By Lilly Lee (MPA ’23)

From high-level executives and thought leaders to innovators and practitioners, many of the people who move the needle in the energy world convened in Houston this month for the biggest energy conference of the year.

I was lucky to have been part of CERAWeek as it turned 40 years old, supporting Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy. Started in 1983 when Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin and James Rosenfield founded Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), the conference has now grown into “the Davos of energy,” gathering together more than 5,000 people who are shaping the global energy agenda.

Is the oil and gas sector part of the solution to climate change?

This year’s conference was evidence that the energy security issue and the geopolitics of traditional fossil fuels are alive and well, even when we cannot afford any further delay in transitioning to clean energy sources to power the world. With economic and geopolitical turmoil in place, there has been an interesting push and pull between transitioning away from oil and gas, while ensuring its supply.

I was surprised by the number of sessions and discussions on diversification and Net Zero strategies of oil and gas companies, more so since CERAWeek previously had an image as a conference for the oil and gas industry. But were there enough discussions on how to meet their climate targets? Maybe not.

This event happened exactly a week after the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The United Nations climate science body warned that the window to secure a sustainable future is rapidly closing, and that we need to bring adaptation to the forefront of discussion — a policy path that was avoided by the climate community out of fear that it would undermine the importance of reducing emissions now and mitigating future damage. Compared to the last major report in 2014, this shows how much time we have lost. However, there was not enough, if any, discussion on the report in Houston and how the industry as a whole should ramp up its effort to address the climate crisis.

Simultaneously, and unfortunately so, CERAWeek happened 10 days into the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With oil and gas prices at an all-time high due to fears of supply disruptions, there was a strong comeback discussion on energy security. As New York Times reporter David Gelles put it during the conference, oil and gas producers were “suddenly feeling good about themselves” and this price hike was “a moment of validation that American oil and gas producers have been waiting for.” In one of the panel discussions with CEOs of oil and gas companies, Hess Corporation CEO John Hess argued that it is time the sector needs growth again and that more investment is needed immediately. The session ended with the Petronas CEO Tengku Muhammad Taufik commenting that oil and gas companies are not villains, but part of the solution.

It is true that it is unrealistic to imagine an energy transition without the oil and gas sector on board. Even in the International Energy Agency’s 2050 roadmap to Net Zero, fossil fuels will still account for around one-fifth of total energy supply in 2050. Fossil fuels will continue to be used in hydrogen production or in manufacturing of carbon-intensive products (such as steel and cement) using carbon capture technology. Fossil fuels could also not be combusted and instead be used as feedstocks to make plastics and other chemicals, for example. This was echoed in the most recent outlook released since the war in Ukraine had begun. According to bp’s most recent outlook report, the upstream oil and gas sector needs significant investment even in its net zero scenario, where the demand for oil and gas falls. The reason is that there is a natural decline in production from existing oil and gas wells.

Many of the oil and gas giants at the forefront of the energy transition, including Shell, bp, and TotalEnergies, highlighted their efforts on different fronts — from carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and biofuels, to offshore wind and electric vehicle charging. Of course, some were more aggressive than the others. President of Shell USA Gretchen Watkins said, “While we may show up as kind of a strange person or entity to be at the climate change table, I think we’re 100% needed there. We’re good at building relationships with governments and partnerships with each other. We’re good at actually doing things at scale.”

Transition tomorrow, energy security today, and collaboration now

The confidence of oil and gas companies was definitely bolstered by the message that U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm conveyed. While Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry’s message on the first day was geared towards climate ambitions, by the third day, the atmosphere shifted as the situation intensified in Ukraine. Secretary Granholm called for an immediate ramp-up in oil production and mentioned that the government is ready to support the industry. There was a burst of applause when she touched upon the issue of permits, which has been long considered as one of the biggest barriers in the industry. She also called upon investors, mentioning that everybody should come together and collaborate in the time of crisis.

The elephant in the room?

All in all, it was a great conference — many important messages were conveyed, partnerships were announced, and there was a good balance between the policy and technology crowds. Another important milestone was the agreement among Oil and Gas Climate Initiative members to aim toward near-zero methane emissions by 2030. I was also excited by the announcement of a partnership between Ford and PG&E on bidirectional electric vehicle charging, showing how industries are collaborating to find creative solutions.

However, there were a few things I personally thought were missing.

First, there was not enough discussion about just energy transition, how to support and finance emerging markets and developing economies, and how to support the communities adversely affected by the transition. While advanced economies benefit from convenient energy services, around 790 million people do not have access to electricity and 2.6 billion people do not have access to clean cooking options. We should not forget that the world’s wealthiest 10% are responsible for around half of global emissions. As Dr. Arun Majumdar, professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University, pointed out, we should not put the burden of climate change on the people who are the least responsible; energy access should be a human right in the 21st century.

In a panel discussion, Jason Bordoff, Founding Director of the Center on Global Energy Policy and Co-Founding Dean of the Columbia Climate School, outlined five things to think about when it comes to just energy transition: first, the cost of transition. Second, climate impacts — we now have to focus our efforts more on adaptation aspects than mitigation, as outlined by the IPCC report. Third, economic opportunities, such as new jobs that could be created. Fourth, communities that would be disrupted, such as communities that depend heavily on the coal industry or indigenous communities reliant on natural resources. And lastly, emerging markets and developing economies that have not historically contributed to the problem, but that will suffer the most from climate change. The effects will not be felt equally, and governments and industry are not taking the necessary actions yet. How do we get to a net zero economy in a fair and equitable way? This is a question that should be discussed more in the energy sector.

Secondly, there were certainly not enough women panelists. As I look around my colleagues or look at the media, I am excited to see more and more brilliant and smart women working in the energy sector. But why weren’t more of them present at CERAWeek? I was surprised by how often I was one of the very few women in the room. First of all, there should be more women in the energy sector, and more so in senior management roles. And if there are more women in the sector, the experts invited to talk or present should be proportionate. According to the IEA, while women make up 48% of the global labor force, they only account for 22% of the traditional energy sector. This number goes down to 14% when we look at senior management positions. With the energy sector going through a major transition, we need to bring people in from diverse talent pools more urgently than ever to create innovative solutions and business models to fight climate change.

We tend to not realize when we are in the middle of history in the making. However, we should never forget that we really are the generation living at an inflection point. The direction and speed are up to us. As RJ Scaringe, CEO of the electric car company Rivian, said, we should be excited to be given the chance to mold the future as we want and transition away from the past as much as we want.

The week in Houston has taught me a lot — it has allowed me to look at the past, pause for the present, and picture the future all at once. I close my reflections on this intense and insightful week by dreaming of a future where we can proudly tell our future generation that we steered the world toward the right side of history.

Lilly Lee is a first-year MPA candidate majoring in energy and environment. She currently works at the Director's Office at the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy as a research assistant and is the vice president of the SIPA Energy Association. Prior to SIPA, she worked at the International Energy Agency as an energy systems modeler.