DETROIT – Ford Motor is delaying production of a new all-electric large SUV and pickup truck, as it shifts to offer hybrid options across its entire North American lineup by 2030.

The Detroit automaker on Thursday said it will continue to invest in EVs, but it is postponing production of the three-row SUV at a plant in Canada from 2025 to 2027 to allow for the market to mature more. The pickup is being pushed back from late 2025 to 2026.

The shift in EV plans is the latest for Ford and the entire automotive industry as adoption has been slower than many expected and production costs remain high.

Ford last year said it would delay or cancel $12 billion in planned spending on new electric vehicles due to the shifting market conditions as well as challenges to profitably building and selling the vehicles. It was not immediately clear whether the new delays were part of those plans.

“As the No. 2 EV brand in the U.S. for the past two years, we are committed to scaling a profitable EV business, using capital wisely and bringing to market the right gas, hybrid and fully electric vehicles at the right time,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said Thursday in a statement.

The three-row SUV was part of a roughly $1.3 billion investment to transition Ford’s Oakville Assembly Plant in Ontario, Canada, into a new electric vehicle hub. It was supposed to be Ford’s first time completely retooling a North American facility producing gas-powered vehicles into one that manufactures EVs.

“The additional time will allow for the consumer market for three-row EVs to further develop and enable Ford to take advantage of emerging battery technology, with the goal to provide customers increased durability and better value,” the company said in a release.

Ford said it will continue to focus its EV efforts on new plants such as its “BlueOval City” campus in Tennessee rather than transitioning current facilities producing engine-powered vehicles to all-electric models.

“Our breakthrough, next-generation EVs will be new from the ground up and fully software enabled, with ever-improving digital experiences and a multitude of potential services,” Farley said.

The automaker said the massive Tennessee facility, which was part of an $11.4 billion investment announced in 2021, will begin production of Ford’s next-generation all-electric truck, codenamed “T3,” in 2026, rather than 2025.

Ford said it is continuing construction of battery plants in Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky.

In the first quarter of 2024, Ford’s electric vehicle sales increased by 86% from subdued levels a year earlier. Hybrid sales for the automaker rose 42% year over year, while sales of Ford’s traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines were up 2.6%.

Ford’s “Model e” electric vehicle business lost $4.7 billion in 2023, including $1.57 billion during the fourth quarter. In February, the automaker said it expected the unit to lose between $5 billion and $5.5 billion in 2024.

Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after a container ship hit it early Tuesday.

Up to seven people may have fallen into the water after the crash, according to Baltimore City Fire Department Chief James W. Wallace. Two people were rescued, with one transported to a trauma center in very serious condition.

The bridge carries Interstate 695 across the Patapsco River, southeast of the Baltimore metropolitan area.

The crash by the large container ship occurred around 1:30 a.m. ET,  when contractors were working on the bridge, according to Paul Wiedefeld, Maryland’s transportation secretary.

Wiedefeld said the incident is an active search and rescue mission and that vessel traffic into and out of the Port of Baltimore is suspended until further notice.

“This is a very large incident, it involves a very large footprint,” Wallace said in a press briefing.

The fire department chief said sonar scans had detected the presence of submerged vehicles, but could not disclose the number of cars involved.

“The latest information we have on the crew of the ship is that they still are on board of the ship,” Wallace said, adding that rescue agents must first do a damage assessment of the vessel before being able to board. Asked if the ship was suffering any technical impairments, he said, “We do not have that information.”

“There is absolutely no indication that there was any terrorism, that this was done on purpose,” a Baltimore police spokesperson said during the briefing Tuesday. “There is absolutely no indication that this was intentional.”

Completed in 1977, the bridge took the name of Francis Scott Key, whose poem was the foundation of the U.S. national anthem.

The vessel that collided with the bridge has been identified by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“USCG confirms the ship is the 948-ft DALI vessel. USCG has deployed three response boats, and pollution responders are en route from the Sector Maryland-National Capital Region,” the U.S. Coast Guard’s Matthew West told NBC News.

Shipping data indicates that the Singapore-flagged container vessel is under the management of Synergy Marine Group, which said in a statement that all 22 crew members on board, including two pilots, had been accounted for.

“Whilst the exact cause of the incident is yet to be determined, the ‘DALI’ has now mobilised its Qualified Individual Incident response service,” the group said. “The US Coast Guard and local officials have been notified, and the owners and managers are fully cooperating with Federal and State government agencies under an approved plan.”

