Europe΄s Οil Giants Will Create a Think Tank on Climate Change Policy

The biggest oil companies in Europe will form a new industry body or a think tank to influence the climate change policies promoted by the international community.

Bloomberg reported today that Royal Dutch Shell, Total, BP, Statoil and Eni are among the companies which want to influence the climate change policy making process. “If each of us is attacked separately, we will be stronger as a group,” Total Chief Executive Officer Patrick Pouyanne said today in Paris.

The oil companies are worried they could be ignored as world’s policy makers moves toward a potential deal limiting greenhouse gases. The public announcement for the implementation of the political communication strategy, will be announced as soon as next month.

According to Bloomberg, BP Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley said at a meeting hosted by IHS Inc.’s CERA consulting unit in Houston in April: “We’re trying to put together a group of people to begin to speak the same language…There’s a bit of different language coming out of different companies and therefore our voice is lost in this.”

The US financial website reported that the European oil giants will promote natural gas as more climate friendly in generating power than coal.

UN Position on Sustainable Energy

As the biggest oil companies in Europe are trying to team up and present their opinion on the climate change policy making, United Nations officials are urging the international community to promote sustainable development.

United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said on 20 May to the General Assembly’s Global Energy Ministerial Meeting: “Future generations will judge us harshly if we fail to uphold our moral and historical duties in this year of action.”

Eliasson underscored that 2015 would be “a milestone year” for the UN and the international community as it addressed these economic, social and environmental imperatives at three key meetings: in Addis Ababa in July, where UN Member States will work to agree a new forward-looking financing framework for sustainable development; in New York in September where they would seek to adopt “a bold universal new post-2015 development agenda” and in Paris in December where they would work to reach a robust universal climate agreement.

Kandeh Yumkella, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Sustainable Energy for All and CEO of the SE4All Initiative warned delegates that the time for implementation had now come and Member States would be required to take action at the national and regional level.

“This is not about helping the poor South. This is about an energy revolution. Making sure even the rich use energy different,” the Special Representative asserted to widespread applause. “Because it is the emissions from a handful of countries that will take us to climate hell. It is the poor who will suffer the most if others do not use energy properly.”