Assistant Secretary for Energy Resources Geoffrey R. Pyatt’s Keynote Address to the AmCham MENA Regional Council Conference in Dubai

Good evening to all of our AmChams across the MENA region. I really would have loved to be with you in Dubai for this regional meeting, but I’m delighted to at least be able speak virtually. Like everyone in the United States today, we’ve been watching over the past two days the incredible pictures out of Dubai and the Gulf Region. I want to begin by just saying how much I hope everyone is safe and secure at this point. 

For nearly two years now I’ve led the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources at a time during which energy security and the energy transition have taken center stage in our diplomatic engagements.  

As President Biden has said on many occasions, “energy security is national security.”  But if we are going to meet our energy and climate ambitions, governments can’t do it alone.  We need the help of so many of you who are gathered from the private sector across the MENA region to reach our energy transition goals.  

For my part, since day one in this position, I have prioritized collaborating with the private sector globally, often working with our partners at the U.S. Chamber in Washing and with AmChams around the world.  

If we have any hope of keeping within reach the Paris climate goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, we all need to dramatically decrease emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, from all sources.  To do this, we need to quickly increase private and public investment, accelerate the energy transition, and boost every form of clean energy.

We have a historic opportunity to lead in this energy transition, just as the United States has led across the fossil fuel era – deploying American technologies and American innovation, working with like-minded partners around the world.  

But to succeed, we will need to accelerate our efforts to deploy clean energy technologies and find solutions to reduce reliance on unabated fossil fuels. 

The Middle East region is facing simultaneous challenges with global implications: the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, attacks by Iran and its regional proxies, and the ongoing instability that imposes, and interruptions to key shipping routes in the Red Sea to name just the headline issues.

It’s more clear than ever that we have to work together to shape energy systems that can withstand this sort of volatility.  

The nations of the Middle East and North Africa have repeatedly proven their resilience in the face of adversity and strife.  

Many of you in the audience today are from traditional fossil fuel exporting countries whose governments and state-owned companies nonetheless are taking very seriously the climate crisis, and the need to diversify energy sources and diversify economies.

In my time as Assistant Secretary, I have traveled across the MENA region and seen tremendous innovation and investment in the energy transition.  I had the opportunity to be in Egypt for COP 27 just two months after I started this job.

I also attended COP28 in Dubai last year.  I was so impressed by the progress that we’ve made at both conferences, and by how seriously governments in the region and the private sector have invested in the success of our energy transitions.  

COP28 achieved some historic outcomes, with the leadership of UAE, including a call for all parties to transition away from fossil fuels in their energy systems to achieve net-zero by 2050 and a decision made on day one of the COP conference to operationalize a fund for loss and damage from climate change. 

The United States worked closely with partner governments at COP28 to expand the number of countries signed on to the Global Methane Pledge and to increase the availability of international finance for methane abatement projects, and we are continuing  to implement these efforts to reduce emissions, a topic we covered here in Washington over the past few days with Iraqi Prime Minister Sudani and his cabinet.    

Having two consecutive COPs in the MENA region, and the next COP nearby in Baku, underscores the vital importance of your region to current and future energy security.  Each country’s transition will be different, but what we have in common is the need to accelerate investment and secure diverse supply chains.  

I went to Saudi Arabia in January to attend the Future Minerals Forum and visit with American companies in Dhahran. I was so impressed by the scale of the Kingdom’s investments in renewable technologies and also the commitment the Kingdom has demonstrated to investing in neighbors such as Egypt. 

I’ve also visited Qatar’s impressive facilities at Ras Laffan and seen what that government is doing to advance work on carbon sequestration, capturing CO2 and injecting it back into the earth where it’s stored forever.  This is a prime example of how the global oil and gas industry is investing in ways to minimize its carbon and methane footprints, both critical requirements if we are to meet our Paris climate goals. 

Iraq, similarly, is a country with enormous traditional and renewable energy potential that U.S. energy companies can help unlock.  We aim for our companies around the region to be preferred partners, including in Iraq to help boost prosperity, and ensure energy security in a way that also accelerates the energy transition. 

