Petronas logo on the background of the Petronas Twin Towers.
Wu Chengchang | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asia needs to get to net-zero emissions before the world, says the chief executive of Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company Petronas.
“The majority of future emissions are expected to be generated in Asia,” Tengku Muhammad Taufik told CNBC’s JP Ong on the sidelines of the Energy Asia show in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Tuesday.
“If Asia does not achieve net zero emissions, the world cannot achieve net zero emissions,” Taufik said in his opening remarks at the summit. He added that by 2040, Asia would account for half of global GDP and 40 percent of global consumption. %.
In his keynote address, he said the energy transition goals embodied in the Paris Agreement could not be undertaken by “one industry, one group of policymakers or one country alone”.
Governments around the world agreed in the 2015 Paris climate agreement to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to work towards limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C.
according to a IEA March reportEmissions from developing economies and emerging markets in Asia are expected to grow faster than other regions in 2022, growing by 4.2%. More than half of this growth was attributed to coal-fired power generation.
Idealist narrative?
Seeking to limit the use of fossil fuels or abandon them altogether may not necessarily be the way forward, Taufik said, adding that complete decarbonization overnight is only an idealist’s talk.
He said that if the world is to escape energy supply shocks, it will need to incorporate fossil fuels into the energy base for at least the first half of this century.
“Unfortunately, the narrative to date has been driven by idealists. Extremists believe there is a binary shift where we can go from System A to System B overnight,” he said, referring to System A is an economy inherently supported by fossil fuels, while System B decarbonizes to zero carbon overnight.
Taufik added that the world has not considered the full ecosystem that comes with implementing System B, such as minerals and metals requirements and supply chain issues that need to be addressed first.
“However, we seek to ditch fossil fuels in extreme ways without subjecting the industry to the inherent emissions challenges,” he said.
according to separate World Energy Outlook Report According to the International Energy Agency, the world remains highly dependent on the use of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.
“For decades, the share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix has remained high, at around 80 percent,” the report said. In a Scenario-Based Forecasting Under current policy settings, the fossil fuel mix will fall to just below 75% in 2030 and above 60% in 2050.
“We have always positioned gas as a transition fuel,” said the Petronas chief executive, noting that recent debates have considered the idea that gas could even be a destination fuel as it provides baseload security and certainty , especially if renewable energy is not yet available. Overcome intermittent problems.