Larry Fink sends an annual letter to the bosses of all companies in which he is invested, and a few years ago an important topic was decarbonization.
As the managing director of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, his message has investors and business leaders all over the world.
His next letter comes soon and he indicates that the environment is less emphasized and emissions are reduced.
“I still believe in it, but I also warn that every decarbonizing technology is very inflationary at the moment,” said Fink, while talking this week in Houston as part of Ceraweek, a Global Energy Conference.
Fink is not alone to make this shift. The emphasis on climate protection and the transition to clean energy has decreased in recent years, since often more focus is on energy safety and affordability.
And that was before Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Since then the US President has pulled The country from the Paris climate agreement and shortened climate shots. The law to reduce inflation Program for clean energy Introduced by former President Joe Biden, is now in the crosshair.
In addition, Trump has granted a command to revoke bidges in most US coastal waters to revoke the oil and gas bores and also has temporarily suspended New or renewed rental contracts for offshore and onshore wind projects.
The Sierra Club campaign director says that Trump’s withdrawal from the climate agreement is a “call to act” for every other country in the world, including Canada.
In total, hundreds of billions of dollars of clean tech and energy projects with low recording could be affected, and Ripple-Effects worldwide.
“We have to think about power and energy across the board in a pragmatic way,” said Fink.
A few years ago, the climate was an important topic of the annual Ceraweek event when company and government heads presented their environmental progress and the latest investments.
This year there is no noticeable in the conversation. Instead, the limelight lies on the increasing worldwide demand for all types of energy, especially for oil and natural gas.
“A side effect”
During the stage on Monday, Trump’s energy -energetic Chris Wright called herself as a “climate manager”.
“The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is, a global physical phenomenon that has a side effect of the construction of the modern world,” he said. “Everything in life includes compromises. Everything.”
Experts are increasingly saying that Energy transition becomes more difficult, more expensive and more complicated than expected.
The shift of some energy companies in decarbonization efforts lasts.
Five years ago, BP set some of the most ambitious goals of all large oil patch companies, including the production of oil and gas by 2030 by 40 percent and the investments in renewable energies significantly change.
Now this plan has been thrown out of the window.
BP relocates the investments of renewable energies back to oil and gas production as part of a “reset” for the company, said managing director Murray also.
“The world has changed a lot,” he said, while on stage in Houston. “When I visited governments all over the world, it became clear that the two priorities in all countries we have worked were really affordable energy and reliable energy.”
The current one19:54What will the USA for Canada push for “energy dominance”?
Donald Trump’s administration would like to create a new era of “energy dominance” in the USA by increasing energy generation in order to give more Americans cheap power. What does this mean for the Canadian oil and gas sector? The CBC Business Reporter Kyle Bakx went to Ceraweek, the “Super Bowl” of energy conferences, to find out what the industry is thinking.
Spotlight on Trump
The decreasing priority of the climate is noticeable, said Martha Hall Findlay, head of the School of Public Policy from the University of Calgary. She is a former liberal MP and recently was the role of Chief Climate Officer for Suncor Energy.
“I’m not looking forward to it. Climate change is a problem,” she said during an interview in Calgary.
“The basic change was the choice of Donald Trump,” said Hall Findlay, pointing out his contempt for environmental policy, the deposition of environmentally friendly subsidies, promoting more oil drilling, the question of science of climate change and its orientation with Russia on the world stage.
“What do priorities have in such a situation?” she said. “Unfortunately it is not a climate.”
With Trump in the White House, Dan Grossman from the Environmental Defense Fund awaited a cheering party atmosphere in the oil and gas industry in Ceraweek in Texas.
Instead, companies say that they are still committed to climate efforts.
“We certainly don’t see many disputes and grocery straps,” said Grossman in an interview with CBC News in Houston.
“We have made a lot of progress in the question of climate change and methane reduction worldwide, and that won’t only dissolve overnight,” he said. “The people who are in office may have changed, but science behind climate change has not changed.”
Climate expenditure
2025 is expected for the first time that the expenses and investments of clean energy technology will be replaced by oil and gas investments that are upstream, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights
“There are companies that decide that the climate is less priority, that sustainability is less priority and that they want to concentrate more on expense and short -term returns,” said Roman Kramarchuk, head of climate markets at S&P, in an interview with CBC News in Houston.
At the same time, there will be other companies that consider the climate as a way for them to practice their skills and also earn money in this sense. “
In the United States, many state and local governments continue their environmental policy to tackle climate change.
For companies, they often make large investment decisions that make sense for a decades or two in the future, long after Trump is president.
“You see how the world is going,” said Samantha Gross, analyst for energy safety and climate at the Brookings Institution, a DC-in DC-based thought factory. “I think they are approaching the energy transition with realism and understanding that it will not happen overnight.”
Fink, the head of the massive money manager, is still optimistic of where the world leads and how quickly the technology changes many aspects of the energy sector.
Nevertheless, inflation is at the forefront for him at the moment and the decarbonization efforts are not always financially useful.
“Everyone talks about the opportunity with hydrogen. Well, we can have green hydrogen and blue hydrogen, but is someone ready to pay the costs?”