Marine traffic data suggests the ship was bound for Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Maersk later confirmed chartering the vessel.

“We can confirm that the container vessel ‘DALI’, operated by charter vessel company Synergy Group, is time chartered by Maersk and is carrying Maersk customers’ cargo. No Maersk crew and personnel were onboard the vessel,” the company said.

“We are closely following the investigations conducted by authorities and Synergy, and we will do our utmost to keep our customers informed.”

The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said in a statement it “will provide full cooperation to the US Coast Guard in its investigations.”

The office of Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said emergency personnel remained on the scene after the bridge’s collapse.

“I have declared a State of Emergency here in Maryland and we are working with an interagency team to quickly deploy federal resources from the Biden Administration,” the governor said.

“We will remain in close contact with federal, state, and local entities that are carrying out rescue efforts as we continue to assess and respond to this tragedy.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the Francis Scott Key Bridge carries Interstate 695 and crosses the Patapsco River.

Elon Musk said Chinese electric automakers will find “significant” success outside of China, even as his firm Tesla faces intense competition from these same companies.

“The Chinese car companies are the most competitive car companies in the world. So, I think they will have significant success outside of China depending on what kind of tariffs or trade barriers are established,” Musk said on Tesla’s earnings call on Wednesday.

“Frankly, I think, if there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other companies in the world.”

It’s not the first time Musk has heaped praise on Chinese EV makers. Last year, the billionaire called Chinese EV firms “the most competitive in the world” and said they are likely to be among the world’s top auto companies.

“If I were to guess … probably some company out of China is the most likely to be second to Tesla,” Musk said.

Tesla’s own shares slid in pre-market trade on Thursday, after the company posted earnings that missed expectations and warned of a slowdown in 2024.

As around half of the world’s adult population heads to the polls in a bumper year of elections, concern over the role of artificial intelligence in disrupting outcomes has topped the list of the biggest risks for 2024, according to a new report.

The World Economic Forum’s “Global Risks Report 2024,” released Wednesday, ranked AI-derived misinformation and disinformation — and its implications for societal polarization — ahead of climate change, war and economic weakness in its top 10 risks over the next two years.

“AI can build out models for influencing large populations of voters in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Carolina Klint, chief commercial officer for Europe at consultancy Marsh McLennan, which co-produced the report, told CNBC’s Silvia Amaro.

“How that is going to play out is going to be quite important for us to watch,” she added.

Looking further ahead, the balance of risks for the next decade shifts toward extreme weather conditions and critical changes to the political world order, with two-thirds of those surveyed anticipating a new multipolar or fragmented world to take shape.

The WEF report, which was also produced in collaboration with Zurich Insurance Group, surveyed over 1,400 global risk experts, policymakers and industry leaders in September 2023 about their biggest global concerns.

The report’s authors said the combined risks are “stretching the world’s adaptative capacity to its limit,” and called on leaders to focus on global cooperation and building guardrails for the most disruptive emerging risks.

“An unstable global order characterized by polarizing narratives and insecurity, the worsening impacts of extreme weather and economic uncertainty are causing accelerating risks – including misinformation and disinformation – to propagate,” Saadia Zahidi, WEF’s managing director, said.

“World leaders must come together to address short-term crises as well as lay the groundwork for a more resilient, sustainable, inclusive future,” she added.

The most cited risks for the next two years were, in order: misinformation and disinformation, extreme weather events, societal polarization, cyber insecurity and interstate armed conflict. Also in the top 10 were lack of economic opportunity, inflation, involuntary migration, economic downturn and pollution.

Extreme weather events, critical change to earth systems, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, natural resource shortages and misinformation and disinformation were named as the most likely risks over the next 10 years. Adverse outcomes from AI technologies was also named as a longer-term concern.

“Artificial intelligence breakthroughs will radically disrupt the risk outlook for organizations with many struggling to react to threats arising from misinformation, disintermediation and strategic miscalculation, Klint said in the report.

“At the same time, companies are having to negotiate supply chains made more complex by geopolitics and climate change and cyber threats from a growing number of malicious actors. It will take a relentless focus to build resilience at organizational, country and international levels – and greater cooperation between the public and private sectors – to navigate this rapidly evolving risk landscape,” she added.

