“One of the oil companies will break ranks and this time it is going to stick,” he said. “The industry is facing plunging commodity prices and soaring costs at risky projects in the Arctic, deepwater Brazil and elsewhere. Leggett, who plans to stands down as chairman of the highly successful Solarcentury renewable business he founded to focus on climate change campaigning, holds what he calls “friendly critic” sessions with the fossil fuel sector these days. The tone of the meetings has changed significantly over the past two years, he said. “Before it was know your enemy. Now it’s: ‘Crikey. A lot of this may be coming true on our watch. What shall we do about it?’ There are top-to-bottom strategic reviews going on in E.ON but in other companies as well, utility and oil and gas. So it will be really interesting to see which is the first of the oil and gas companies to break from the pack, although I fear BP and Shell are going backwards not forwards on carbon.” “Oil companies are also realising it is no long morally defensible to ignore the consequences of climate change.” Leggett, now a solar energy entrepreneur and climate campaigner, points to Total of France as the kind of group that could abandon carbon fuels in the same way that E.ON, the German utility, announced plans before Christmas to spin off coal and gas interests and concentrate its future growth on renewables. Pressure on the energy industry to pull out of fossil fuels has grown in recent months with a campaign for pension funds to disinvest from coal, oil and gas. theguardian/business/2015/jan/11/oil-company-fossil-fuels-jeremy-leggett-soaring-costs-risky-energy-projects
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 23:59:06 +0000
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