Hi, everyone. I think the video sort of sums up much of why we're all here today. Let me start by just acknowledging everybody and welcoming everybody and thanking you all for being here, along with everyone that we have in the audience here today. The number keeps going up. I think it's real, but there's 19,000 people joining us online now from China to Brazil. Bloomberg are live streaming the event as well. A large number of people joining us to see what we've got to say. Now, my team always tells me that my first two or three minutes of a talk are a bit stilted. They said, "Get out on stage, loosen up a little bit." This is actually what I'm doing right now. Just bear with me a little bit.
I also want to acknowledge, of course, it's not just people online, but a huge amount of BP people, some in the audience here today, but a lot of people from around the world that are joining us online. These are the people that run BP. It's wonderful to have you all join us. The event is carbon neutral. All of your travel has been offset. Our thanks to the BP Carbon Neutral team for doing that. I do want to extend just a few personal welcomes if I can. You're all important, obviously. We do have our chairman here, my boss. Where is Helge? Helge is here. Great to see our chairman here today. It's been great working with Helge over the last few months. As he challenges and pushes and supports me, it's been fantastic. John Browne is here.
Lord Browne, former Chief Executive of BP, needs no introduction. A great friend and a great mentor, and I appreciate John's time and his presence here today. Georg Kell. Where is Georg? Georg is here. Georg is the founder and the former Executive Director of the UN Global Compact, the world's largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative. I met Georg in New York some time ago, and he's been very helpful in my thinking, and I'm really appreciative of Georg being here. Steve Pacala. Where is Steve? Steve is here. Steve is one of the world's preeminent climate scientists. He's a Professor at Princeton, and he is also Director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, which BP has been partnering with Steve, and he's stuck with us for two decades. I really appreciate you being here as well. Will Day. Where is Will? Will is here. Thank you, Will.
Will is a fellow at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and he's a leading thinker on sustainability, advising companies and governments around the world. We've talked, and we've had lunch together and been pushing me. Then online, we have Fred Krupp joining us online. Fred, thank you for joining us. He's the President of the Environmental Defense Fund, and the EDF is one of the most influential, I think, environmental organizations working every day to protect our planet. We very much appreciate Fred and his team taking time. Now at BP, we start every meeting with a safety moment, and I will do the same here today. Safety is about taking care of each other and for this, it's this room and looking after each other. There is no alarm planned, so if there is an alarm, it's a real one.
It might also be a protest, so far so good. Nothing planned. The hotel staff will guide us to the exits. The muster point is near St. James' Church or in St. James' Church. When you exit the hotel, turn right towards Paddington Station, and you'll be taken well care of. I'm going to speak for between 40 to 45 minutes. John, you would have told me that's far too long, and you're probably right. There is a lot of ground that we wish to cover. I'm going to speak at the lectern here in a little bit, and then we will have time for questions and answers. I want to say at the very beginning, to manage expectations, that today is about a vision. It is about a direction of travel.
As everybody or somebody said, every journey has to begin with a destination. That destination for BP is a thriving, sustainable energy company, a force for good in what we hope will be a net zero world. That's our destination. What I'm not going to talk through today is a lot of detail on the next month or the next year or indeed the details of the next five years. That comes later. We will have a capital markets day in September, in many ways, that is just the beginning of a longer-term conversation about details that will emerge over time. Just wanted to set that up. With that, I'm going to head to the lectern here and get into some detail. This is only week two for me in the job. It is really early days, I think, in anybody's books.
I have been thinking about today for quite some time and about what we need to do as BP. I've been working with my team, planning, challenging, testing ideas, testing concepts, we've been spending a lot of time on the road over the last four months in India, China, Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Oman. We've been to Russia. We've been to Germany, around the United States. Yesterday, I was in Cairo, and of course, here in the United Kingdom. We've been listening to investors, many of you represented here in the room, partners, policymakers, NGOs, academics, the media, and of course, our colleagues at BP. Everywhere I have been, inside BP as well as outside BP, I have come away with one inescapable conclusion, that is that we have got to change.
I do not say that lightly because, as many of you will have heard me say, I love this company. Since leaving Ireland in 1991 and joining BP, I have met and worked with some truly remarkable people, many of you in the room, and John included. I joined as an entry-level engineer and have had a variety of different roles around the world. I've seen the positive impact that BP can have on communities. I have been given chances to learn and to grow and to develop and been given opportunities that I could never have imagined growing up. I owe everything to my mother's unshakable belief in education and to BP's belief in meritocracy, and that's why I love this company. We have got to change and change profoundly.
