all steel purchased will be near-zero emissions by 2030, measured by volume per year. This is an example of being good for business through strategic investments and good for sustainability and climate.

A new world order for breakthroughs

In recent years, the U.S. and European Union have enacted policies to ignite investments in breakthrough technologies. However, at COP28, the Global East and Global South made their own case. They raised their hands high to reinforce their commitment to being part of the future of innovation, and offering collaborative environments to ensure they can accelerate progress.

GE Vernova announced a range of collaborations with governments and customers across the region and around the globe. For example, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation (ENEC) announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to identify opportunities for future investments in the BWRX-300 small modular reactor. The collaboration will expedite and centralize the UAE's approach to deploying state-of-the-art nuclear technology. As another sign of nuclear power momentum, we were pleased to be invited to the official delegation for the announcement by 22 countries to launch the “Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy by 2050,” which was hosted by President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron and U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry.

I also had the honor of attending an MOU signing ceremony with SK E&S and others to help advance and scale a low-carbon hydrogen project in Boryeong City. With this MOU, SK E&S aims to produce and supply up to 250,000 tons of low-carbon hydrogen each year and use it for mobility and power generation, and GE Vernova will evaluate its highly-efficient and industry-leading gas turbines to run on hydrogen/natural gas blends.

And just before the opening of COP28, Dubai-based Emirates became the first airline to operate an Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger airliner, using 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in one of its engines. Conventional jet fuel was used in three of its four Engine Alliance GP7200 engines and 100% SAF in the fourth engine, marking another milestone in the industry’s growing momentum to bring standardization and adoption of 100% SAF closer to reality. Take a look at how GE Aerospace made progress to reduce emissions in 2023.

Delivering energy innovation to new horizons

COP28 highlighted how GE’s global technology and services portfolio is increasingly having local impacts in a more diverse set of markets. For example, GE Vernova and Alfanar Construction have started a project to convert a significant fleet of GE Vernova 7E turbines from liquid fuel to natural gas at Saudi Electric Company's 3.5 GW Power Plant 10 in Riyadh, one of the largest power stations in the world, reducing up to 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

The Islamic Corporation for the Insurance of Investment and Export Credit (ICIEC) and GE Vernova’s Energy Financial Services business signed an MOU to bolster sustainable development and climate action across ICIEC’s 49 member states. We believe this collaboration will accelerate the deployment of capital, goods, and services necessary for sustainable energy projects in ICIEC member states.

And on the eve of COP28, we announced an order from O2 Power Private Limited to supply, install, and commission 36 units of our workhorse 2.7-132 onshore wind turbines for the 97 MW wind power projects in Maharashtra, India. The agreement will contribute towards India’s target of 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. The O2 Power project leveraged GE’s significant local footprint in India with product design primarily at GE’s Technology Center in Bengaluru, blade manufacturing in GE’s plants in Vadodara, and assembly at the GE multi-modal manufacturing facility in Pune.

Moving technology off the page and to the senses

Perhaps one of my most impactful learnings was how we have to do more than discuss innovation. Just as a picture’s worth a thousand words, the impact is multiplied when people have the opportunity to see, touch, and engage, creating a truly immersive experience of the technology that is driving climate action.

At GE Vernova’s “Wonders of the Wind” exhibit in the Blue Zone, we showcased our contributions to the 3XRenewables by 2030 campaign, which calls to triple global renewable power capacity by the end of the decade. We welcomed Her Highness Sheikha Shamma bint Sultan bin Khalifa Al Nahyan , president and CEO of the UAE Independent Climate Change Accelerators , to share how replicas of LM Wind Power ’s ZEBRA 100% recyclable wind turbine blade tips were transformed into dynamic murals reflecting core themes at COP28: energy, water, food, health, transport, diversity, nature, and trade. 

We also hosted scores of customers, government stakeholders, and partners at the GE Vernova Experience Center for tours to see the breadth of our technology across three distinct exhibits highlighting industry-leading electrification technologies, solutions to decarbonize the energy sector, and developing innovations to meet net zero.

This year’s COP is a historic success thanks to the leadership, initiative and investment undertaken by the UAE, who have been an incredible partner to GE as we explore new opportunities for renewable energy infrastructure and deployment in the region.  Although expectations were high, they always are with the UAE and they certainly continued their legacy of overdelivering for one of the world’s most important stages.

As we prepare to launch GE Aerospace and GE Vernova as independent companies in the beginning of the second quarter, we are excited to use this momentum to progress our goals toward a lower carbon future. More important, GE’s own transformation is helping to advance climate action toward electrification and decarbonization at GE Vernova and leading the future of flight at GE Aerospace.