'Unsustainable path': Energy leaders warn on lagging climate progress

Business leaders in Australia’s energy industry are calling for more aggressive action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, warning the world is “seriously on the wrong trajectory” if it is to avoid the most drastic and immediate effects of global warming.

As protesters pour on to the streets across the globe demanding climate action and the International Monetary Fund calls for the wider rollout of carbon pricing, executives at multinational oil major BP and Schneider Electric are the latest to sound the alarm over sluggish efforts to reduce emissions.

BP chief economist Spencer Dale said the company’s annual review of global energy usage - a highly-respected publication in the energy economics field - had grown at its highest rate since 2010-11, moving even further away from the transition envisaged by the Paris climate agreement which seeks to limit warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Schneider Electric CEO Jean-Pascal Tricoire addresses the company's 2019 Innovation Summit.

“At a time when we are seeing demand from society for more action, more than we’ve ever seen before, last year carbon emissions increased at the highest rate for seven or eight years,” he said.

“So we are seeing this mismatch between the hopes of society … and the reality of the data which is moving in the wrong direction. It’s an unsustainable path. We need to do more about it.”

Emissions policy in Australia has been in uncertainty for more than a decade since the Rudd government’s failed emissions trading scheme in 2008. Last year, the federal government abandoned Malcolm Turnbull’s national energy guarantee.

Mr Dale's comments come after Jean-Pascal Tricoire, chairman and chief executive of the $65 billion French energy giant Schneider Electric, warned the world was on course for a temperature rise of 3.5 degrees, well overshooting the Paris climate target. The world still had approximately 20 years to react, he said, but “not more”.

“The bad news is we are not at all on the right trajectory. If we keep going on that trajectory we have to be prepared for hot weather, typhoons, hurricanes, climate disorder, migrations,” he said.

“We will see more of that happening … 3.5 degrees is ugly.”

French-based Schneider Electric - an adviser on energy management to Australian businesses, manufacturer of electrical equipment and owner of Adelaide-based energy technology company Clipsal Solar - last month stepped up its commitment to carbon neutrality by bringing forward its 2030 goal of carbon neutrality to 2025.

The $47 billion French multinational pledged to achieve net-zero operational emissions by 2030 and engage with suppliers towards a net-zero supply chain by 2050.

The good news, said Mr Tricoire, was that electricity was anticipated to grow from 20 per cent of global energy use to 40 per cent by 2040 as the world became increasingly electrified, and electricity was gradually shifting away from fossil fuels towards renewable sources of generation.

Mr Tricoire said businesses and households would largely drive the transition towards a renewable energy-dominated future as they sought to unlock efficiency and sustainability savings and avoid climate-related risks. But he said government leaders had a role to play in establishing carbon prices, and “at least not block progress” by continuing to subsidise fossil fuels.

“Subsidising fossil fuels? You have to be crazy,” Mr Tricoire said. “You are subsidising pollution and global warming.”

I sometimes worry that the demonstrators can suggest there is a silver bullet, that renewable energy will provide the answer to everything.

Spencer Dale, BP

As well, Mr Tricoire said digitally-enabled energy-measures could assist in driving a 50 per cent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by 2040 if they were adopted in half of existing buildings.

Mr Dale said BP, primarily an oil and gas producer, was working to drive down the emissions of its operations while rapidly expanding its renewable energy businesses, particularly solar.

“Large businesses and large energy producers like BP have our role to play, to improve our efficiencies in our own operations, and making sure we are generating energy that is cleaner and kinder to the planet," he said.

“The way forward is we need to rely on many, many different types of energy and many, many different types of technology,” he said.

“I sometimes worry that the demonstrators can suggest there is a silver bullet, that renewable energy will provide the answer to everything.”

The reporter travelled to Barcelona as a guest of Schneider Electric.