With a record 8,400 'delegates' paying big, big dollars for admission, CERAWeek unfolded last week in Houston, Texas. Titled this year the ‘Multidimensional Energy Transition: markets, climate, technology and geopolitics’, CERA is the biggest and most important global energy conference in the world. A bunch of important stories came out of the week but we’re going to focus on the one we think is most important: the people who were not there.
This was, historically, a pure oil / gas conference. The front man has always been Daniel Yergin, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book ‘The Prize’ which tells the history of the global oil and gas industry. Yergin is fortunate to have James Rosenfeld as his co-founder and CEO of the event, as “Jamie” spearheaded the creation of the ‘Innovation Agora’ at the conference. The Agora is housed in a separate wing of the conference and is populated by companies, individuals, and leaders, thinking and working on the energy transition. The conference gives these good people a platform to develop and execute their emission reduction strategies - from hydrogen to solar / wind / batteries, to carbon capture, nuclear, geothermal, and so on. Good progress is being made and a sea change is underway.
Nevertheless, while there’s general agreement on the oil / gas side that the energy transition must happen, it’s not happening nearly as fast as needed and only to the extent it’s profitable. Not that the oil / gas folks are actually advocating for federal policies needed to create clean energy; instead, they are quite pleased with the status quo. The predominant narrative is that oil / gas demand and supply will continue to rise for decades to come, even as renewables come on strongly, because fossils will remain essential for affordable and secure energy supplies for both the U.S. and our allies.
As the conference progressed, it struck us that almost nobody was there talking about the consequences of unabated fossil fuel emissions over the next decades, much less the next century. The very reason for the energy transition is to avoid the consequences of these emissions. It was surreal. There was precious little pushback on the fact that we’ve effectively abandoned fossil fuel emission reduction goals.
There are countless actors, including a multitude of nonprofits, working to save the planet. Their voices were virtually absent from the conference. These folks could help conference attendees explore what is going to happen. Talking about future climate impacts is not easy as there’s no way to be specific about time, place and consequences of future sea level rise, droughts, floods, fires, biodiversity loss, etc. Here’s a summary by one of the highest courts in the US, after a trial between environmentalists and the Trump administration five years ago, describing what it will look like:
As the majority recognizes, and the government does not contest, carbon dioxide (“CO2”) and other greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions created by burning fossil fuels are devastating the planet. Maj. Op. at 14–15. According to one of plaintiffs’ experts, the inevitable result, absent immediate action, is “an inhospitable future . . . marked by rising seas, coastal city functionality loss, mass migrations, resource wars, food shortages, heat waves, mega-storms, soil depletion and desiccation, freshwater shortage, public health system collapse, and the extinction of increasing numbers of species.” Even government scientists project that, given current warming trends, sea levels will rise two feet by 2050, nearly four feet by 2070, over eight feet by 2100, 18 feet by 2150, and over 31 feet by 2200. To put that in perspective, a three-foot sea level rise will make two million American homes uninhabitable; a rise of approximately 20 feet will result in the total loss of Miami, New Orleans, and other coastal cities. (Juliana v. U.S., 9th Circuit 2019)
If this is indeed the future, it’s certainly worth talking about these crucial topics at the world’s largest energy transition conference. Where are we in 2024 on climate consequences? Shouldn’t future climate consequences be explored in the context of present-day energy affordability and reliability? It was a big deal last year when COP28 was held in the UAE, a major fossil fuel state, and all the oil / gas companies were invited into the discussion. It opened their minds and created bandwidth for working harder on the problem — and they are, though some harder than others. For the environmentalists and energy companies to work together, they need to spend time talking and learning from each other. Maybe next year’s CERAWeek can do better.
