Go global on warming

An international agency should be set up to coordinate moves to combat global warming, says John Browne, former chief executive of oil giant BP.

For example, we know that the annual carbon dioxide concentration growth rate was highest during the last ten years than at any time since the beginning of continuous direct atmospheric measurements;

We know that 11 of the last 12 years rank among the 12 warmest years in the record of global surface temperature since 1850;

We know that sea levels rose by an average of 3.1 millimetres per year over the period from 1993 to 2003;

We know with virtual certainty that past greenhouse gas emissions will increase the global mean temperature over the next few decades and that continued greenhouse gas emissions, at or above current rates, are very likely to produce further significant warming and induce other changes in the global climate system during the 21st century;

We know that it is very likely that extreme weather, such as heat waves and heavy rainfall events, will become continuously more frequent.

As well as pointing to its effects, science is also pointing the way to what needs to be done in the face of the climate change threat. Scientists and engineers are presenting policymakers with real, practical options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions – all within the range of current technical capability.

Of course, there is much more to do: more science on the detailed pattern of causation and on the impact of climate change and more development of low carbon alternatives. Overall then, scientists and engineers are playing their proper roles in society in relation to climate change: helping to advance the frontier of climate change understanding and offering society practical choices for reducing emissions.

Evidence ‘increasingly compelling’

Business is also playing its part. Thanks to the increasingly compelling scientific evidence, the overwhelming majority of business opinion has accepted that the climate change threat is real, that immediate action is necessary and that the costs of taking it are manageable.

But of course the most important actor in the current climate change picture is government. The truth is, only government can create and police the framework within which genuine progress can be made.

There are almost as many climate change policy recommendations as there are policymakers. But I believe one of the biggest steps forward would be to put in place a robust international climate policy framework.

Of course this could develop from the bottom up, country by country, continent by continent, and that’s the way we have started.

But this is a global problem and the world's atmosphere cannot be divided up. It is clear from every strand of analysis which I have ever read that the most effective solution is to work on the largest possible scale. That way targeting reductions, and the resources required to achieve them, to the places where the cost of abatement is lowest and the impact is highest.

Targeting resources to where they have the largest impact is what a business plan is all about. And that’s what we need now: a global business plan for making the transition to a lower carbon future.

Time for the agency

That’s why I believe that the international community should create an International Climate Agency, with responsibility for:

First, establishing a long term green house gas stabilisation goal. There is much debate about what that level should be, and the view of what is acceptable seems to be falling rather than rising over time, but a level of 450 to 500 parts per million is the present consensus;

Second, the agency would set a fair and equitable emissions targets on a trajectory which leads to this goal;

Third, it would issue emissions allowances in line with those targets;

Fourth, it would design new mechanisms which encourage clean, low carbon development in the emerging market economies, where the largest increase in emissions will occur;

Fifth, it would encourage global technology transfer;

And finally, it would undertake monitoring and verification.

Of course this is an ambitious proposal. It would require stretching international legal norms to the limit of current understanding and practice.

But given the remarkable ramping up of public concern about climate change in recent years, I believe that real, concerted global action of this kind is becoming increasingly realistic.

The stark fact, and one recognised by publics around the world with increasing alarm, is that time is running out: emissions are growing and the pace of that growth is accelerating.

Partly that is because of the strength of the global economy.

Remarkably, we have had ten years of strong economic growth. That growth has raised living standards here and around the world. Hundreds of millions of people in China and India have been lifted out of poverty. The Chinese economy alone has grown by more than 9 per cent per year in the last decade.

This growth has been fuelled by hydrocarbons. The world uses more than 30 percent more electric power than it did in 1997 and around 50 per cent of that new power has been fuelled by coal. Coal demand worldwide has risen by more than 30 per cent in the last ten years.  And then there are some 100 million more cars on the world's roads - almost all still fuelled by oil.

The result, according to the CO2 Information Analysis Center in the Unites States, is that carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption rose by around 25 per cent during the decade from 1994 to 2004. We also know that the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere is currently growing by around a per cent a year.

The policy gap

So global public concern has grown. But it has not yet been matched by global public policy. A new climate change global business plan, monitored and enforced by an international climate agency, would, in my view, be the appropriate international response.

Such an institution would also provide a framework within which national policies could be made.

National governments already have several policy carrots and sticks – incentives and regulations – at their disposal. As a rule, I believe that incentives are preferable to regulations, but I also recognise that regulations will play an important role, particularly in changing consumer behaviour.

Although national governments are bound to take into account existing political cultures and regulatory structures when making climate change and alternative energy policy, certain rules of thumb should apply:

Policymakers should incentivise as broad a suite of low-carbon technologies as possible and should avoid picking winners.

They should use, wherever possible, market mechanisms – to ensure resources are directed to areas where the biggest impact can be made at the lowest cost. That is one reason why cap-and-trade is emerging as the preferred carbon policy over carbon taxes in many parts of the world and why green certificate trading schemes, such as Renewable Portfolio Standards in the US states and the Renewables Obligation in the UK, are proving increasingly popular.

Policymakers should recognise that carbon pricing is not a silver bullet. Transitional incentives, ranging from tax incentives to quotas to price support mechanisms, will also be needed in parallel, to accelerate the deployment and diffusion of less-mature low-carbon technologies – such as solar and wind power – and thereby drive cost reductions through economies of scale. Incentives will also be required to stimulate low-carbon technology R&D, such as second- and third-generation biofuels, wave power and solar nano.

One particularly tough policy challenge is incentivising technology demonstration projects. Some of the world’s most promising clean technologies – like integrated gasification combined cycle [clean coal burning] and carbon capture and storage – are at demonstration phase. Demonstrating a new technology is costly and additional incentives are often needed to persuade business to go through with a first project.

Big sums

The problem is that a single carbon capture or clean coal project is huge and can swallow billions of dollars of investment capital in one go. That means required government support is also large and “lumpy”, perhaps hundreds of millions dollars at a time. Steering such sums through the political system quickly and fairly is not easy. This will require a new approach to policymaking as well as real political leadership.

Finally, national governments must also act to remove policy barriers, some unseen, to low-carbon technology market entry. Current examples include daily, as opposed to “time-of-use”, pricing of retail electricity, which effectively discriminates against solar power; the current absence of a legal framework governing carbon capture and storage in most parts of the world; and cumbersome planning rules that slow down onshore and offshore wind project development.

I believe, then, that action by governments remains the critical path in determining society’s progress in response to climate change. The role of the public is to communicate their concern. The role of business is to adapt their practices in anticipation of future constraints and to deliver on new opportunities by taking risks. And the critical role of scientists and engineers is to provide information, on why, how and when climate change will occur and on what the effects will be, and to develop real, practical options in the face of the numerous challenges and uncertainties. That is a substantial responsibility, but it is one that the scientific community is already rising to – and has risen to many times before.

This is an edited version of John Browne’s Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, held at York University, UK, earlier this month.