Decarbonisation challenge

The energy transition is difficult, not least because people cannot agree on which solution to pursue. People are concerned that the world will go down the wrong path and bring us to the brink of a different disaster instead. Yet we are arguing with each other in front of the ticking time bomb of climate change while the problem of huge amounts of carbon emissions continues.

Behind these ‘energy transition experts’, the energy users are beginning to realise they must take charge of their future energy destiny. There is not going to be a straight-forward answer but they will have to figure out what works for them while decarbonising their energy use. And this is why government and policymakers ought to continue ensuring proper pricing of carbon in their system, and defining standards to track and trace the carbon emissions along supply chains.

The basic operating principles are: (1) ensuring emissions data is tracked and that (2) carbon emissions are priced (it can be paid for by anyone in the value chain as they ought to be able to pass on the price until it hits the ultimate direct emitter so that they are incentivised to lower their emissions). These two principles would already do wonders without complexifying things.

The oil majors want us to find energy transition difficult. They want to be the ones to empathise with the huge challenge ahead of us. Because if we are discouraged and slow things down, we can at least buy more fossil fuel in the meantime. Or we can find ways of paying for carbon dioxide removal directly from their fuel emissions or from the air so that it is fine to continue using fossil fuel. Those are more obviously the wrong paths we don’t want to go down. The more natural gas you use right now that comes from the geological reserves, the more empty caverns available for these players to store carbon dioxide in the future.

It’s not easy to cut through the smoke; and we can definitely be more careful with the process by which we arrive at the ideas we have strong convictions about. But if we can keep to those principles and to try and keep solutions simple, we can get to the answer.