Hello and welcome. I'm at Shell’s powering progress together event
at London's Olympic Park
and we've been talking today about the future of transport
how people are going to live work and travel not just now
but up to the year 2040
So Baroness Brown let me start with you
We've talked a lot today about what transport will look like in 2040.
Can we just narrow down to one big change you think that we're going to see
around the world in the way that we travel in 2040
Gosh that's a very difficult question when you say around the world because we all travel the same way today
But let me say it'll be cleaner and quieter
Is that the technology or the government policy that’s doing that?
Well the technology will deliver cleaner and quieter but we will need government policy I'm sure
to drive that to make sure it is
I would say that the one, if you like, I hope that will be the biggest revolution is
moving away from the one person one car or one parcel one van
to a shared efficient mobility system, if we can revolutionise that attitude,
I think that would be one of the big things that we can take away.
So how does that all translate to policy.
We've seen famously last year France
put a ban on the sale of diesel and internal combustion engines
Britain followed shortly afterwards
And that seems to be the sort of direction in which we are going
Does it feel like that is the right policy proposal, is it fast enough. Should it be sooner?
Norway said 2025. Scotland has said 2032.
In the Committee on Climate Change, in our reports, we've recommended that in the UK we need to be
at least 60 percent of vehicles by 2030 need to be plug in hybrid or full electric.
So 2040 for eliminating conventionally fuelled light duty vehicles is actually quite slow
and if we're going to meet the Paris commitment which goes beyond the UK's current commitment of an 80 percent reduction by 2050
we really have got to start thinking about how how do we eliminate emissions.
How do we get them to zero emissions really as quickly as possible because there are going to be heavy, lorries
heavy goods vehicles which can be much more difficult. Aviation is going to be much more difficult to decarbonise so
the stuff we can do actually we need to get to zero as quickly as we can.
I think it's, I think one point I would pick up on is
government actually have not said they're going to ban anything they've said they aim to end the sale of conventional vehicles
and actually I think Scotland have said they aim to end the need for conventional vehicles in 2032
and to me that's the right thing to do. We actually want to focus on the objectives decarbonisation and clean air
and delivering those objectives with the best technology and the fastest pace we can.
Picking a technology that we ban is not the right way of doing that it’s
what are the objectives, so I would absolutely welcome the advent of zero emission zones for example but banning
a particular technology without necessarily knowing what we can deliver from that technology in 22 years time
I think is a dangerous way playing and government to their credit I think they are technology neutral.
Let me disagree with you there
because we are going to have to get to net zero somewhere not too far beyond 2050
so we cannot still be in light duty vehicles and cars and vans
We cannot, in a rich country like this, still be burning diesel in cars unless you've got some kind of bag on the back that's collecting the CO2.
You know there will be other applications like aviation where it's going to be much harder to eliminate fossil fuels.
We need the energy density and so if we can't eliminate them from road transport
then boy we're going to have to have an awful lot of negative emissions technologies to compensate for aviation and some of the other crucial areas where we can't get to zero.
So I'm afraid I disagree with you on that.
I think fossil fuels emitting CO2 out of a tailpipe in light duty vehicles is going to be we have we have to get rid of
and I think not giving the industry a clear decision that says no you won't be able to sell those vehicles is kidding ourselves
and actually it's not forming a level playing field for industry.
I hope and I actually believe we will actually get to this position much earlier than 2040
I think you know for cars and I'll absolutely agree there is no reason in the timeframe that we're talking about that we can't get to
a fully electrified light car, light Vehicle Network.
But we shouldn't rule anything out. I think you're absolutely right about net zero is a big challenge and fossil fuels
no doubt about that. We need to remove fossil fuels and decarbonise our fuels as quickly as we can.
Every country has a different set of energy challenges that it's playing with so
what do you think needs to be done so there isn't just a couple of European countries that have
put this policy in place but there's a kind of global movement, is there anything else that the world
needs to do. Or is it just basically look at the Paris Agreement and find the solution that will fit your local country.
Well I think we shouldn't think it's just a few countries in Europe.
We should look China. Who've got some really ambitious plans. You know that's a country that isn't as rich
on a per capita basis as we are. And yet they can see the need. And they are doing , setting some very ambitious targets.
So if they’re decarbonising and as they move to decarbonising at a rate that will be in line with Paris then you know we have a very important manufacturing nation
getting onto the right path. So I think sometimes we do think it's just us in the West, in the developed countries.
And that's not the case. But we do. We do need India. We do need the whole of Europe, that's true.
And I think it's very clear that what we can do is allow
all of the developing countries are at different stages of this to go through the same development cycle that we did
because that's why we're in the situation we're at now so
we have an obligation to help people avoid the mistakes that we made
and there are some mistakes in there or build on the learnings that we've got over many years
and that's where you know there's some great work going on here in the U.K. we've got to be sharing that, there's some great work going on around the world
in different areas that connection and collaboration so that we all move forward as fast as possible together
because I think we probably both agree we're going to need every tool in the box if we're going to deliver anything like the Paris Agreement.
Fascinating insight there from my guests
Baroness Brown of Cambridge
and Andy Eastlake
Thank you very much for your time. Do head to the Inside Energy website for lots more stories
about energy, technology and the people and ideas powering our lives.
Thank you very much for watching.