30th Jun 2016 05:40
LONDON (Alliance News) - The chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell PLC will call upon the UK government to implement effective government policy to ensure the country can meet its energy needs whilst tackling climate change, in a speech later Thursday.
Ben van Beurden will tell Shell's Powering Progress Together Forum in London that the UK can not "sit back and relax" and ignore its commitments to lowering its carbon footprint.
"Shell is an important supplier of energy to this country. This means that we have both a responsibility and an incentive to help tackle its energy challenge. When it makes business sense, Shell is determined to play its part in meeting the UK's energy needs while lowering carbon emissions," said van Beurden.
"It's important for governments to create the right conditions for companies to not only deliver energy but to do so with fewer emissions," he added.
Government and business leaders will be attending the annual event that has been running since 2012, and van Beurden will remind the UK of its climate change commitments and stress the importance of the energy market to the UK economy.
Although many countries will continue to experience significant rises in energy demand as populations rise, cities grow and the demand for items such as cars increase, the UK is expected to see its demand for energy level off in the future, as the energy efficiency continues to improve.
"But this does not mean the UK can sit back and relax. It has a legally binding commitment to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 from the 1990 level," the Shell chief said.
Carbon emissions are coming down in the UK and were 35% lower in 2014 compared to 1990 levels. Currently, the UK would need to lower emissions by 3.0% per year to meet its legal obligations by 2050. That was achieved last year following another 3.0% year-on-year reduction in 2015, according to the Committee on Climate Change.
The world is tackling climate change by using carbon budgets, which breaks down the emission targets over separate phases. Although the UK met the first budget and is expected to outperform the second and third budgets, it is not currently expected to meet the fourth one for 2023 to 2027.
"This [goal] requires changes to how transport and infrastructure are organised, as well as to how people heat their homes. In fact, changes need to happen in virtually every part of society. And they need to happen while keeping the UK?s energy-based economy growing," said van Beurden.
Although politics in the UK is currently entangled in Brexit, the UK government launched a GBP320.0 million scheme on Wednesday to create "central heating for cities" in an attempt to utilise natural sources of heat to warm homes, a popular system in Scandinavian. The hope is that such a system could lower UK household bills by up to 30%.
There are some systems already in place in the UK - city centres in Sheffield, Nottingham, Birmingham and Southampton - the latest of which was built in the Olympic Village network in East London.
Cities around the world are expected to undergo the most severe level of growth and will require thorough planning. Shell predicts 75% of people will live in cities by 2050 and has previously stressed the need for greater resilience in city planning and management systems.
"For tackling the energy challenge, you need non-government organisations, and scientists, and economists, and investors, and consumers, and innovators, and policy makers and, yes, oil and gas companies too," said van Beurden.
"There is one inevitable truth though: the energy system is and always will be the outcome of government policies and consumer choices," he added.
"This is why Shell supports government-led carbon pricing systems. By taking the costs of tackling climate change into account, these systems will drive the right behaviour of consumers and producers. It will encourage the fastest and most efficient ways of cutting emissions," said van Beurden.
By Joshua Warner; [email protected]; @JoshAlliance
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