THE CARBON WAR

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The Winning of The Carbon War
make the targets you table in the run up to the summit as renewables-rich as
you can. There can be no excuses now. We dare not fail.
Ségolène Royal, French Environment Minister, speaks next. I echo all that,
she says. In France, as host of the summit, we have a particular obligation to
increase the share of renewables in the energy mix, and are responding to that
responsibility, decreasing the nuclear share and substituting with renewables.
She speaks with passion, using no notes, like Christiana. It strikes me that
two powerful women will have key roles in the endgame at the Paris climate
summit. So much better a prospect than so many of the grey aging men I could
easily imagine might have been appointed in these pivotal roles.
National interventions follow: Germany, South Africa, USA – all positive.
But you would hope they would be, by definition, at the gathering of an
international renewables agency.
Then comes an intervention from the business community: Steve Howard,
Chief Sustainability Officer at IKEA. Our company’s target is 100% renewable
energy right across our global operations by 2020, he says. We are one of the
biggest retailers in the world, and our target is just five years from now. As for
the low oil price, we are not fazed by it. We have seen this movie before. The
oil price goes down. It also goes up. And amid all this volatility, bad as it is for
business, what role do our renewables play? We know the cost of the energy
from all our wind turbines and solar panels will be zero tomorrow, the next
day, and in 20 years from now. This is good for business. We have started to
sell solar panels in our stores. This is good for consumers. A solar roof system
is the best investment a householder can make.
He works up an impressive rhetorical flow as he describes IKEA’s vision of
a renewable-powered future, and the role of the business world in delivering it.
Now is our moment, he concludes. We must seize the day.
The applause is enthusiastic.
After this session, I have a catch-up meeting with Christiana. We sit in
the marbled lobby of a five-star hotel as famous professional golfers wander by
wearing their caps and suntans. The Abu Dhabi HSBC Masters is on its final day.
Steve was great, Christiana agrees. But why do we have a silent majority
in business? We need many more to speak out like him in the year ahead. We
all need to work harder to make that happen. What are you intending to do
about it Jeremy?
Evening comes, but there is no rest for the participants. They are bussed
to the airport, where a hanger has been decked out for a Question Time-style
debate sponsored by the Financial Times, and a reception fuelled only by fruit