We have to because the world is changing fast and so are society's expectations of us. It is more than having to change. We want to change. We want to change because it's the right thing for the world, and it's a tremendous business opportunity for BP. That is what I would like to talk with you today about. First, I'm going to share how we intend to reimagine energy. Second, I will explain how we will reinvent BP in order to do that, in order to reimagine energy. Third, I will make clear our commitment to perform and deliver as we fundamentally transform the company. That's the frame for today, reimagining energy, reinventing BP, performing while transforming. First, let me start by explaining why we need to change and why we want to change.
It so happens that I'm taking on this role at the beginning of a new decade, and the turn of the calendar has added significance for BP. We've just closed out a decade of epic challenge. The Deepwater Horizon tragedy in 2010 tested us to the core. A few years later, the oil price correction rocked the whole industry. Bob Dudley's steady hand saw BP through both of those challenges. We recovered, we returned to growth, and through it all, we remained true to our values. 10 years on, we're a safer, stronger, and more disciplined company. We learned some hard lessons that we will never forget. We learned that we don't always have all the answers. We learned that we don't always get it right. We learned that we can't do everything on our own. Relationships, partnerships, friends really matter.
We remember those lessons in this new decade, where the big challenge for BP is the one that the world faces, and that is climate change. The reality is we are seen by many as a source of the problem and, worse still, an obstacle to solving it. On my first day last week, protesters forced us to shut down our headquarters, and they're not the only ones who believe we are out of step with society. Some investors do as well, and some of our own staff also. That's an uncomfortable place to be, and let me be very clear today that I get it. The world does have a carbon budget. It is finite, and it is running out fast, and we need a rapid transition to net zero. Society has got to deliver on the Paris goals.
I get the huge frustration, I get the anxiety, I get the anger, and I get that people want cleaner energy. I hear that everywhere I go in the world. Yes, it has to be reliable, of course, and it's got to be affordable, of course. It also has to be cleaner. At the end of the day, we all want and need that same thing. Some see that as a threat, a threat to our existence. I see it differently. I see opportunity. I see huge opportunity for BP to demonstrate that we are a force for good in the world and to grow and to thrive. Over the next few decades, trillions of dollars are going to be invested in replumbing and rewiring the global energy system.
Currently, around $300 billion a year is invested in new energies. To keep to a two-degree temperature rise, that has to become $1 trillion, and for one and a half degrees, it has to be $2.5 trillion. As I said, the opportunity in providing the world with what it wants and needs is enormous. That brings me to the first of those three things that are at the heart of what I have to say today. Providing the world with clean, reliable, affordable energy will require nothing less than reimagining energy. Today, that becomes BP's new purpose, reimagining energy for people and our planet. Beyond what many may call a grand statement, what might reimagining the global energy system actually look like in practice? Let's think about air travel for a moment. Over 80% of the world have never been on an airplane, 80%.
Passenger numbers could double over the next 20 years. 100 million people taking to the airways every year for the next decade. At the same time, the aviation sector is looking rightly to cut its carbon footprint in half by 2050. What about cities all over the world? As Will told us, there is a mass migration to urban areas. 70% of the world will be living in cities by 2050. You have city mayors desperate for help, cleaning up the air, electrifying transport systems, and dealing with waste. Now, imagine turning that waste into biojet fuel for the planes that fly in and fly out of those cities. Growing cities need new homes, shops, offices, but cement production is responsible for up to 7% of carbon dioxide emissions. What if you could build that new infrastructure with concrete that locks up carbon instead of emitting it?
How about capturing the carbon from big emitting industries like cement, steel, or chemicals? That is already a possibility. Planning is underway on Teesside here in the U.K. for the world's first large-scale gas-fired power station with carbon capture technology built in. Shared use by the local industry is part of those plans. Here's another one. Our solar joint venture, Lightsource bp, is going to provide the power for a steel mill in Colorado. It'll be the first U.S. steel mill powered this way, and it's going to save 1,000 jobs in the process at the mill and create 300 more building the solar facility. These are all amazing opportunities if they can be done at scale, and they are just a few examples of what we're already working on to reimagine energy. How do we turn that purpose into reality?
