Climate Change Put Qatar at Risk Due to Pollution [Study]

Qatar is one of the wealthiest countries per person in the world, but it is also one of the most polluting. Large SUVs with cheap gasoline are common in this country, which is about the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut. Buildings are kept cool all year with air conditioning. Even the country's drinking water uses a lot of energy since it comes from desalination plants that burn fossil fuels to get the force they need to press ocean water through tiny filters to make it drinkable.

Qatar has made small steps toward meeting its climate goals in the past few years. At the climate talks in Paris in 2015, it didn't promise to cut emissions, but it did set a goal to cut emissions by 25% by 2030. One way would be to use carbon capture and storage at gas production plants, a technology that has been widely discussed but hasn't been used on a large scale yet.

A study published in the Reviews of Geophysics in June 2022 says that the weather in the Middle East is likely to get 9°F (5°C) warmer by the end of the century.

(Photo: GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP via Getty Images)
A general view taken on December 20, 2019, shows the skyline of the Qatari capital Doha.

Can Liquefied Natural Gas Solve Qatar's Pollution?

Qatari officials and some academics say that exporting liquefied natural gas to the rest of the world can help the world switch to clean energy because liquefied natural gas is less polluting than oil and coal. As more leaks from natural gas infrastructure become clear, science is showing that this view is not accurate. Ton for ton, natural gas leaks are much worse for the climate than carbon dioxide.

This year, the state-owned gas company Qatar Energy joined a pledge by the industry to cut almost all methane emissions by 2030. Methane is the main thing that makes up natural gas.

But after Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe rushed to find a replacement for the gas that came from that country. Qatar, one of the world's top producers and exporters of natural gas, was in the best position to benefit.

Qatar made new deals with a number of energy companies. Most recently, it signed a 27-year deal with the Chinese oil and gas company Sinopec to supply it with liquefied natural gas.

"Since the war in Ukraine, everyone is talking to the Qataris now to see if they can get that gas," Karim Elgendy, an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, said per Phys.org.

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About Qatar's Environment

Qatar is a small peninsula that sticks out into the Persian Gulf. It is in a part of the world that is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, except for the Arctic.

Part of the reason is that the water in the Persian Gulf is getting warmer. The Persian Gulf is a shallow, narrow sea that helps make Qatar very humid during some months.

Elgendy said in an Associated Press report that the modern country couldn't exist without being able to pay for imported food, strong air conditioning, and ocean water that has been filtered to remove the salt.

Mohammed Ayoub, a professor at Qatar's Hamad bin Khalifa University's Environment and Energy Research Institute, said Qatar has much to lose from climate change. It is one of the hottest places on Earth and will get even hotter, with more floods, droughts, sand and dust storms, and floods.