Burson-Marsteller

Global Energy Practice

by Bill Royce on 9th June 2011 • The Cast Blog

We have just launched Burson-Marsteller’s Global Energy Practice, which connects the EMEA Energy Environment & Climate Change practice to colleagues worldwide to service companies operating globally and to better share knowledge and insights.

As our global CEO Mark Penn says,energy issues are increasingly global, interconnected and complex. This new global practice brings together a range of expertise that can advise energy companies on their full spectrum of communications needs at this crucial time for the industry, government energy policy and the environment. 

In support of Mark’s astute comment, I offer three timely observations.

First, since March the so-called nuclear renaissance has gone full-tilt into a nuclear retreat.  While tens of thousands of lives were lost and entire lowland communities devastated by the tragic earthquake and tsunami in Japan, this natural disaster has been largely defined internationally by the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.

We cannot overstate the immense scale of this awful incident, the sacrifice of people displaced from their homes nor the heroic courage of the workers who are trying to contain the situation (we must not forget that many of the workers are also victim of the earthquake and tsunami). Yet most modern nuclear plants would have shut down automatically and safely if their backup systems were disabled.  That fact has been lost in sensationalist reporting and NGO fear-mongering. The salient lesson is that a tragic event in one country in an old plant with outdated technology has changed energy scenarios and policies worldwide. That’s what Mark means by global.

Secondly, the sudden demise of nuclear as a foundation of several countries’ low-carbon energy futures means greater reliance on fossil fuels for baseload electricity – a clumsy phrase, but it means electricity generation that provides a reliable, consistent output to meet demand. Most of today’s “dumb” power grids require an exact match between energy demanded and energy produced, so you need generation capacity on ‘stand-by’ to ramp up if generation from wind or solar (or other intermittent renewables) suddenly drops off.  The flight from nuclear means more “dirty” coal or natural gas (cleanest-burning fossil fuel) or hydroelectric power (which is often environmentally and socially destructive).  There is no easy answer in the energy and climate mix (welcome a new acronym: TINEA) which underscores Mark’s point on interconnected issues. 

Finally, if we need any proof of the complexity of these issues, please review this summary of the first day of the Bonn climate talks on Monday. This was the first day of two weeks of high-level “sherpa” (bureaucrat) talks to move the UNFCCC programme towards a new global agreement in Durban in December to continue or replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires next year.

One of the key bodies, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice (SBSTA) spent the entire day in disagreement on the agenda and its relationship to the meeting of another group, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) – with the SBI’s opening session delayed at least one day.  I’ve just finished reading the summary of day two (Tuesday) and it didn’t get any better – almost endless arguments and objections about procedures.

Can we really expect a sceptical public to accept painful measures to stop dangerous climate change, including higher power bills, if some of the best brains in the world cannot even agree a meeting agenda?  As a concerned observer, the procedural inertia of the UN process is as great a problem as the world’s energy imbalance. While we have a range of technological solutions to climate change, we don’t seem to have a fix for the UN climate response process.  That should concern us all – and demonstrates why the launch of the Global Energy Practice is both timely and strategic.

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