CSR
Corporate social irresponsibility
What is the responsible thing to do if you are an oil company, and you know roughly the amount of carbon that would be needed to tip global warming beyond a danger threshold that governments are trying to avoid (a 2 degrees C increase in global average temperature, or a ceiling of 450 parts per million of carbon-dioxide-equivalent in the atmosphere), and you also know there is more carbon in Canadian tar sands and squeezing liquids from coal than would be needed to push the world over that limit? Why, you resolve not to produce oil from the tar sands and coal-to-liquids of course. BP declared the tar sands out of bounds for carbon reasons when Lord Browne was CEO. Under Tony Hayward, they have decided to produce oil and blow the consequences. Shell has always been an enthusiastic exploiter of the tar sands, meanwhile describing itself as a responsible company. In a BBC World debate, I confronted Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer with the implications of his company’s actions, and he explained the philosophy behind it. Summarised fairly, it is that Shell is not responsible for the way the world uses energy. That is corporate irresponsibility personified.
Corporate leadership
Other companies know we have to get to deep cuts in emissions, and are acting on that assumption, trying to exercise the corporate leadership that is so badly going to be needed if we are to crack the climate-change problem. Companies in the retail sector often seem to be competing with each other to cut ddep cuts, and are putting pressure on their supply chain to do the same. As for my small company, Solarcentury, we are doing what we can. We believe we are best-of-class, for small-and-medium energy enterprises. Our video corporate responsibility report sets out our stall.
You neatly summarise why Lord Browne needs to act, and get government to act. in the CSR piece above you rightly say that the underlying ethics are wrong and the implication must be drawn that government must act to get the funding flows right.
On the subject of Solar, no major progress can be made until losses are reduced to about one tenth of current usage to allow solar to be cost-effective. Government Subsidy will be required for both of these
I think the solar situation is a little more complicated than that Ian. Solar PV is already giving better returns on investment than leaving money in the bank, even without subsidies. See the solar page on the site for more.