Petra Sarapatkova
20 November 2007
The challenges posed by climate change and ‘peak oil’ are inextricably linked both in terms of their causes and solutions, renewable energy expert Jeremy Leggett observed in a lecture at the LSE, last Wednesday.
Oil companies and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) claim that peak oil - the point at which global petroleum production reaches its peak and prices begins to soar – is decades away.
But Leggett, a former Shell consultant who is now the CEO of renewable energy firm Solarcentury, claimed that statistics relating to oil reserves are manipulated and even deliberately misleading, as in the case of Shell in 2004.
Independent theorists claim that global petroleum production has already reached its maximum and will decline in the near future. Leggett agrees and claims that “the battle is over, the peakers have won”.
In his lecture, entitled ‘Climate Change Meets Peak Oil’, Leggett raised an important question: once oil runs out, what will we fill the energy gap with?
Leggett also presented familiar evidence on climate change and noted that we are nearing the critical limit of 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, beyond which the average global temperature is likely exceed the threshold of two degrees Celsius.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the consequences of such a rise will be catastrophic: droughts and increasingly intensive extreme weather events will hinder food production, availability of water will deteriorate, and vital ecosystems will be threatened.
The simplest solution to oil depletion would be to substitute increasingly scarce oil with coal, supplies of which are immense in comparison with any of the other fossil fuels. However, Leggett warns that this could be fatal as using coal is extremely carbon dioxide intensive. He argues that substituting coal for oil is a road to perdition and thus “coal has to stay in the ground”.
He added that climate change and peak oil are linked because they are both caused by the energy intensive nature of the global economy and the failure to begin a successful transition to renewables.
What remedy does Leggett prescribe? Increasing demand for energy and mitigating of the climate change threat can be reconciled, but require a new focus on renewables. Renewable energy accounts for a mere 2.7 per cent of global energy production; demand is still relatively low, but the cost of technology is plunging as global capacity increases.
What Leggett suggests seems to provide hope: renewable energy markets are and will be growing explosively. The progress could, however, be undermined by political resistance.
From 2002 to 2006, Leggett was a member of the UK Government Renewables Advisory Board. He commented that “working on that panel was like seeing 50 episodes of Yes, Minister”, and that hardly any progress was achieved during those four years.
The main organiser of the talk and president of Oikos London, Olivier Darmouni, was pleased with the event: “The turnout was great which shows that LSE students are concerned with these topical issues and that they’re all eager to know where the world is going.”
This is definitely good news because, as Leggett himself pointed out, the “solution will be on our watch”.