In the shadow of COP29 and its host of missing leaders, are we waking up to realise net zero isn’t as easy as we thought?
In this week’s Net Hero Podcast I explore this topic with Stuart Broadley the CEO of the Energy Industries Council, we discuss the way it took off and why it seems to have slumped, has the reality of cost, regional wars and political instability led to this slowdown?
Stuart started by looking back to the pandemic and how it boosted global ambition: “Net zero is just a term that is loosely used. And I’ll probably talk about when does it become something that’s in hearts and minds of business leaders, that we the people believe in. And I would say that it was that weird time of March 2020, when faced with Covid and that sense of we have to work together as a planet, we have to ignore our political and boundary and border issues and actually work together, because it was a shared crisis for the planet.
“The data shows that March 2020 was the point at which suddenly a lot of new projects were being announced in areas like carbon capture and hydrogen and energy storage at a rate that we’d never seen before.
“Now, the issue is that in, 2020, 2021, we did solve the pandemic. We did not solve net zero at that time.
“And now here we are now, much later. And of course, those barriers and borders and bad behaviors have all returned. And so the idea that we can solve net zero with that sense of urgency and common spirit does feel like it’s gone.”
Since then we’ve had Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Hamas attack and subsequent war in the Middle East, political changes and huge economic pressures. But Stuart also believes something else has knocked net zero off track, the availability of technologies and work to shift the dial. All this has led to companies and politicans having to row back on pledges.
He added: “Companies started to make investments based upon the pledge, the promise, the hope that, okay, it’s happening, let’s go, go, go. And a lot of companies started making their own pledges to their shareholders, to their staff. We’re going to move from 90% oil and gas to 50% in the next three years.
“And unfortunately, it really wasn’t the fault of those companies, that they’ve now started to backtrack.
“It’s just that work has not come through into their order intake as they assumed. And of course, you know, companies and I’m not really talking about oil companies. I’m talking about companies across the value chain, big companies, small companies as well. So of course that then becomes a problem for those companies to say, well, I believed and I still believe in the concept of net zero. But I’m now not able to deliver on what I promised because I just can’t find the work. And that’s giving them a problem.
“Because if you’re a leader and of course, especially if you’re a policymaker who’s promised these kind of targets, it’s very hard to then say, I’m really sorry, but I’m going to miss those targets.”
Listen to the whole podcast and find out what he believes the solution is. And remember to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify or Apple Music or your podcast service.
