A group of business leaders has backed proposals for radical changes to industries including steel, cement, shipping and aviation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that they can be transformed at an acceptable cost. The Energy Transitions Commission, which includes leaders from companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Saint-Gobain and Schneider Electric, as well as banks and environmental think-tanks, said net emissions from those sectors could be cut to zero by 2060 at a cost of about 0.5 ppercentof world gross domestic product, using technologies including renewable energy and hydrogen fuel.
Chad Holliday, chairman of Shell and a member of the commission, said: “There is going to be an energy transition . . . We need to be part of the solution, not an anchor holding it back.” The commission, which is chaired by Lord Adair Turner, former chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, and Ajay Mathur, director-general of the Energy and Resources Institute of India, was created to find ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions that will allow healthy economic growth while limiting global warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, the goal set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement. In the electricity sector, steep declines in the costs of wind and solar power and battery storage have made it possible to find ways to cut emissions sharply.
If that happens, electric cars would also allow steep reductions for passenger transport. There are several sectors, however, for which it is much harder to see how emissions can be cut, including heavy industries such as steel, plastics and cement, as well as other forms of transport, including trucks, ships and aircraft.