The report comes as global leaders are due to meet next week in Davos, Switzerland for WEF’s annual summit, during which they will discuss global issues including the ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, the economy and technology, under the event’s tagline “Rebuilding Trust.”

It also comes as the world embarks on a historic year of elections, with Taiwan this weekend kickstarting the elections, which are also due in the U.S., India, Russia, South Africa and Mexico.

In a separate 2024 global risks report released Monday, Eurasia Group named the upcoming U.S. election as its top risk for the year, with “ungoverned AI” also ranking among the top five.

Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group, said in a press briefing that given the wider reaching ramifications of the election outcome, the consultancy had “no choice” but to rank the risk ahead of the wars between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Hamas.

A hacking group widely reported as being linked to Israel has taken responsibility for a cyberattack that’s knocked out the majority of gas stations across Iran, leading to long lines of cars and angry crowds.

Iranian state TV cited the country’s Oil Minister Javad Owji saying that outside interference was a possible cause after 70% of Iran’s gas stations were hit by service disruptions, according to Reuters.

A group called Gonjeshke Darande, or Predatory Sparrow, claimed it was behind the attack in a post on the social media site X.

“We, Gonjeshke Darande, carried out another cyberattack today, taking out a majority of the gas pumps throughout Iran. This cyberattack comes in response to the aggression of the Islamic Republic and its proxies in the region,” the post read.

Addressing Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the group added: “Khamenei, playing with fire has a price.”

Gonjeshke Darande has claimed responsibility for previous cyberattacks on Iran, including one on Iran’s major steel companies.

Iran’s civil defense agency said an investigation was underway and that it was still examining all possible causes for the disruption. Israeli media has covered the alleged attack, but Israel’s government has not commented on it.

A project to build a facility described as “the world’s largest offshore wind farm” took a big step forward this month by producing its first power.

Located in the North Sea, over 130 kilometers off England’s northeast coast, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm still has some way to go before it’s fully operational, but the installation and powering up of its first turbine is a major feat in itself.

That’s because GE Vernova’s Haliade-X turbines stand 260 meters tall — that’s higher than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge — and have blades measuring 107 meters.

Turbine installation at Dogger Bank has required a huge amount of planning and preparation, with the Voltaire — a specialist vessel designed and built by the family-owned Jan De Nul Group — playing a key role.

With a lifting capacity of 3,200 metric tons, the Voltaire — named after the 18th-century French philosopher — will have installed a total of 277 Haliade-X turbines when its work is complete.

Described by Dogger Bank as the “largest offshore jack-up installation vessel ever built,” in many ways, it’s the pinnacle of an extensive supply chain involving numerous businesses and stakeholders.

The logistics are complex and multi-layered, with water depth a particular issue.

The sea in the Dogger Bank Offshore Development Zone is up to 63 meters deep, meaning the Voltaire’s ability to work in deeper waters is crucial. 

This is where its four legs come into play.

According to Jan De Nul, the legs of the Voltaire — which was built at the COSCO Shipping Shipyard in China — enable it to lift itself above the water’s surface.

With each leg measuring roughly 130 meters in length, they highlight the scale of equipment required to install huge offshore wind turbines like GE’s Haliade-X.

In an online Q&A before installations at Dogger Bank began, Jan De Nul’s Rutger Standaert spoke of their importance. “Thanks to those legs, the Voltaire can effectively operate at a water depth of 80 meters,” Standaert, who is manager of vessel construction at the business, said.

He noted that the Voltaire’s capabilities would enable installations further out to sea, allowing it to play a key role in the emerging floating offshore wind sector.

“Off the Scottish coast, for example, expensive floating windfarms are often the only way to tap into offshore wind,” he said. “The water is too deep for fixed windfarms, but the Voltaire can offer new opportunities.”

Thinking big

Once completed, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm will have a total capacity of 3.6 gigawatts (GW) and be able to power as many as six million homes per year, according to its developers.

Work on the project is taking place over three phases: Dogger Bank A, B, and C. A fourth phase of the wind farm known as Dogger Bank D has also been proposed, and would increase its capacity even further.

Søren Lassen is head of offshore wind research at Wood Mackenzie, a research and consultancy group. He described Dogger Bank as “a huge project, especially if you combine the three phases.”

