As governments across the world work to address climate change, big businessesare doing the same. David Hone is Chief Climate Change Adviser at the energy company Shell. Hone is in Aspen this week, discussing the company’s plan to limit global temperature rise.
Hone believes there’s a way to limit the worst impacts of climate change, but it means a high level of global coordination. It starts, he said, with charging a fee for greenhouse gas emissions.
“Carbon-pricing is one of the key policy levers that is available," Hone said. "The ideal construction would be that you had some sort of globally uniform approach.”
A carbon fee is central to Shell’s Sky Scenario, an outline that aims to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The plan sketches actions, like a carbon price and a move to electric power, across the energy sector; it also delves into some areas less familiar to an oil company.
“The company’s also looking at how an industry such as ours can get more involved in reforestation,” Hone said.
The plan includes changes to land use practices and agriculture, which help to address some of the more challenging emissions.
While it’s relatively simple to replace coal and gas with solar and wind, “You can’t easily reduce emissions in the aviation sector, so you have to look at some other way, potentially, of negating those emissions," Hone explained.
Hone said Shell and other fossil fuel companies have supplied the energy of the modern world, but now is time to find solutions to the issues associated with this energy.
“The technologies are there today, the policies are well understood," he said. "It’s just a question of political and societal will to implement them on a cooperative basis.”
Hone will discuss what that cooperation looks like, and how society can meet the goals of the Paris Agreement on Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Limelight Hotel.
