Climate collaboration
Support for an international agreement on climate change by chief executives of 10 large oil and gas companies represents a constructive step. But the Joint Collaborative Declaration published Oct. 16 by the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) needs a careful reading it might not receive in the absolutist stampede of climate politics.
By noting that companies represented in the declaration have lowered greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 20% in 10 years, the OGCI declaration usefully asserts that fossil-energy companies can advance climate-change mitigation and aren't just demons requiring exorcism. To that end, the declaration makes the crucial point that governments are challenged not only to respond to climate change but also to accommodate the growth of energy supply needed by a growing world.
Timely assertion
This assertion of a constructive role for fossil energy companies is timely. In the run-up to the United Nations climate change conference in Paris starting Nov. 30, ascendant messages of climate activism are that suppliers of fossil energy threaten humanity and that resources of oil, gas, and coal should remain undeveloped. Such economically perilous nonsense deserves automatic dismissal. That it receives serious attention bodes ill for the Paris meeting, called COP21.
The OGCI declaration begins by expressing "our collective support for an effective global climate-change agreement." It later says signatory companies will support implementation of "clear, stable policy frameworks that are consistent with a 2° C. future." The statement thus promises support for COP21 decisions but adds the important qualifiers "effective," "clear," and "stable."
To some observers, any support will seem concessionary. In fact, it's pragmatic. Businesses of all types crave to know what rules will be for climatological precaution. Most know rules are coming. "We will support the implementation of these frameworks," the declaration says, "because they will help our companies to take informed decisions and make effective and sustainable contributions to addressing climate change."
By mentioning "a 2° C. future," the OGCI flirts with hazard. The reference is to the gain above preindustrial levels beyond which UN climate researchers believe global average temperature can't safely stray. Handy as it is as a benchmark, the 2° C. increment concedes too much of an unsettled argument. Its use asserts knowledge that doesn't exist about the amount of GHG reduction required to keep temperature within the targeted limit.
Much remains to be learned about climate sensitivity-the temperature consequence of a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Temperature observations increasingly indicate computer models that predict dangerous warming assume much more climate sensitivity than is at work in nature. No one really knows the GHG concentration correlating with a 2° C. temperature rise-certainly not with confidence required for the energy-use overhaul central to aggressive proposals. What is clear is that the sum of GHG cuts governments have expressed willingness to make doesn't come close to what's necessary if the current guesswork is correct.
The OGCI declaration acknowledges the political force of the 2° C. policy expediency without fully endorsing it. "We recognize the general ambition to limit global average temperature rise to 2° C., and that the existing trend of the world's net GHG emissions is not consistent with this ambition," it says.
Value of collaboration
Signatories of the declaration-representing BG Group, BP, Eni, Pemex, Reliance Industries Ltd., Repsol, Shell, Saudi Aramco, Statoil, and Total-commit to collaboration in five areas: efficiency, natural gas, long-term solutions, energy access, and partnerships and multistakeholder initiatives. By collaborating, the companies say, they can achieve more than what's possible through individual efforts.
The commitments are ambitious, practical, and bound for trouble. The effort to increase gas use in the global energy mix, for example, will meet resistance from influential pressure groups outspokenly determined to curtail use of fossil energy. The reception OGCI receives for its initiative thus will reveal much. It will highlight important differences between COP21 participants serious about prudent and practicable action on climate change and radicals who just want to tell others how to live.