“It is a project that requires a lot of preparation,” he told CNBC. “There’s the logistics in terms of having the vessels to do the installation … and then of course, you also have the logistics in terms of getting the components to the marshaling port.”

Both of these aspects were being made “a lot more complicated” by the use of next-generation turbines and a next-generation installation vessel, Lassen said.

“You have … a lot of innovation that goes into this. And not only do you need a new vessel or new components, you also need new factories to build those components.”

As such, a slew of upgrades and adjustments were needed to “reverberate throughout the entire value chain” for operations to run smoothly, he added.

Bigger turbines, bigger challenges?

Thanks to their sheer size, larger turbine designs have created a specific set of needs for the offshore wind sector and sites like the Dogger Bank Wind Farm.

“From cranes to vessels, we use a number of specially designed pieces of equipment to transport the Haliade-X turbines that will be used in this project,” a spokesperson for GE Offshore Wind said in a statement sent to CNBC.

Wood Mackenzie’s Lassen stressed the importance of having dedicated transportation vessels, noting that the towers of turbines need to be broken into three or four sections in order to fit on board.  

Massive blades represent the biggest challenge, he said, as they have to be laid flat. “And that just means that you need a very, very long transportation vessel, [and] that you need to stack them up accordingly.”

Meanwhile, delays or bottlenecks can have far-reaching — and expensive — consequences.

Lassen cited the example of blades not being delivered on time, which leads to vessels having to “go away and then come back half a year later to do the installation. This is very costly, of course.”

And delays also lead to lost revenue.

“These projects are going out [and] generating a lot of power from the day that they’re being installed, pretty much,” Lassen added.

“So any delays [and] you’re also losing a lot of revenue, especially right now when the power prices are really, really high.”

The bigger picture

Offshore wind farms are set to play a significant role in reducing emissions and hitting net zero goals in the years ahead — but a supply chain that’s well-run and reliable will be key to the industry’s success.

This is set to cost serious money. According to Wood Mackenzie, a base case of 30 GW of installations per year by 2030 — excluding China — will require investment of around $27 billion by 2026 to build out supply chains.

“The supply chain needs to invest,” Lassen said, adding that it also needed capital, certainty and concrete, firm orders. However, cost pressures mean there is currently uncertainty over projects planned for 2025, 2026 and 2027.

“Any delays to these projects takes away volume from the supply chain, and the supply chain needs that volume to convert it into revenue to build new factories,” Lassen explained.

It is crucial that projects planned for the next few years go ahead, he added. “That helps the underlying supply chain ramp up so they can build the capacity [for] ’27, ’28, ’29 and well into the 2030s as well.”

A project described as the “world’s largest offshore wind farm” took a major step forward over the weekend after producing its first power.

Located off the coast of northeast England in the North Sea, the Dogger Bank Wind Farm is being developed in three phases — A, B and C — and will have a total capacity of 3.6 gigawatts once fully up and running. A fourth phase, known as Dogger Bank D, has been proposed.

“The project’s first turbine at Dogger Bank A started turning and producing electricity at 8.37pm BST on Saturday 7 October,” the Dogger Bank Wind Farm Project said in an announcement Monday.

“Power from the first offshore wind turbine is now being transmitted to the UK’s national grid via Dogger Bank’s high-voltage direct current … transmission system, marking the first-time use of HVDC technology on a UK wind farm,” it added.

The scale of the project is considerable, with those behind it saying it will be able to power as many as 6 million homes per year. Dogger Bank is using GE Vernova’s huge Haliade-X turbines, which boast blades measuring 107 meters, or about 351 feet.

Dogger Bank is a joint venture partnership involving SSE Renewables, Equinor and Vårgrønn, which hold stakes of 40%, 40% and 20% respectively.

In a statement, SSE Chief Executive Alistair Phillips-Davies said Dogger Bank would “provide a significant boost to UK energy security, affordability and leadership in tackling climate change.”

“This is exactly how we should be responding to the energy crisis,” he added.

Equinor is a Norwegian business better known for its production of oil and gas, but it also is involved in wind energy projects like Dogger Bank and Hywind Tampen.

“A renewable mega-project like Dogger Bank constitutes an industrial wind hub in the heart of the North Sea, playing a major role in the UK’s ambitions for offshore wind and supporting its net zero ambitions,” Equinor CEO Anders Opedal said.

