Total CEO Patrick Pouyanné believes that the energy transition will take time and that "there will be no big night" in the face of the climate emergency, in an interview with Le Monde published Thursday.
The Paris climate agreement is "a benchmark" but "the real debate is timing: there won't be a big night," said the boss of the oil and gas giant.
"Environmentalists believe that everything will have changed in 2025 or 2030. But it is impossible to move the demand for energy, which today is 80% fossil, as quickly," he said.
"The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] suggests halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 if we want to keep warming at 1.5 ° C, but it won't happen so quickly. The planet cannot change overnight, ”adds Patrick Pouyanné.
Growing pressure
He thus takes up arguments he has often raised, while his company - like certain competitors - is under increasing pressure from civil society but also from investors to do more against global warming.
At the general meeting of Total at the end of May, a resolution brought by eleven investors to force the group to more ambitious climatic objectives was rejected, but received the support of nearly 17% of the shareholders.
Total estimates that oil demand "will reach a plateau around 2030, in particular because Europe and China will have switched to the electric vehicle", says Patrick Pouyanné.
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“In a world at 2 ° C, we will still produce 50 million barrels per day by 2040-2050 [against 100 million before the pandemic]. The world therefore needs oil ", he judges, even if" we will eventually get out of oil ".
In its scenario compatible with the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to keep global warming well below 2 ° C or even 1.5 °, the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that oil demand should begin to decline in the coming years, around 2022.
