There is “no science” behind the demand to phase out fossil fuels, the United Arab Emirates politician who is Cop28 president has said, in the latest difficult revelation for the summit’s Emirati hosts.

Dr Sultan Al-Jaber, who also heads the state oil company Adnoc, said the phase-out of fossil fuels was not necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement target of limiting warming to 1.5C during a meeting in the run-up to the summit.

“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C,” he said in response to a question from Mary Robinson, the former Irish president.

Dr Al-Jaber, who is also head of the renewable energy company Masdar, suggested that a phase-out of fossil fuels would mean countries missing out on “sustainable socioeconomic development” and could not be achieved “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.

He added that a “phase-down and a phase-out of fossil fuels is inevitable, it is essential, but we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it.”

His comments are at odds with messaging from the UN, which convenes the Cop28 summit.

On Friday Antonio Guterres, the UN chief, called for a total oil and gas phase-out. “Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out – with a clear timeframe aligned with 1.5 degrees,” he said.

The comments from Dr Al-Jaber were seized upon by climate activists, who pointed to several reports that find phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to stick to the Paris Agreement goals, including a new report released on Sunday.

Prof Sir David King, a former UK chief scientific adviser, and the chairman of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group told the Guardian, who first revealed the comments from Dr Al-Jaber, that they were “incredibly concerning and surprising”.

The report, Ten New Insights in Climate Science, was presented to the Cop28 summit on Sunday afternoon. It finds that warming beyond 1.5C was “fast becoming inevitable” and that scenarios that include oil and gas in the future were no longer feasible to limit warming.

“The only way to do that is to phase out fossil fuels by 2050,” said Prof. Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

But he acknowledged that Dr Al-Jaber may be right in a limited sense, that “It may not be an absolute zero [fossil fuels] by 2050. There will be a residual that will have to be abated through carbon dioxide removal technologies”.

‘Evidence-based action plans’

Simon Stiell, the head of the UN’s climate change body, which convenes the Cop28 summit, said “scientific findings from reports like these should inform the ambitious and evidence-based action plans needed in this critical decade of accelerated climate action”.

A spokesman for Cop28 said “The IEA and IPCC 1.5C scenarios clearly state that fossil fuels will have to play a role in the future energy system, albeit a smaller one.

“The COP President was quoting the science, and leading climate experts. He has clearly said that the oil and gas industry must: tackle scope 1 and 2 emissions, must invest in clean energy and clean technologies to address scope 3, and that all industry must align around keeping the North Star of 1.5 within reach.

“Once again, this is clearly part of a continued effort to undermine the COP Presidency’s tangible achievements and a misrepresentation of our position and successes to date. We operationalized Loss and Damage and capitalized the Fund with over $700 million. 

“We launched the world’s largest private market climate vehicle with $30 billion. We brought 51 national and international oil companies to agreement ambitious decarbonization targets, and 119 countries have signed our renewable energy and efficiency pledge. 

“We secured the largest ever replenishment of the Green Climate Fund with $12.5 billion. This is just the beginning.”