THE CARBON WAR

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The Winning of The Carbon War
Nick Butler, former BP executive and now energy columnist at the Financial
Times, chairs a panel after Tim’s speech. Most sensible people think fracking
is safe, Nick says in his introductory remarks.
Sensible. Another big word.
I have to wait my turn to reveal myself as misguided and not sensible,
on a later panel. Nick Butler chairs it. David Hone, a Shell executive, is on it.
Shell has been most upset by Ed Davey’s support for the inconvenient and
flawed notion of a carbon bubble. They and other companies have protested the
Secretary of State’s talk of “risky” assets. Oil & Gas UK has written a letter of
protest to the Secretary of State saying the industry is “deeply unsettled” about
risk to investor sentiment. Shell boss Ben van Beurden has given a speech to an
industry gathering on the subject. “For a sustainable energy future,” he says in
it, “we need a more balanced debate. Fossil fuels out, renewables in – too often,
that’s what it boils down to. Yet in my view, that’s simply naïve.”
Naïve. So many big, derogatory, words.
Then this: “Yes, climate change is real. And yes, renewables are an indispensable
part of the future energy mix. But no, provoking a sudden death of
fossil fuels isn’t a plausible plan.”
I am not aware of any advocates of a global energy transition who think
there is any remote feasibility of a “sudden death” for fossil fuels. That’s why
we call it a transition, after all. Non fossil fuels still occupy a small minority of
total global primary energy as things stand.
At the Bloomberg conference, I run through the solar upsides and the
shale downsides in my opening statement. The government needs to get its
shale gas U-turn out of the way so we can focus on the green industrial revolution,
I suggest.
David Hone counters that with the standard oil-industry mantra: fossil
fuels are essential. You can’t solve these problems with a few solar panels on
roofs, he adds.
That’s not what I’m saying, I respond. I am talking about transition away
from oil and gas to clean energy over a period of thirty-five years. You and
your CEO should not resort to straw-man arguments pretending that those
you debate with seek a “sudden death” switch from fossil fuels. I don’t know
of a single person across the table from you who does.
I say this with a small element of what I hope is well contained passion.
These are, after all, matters of life and death. Hone sits listening, not looking
at me, a small smirk on his face.
We don’t want this to turn into a Chelsea match, says Nick Butler.