How Can Economies Thrive While The World Cuts Carbon?
Description
As countries across the world strive to reach their climate targets, they must make sure that the move to a cleaner energy system supports economic growth. The Energy Podcast explores this difficult balancing act.
Presented by Julia Streets. Featuring Dr Rob Charnock of the Metis Institute for Climate Strategy, climate scientist and advisor Dr Yvonne Maingey-Muriuki and Shell’s chief economist Dr Mallika Ishwaran.
The Energy Podcast is a Fresh Air Production for Shell, produced by Annie Day and Sarah Moore, and edited by Eno Alfred-Adeogun.
Episode Transcription:
Julia Streets: Today on The Energy Podcast.
Speaker 2: Economic growth and developmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 3: With a strong talent pool of young entrepreneurs and qualified engineers, we are pressing forward with solutions in climate-smart agriculture, water conservation, clean energy innovations, and more.
Speaker 4: Let us come together to build resilient, sustainable and green businesses, communities, and countries of the future.
Julia Streets: The dust has settled on COP28, and the main takeaway was clear; the world is falling short of its climate targets. But as the leaders who gathered at the conference highlighted, there remains an appetite to do better while simultaneously ensuring economies keep turning. The question is, how? The climate summit showcased diverse approaches. Some nations prioritised boosting the supply of lower carbon energy to meet demand and remain competitive. Others advocated for increasing funding in renewables to attract investment and spur the creation of more jobs. And while some countries pushed for a complete phase-out of all fossil fuels, others favoured a phase-down, where coal, oil, and gas usage is reduced rather than eliminated as a more economically viable plan. The reality is, different solutions will be needed in different places, and countries will move at different paces to achieve net- zero.
Hello, I'm Julia Streets, and today on the Energy Podcast as we look ahead to 2024, we ask: how can economies thrive while the world cuts carbon? Joining me today are guests, Dr Yvonne Maingey-Muriuki, who is a climate scientist and strategic practitioner to organisations operating in Africa. Dr Rob Charnock who is director of the Metis Institute for Climate Strategy, and Shell's chief economist, Dr Mallika Ishwaran. Now, before we look ahead to what this year and beyond may have in store, let's take a moment to reflect on where things currently stand. Rob, I'm going to come to you. How would you rate the current global progress in cutting carbon?
Dr Rob Charnock: I think what was incredibly interesting to see at the recent COP, was that it's the first global stocktake, so we really get a sense of how close we are to being on track towards the targets set out in the Paris Agreement. And what I thought was very encouraging is, previously we thought we were on track for somewhere between 2. 7 to 3.6 degrees of warming, but as we get more and more commitments coming through that are updated as well after a few years, we see that we're getting closer. Now, that's not to say we're on track for 1. 5 or even well below two degrees at the moment.
Julia Streets: Some areas of the economy are more challenging to decarbonise than others. I mean, I think particularly industry and transport as well, but they are central to economic growth. I'm curious to think about what's the way forward, and Mallika, I'd love to come to you for your thoughts on that.
Dr Mallika Ishwaran: So what we are seeing is there's a sector by sector difference in how the different sectors are progressing in the transition. I think you can see the evidence is there that power is decarbonising, renewables are coming in at scale and really are changing and disrupting the system. But there are other sectors. I would put passenger EVs as part of the transport segment as something that is changing rapidly. But there are other bits of the transport segment not transforming as easily, and these are areas that require either high heat or they require dense energy molecules, and you can't do that with electricity unfortunately. So they're requiring things like hydrogen or sustainable biofuels, and these are taking a little bit longer to bring to market and to commercialise. So they're still quite a bit more expensive than the fuels we use today. And so the key there is, how do we accelerate the process of commercialisation of these kinds of fuels so that the whole world is changing and transforming to low carbon at pace at the same time by 2050.
Julia Streets: Rob, I'd love to get your thoughts on this. The incentives that are needed in order to encourage consumers to choose lower carbon goods and services that will drive down cost and also increase adoption.
Dr Rob Charnock: Over time we've heard this narrative that low carbon might be more expensive, but as time goes by, you quickly find that the cost profile decreases rapidly, and frankly beyond the forecasts as well. So, I would say, even the economic reason for shifting consumer demand is already coming online in most segments, and this will continue to do so. I also think shifting customer preferences and shifting demands suggest, if you are not properly tackling the carbon profile of your products or even the recyclability of those products afterwards, there is going to be a significant shift away from what you're selling.
Julia Streets: There's clearly a sense, we need to move at pace and we need to move at scale. I'd like to return to COP28, because one of the key topics was about phasing out fossil fuels versus the phasing down of fossil fuels, but the final deal made no mention of either. And instead, we note that the pledge talked about the transitioning away from fossil fuels. So not phasing out, not phasing down, but transitioning away.
And Yvonne, I think particularly of a remark made by Ruth Nankabirwa who is Uganda's energy minister. She had a very interesting take on this, and let me just read what she told journalists during COP28: “To tell Uganda to stop fossil fuels, it is really an insult. It is like you are telling Uganda to stay in poverty." I'd love to get your thoughts on that. How would you respond to that?
Dr Yvonne Maingey-Muriuki: I mean, it's a really sort of difficult position to be in. I think on the one hand, African governments, and I'm speaking specifically about the Kenyan government, have made their intentions very clear; we are going to foster low carbon resilient development pathways. If you look at Kenya as an example, where I'm based, where I'm from, 80% of our energy is already renewable. We're looking at more geothermal, hydro, solar. The majority of our grid is actually already quite green. The opportunity within the continent is quite significant to focus on it and to drive renewable energy to power our economy. On the other hand, it's important to think about how Africa is powered specifically, because this is where the root cause of the problem is. About 43% of the total population in Africa lack access to basic electricity. This means that about 600 million people right now do not have access to energy.
I think the first question for the African continent is just ensuring that we have access to energy first. But, we have to contend with the reality that African economies for the first time, some of which have just discovered oil, I'm talking about Kenya, looking at one of the most impoverished parts of the country, Turkana, which discovered oil four, five years ago. And expecting some of these local economies to not exploit this resource, I think is a bit rich, particularly from the developed countries. But then we also have to think about in the context of what is the actual contribution to emissions. Look at Tanzania, another great example where they have natural gas deposits, which they have on many occasions shown a desire to develop and to exploit. But when we look at the calculations, Africa already accounts for maybe less than 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. If Tanzania was to develop all of their natural gas deposits, you are looking at an increase of about 0. 4 to 0. 6% of global emissions. These are economies that do have access to these resources which they have an interest to develop,
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