Net Zero: Recent Episodes
Tortoise Media
The world needs to stop emitting carbon: it needs to get to ‘net zero’. The arguments are about how, and by when – but they’re fierce. Environmental groups say we need to get there as quickly as possible and if we have to completely rethink our lifestyles to do it, so be it. Most governments and big businesses agree on the target, but they’re cautious: how do our economies survive? How does society hold together if we try to de-carbonise overnight? In this series Tortoise – in partnership with BP – talks to campaigners, businesses, academics and members of the public about the most important question of our time.
There are pressing reasons why energy use around the world is likely to rise. Too many people in the developing world don't yet have access to the energy they need to live healthy, fulfilled lives. But at the same time there's an urgent need to reduce carbon emissions; to achieve Net Zero. BP and Tortoise brought together a group of experts and members of the public to try to square the circle.
Achieving Net Zero in a few short years, as many climate campaigners want, would present real challenges to big economies and ways of life. Even hitting that goal by 2050 could be tough if we rely just on cutting energy consumption. But there's another possibility: inventing our way out of climate change. It won't be the whole answer, but there's a role for it. How big a role could it be?
“The world is on an unsustainable path… We have to rethink how this all works… We have to change or we won’t exist in 20 to 30 years.”
This could have been the UN Secretary-General at the opening of the COP25 conference in Madrid. In fact it was Peter Mather, head of BP in the UK and Europe, at Aston University for a Tortoise ThinkIn.
The event was the first of three to focus on the question of whether we should stop using fossil fuels altogether. The consensus answer was yes – in principle. As Professor Hongming Xu put it, we’d stop using them tonight if it was possible. But what is possible in the real world, where 7.7 billion people and counting need energy to live and feed and clothe themselves?