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak welcomed the news. Sunak — who has faced sharp criticism from some quarters after a shift in climate policy — described offshore wind as being “critical to generating renewable, efficient energy that can power British homes from British seas.”

The United Kingdom is home to a mature offshore wind sector, with the U.S. government’s International Trade Administration highlighting traits such as good wind speed, a long coastline and a “relatively shallow seabed,” among other things.

Major offshore wind farms in waters off the U.K. include Hornsea 2, a fully operational, 165-turbine facility that boasts a capacity of more than 1.3 GW. Danish energy firm Orsted has previously called it “the world’s largest installed windfarm.”

While those involved in Dogger Bank have repeatedly called it “the world’s largest offshore wind farm,” Monday’s statement also referred to it as the “world’s largest offshore wind farm under construction,” an apparent nod to the fact that significant work is still required before it’s complete.

Across the Atlantic, the U.S. has some way to go to catch up with countries like the U.K., with a range of factors creating a challenging environment for the sector’s development there.

America’s first offshore wind farm, the 30 megawatt Block Island Wind Farm, started commercial operations only in late 2016, although the U.S. is planning to ramp up its offshore wind capacity in the coming years.

In November 2021, ground was broken on Vineyard Wind 1, which has been dubbed the United States’ “first commercial scale offshore wind farm.”

MUNICH — You’d be forgiven for thinking that the IAA, one of the world’s biggest motor shows, is actually a technology conference, after tech giants like Amazon, Qualcomm and Samsung all showed up for this year’s event.

Their presence underscores demand for traditional automakers to boost the technology in their vehicles, from software to hardware, as they look to catch up with Tesla in the electric car future. Ramping up technology features is also essential to meet buyer expectations in China.

“Tesla and the Chinese start-ups. This is the two-way force they [traditional automakers] are experiencing, driving them to have more user experience in the car,” Mohit Sharma, automotive research analyst at CCS Insight, told CNBC.

They can’t do it alone. Carmakers are looking at tech firms for help, while also trying to work on items like software in house.

Part of Tesla’s global success has come down to its technology in a number of areas, from batteries to Autopilot — its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), which uses semi-autonomous driving features. The screen within Tesla cars is also akin to that of a smartphone.

Those features are what rival automakers are trying to build and get ahead on.

There are two major operating systems in the smartphone sphere — Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. That’s not the case in the car world, when it comes to the ever popular infotainment systems and screens.

Auto firms are now focusing on developing their own operating systems, so that using car screens more closely resembles working with the apps of a smartphone.

To that end, Mercedes-Benz revealed further details at the IAA about its self-developed operating system called MB.OS, which will help power various features from the giant screen across the dashboard to the voice assistant in its upcoming EVs.

Swedish EV player Polestar this year created a joint venture with Xingji Meizu — a smartphone maker owned by Chinese auto giant Geely — and plans to launch its own smartphone in December, when the Polestar 4 car begins delivery to customers. Meizu is making an operating system for Polestar cars based on its own product, called FlyMe. The idea is that users would be able to have a seamless experience between the smartphone and Polestar’s operating system in the company’s cars.

U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm was also in attendance at IAA. The company is making a big push into the automotive space, where its chips can be used to help power artificial intelligence applications within vehicles. One example it showed was a car assistant that could find a recipe for chicken enchiladas and add the ingredients to a shopping list. 

It’s not just about the screen — automakers are also looking into using all parts of the car to display information. BMW said the Neue Klasse EV models it unveiled on Saturday will have what it calls Panoramic Vision, a heads-up display which projects information on the windscreen at the driver’s eyeline.

To make the drive as comfortable as possible, U.S. EV maker Lucid showed off the massage feature of the seats in its Air Midnight Dream Edition car.

A big part of the focus of Tesla technology has surrounded its Autopilot ADAS. No car can operate autonomously — at least from a legal perspective — but automakers are ramping up the driverless features and capabilities.

Tesla is perhaps one of the furthest ahead with its ADAS features, followed by young Chinese players like Xpeng and Nio.

Many automakers aspire to become major players in the world’s biggest and highly competitive electric vehicle market, China. In a bid to differentiate themselves from rivals, Chinese firms have talked up the tech features of their vehicles, from software to ADAS capabilities — and Chinese customers expect the latest tech perks.

“It’s not just good enough to bring a great European design to China, you have to be very, very special about what you offer to the market when it comes to software,” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, told CNBC in an interview Tuesday.