During his visit to Washington this week Prime Minister Sudani committed to accelerating the capture of flared Iraqi natural gas and adding at least 12 GW of solar capacity to Iraq’s grid with the goal of increasing Iraq’s energy independence, something the United States strongly supports.  U.S. companies like KBR, Baker Hughes, Honeywell, and GE are at the forefront of these efforts, working to capture flared and wasted gas and turn it into electricity for the people of Iraq. 

Algeria, likewise, is working with partners to take concrete steps to identify and manage its methane emissions, reducing the carbon intensity of its oil and gas sector, slowing global warming, and enhancing Europe’s energy security by exporting more natural gas. 

As leaders in the private sector, all of you are aware that planning for the energy transition makes good business sense and is also critical to ensuring the long-term prosperity of energy producing countries.  

I believe that your region – once known to supply the world with fossil fuels – can grow to be a hub for low-to-zero emission energy sources, whether it’s wind, solar, clean hydrogen, or nuclear.  And I want to help ensure that just as American companies were the MENA region’s partner of choice in the fossil era, our companies are positioned to lead the way in the energy transition.

Having reliable and abundant clean energy will greatly reduce or eliminate emissions from industry, transportation, and other hard to abate sectors and will allow for the growth of new industries, technologies, and export markets.  

Countries across North Africa, for instance, have considerable potential to develop their wind and solar resources and hope to build out and attract investments to expand this capacity.

It’s also encouraging to see so many proposals for electricity interconnection in the MENA region, including the prospect of directly connecting Egypt and Greece via an undersea green electricity interconnector cable.  

I had a front row seat to these ambitious proposals when I was the U.S. Ambassador in Greece.  I know electricity interconnections will help stabilize and integrate the region, allowing power trading across borders, based on the unique resources and demand patterns of different countries.

We are already seeing big moves in this space, like the first exports of electricity from Jordan to Iraq which recently came online, and Iraq’s connection to the GCCIA, the Gulf Cooperation Council’s electricity interconnector, as well as proposals to export Morocco’s solar energy via an undersea cable to the UK.  

Even important regional groupings focused on fossil fuels, like the East Med Gas Forum that Egypt launched in 2019, have embraced important decarbonization – and they have commissioned several studies on ways to decarbonize the gas industry and are looking into how to synchronize efforts on Measurement Monitoring Reporting and Verification standards. 

The State Department, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Bezos Earth Fund are all partnering together to establish the Energy Transition Accelerator (ETA), an initiative to mobilize finance for power sector transition in developing countries via carbon credit markets.  

By COP29 in Azerbaijan this fall, the ETA will launch a coalition of ETA credit buyers and suppliers and will announce a collective mobilization goal, which we estimate could generate up to $41 billion in investment, and upwards of $200 billion in transition finance through 2035.

Multilateral development banks, meeting in Washington this week, make up a large and growing share of overall public climate finance.  They are critical to our ability to deliver on our climate finance target.  Additionally, they are particularly well-placed to drive business-friendly policy reforms in developing economies.  It will be critical for the World Bank to press this agenda forward this year, and to leverage its private sector lending arm to help mobilize private capital.

We all must also unlock private-sector resources to mobilize finance at the enormous scale we need to solve the climate crisis.  In the run-up to COP29, private sector financial institutions need to demonstrate how they are going implement their net zero commitments, including their plans for deploying capital in emerging markets and developing economies. 

However, a major barrier to this investment is the higher risk associated with doing business in emerging markets and developing economies.  In this context, blended finance can play an important role.  It uses risk-taking capital from public or philanthropic sources to shift the risk-versus-return calculus so the private sector can participate comfortably.  The United States made its first three investments in blended finance programs in 2023, totaling $32 million. 

Finally, I should add a note on energy access.  One of the most critically under-resourced regions in the Middle East and North Africa is of course Gaza.  This was already the case before October 7, when Gaza had 8-12 hours of electricity per day.  

Now the situation is far more dire.  The U.S. government has worked relentlessly to remind stakeholders in the Israel-Hamas conflict about critical humanitarian needs, which include electricity and fuel to power necessities like water desalination and urgent healthcare services.

Any plans we have for reconstruction the “day after,” or economic recovery efforts, will require that the people of Gaza have access to affordable and reliable energy streams that are clean and green.   

We hope to see the vision of regional integration and collaboration realized, with a more connected, more prosperous, and much more peaceful MENA. 

Thanks for your time and I look forward to supporting your continued success.