Duncan Green
Oxfam GB

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As GE’s citizenship report highlights a new industrial revolution is needed to prevent catastrophic climate change, enable access to energy for all and create green jobs. This is both an environment challenge and a development imperative. Energy poverty is a killer in poor countries — 1.6 million people die every year (more than deaths from malaria) because of smoke inhalation due to dirty cooking fuels.

The scale of the challenge of such a low carbon transformation is immense.

Greenhouse gas emissions, which have been rising along with economic growth ever since man discovered how to make fire, have to be ”decoupled” so that poverty can be ended without destroying the planet. GE, together with other businesses in advocacy groups such as the Copenhagen Climate Council, Combat Climate Change Coalition and the US Climate Action Partnership have called for strong global targets to slow, stop and reverse greenhouse gas emissions — supporting an 85 percent cut in emissions by 2050. But GE should also be ready to pull out of business alliances that seek to undermine proposed U.S. climate legislation, as has been reported of the American Petroleum Institute, of which it is a member.

This is a tough target: if the world started to cut its greenhouse gas emissions now, it would have to improve its carbon efficiency by some 4 percent a year, every year if we want economic growth to continue at its trend rate. And the longer the world takes to hit “peak carbon”, the harder it gets — if we don’t start till 2020 we would need to reduce the carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 9 percent a year to have a decent chance of staying within two degrees of warming.

GE is clearly at the forefront of much of what will really count in reaching these targets: developing technologies for renewable energy and smart grids, efficient lighting, lower emissions from transport, lighter and stronger materials, and water saving and purification technology. It has also begun to demonstrate what it would take to meet global greenhouse gas emissions targets, through its own operations, where it has reduced its carbon intensity by 12.5 percent a year from 2004 to 2008.

While GE is to be commended for its achievements, pursuing low carbon virtue is necessary, but not sufficient. GE’s business model must allow it to become part of a systemic process of decarbonization, meaning becoming both a vigorous advocate and a sharer of technology.

Key questions then, for GE are:

• How does it relate the decarbonization of its own footprint to the bigger picture, of global, national and sectoral challenges? How does GE understand its fair share of emissions, and how can such an approach be more generally used by all businesses?
• How does GE contribute to the broader agenda of encouraging effective technology transfer, and in particular unlocking constraints that arise through a ”business as usual” approach to intellectual property? Rather than lobbying for more restrictive approaches (“knowledge protectionism”), could GE take the lead in sharing new carbon-reducing technologies, for example, promoting patent pooling as GSK has done in pharmaceuticals?
• How does GE shape its research and development agenda to ensure that its technology and product portfolio supports a pro-poor agenda, and in particular supports poorer communities’ needs to protect themselves against the destructive impacts of climate change as is already happening in many of the countries where Oxfam works?

Duncan Green is Head of Research at Oxfam GB. See his daily blog on international development.