Heeding that sentiment, foreign companies from BMW to Mercedes are looking to invest heavily in tech development, as they aim to boost EV sales in China.

Volkswagen CEO Oliver Blume on Wednesday said that the company is ramping up its number of software engineers in China.

“We want to operate with China speed in China,” Blume said at the IAA conference.

UAE oil giant ADNOC — run by the president of the COP28 climate conference — is expected to spend more than $1 billion every month this decade on fossil fuels, according to new analysis by international NGO Global Witness.

This is nearly seven times higher than its commitment to decarbonization projects over the same timeframe, the research says.

ADNOC, which recently became the first among its peers to bring forward its net-zero ambition to 2045, disputes Global Witness’ analysis and says the assumptions made are inaccurate.

It comes ahead of the COP28 climate summit, with Dubai set to host the U.N.’s annual conference from Nov. 30 through to Dec. 12. Viewed as one of the most significant climate conferences since 2015’s landmark Paris Agreement, COP28 will see global leaders gather to discuss how to progress in the fight against the climate crisis.

The person overseeing the talks, Sultan al-Jaber, is chief executive of ADNOC (the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company) — one of the world’s largest oil and gas firms. His position as both COP28 president and ADNOC CEO caused dismay among civil society groups and U.S. and EU lawmakers, although several government ministers have since defended his appointment.

Global Witness’ analysis, provided exclusively to CNBC, found that ADNOC is planning to spend an average of $1.14 billion a month on oil and gas production alone between now and 2030 — the same year in which the U.N. says the world must cut emissions by 45% to avoid global catastrophe.

It means that ADNOC is forecast to spend nearly seven times more on fossil fuels through to 2030 than it does on “low-carbon solution” projects.

By 2050, the year in which the U.N. says the entire world economy must achieve net-zero emissions, ADNOC is projected to have invested $387 billion in oil and gas. The burning of fossil fuels is the chief driver of the climate emergency.

A spokesperson at ADNOC told CNBC via email: “The analysis of, and assumptions made, regarding ADNOC’s capital expenditure program beyond the company’s current five-year business plan (2023 to 2027) are speculative and therefore incorrect.”

The Abu Dhabi energy group announced in January this year that it would allocate $15 billion for investment in “low-carbon solutions” by 2030, including investments in clean power, carbon capture and storage and electrification projects.

Global Witness arrived at its projections by analyzing ADNOC’s forecasted oil and gas capital expenditure, exploratory capital expenditure and operational expenditure for the period from 2023 to 2050. The data was sourced from Rystad Energy’s UCube database.

Rystad’s data is not available to the public, but is widely used and referenced by major oil and gas companies and international bodies.

“Fossil fuels companies like to burnish their green credentials, yet they rarely say the quiet part out loud: that they continue to throw eyewatering amounts at the same old polluting oil and gas that is accelerating the climate crisis,” said Patrick Galey, senior investigator at Global Witness.

“How [al-Jaber] can expect to lecture other nations on the need to decarbonise and be taken seriously is anyone’s guess, while he continues to provide vastly more funding to oil and gas than to renewable alternatives,” he added.

“He is a fossil fuel boss, plain and simple, saying one thing while his company does the other,” Galey said.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the analysis conducted by Global Witness. The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the supreme decision-making body of the UNFCCC.

Al-Jaber was the founding CEO of Abu Dhabi state-owned renewable energy firm Masdar, which works in more than 40 countries worldwide and has invested in or committed to invest in renewable energy projects with a total value of over $30 billion.

Speaking earlier this year, al-Jaber said the main priority for the COP28 summit will be to keep alive the fight to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The Paris Agreement aims to limit the increase in the global average temperature to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond the critical temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, it becomes more likely that small changes can trigger dramatic shifts in Earth’s entire life support system.

The International Energy Agency says no new oil, gas or coal development is compatible with the goal of curbing global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In response to a request for comment from CNBC, an ADNOC spokesperson said that energy demand is increasing as the world’s population is expanding. “All of the current energy transition scenarios, including by the IEA, show that some level of oil and gas will be needed into the future,” the spokesperson said.

“As such, it is important that, in addition to accelerating investments in renewables and lower carbon energy solutions, we consider the least carbon intensive sources of oil and gas and further reduce their intensity to enable a fair, equitable, orderly, and responsible energy transition. This is the approach ADNOC is taking,” they added.

