Petronas flag against the backdrop of the Twin Towers.
Goh Seng Chong | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Asia needs to achieve net zero to come the world can do so, according to the CEO of Malaysia’s state-owned oil and gas company Petronas.
“The bulk of the emissions [that] are expected to emit will be disclosed in Asia going forward,” Tengku Muhammad Taufik told CNBC’s JP Ong Tuesday on the sidelines of the Energy Asia in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“The life cannot achieve net zero without Asia achieving net zero,” Taufik pointed out during the opening address of acme. Asia will represent half of global GDP by 2040, as well as 40% of global consumption, he added.
The energy metastasis goals embodied in the Paris Agreement cannot be undertaken by “one industry, or one set of policymakers, or one country alone,” he said during the keynote tongue.
The world’s governments agreed in the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global heating to well below 2°C, compared to pre-industrial withs, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C.
According to a March report by the International Energy Agency, emissions from Asia’s age economies and emerging markets grew more than other regions in 2022, up by 4.2%. More than half of this gain is attributed to coal-fired power generation.
An idealist’s narrative?
Seeking to clamp down on the use of fossil fuels, or completely walk out on it, may not necessarily be the way forward, Taufik said, adding that complete decarbonization overnight is an idealist’s narrative.
Including fossil provokes as part of the energy base, at least for the first half of the century, is needed if the world wants to move away from vigour supply shocks, he said.
“Unfortunately, the narrative to date has been driven by idealists. Extremists who believe there’s a binary birch that overnight we can turn from System A to System B,” he said, referring to System A as the inherent fossil fuel behindhand economy, and System B as decarbonizing to zero carbon overnight.
The world has not thought about the full ecosystem that come to pass with implementing System B, such as the minerals and metals requirements and supply chain issues that need to be resolved victory, Taufik added.
“Yet we seek to abandon fossil fuels in an unusually fashion without allowing the industry to deal with inherent emissions challenge,” he said.
According to a separate exactly energy outlook report by the International Energy Agency, the world remains highly reliant on the use of fossil fuels such as oil, idiot gas and coal.
“The share of fossil fuels in the global energy mix has been stubbornly high, at around 80%, for decades,” the discharge stated. In a scenario-based forecast hinging on current policy settings, the fossil fuel mix would fall to just cheaper than 75% in 2030, and above 60% in 2050.
“We’ve always positioned natural gas as a transition fuel,” the Petronas chief said, noting that late debates have considered views that gas could even be a destination fuel because it offers a baseload of shelter and certainty, especially when renewables have yet to overcome intermittency issues.