Statement on Oil & Gas CEOs’ Letter Calling for Carbon Pricing
We Mean BusinessWe Mean Business welcomes the recent letter from oil and gas CEOs to Christiana Figueres of the UNFCCC and Minister Fabius, President of COP21 calling for a clear, stable, long term policy framework that will introduce effective carbon pricing.
“We commend the CEOs of BG, BP, ENI, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Total for stepping up and being part of the solution,” said Nigel Topping, CEO of We Mean Business. “This is precisely the type of business leadership we hope to see to encourage government to create ambitious climate policy.”
While calling for carbon pricing is an important and meaningful first step, we need the oil and gas sector as a whole to go further. Real leadership needs to include clear commitments to solutions that the companies themselves can implement. We call upon the oil and gas sector to commit to huge-scale investment in CCS and an end to methane flaring.
We need the sector to be specific about the price on carbon they are calling for, when they want to see it and in which jurisdictions.
We call upon the sector to engage in the policy process in a consistent and transparent manner.
And we urge the oil and gas companies to share their 2°C scenarios – to help us all constructively manage and accelerate the transition to a strong low carbon economy.
Finally, we urge all oil and gas companies to sign the UN Global Compact carbon pricing leadership principles, fully disclose their carbon pricing policies through CDP and join collective efforts such as the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition.
By doing this, the sector will demonstrate that they are building on their trajectory of innovation and are ready to help us seize the historic economic opportunity of meeting the climate challenge.
We applaud today’s news and look forward to working with the six CEOs to get all of the oil and gas sector on this path.