The spokesperson said its 2022 upstream emissions data confirmed the energy group as one of the least carbon-intensive producers worldwide. The company will seek to further reduce its carbon intensity by 25% and target near zero methane emissions by 2030, they added.

“As we reduce our emissions, we are also ramping up investments in renewables and zero carbon energies like hydrogen for our customers,” the spokesperson said.

A separate report published in April last year by Global Witness and Oil Change International found that 20 of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies were projected to spend $932 billion by the end of the decade to develop new oil and gas fields.

At that time, Russian state company Gazprom was estimated to spend the most on fossil fuel development and exploration projects through to 2030 ($139 billion), followed by U.S. oil majors ExxonMobil ($84 billion) and Chevron ($67 billion).

The world could face a shortage for lithium as demand for the metal ramps up, with some analysts forecasting that it could come as soon as 2025. Others, however, see a longer time frame before that shortfall hits.

BMI, a Fitch Solutions research unit, was among those that predict a lithium supply deficit by 2025. In a recently published report, BMI largely attributed the deficit to China’s lithium demand exceeding that of its supply.

“We expect an average of 20.4% year-on-year annual growth for China’s lithium demand for EVs alone over 2023-2032,” the report stated. 

In contrast, China’s lithium supply will only grow 6% over the same period, BMI said, adding that rate cannot satiate even one third of forecasted demand. 

China is the world’s third largest producer of lithium, which is an integral element in electric vehicle batteries. 

The world produced 540,000 metric tons of lithium in 2021, and by 2030 the World Economic Forum projects that global demand will reach over 3 million metric tons.

According to forecasts by S&P Global Commodity Insights, EV sales are set to reach 13.8 million in 2023, but will subsequently proceed to skyrocket to over 30 million by 2030.

“We do fundamentally believe in a shortage for the lithium industry. We forecast supply growth of course, but demand is set to grow at a much faster pace,” said Corinne Blanchard, Deutsche Bank’s director of lithium and clean tech equity research. 

By the end of 2025, Blanchard sees a “modest deficit” of around 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, but forecasts a wider deficit amounting to 768,000 tonnes by the end of 2030.

Other analysts don’t see a deficit coming so soon, but still predicted a shortfall by the end of the decade.

While more lithium mines and mining exploration projects coming online could support burgeoning demand, that would only extend the runway for a few more years, according to Rystad Energy’s estimates.

According to the energy research firm, hundreds of lithium projects are currently under exploration, but the complexity in geology and time-consuming permitting process still pose challenges.

There are currently only 101 lithium mines in the world, according to Refinitiv data.

Rystad Energy Vice President Susan Zou estimates that total lithium mine supply will increase by 30% and 40% year on year in 2023 and 2024, and that miners would continue to develop both existing and greenfield projects amid a “global push to electrify transportations.”

While that could point to a global lithium surplus next year, shortages could start to plague supply chains in 2028. 

“In the next couple of years, though the lithium supply may stay adequate at a world-level, regional supply imbalance is still inevitable,” Zou added, noting regional mining and processing capacities in the U.S. and Europe might not be able to keep up with demand for EV batteries. 

“The global battery supply chain may find lithium in shortfall again approaching the end of this decade when the supply growth might not keep pace with that of the demand,” she said.

In that scenario, Zou said lithium prices could spike to their historic 2022 highs, which in turn would increase battery production costs. 

Lithium carbonate prices surged to a record high of almost 600,000 yuan per ton in November 2022, more than 12 times January 2021 prices.

Wood Mackenzie similarly forecasts that the overall lithium market will see a supply surplus in the coming years. However, continued demand growth and very few projects entering production in the early 2030s could mean the market is likely to experience another supply deficit, said the consultancy’s vice president of metals and mining research, Robin Griffin. 

“The main risks [are] likely to come from delays in commissioning of new projects and delays in permitting of new assets,” he said.

Lithium mines generally take “10 years or longer” from first discovery to full-fledged lithium operation, Piedmont Lithium’s chief commercial officer, Austin Devaney, told CNBC via e-mail.

“We believe there will eventually be enough lithium to support the demands of electrification. But in the near term, we expect to see the impact of supply constraints on lithium pricing for many years, if not longer,” he said.