What will transport look like in 2040?

Duration: 07:24 minutes

[Audio:]

Background music commences

[Kunal Dutta standing on the orbit:]

Hello and welcome. I'm at Shell’s powering progress together event

at London's Olympic Park

[Shell PPT LIVE montage]

and we've been talking today about the future of transport,

how people are going to live work and travel not just now

but up to the year 2040.

[Cut to three speakers - Kunal Dutta, Baroness Brown and Andy Eastlake]

So Baroness Brown let me start with you.

[Kunal Dutta speaks on camera]

We've talked a lot today about what transport will look like in 2040.

Can we just narrow it down to one big  change you think that we're going to see

[Three speakers on screen]

around the world in the way that we travel in 2040.

[Baroness Brown in shot]

Gosh that's a very difficult question. When you say around the world because we all travel the same way today.

But let me say it'll be cleaner and quieter.

[Kunal Dutta speaks on camera]

“Is that the technology or the government policy that’s doing that”

[Baroness Brown in shot]

Well the technology will deliver cleaner and quieter but we will need government policy I'm sure

to drive that to make sure it is.

[Cuts to Andy Eastlake]

I would say that the one, if you like, I hope that will be the biggest revolution is

moving away from the one person one car or one parcel one van

to a shared efficient mobility system if we can revolutionise that attitude

I think that would be one of the big things that we can take away.

[Kunal Dutta speaks on camera]

So how does that all translate to policy.

We've seen famously last year France

put a ban on the sale of diesel and internal combustion engines

Britain followed shortly afterwards.

And that seems to be the sort of direction in which we are going.

Does it feel like that is the right policy proposal? is it fast enough. Should it be sooner?

[Baroness Brown in shot]

Norway said 2025. Scotland said 2032.

In the Committee on Climate Change, in our reports, we've recommended that in the UK we need to be

at least 60 percent of vehicles by 2030 need to be plug in hybrid or full electric.

So 2040 for eliminating conventionally fuelled light duty vehicles is actually quite slow

and if we're going to meet the Paris commitment which goes beyond the UK’s current commitment of an 80 percent reduction by 2050

we really have got to start thinking about how how do we eliminate emissions.

How do we get them to zero emissions really as quickly as possible because there are going to be heavy, lorries

heavy goods vehicles which can be much more difficult. Aviation is going to be much more difficult to decarbonise so

the stuff we can do actually we need to get to zero as quickly as we can.

[Three speakers on screen]

[Cuts to Andy Eastlake Speaking]

I think it's, I think one point I would pick up on is

government actually have not said they're going to ban anything they've said they aim to end the sale of conventional vehicles

and actually I think Scotland have said they aim to end the need for conventional vehicles in 2032.

and to me that's the right thing to do. We actually want to focus on the objectives decarbonisation and clean air

and delivering those objectives with the best technology and the fastest pace we can.

Picking a technology that we ban is not the right way of doing that it’s

[Three speakers on screen]

what are the objectives, so I would absolutely welcome the advent of zero emission zones for example but banning

[Andy Eastlake in shot]

a particular technology without necessarily knowing what we can deliver from that technology in 22 years time

I think is a dangerous way playing and government to their credit I think they are technology neutral.

[Three speakers on screen]

Let me disagree with you there

[Baroness Brown in shot]

because we are going to have to get to net zero somewhere not too far beyond 2050

so we cannot still be in light duty vehicles and cars and vans.

We cannot, in a rich country like this, still be burning diesel in cars unless you've got some kind of bag on the back that's collecting the CO2.

You know there will be other applications like aviation where it's going to be much harder to eliminate fossil fuels.

We need the energy density and so if we can’t eliminate them from road transport

then boy we're going to have to have an awful lot of negative emissions technologies to compensate for aviation and some of the other crucial areas where we can‘t get to zero.

[Three speakers on screen]

So I'm afraid I disagree with you on that.

I think fossil fuels emitting CO2 out of a tailpipe in light duty vehicles is going to be we have we have to get rid of

[Baroness Brown in shot]

and I think not giving the industry a clear decision that says no you won't be able to sell those vehicles is kidding ourselves

and actually it's not forming a level playing field for industry.

[Kunal Dutta in shot] 

[Cuts to Andy Eastlake]

I hope and I actually believe we will actually get to this position much earlier than 2040.

I think you know for cars and I'll absolutely agree there is no reason in the timeframe that we're talking about that we can't get to

a fully electrified light car, light Vehicle Network.

But we shouldn't rule anything out. I think you're absolutely right about net zero is a big challenge and fossil fuels

[Three speakers on screen]

No doubt about that. We need to remove fossil fuels and decarbonise our fuels as quickly as we can.

[Cuts to Kunal Dutta on screen]

Every country has a different set of energy challenges that it's playing with so

what do you think needs to be done so there isn't just a couple of European countries that have

put this policy in place but there's a kind of global movement. is there anything else that the world

needs to do or is it just basically look at the Paris Agreement and find the solution that will fit your local  country.

[Three speakers on screen]

[Baroness Brown on Screen]

Well I think, I think we shouldn't think it's just a few countries in Europe.

We should look China. Who’ve  got some really ambitious plans. You know that's a country that isn't as rich

on a per capita basis as we are. And yet they can see the need. And they are doing , setting some very ambitious targets.

So if they’re decarbonising and as they move to decarbonising at a rate that will be in line with Paris then you know we have a very important manufacturing nation

getting onto the right path. So I think sometimes we do think it's just us in the West, in the developed countries.

And that's not the case. But we do. We do need India. We do need the whole of Europe. That's true.

[Andy Eastlake speaks on Camera]

And I think it's very clear that what we can do is allow

all of the developing countries are at different stages this to go through the same development cycle that we did

because that's why we're in the situation we're at now so

we have an obligation to help people avoid the mistakes that we made.

and there are some mistakes in there or that build on the learnings that we've got over many years.

And that's where you know there's some great work going on here in the U.K. and we can be sharing that with some great work going on around the world

in different areas that connection and collaboration so that we all move forward as fast as possible together

because I think we we probably both agree we're going to need every tool in the box if we're going to deliver anything like the Paris Agreement.

[Kunal Dutta Speaks to camera]

Fascinating insight there from my guests

Baroness Brown of Cambridge

and Andy Eastlake

[Three speakers on screen]

[Kunal Dutta in Shot]

Thank you very much for your time. Do head to the Inside Energy website for lots more stories

about energy, technology and the people and ideas powering our lives.

Thank you very much for watching.

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