Energy This Week | The National

Does energy security now trump net-zero? This is a question I’ll be asking at a panel tomorrow at the World Future Energy Summit here in Abu Dhabi. Energy security is top of agenda again in 2026 as countries grapple with uncertainties over the supply of oil and parts required to build large-scale renewable energy projects.

Oil markets remain hostage to geopolitics, with tensions around Iran and the US actions in Venezuela injecting more volatility into the reliability of future supply. At the same time, trade barriers, including tariffs on key solar components, are raising costs and slowing the deployment of renewable projects, underlining how energy security concerns are increasingly shaping the pace and path of the energy transition.

The US exit from the Paris Agreement in 2025, following the re-election of Donald Trump, has also softened earlier rhetoric around accelerating net-zero transition by 2050. The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence also creates more strain on existing power grids, necessitating additional capacity. Additional power-generation capacity - even if it is renewable - is not necessarily replacing hydrocarbon-generated electricity but simply meeting new demand.

In today’s energy landscape, net zero may still be the destination but energy security is clearly setting the speed limit.

At the opening of Abu Dhabi’s annual sustainability week, Dr Sultan Al Jaber, managing director and group chief executive of state-run Abu Dhabi National Oil Company painted a realistic picture of the energy landscape as it stands today. Dr Al Jaber, who is also chairman of renewable energy company Masdar, sees fossil fuels continuing to dominate the energy narrative even as countries including the UAE continue to work towards net zero by the middle of the century.

Global data-centre electricity demand is set to rise 500% by 2040.
AI is the primary driver, its growth fueled by large-scale investments in data centres around the world

More than 70% of data-centre power demand will still be supplied by hydrocarbons, according to Dr Al Jaber.

He called for a reality check, noting that renewables will complement, not replace, fossil fuels over the coming decades. “Energy demand is accelerating across every dimension,” Dr Al Jaber said at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week.

The International Energy Agency estimates data-centre power demand will:

More than double by 2030
Reach 945 terawatt-hours

That is equivalent to slightly more than Japan’s total electricity consumption today.

AI workloads are power-intensive, always-on, and highly sensitive to outages.

This makes baseload power, including natural gas, critical to AI expansion. “There is no artificial intelligence without actual energy,” Dr Al Jaber said.

AI investment since 2024: $148 billion
Major global partners include: OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, SoftBank
Flagship project: 5-gigawatt UAE-US AI campus in Abu Dhabi
Microsoft investment: $1.5 billion in G42, which includes a 200-megawatt data centre

Clean energy capacity targets:

6.8 GW installed by end-2024
19.8 GW by 2030 (up from 14.2 GW)
More than 22 GW by 2031

Clean energy share:

35 per cent of baseload by 2031
50 per cent of energy mix by 2050 (net-zero target)

Bottom line:

The AI boom is exposing the limits of today’s power systems, forcing policymakers to balance climate ambition with the practical need for scale, speed and reliability.

Baseload: Electricity that is available all the time, without interruption, regardless of weather, time of day or demand spikes. Baseload is critical to ensure reliability of AI systems. As renewable energy power is intermittent due to the variability of solar irradiation and wind currents, natural gas and even nuclear are seen as more viable baseload power.

Annual investment needed in energy to build grids and data-centre infrastructure