Bob Dudley, BP's group chief executive, called Tuesday for a global price on carbon in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"We need governments, in our opinion, to put a price on carbon," Dudley told the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference.
Dudley did not suggest what a global price structure would look like and acknowledged it presented numerous challenges.
Dudley, who chairs the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a group of 10 oil and gas companies focus on reducing GHG emissions, said the industry "can and must be part of the solution."
In a speech before the Houston energy conference, he said there was no "silver bullet" to reduce emissions and presented a case that oil and gas production do not need to run counter to climate goals.
"We need to be agnostic about fuels and focus on a race to lower emissions," he said.
Much of the emissions reduction work, he indicated, would be in the power sector, where reductions have already taken place due to coal-to-gas switching. Renewables, he said, would only be able to cover 40% of global supply even under the most aggressive growth scenarios.
Dudley said that more work needs to be done to reduce methane emissions from oil and gasoperations worldwide. He said BP would soon announce its own targets for emissions reductions. - Platts -