[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 37 (Tuesday, April 9, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E452-E453]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        RECOGNIZING JOHN BROWNE

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. SHERWOOD L. BOEHLERT

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, April 9, 2002

  Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize John Browne, 
chief executive of BP for his distinctive leadership on the issue of 
climate change. In 1997, at Stanford University, John Browne took a 
bold step; he broke from his peers in the oil and gas industry and set 
a target to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from company 
operations. The target he set was a ten percent reduction below a 1990 
baseline by the year 2010.
  Just last week this same man again stood before an audience at 
Stanford to announce that the company had achieved the target, and done 
so eight years ahead of schedule. Importantly, this was done at no net 
cost to the company. Mr. Browne further announced that BP would 
continue its quest to reduce the carbon intensity of its activities and 
stabilize carbon emissions at current levels while growing the company. 
This, he said would be achieved through focusing on technology 
improvements, gains in efficiency and through offering less carbon 
intensive products to customers.
  Mr. Speaker, the actions on the part of John Browne and BP clearly 
demonstrate that a little bit of initiative can go a long way. This is 
leadership--we need more of it here in the US on the matter of climate 
change, because this issue is not going to go away.
  I applaud the achievements of John Browne and the progressive company 
that he leads.
  Attached is a copy of Mr. Browne's Stanford speech for my colleagues' 
consideration.

   Excerpts From the Statement of John Browne, Chief Executive, BP, 
                   Stanford University--11 March 2002

    Beyond Petroleum: Energy and the Environment in the 21st Century

       Stanford is a place to which I first came twenty-three 
     years ago to learn about business. And it's place to which I 
     came back five years ago to talk about the issue of climate 
     change and global warming.
       Climate change is an issue which raises fundamental 
     questions about the relationship between companies and 
     society as a whole; and between one generation and the next. 
     It is an issue which is about leadership as well as science.
       It was clear that the issue was global, potentially 
     affecting everyone. And it was equally clear that the only 
     practical solutions would be ones which recognized the human 
     desire for improved living standards.
       To ask people to sacrifice the future would be unrealistic. 
     To deny the basic aspirations of hundreds of millions of 
     people to escape from poverty would be immoral.
       It was clear too, that the immediate challenge couldn't be 
     solved by a sudden magical transformation of the energy mix, 
     through the replacement of oil and gas by alternative and 
     renewable forms of energy.
       In 1997 we accepted that logic. We set our own target--to 
     reduce our own emissions of greenhouse gases by 10 per cent 
     from a 1990 base line by the year 2010 That was broadly in 
     line with the Kyoto targets, and based on the presumption 
     that at some point in the future those target of something 
     similar would be converted into mandated objectives. At that 
     time, we didn't know precisely how we were going to achieve 
     our target--but we had some initial ideas.
       Now, five years on, I'm delighted to announced that we've 
     delivered on that target.
       That means our emissions of carbon dioxide have fallen to 
     almost 80 million tonnes, 10 million tonnes below the level 
     in 1990 . . . and 14 million tonnes below the level they had 
     reached in 1998.
       That achievement is the product not of a single magic 
     bullet . . . but of hundreds of different initiatives carried 
     through by tens of thousands of people across BP over the 
     last five years. They deserve the credit . . .

[[Page E453]]

     and their achievement makes me very proud to lead the BP 
     team.
       The answer came through efficiency . . . and technology, 
     and through better management of the energy we use ourselves. 
     At the Texas City refinery alone that saved $5 million and 
     300,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. It came through 
     a reduction in the amount of energy we need to use. And by 
     applying simple efficiency--stopping leaks. There are 
     hundreds of examples.
       In aggregate the net effect of all those actions is that 
     we've met the target, seven years ahead of schedule. And 
     we've met it at no net economic cost--because the savings 
     from reduced energy inputs and increased efficiency have 
     outweighed all the expenditure involved.
       That's a particularly noteworthy point, a positive 
     surprise--because it begins to answer the fears expressed by 
     those who believed that the costs of taking precautionary 
     action would be huge and unsustainable.
       In the process of reaching that objective we've learned a 
     great deal. We can now measure our emissions with much more 
     precision than we could five years ago. We now have a 
     verified inventory of emissions. That means we can track 
     reductions in a way which simply wasn't possible before. 
     We've learned a great deal about trading greenhouse gas 
     emissions--through establishing the first global internal 
     trading system which enabled us to apply the right resources 
     in the right places and to reduce the costs involved. And 
     we've learned a great deal about the potential to resolve the 
     challenge of climate change through technology.
       The quality of the products we sell has improved--with the 
     development of cleaner fuels. That not only improves air 
     quality in our cities, it also enables us to work with the 
     auto manufacturers to produce significantly more efficient 
     engines.
       Taken together, those steps mean that we've not only 
     reduced our own emissions but we've also reduced the carbon 
     content of the energy products we supply to the world. So it 
     is a good start. But it's not a place to stop.
       There is no single solution . . . but there are many ways 
     forward. What we and others have done show that there are 
     rich and wide-ranging possibilities.
       The compelling conclusion from the scientific work is that 
     the ultimate objective must be to achieve stabilization--a 
     maximum level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which is 
     below the level of risk.
       If stabilization is the objective, what is the appropriate 
     contribution of an individual company? Clearly, we can't do 
     everything. We supply just 1.5 per cent of the world's energy 
     and around three per cent of the world's oil and gas.
       But we play our part and take a lead. We can use our skills 
     and technology and business process to set our own internal 
     target in the context of the goal of stabilization, with a 
     clear time scale over the next decade; in short to hold the 
     emissions from our operations at 10% below 1990 levels, 
     through 2012, with approximately half of that coming from 
     improvements in internal energy efficiency, and half from the 
     use of market mechanisms, generating carbon credits.

