31 July 2006
California and the UK are to work together on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting new clean fuel technologies. The deal was announced at a press conference with Tony Blair and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a BP plant in Los Angeles.
- PM and Schwarzenegger engage on green issues
- PM and Governor Schwarzenegger’s opening remarks
- Business Leaders Final Statement PDF (89.6 kbs)
- UK CA agreement PDF (102 kbs)
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
Read the transcript
Mr Steve Howard:
Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is Steve Howard, I am the CEO of the Climate Group. Thank you all for waiting for us today. We have had an unprecedented meeting inside, business leaders with Governor Schwarzenegger and Prime Minister Tony Blair, we have all been coming round the common subject of our concern over how do we solve climate change and deliver a clean energy future.
There was a tremendous, if you could have bottled the energy in that room we could have definitely solved the problem overnight. We will have a new alliance going forwards here which Lord Browne will talk about, but really I am not going to take any time because I am far from the main event here. I would like to introduce our first speakers and then introduce the business leaders. We will have Prime Minister Tony Blair, followed by Governor Schwarzenegger and then Lord Browne of BP, then Chad Halliday of Dupont and Tom King of PG&E.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has done more I would say than any other international leader on this issue. He has put climate change at the heart of the G8 agenda, invited in the five major developing countries to build a strong international accord. He set a 60% reduction target for the UK, put climate change at the heart of the EU agenda and really is an exceptional leader on this subject.
Governor Schwarzenegger, last year I had the privilege as the Governor made the first announcement around action in California with an 80% reduction target, which was by far and away the most challenging target, but he also said the debate is over, in such a compelling way I believed it and I went and told everybody the debate is now over and the time for action is now, and I believe the Governor will go down in history as the emissions terminator.
Lord Browne of BP has had a remarkable career at the helm of the second largest company on the planet, a company that has done more than any other and his leadership has been outstanding on climate change, championing policy action, actually reducing emissions within the company itself and actually delivering ground breaking new alternative energy. That is phenomenal leadership.
Chad Halliday at Dupont, they have slashed greenhouse gas emissions and developing new products and services will be part of the new low carbon economy, and saved billions of dollars into the process.
And here in California we have got Tom King from PG&E, which have constructed really useful partnerships with our customers to help save energy as well as sell energy. So we will have a great conference, there will be time for questions and answers from the Prime Minister and the Governor afterwards. Thank you for waiting for us and without any further ado, over to Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Prime Minister:
Thank you. First of all can I say how delighted I am to be here in California and in particular to be able to discuss with Governor Schwarzenegger the extraordinary work and extraordinary leadership that he has accomplished here in California. This is of immense importance I think. Some say this issue is always portrayed as Europe wants one thing, America wants another. Actually what he is showing is that there is a tremendous amount of commitment and dedication to getting this issue resolved and for a state as large and as powerful as California to play a part in this is obviously tremendously important.
And one of the things that we are launching today is a UK-California Partnership which will allow us to explore how both of us as leaders, his the Californian State, the UK, as leaders in this area, can combine together in research and technology, but also in trying to evolve market mechanisms that allow us to reduce CO2 emissions. And although this work is at an early stage, I think of all the things that we are talking about today, the one thing that would be really, really exciting is if we could start a tie-up between what we are doing in Europe with the European trading emissions system and what could happen here in the US and here in the state of California.
And I just wanted to say a couple of things. The first is that we know that we need a new international framework when the Kyoto Protocol expires. I think there is a real chance of getting such a framework provided that we are going to be clear that it needs to be a framework that gives us the right market mechanisms in order to reduce CO2 emissions, and provided it is a binding framework with a stabilisation goal at the heart of it. I think it is possible to achieve this. If we do that, and the whole purpose of the G8+5 dialogue was to make sure that not just Europe and Japan, but also North America and of course the emerging countries - China, India, Brazil, Mexico and so on - if we can get an international agreement with both of those things, strong market mechanisms and a stabilisation goal, and put that within an overall international framework, we will be well on the way to developing the right technologies and the right efficiencies in order to deal with the issue that confronts us, an issue that I think people do understand now is of huge significance and also huge danger for the whole of the world.
And in that regard I was delighted to be in the presence of so many committed business leaders. This can’t be done by business alone, but it certainly can’t be done without business. And what is interesting to me is that we have a whole generation of leadership in the corporate sector today that wants to take this subject seriously, that are determined to do it, they want the right partnership with government to get it done.
So I leave today’s meeting actually with a certain spirit of optimism, which people may think is very idealistic in the face of the challenge that we have, but actually as Steve was saying a moment or two ago, if we took the commitment that was there from business leaders in really strong sectors, together with what I think is an increasing commitment by those in government, then we are at least on our way to putting in place the framework that will resolve this problem. There couldn’t be anything more important for our children and for the generations to come, and it is a very heavy responsibility we have at this time, knowing what we now know with the science as certain as it is, we have to act and that is the purpose of what we are doing today.
