By Rachael Everard – Head of Sustainability
Entering the second week of COP27, it’s fantastic to see the voice of business alongside government and civil society in responding to climate change
Businesses, like Rolls-Royce, played an important role in COP26 in Glasgow last year, and we have seen that energy carry forward into 2022. Earlier this year the ICAO Assembly adopted the long-term aspiration of net zero CO2 emissions by 2050, and as the Farnborough International Airshow convened for the first time since the pandemic, the energy transition was the number one issue for the sector.
UK, November 16. Here at COP27, it’s clear this momentum is accelerating. Last week, 45 countries under the Breakthrough Agenda launched a package of 25 new collaborations to decarbonise the hardest-to-abate sectors. The Breakthrough Agenda announcements build on the leader-level commitment at last year’s conference: countries representing half of global GDP have committed to work together to make clean technologies and sustainable solutions the most affordable, accessible and attractive option in emissions-intensive sectors of the global economy by 2030. Practical roadmaps and committed partnerships between countries and industries will be essential to rapidly scale climate tech solutions.
As a business that operates across some of the hardest-to-abate sectors, including energy and transport – sectors that are by their very nature both inherently local and fundamentally global, we welcome international co-operation and collaboration. This is essential to creating the enabling environment we need to deliver our decarbonisation goals and in supporting our partners, including national governments, to do the same.
Implementation and action
As a proud founding member of the UN’s Race To Zero global campaign and partner of the We Mean Business coalition, Rolls-Royce has focused on accelerating progress over the past year. importantly, we have submitted our science-based targets to the SBTi. These will anchor our net zero pathway, as we progressively decarbonise our own operations, and work with partners to help decarbonise transport, energy and the built environment.
Like so many at this COP, we are focused on implementation and action, and we’ve made good progress. Over the last year, Rolls-Royce has carried out multiple SAF (sustainable aviation fuel) tests both on the ground and in the air. By the end of 2023, we will have proven that all of our Trent and Business Aviation engines are compatible with 100% drop-in SAF, in readiness for subsequent industry certification and passenger operation. As SAF production scales up, this represents >40% of the global long-haul fleet being compatible with non-fossil fuel energy. We are progressing through the design stages of our small modular nuclear reactor (SMR); a technology that can deliver significant volumes of clean, constant energy whilst simultaneously creating 40,000 green jobs in the UK alone. At COP26 last year we unveiled our first hydrogen fuel cell, with application in power generation, and this summer we announced the start of a comprehensive programme of engine testing and development to accelerate the use of hydrogen in aviation. . Acquiring a majority stake in Hoeller Electrolyzer has propelled forward our work accelerating green hydrogen-powered energy systems, with technology that will form the basis of a new range of mtu electrolyser products in our Power Systems division. These have the potential to replace diesel generators in the built environment, significantly reducing the ~23% of carbon emissions from running buildings.
Building a net zero economy, running on low-carbon, affordable and secure energy will require many different technology solutions, and collaboration will be the key to innovation. So too will the capabilities and skills that can unlock and empower such solutions.
A year ago at COP26 I spoke on the UNFCCC Climate Action stage about the technologies we were pioneering to decarbonise flight. I closed out my remarks by commenting how fortunate I felt to work in an organisation filled with engineers, because engineers love nothing more than solving difficult problems. On that very same stage in Sharm el-Sheik it was my pleasure to host an in-depth conversation about the engineering activism that lies behind the energy transition. Now it is even more clear that climate change will be the greatest challenge we as society ever face. This puts the next generation of engineers at the heart of scaling solutions and pioneering breakthroughs.
The developments we’ve already seen at COP27 on top of the progress made during 2022 give me real confidence that this can be achieved, and we look forward to seeing how much further we’ve travelled and where business can play a bigger role when we meet at COP28 this time next year.
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