BP's Browne calls for green agency

Lord John Browne, group chief executive of British Petroleum (BP) is calling for change. (ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Lord Browne, the soon-to-depart group chief executive for oil major BP, has called for the establishment of an international climate agency to help direct action on climate change.

The call came in a speech on energy and the environment made to the California-based Stanford Business School on 26 April. In the speech Browne positioned climate change as an issue that stands as part of ‘a wider debate about the security and sustainability of our whole pattern of energy use'.

"High and volatile prices, instability and conflict in producing countries such as Nigeria and Venezuela, war in the Middle East and the increasing dependence of the world market on a shrinking number of suppliers, many of whom are closed to international investment - those are the reasons why energy security has become such a prominent issue on the agenda of public policy," said Browne.

Browne pictures any climate agency having a legal basis for global action created by world governments. According to Browne the agency ‘will need recognition of and then a move beyond the limitations of national sovereignty'.

"Government action, well designed, and making full use of market mechanisms is imperative," he said.

Browne also referenced BP's own work in reducing carbon emissions. He mentioned their injection of naturally occurring carbon dioxide produced with methane in In Salah in Algeria. This work is the topic of a paper being presented at the Sour Oil Gas Advanced Technology (SOGAT) conference in Abu Dhabi, which started today.

"[The] project is one of the largest carbon capture and storage systems in the world," said Browne. "We have reduced the burning of natural gas which has no market - so called flaring - across our operations."

The speech also touched on the way electricity is generated, with Browne stating that electricity generation contributes 40% of carbon dioxide emissions.

"So methods of capturing carbon dioxide from gas, oil or coal fired generation and then storing it in geological structures is an important step," he said.

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