Abu Dhabi: The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s plan to accelerate decarbonisation was approved on Monday.
During a meeting of the Executive Committee of the ADNOC Board of Directors, Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, approved ADNOC’s plan to bring forward its net zero ambition to 2045, from its previous target of 2050, and to achieve zero methane emissions by 2030. ADNOC is the first company in its peer group to accelerate its net zero target to 2045.
Sheikh Khaled noted that these ambitious targets mark a new chapter in ADNOC’s transformational journey to a lower carbon future.
Sheikh Khaled and the committee members were also briefed on ADNOC’s 2022 upstream carbon intensity performance of ~7 kgCO2e/boe as it responsibly contributed to meeting growing global energy demand.
In 2022, ADNOC’s industry-leading methane intensity was ~0.07 per cent, and the company was awarded the Gold Standard Pathway by the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership 2.0.
Additionally, in 2022, the company achieved greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions of ~4mt by using grid energy from solar and nuclear power to supply 100 per cent of its onshore operations and ~1mt from energy efficiency and flaring reduction projects.
ADNOC’s decarbonisation plan includes a $3.8 billion, first-of-its-kind at-scale project, connecting its offshore operations to clean grid power, reducing its offshore carbon footprint by up to 50 per cent. It also includes building a 1 million tonnes per annum low-carbon ammonia production facility to help ADNOC’s customers decarbonise.
This year, ADNOC started two pilot projects to deploy leading climate technologies to capture and permanently store carbon dioxide (CO2) as part of its plan to expand its carbon capture capacity to 5 million tonnes annually by 2030.
The innovative pilots build on ADNOC’s industry-leading carbon capture and storage facility, Al Reyadah, which became the world’s first commercial-scale operation to capture emissions from the steel industry when it was completed in 2016. The facility, with the capacity to capture 800,000 tonnes of CO2, has played a pivotal role in advancing carbon capture technology and reducing emissions from industry.
ADNOC is delivering on its plan to plant 10 million mangroves by 2030. In 2022, the company planted 200,000 mangrove seeds using drone technology to aerially plant 2.5 million mangrove seeds over three years. To date, ADNOC has planted more than two million mangrove seedlings across Abu Dhabi. The company’s efforts support the UAE’s aim to plant 100 million mangroves by 2030.