           That is our next objective and our new commitment.

       The scale of the challenge is clear. We're a growing 
     business, and we want to create value for our shareholders by 
     increasing our share of the world energy market over the next 
     decade. We aim to continue to grow our production of oil and 
     gas by more than five per cent per annum until 2005, and to 
     keep growing beyond that.
       We'll also be increasing the volume of refined products we 
     produce. Precise predictions are impossible but we are moving 
     to the point where we could be producing twice our current 
     output. So we have to have the means to manage the possible 
     volumes of CO2 which that growth implies.
       How then can we contribute to the objective of 
     stabilisation? There are two principal ways. First, through 
     efficiency--improving the productivity of the energy we use, 
     and doing everything we can internally to reduce our 
     emissions per unit of production.
       By applying existing knowledge across the span of our 
     operations, and selective new capital investment in areas 
     such as cogeneration, we believe we can achieve a 10 to 15 
     per cent improvement in the efficiency of our energy use. 
     That will include continued work to avoid leaks. In total we 
     believe we can deliver around half the necessary reductions 
     needed to sustain our internal emissions at current levels.
       Secondly we have to continue to reduce the carbon content 
     of the products we produce and sell. We'll continue to shift 
     the balance of our business in favour of lower carbon energy 
     sources and in particular natural gas. We'll also continue 
     the development of key markets for fuels with a lower carbon 
     content such as Compressed Natural Gas and Liquefied 
     Petroleum Gas.
       We'll offer refined products that are designed to enable 
     improved efficiency, or greater emissions reductions. We'll 
     continue to improve the quality of our refined products. 
     Within the next three years 50 per cent of sales worldwide 
     will be of clean fuels, including zero sulphur fuels, which 
     we hope will catalyze the development of more efficient 
     engines. We're working with engine manufacturers. We'll 
     continue to develop our solar business which will grow by 40 
     per cent this year and which already has a 17 per cent world 
     market share. And we'll explore other potential renewable 
     sources of supply, and test the viability of other potential 
     energy sources such as hydrogen.
       At the same time we'll maintain the leadership we've 
     secured over the last five years in carbon capture and 
     geologic storage, a technology that may have applications 
     across industry sectors.
       Our growth will be cleaner than the average, as it has been 
     over the last decade, and that means we will have earned the 
     right to grow, because by taking action we've ensured that 
     our growth is sustainable in every sense.
       Of course, the offset I mentioned depends on the 
     development of a system of credits which recognizes that 
     emissions can be reduced in many different ways and which 
     incentivises innovation and new thinking. That system of 
     credits has not yet been established. The market mechanisms 
     are not yet in place. But these are early days.
       We, and others, have learned a great deal about the 
     technology of trading emissions over the last five years. But 
     to reach its full potential, and to go beyond the boundaries 
     of individual companies, trading requires real incentives 
     which are not yet in place. Nevertheless, I feel more 
     confident now than I did in 1997 that such systems will 
     eventually be established, and as they are developed we're 
     determined to maintain our leadership position.
       The acceptance of the risk and of the potential for 
     progress is reflected in all the actions being taken by 
     Governments around the world: in China--a shift from coal to 
     natural gas, and an extensive national programme of 
     investment in environmental protection; in the UK--the 
     development of a creative and constructive trading system; 
     and in the US, the important statement about reducing carbon 
     intensity by President Bush four weeks ago builds on previous 
     statements on stabilisation and opens new possibilities based 
     on the fundamental American belief in technology--a belief 
     founded on decades of achievement here in Stanford and in 
     other great universities.
       The differences of approach are to me a source of 
     optimism--because they reflect reality. The most effective 
     forms of action do vary from one country to another, just as 
     they vary from one company to another. That creative 
     diversity of response, combined with the common acceptance of 
     the problem, means that a recognition of different advances 
     in a common form through credits is more likely than it has 
     been before.
       Our aspiration then is to sustain the reduction in 
     emissions we've made. And by doing that to contribute to the 
     world's long term goal of stabilization. That is the route to 
     creating a sustainable, profitable business. We can't do it 
     alone. We need the help of partners. We need the help of the 
     academic. And we need the help of Governments.

     

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