THE CARBON WAR

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The Winning of The Carbon War
there is no doubt that if we burned all the fossil fuel that’s in the ground right
now that the planet’s going to get too hot and the consequences could be dire.”
This was the first time an American President had referred to unburnable
carbon and – implicitly – the risk of stranded assets.
The Carbon Tracker team was thrilled. Speculation began immediately
about whether his team had been reading our work, and briefing him accordingly.
There has been so much visibility for both divestment and engagement
recently, so much of it mentioning our conclusions, that it would be difficult
for American officialdom to miss it. The most potentially damaging development
for the fossil fuel industries has been the decision by the British Medical
Association to take its pension fund out of fossil fuels. In this action, the doctors
are placing coal, oil and gas in the same product-brand category as tobacco.
I wonder where David Cameron’s head is on all this now. He defends the
shale vision so vehemently, and yet his record on climate change is far from
hopeless in other respects. He presides over a government that is completely
split on the issue within its own ranks. George Osborne and the Treasury bat
almost wholly for the oil and gas industry, it seems, but over at the Department
of Energy and Climate Change, ministers seem to be trying hard to move the
climate agenda forward. Secretary of State Ed Davey, a Liberal Democrat, is
a strong advocate of wind energy. Climate Change Minister Greg Barker, a
Conservative, is a strong advocate of solar energy. Notwithstanding Solarcentury’s
spell in court opposite him, I have few illusions about the constraints he
operates under. I need little persuasion that he would do more if he had the
political room to manoeuvre. Cameron could give him that, but mostly doesn’t.
Almost all the Conservative ministers, save Greg Barker, have backed
away from the green industrial revolution they advocated when they were in
opposition. It seems such a lost opportunity, to me: a lost cause, even, when
one thinks of the potential prize for the British economy. The IEA calculated
last month that the world will need to spend $40 trillion on providing its
energy supply by 2035. That is $2 trillion a year, up from $1.6 trillion last year.
How much of this is likely to go to renewables? The REN21 renewable-energy
organisation recently published the results for new power generation added in
2013. The renewables share jumped to more than half for the first time, 56%,
up 8.3% on 2012. More than 22% of global power production is now renewable.
In Germany it is running at more than 30%. Bloomberg has estimated that
by 2030, two thirds of all energy investment will be going to renewables. The
opportunity for the British economy would be huge, if the leadership grabbed
its chance to accelerate the clear ultimate winner.