Looney no muppet as he hits truth on work needed to go green
It ain’t easy being green, sang Kermit the Frog once upon a time. The puppet-frog was right; moving towards net zero will require an extraordinary amount of hard work.
So three cheers to Bernard Looney, the BP boss, for saying what so few are willing to say: the road to a greener future runs straight through the energy majors, and the products they are still pulling out the ground.
Few in politics seem to understand it – certainly if they do, they willingly ignore it in their public statements.
Many on the left and right have gathered behind the most extreme voices, who seem to believe that the green energy capacity required to power a transition to net zero can be conjured up by absurd protests at art galleries rather than energy firms with capital to invest.
BP is often in the crosshairs; its sponsorship of art exhibitions has drawn particular ire, as if ripping up a Vermeer will pay for wind turbines.
As Ed Conway, the Sky News economics editor, has made clear, few of the goals of the net zero movement can be achieved without natural resources. Try and build a wind turbine without digging copper out of the ground; it ain’t gonna work.
When it comes to low-carbon energy, the level of investment by our biggest energy firms is miles ahead of any other body. The City is already moving fast to fund green projects. Fair play to Looney – he’s right.