And again I would like to thank the Governor for his kindness in welcoming me here today and also to say that I hope the UK-California Partnership that we are outlining today can play a real part in making this happen worldwide.
Governor Schwarzenegger:
Thank you very much Prime Minister Tony Blair for the wonderful comments and I want to thank you also for being here today and participating in this round table discussion, and I agree with what the Prime Minister says, that when you get the private sector and the public sector together, that is when you create real action. I am very happy about that. And of course he has been a great inspiration to all of us because he has been a great leader that has proven that you can do both, you can build a great economy and you can take care of the environment at the same time. And of course in California we want to create the same action here, we have been a leader also here for the last three decades and we do not want to wait for the Federal government to create that action, we want to create it and we want to be the leaders in that.
And this is why it is so terrific to be here today and that we have taken the unprecedented step of signing an agreement between California and the United Kingdom. We are collaborating on a long term challenge that Prime Minister Tony Blair has correctly called the single most important issue that we face as a global community.
In the national, international partnership I was …[INAUDIBLE]… leaders in order to fight global warming, and that is what we are seeing here today. California after all is like a nation state and when we act the world takes notice and it has a tremendous impact. Our state has been at the forefront of environmental protection and of energy efficiency for the last three decades. The agreement that we are signing here with Prime Minister Blair means that we will share best practices on emissions trading to speed up the transition to a low carbon economy, and we will share our economic data so that both can deepen our understanding of the economics of climate change. And we will collaborate also on technological research so that the United Kingdom benefits from our work and our initiatives, if it is the million solar roofs initiative, or the hydrogen highway, or that we can benefit from them from their work on issues such as renewable fuels or for instance an emissions trading system.
In the end it is going to take leadership to conquer of course the challenges of global warming and we are all going to work on this. Leadership we will provide in California, leadership Tony Blair will be providing in the United Kingdom, and leadership like these companies that all participated today are providing around the world, which has been really terrific.
So I am very optimistic about the future, I am really looking forward to this great, great agreement that we are signing here today and I want to thank the Prime Minister very much for being here and for being such a great partner.
Lord Browne:
Governor, Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen. We had a superb meeting today and I think the reason for that is that it is in a state which is known for advances in everything, and California is a wonderful place for everyone to meet and talk.
I think from the business leaders’ viewpoint there is no disagreement that climate change is something which requires action to be taken; and secondly, that there are actions that can be taken. In my own industry and in the company that I lead we are driving heavily increases in the scale, in the way in which electricity is generated through solar, through wind, through fuels which no longer have carbon in them because carbon is removed, as well as inventing and creating new types of fuel based on bio inputs. These are just some examples. The third I think is that we have all recognised there is no trade-off, no trade-off between business which is good for the environment and a good business. And fourth, I think everyone remains keen to make sure that the regulation that is put in place to allow the great technologies to be made into businesses must be regulation that isn’t good just for today, but it is also good for tomorrow, good for tomorrow in that if the general price of the competing energies goes down, such as crude oil, then we all hope that the way in which alternative energy works is not damaged because it competes with something which is very much cheaper.
These are things to be solved, solved on a local basis and solved on a global basis. It is quite possible that everything will be solved in pieces, we just have to hope that the pieces can speak to each other and much like currencies there are exchange rates between one regime and another to allow people to do business globally.
Chad Halliday:
To add briefly to Lord Browne’s comments, three things stood out to me in the time we spent together. First, collaboration. Government leaders, NGOs, a broad cross-section of businesses from Google to Virgin Atlantic and Interface came together and solved different kinds of ideas, and that is what is important going forward, we must do that on a global basis. Second, science is our friend. The Prime Minister described the framework that if implemented will give us the freedom for [INAUDIBLE] at Dupont and other companies around the world, but the creativity, particularly biotechnology, a technology that we know can make a big difference and plays a big role in cooperation that Dupont has with BP today. And third, this is about action now and we must give companies encouragement that when they take early action they will be rewarded for that.
Tom King:
This issue is about leadership and I want to thank the Governor and the Prime Minister for being leaders both in climate and in energy. And I also want to thank the Climate Group for taking the initiative to bring this group together and create a very, very positive dialogue. At PG&E we believe that climate change is real and the time is now for action. And Governor, you said it well recently - the time for now is action. That is why PG&E is committed to remaining the nation’s leader in energy efficiency and it is why we are investing an additional billion dollars in energy efficiency over the next two years, and PG&E provide customers today with electricity that is over 50% free of greenhouse gas emissions, and we are committed to add more wind, solar and renewables to that energy list. So then again it is so important that we all take action, we stand up, we move forward and we thank the leadership that we have with the Governor and the Prime Minister for helping us do that, and PG&E remains committed to working with you to make that happen.
Platform Speaker:
Today was the beginning of something, you have all seen a copy of the statement from the new Corporate Climate Alliance, so I think this is the beginning of a positive dialogue.
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