THE CARBON WAR

Duty, bubbles and neuroscience 61
come, especially in our ability to feed ourselves, provide clean water, and avoid
scope for military conflicts.
Jeremy Grantham tells me he views the human predicament as the greatest
race of all time. On the one hand we have accelerating climate disaster, and
the obduracy of the players rushing us ever faster towards that cliff. On the
other hand, we have a global clean-energy shift, and the financing that needs
to be mobilised to accelerate it enough to offer a chance of saving humankind.
We consider Carbon Tracker’s potential role in this race, and our progress
to date. In recent weeks Norway’s oil fund has announced that it will debate
stopping investments in all fossil fuels. It has been given a mandate by the
government, in parallel, to invest in renewable energy. ExxonMobil has agreed
to report to investors on fossil fuel asset-stranding risk. BP has confessed in its
annual report that it agrees not all fossil fuel reserves can be burned.
Jeremy Grantham tells me that he has no doubt that Carbon Tracker has
had a big hand in developments like this.
I ask him where he stands personally on the question of how much fossil
fuel can be burned to give a reasonable change of a two degrees ceiling on
global warming.
We could burn all the cheaper-production oil and gas, he replies. But we
dare not burn all the coal, much of the tar sands and the energy-intensive oil
and gas, including from shale. If we do that, we are cooked, we are done for.
We discuss tactical options for Carbon Tracker. Horses for courses, he
recommends. Sometimes divestment is the right way to go, sometimes engagement.
He agrees with the Carbon Tracker approach of focussing on engagement.
He also supports 350.org’s divestment campaign.
We move on to renewables. The potential for solar and wind to lead the
way in completely replacing coal and gas for utility generation globally is pretty
much certain, he argues. The question is only whether it takes 30 years or 70
years. Solar is getting cheaper by the minute, whereas petroleum is getting more
expensive. It is only a matter of time before these trajectories cross. Solar and
wind are competitive already in many locations. What is needed is a continuing
steady drop in the cost-down trend of renewables.
We compare notes on companies seeing the writing on the wall. Software
giant SAP is the latest aiming to power its operations worldwide with 100%
renewable electricity. They aim to buy renewable energy credits to achieve the
goal. Other companies are intent on the more difficult but ultimately resilient
pathways to 100%: generating their own renewable electricity, or signing power