Increase in carbon emissions should prove ‘wake-up call’

Aleem Sheikh, vice-president of strategic partnerships at BP, told Bradford University School of Management the figures should act as a “wake-up call” to the world and called for closer ties between enterprise and academia.

Carbon dioxide emissions have grown at nearly two per cent a year over the last decade but efficiency and clean energy projects can slow rate of growth, he said.

“However, given the sheer scale of the growth in demand, we still expect CO2 emissions to be more than 25 per cent higher in 2030 than today.

“This is of course a projection, not a proposal. It’s not what we want to see but what we believe is likely to happen. It should be a wake up call for the world.”

The Glasgow-born executive, who is normally based in China, said industrialisation and population growth were the main contributors to the rise and said he wanted to see the introduction of carbon pricing and more support for renewables while the Arctic, shale gas and energy from deep water could all play a part in meeting the world’s energy needs.

BP has been working in the Communist country since the early 1970s and today has 1,200 workers there, alongside 3,600 joint venture staff and 12,000 contractors. Mr Sheikh said the recent history of China was a “story of scale and speed”, having recently overtaken Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

Its continued growth, which will see its energy demand increase by 80 per cent over the next two decades, raise “challenging issues” around sustainability.

“There is a deep recognition here that this energy intensive pattern of growth is not sustainable and a matching aspiration to move towards an energy-efficient, lower-carbon approach is there.”

He said China was playing a major role in the global effort to tackle climate change and had cut the energy intensity of its gross domestic product (GDP) by more than 19 per cent over the last five years.

“On the renewables front, China has already made a good start. The country now has more installed wind power capacity than any other country and plans to triple that capacity by 2015. It also leads the world in solar panel manufacturing.”

Mr Sheikh, a member of the School of Management advisory board, was speaking at the launch of Bradford’s Centre for Managerial Excellence. His role is to provide advice to the faculty in areas such as raising its international profile, improving student recruitment and developing its talent pool.

When asked if he was bringing to the school the lessons learnt by BP from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster last year, in which 11 people were killed, he said he had nothing to add to the information which had already been reported.

“It has been a difficult year but the company remains committed to improving safety and doing the right thing.”