Blue&GreenTomorrow on the FT Global Energy Leaders Summit: “The panel, and perhaps the most interesting one of the day, was titled Are We Entering a New Fossil Fuel Era? with panellists including Jeremy Leggett, founder of Solarcentury, and Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP at the time of the oil giant’s Gulf of Mexico catastrophe and now CEO of Genel Energy.”“But it was Linda DuCharme of ExxonMobil that kicked the section off, saying that the world will still be 80% fossil fuel-powered in 2040, “because they’re here, and they’re affordable”. She failed to lay out what happens after this point, though. Perhaps the most puzzling line of the entire first day came from Hayward, who claimed we have “infinite oil”, or, as he put it, “certainly infinite in the way you or I understand it”. The dictionary definition of the term (“unlimited or unmeasurable in extent of space, duration of time, etc.”) might suggest otherwise, though. Like DuCharme, he didn’t suggest an alternative once these supposedly “infinite” sources of energy had run out. “We do need to find new technologies, but not for another two or three decades”, he added. It was left to Leggett, one of the most respected clean energy commentators in the UK, to bring up the elephant in the room: climate change, which until his appearance had had, as he put it in his opening line, “two fleeting mentions”. He also was the first to bring up the impact of greenhouse gases have had on the Arctic, where sea ice is melting at unimaginable rates. Sitting next to Hayward, one of the oil sector’s most recognisable names, Leggett cited a recent Barclays report, which said that the world is losing 4m barrels a day of “easily extractable” oil. What if the industry has got it “catastrophically wrong”, he queried (adding that the investment banking world already has). “In 10 years”, he added, “History won’t look too favourably at the oil industry”.
JL: The video of this debate can seen on the FT website.
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