We do it today by announcing a bold new ambition, an ambition which is underpinned with 10 aims. Our ambition is to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner, and to help the world get to net zero. We have five aims to get BP to net zero, as well as five more to help the world do so. Let me run through them one by one. Aim number one is to be net zero across our entire operations on an absolute basis by 2050 or sooner. Aim number two is to be net zero on an absolute basis across the carbon content of our upstream oil and gas production by 2050 or sooner. Very important. Aim number three is to cut the carbon intensity of the products we sell by 50% by 2050 or sooner.
Aim number four is to install methane measurement at all our existing major oil and gas processing sites by 2023, publish the data, then drive a 50% reduction in the methane intensity of our operations. We will work to influence our joint ventures to set their own methane intensity targets of 0.2%. Aim number five is to increase the proportion of investment we make into our non-oil and gas businesses. Over time, as investment goes up in low and no carbon, we see it going down in oil and gas. Those first five are about getting BP to net zero. The next five are to help the world get to net zero. Aim number six is to more actively advocate for policies that support net zero, including carbon pricing.
That will include stopping corporate reputation advertising, like the Possibilities Everywhere campaign, and redirecting the resources to promote net zero policies, ideas, actions, collaborations, and our own net zero ambition. Aim number seven is to incentivize our global workforce to deliver on our aims and mobilize them to become advocates for net zero. This will include increasing the percentage of remuneration linked to emissions reductions. Aim number eight is to set new expectations for our relationships with trade associations around the globe. We will make the case for our views on climate change within the associations we belong to, and we will be transparent where we differ. Where we can't reach alignment, we will be prepared to leave. We have more to say on this when we publish a report later this month.
Aim number nine is to be recognized as an industry leader for the transparency of our reporting. Today, we are declaring our support for the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. We intend to work constructively with the TCFD and others, such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, to develop good practices and standards for transparency. Aim number 10 is to launch a new team to create integrated clean energy and mobility solutions. The team will help countries, cities, and corporations around the world decarbonize. We believe these 10 aims, taken together as a package, set out a path that is consistent with the Paris goals and our new purpose. Let me just focus for a moment on the significance of our first three aims, those specifically about reducing emissions. We are aiming to be net zero on our operations by 2050.
We're also aiming to cut the carbon intensity of our products by 50% by 2050. We're not the only energy company aiming to do those things. We, and those we have spoken with, do not believe that is enough. We intend to go much, much further with our aim to be net zero on an absolute basis across the carbon content of our upstream oil and gas production. We are aiming to make absolute reductions to net zero of around 415 million tons of emissions, 55 from our operations, 360 from the carbon in our upstream production. That is not far off the total emissions of the United Kingdom, the world's sixth-largest economy and the second-biggest national economy so far to set a net zero aim.
Now, it's not a like-for-like comparison, but purely in terms of scale, it gives you some idea of what we are taking on. We believe it is the right thing to do, the right thing for the following reasons. It is what the world needs most of all, absolute reductions in the carbon content of fossil fuels. It is simple to understand, or at least we thought it was. I think we have some more work to do to explain, but it is aiming to reduce and neutralize the carbon in the oil and gas that we dig out of the ground. It is logical. If this were to happen, Georg, you and I discussed this, to every barrel of oil and gas produced, the emissions problem for our sector would be solved. Of course, the world is not that simple. We understand that.
The whole energy system has to be transformed, and everyone has a contribution to make, producers, sellers of energy, policymakers, and everyone who uses energy. That's why we are aiming to help people reduce their emissions by cutting the carbon intensity of what we sell in half. We'll do that by offering people more and better choices of low and no-carbon products. In that regard, BP is not starting from scratch. We own the biggest EV charging network in the U.K. We are an equal partner in the world's second-largest sustainable sugarcane bioethanol producer. We have built up a significant wind business in the United States over the past 12 years, and we are 50/50 partners in Lightsource bp, the solar developer I mentioned a few minutes ago. It's an extraordinary business, and I'm delighted that the CEO, Nick Boyle, is here today.
Thank you, Nick, for joining us. Let me introduce a bit of a reality check maybe at this point. I have no doubt that the pace and the direction of travel we are setting out, as significant as it is, will be insufficient for some. I know many doubt our intentions based on seeming inconsistencies between what we say and what we do in areas like lobbying on carbon pricing and methane regulations. Many question our motives in supporting the arts. I get that. We are taking steps to more firmly and visibly align our intentions with our actions and become much more transparent, we won't get everything right immediately. I know that.
If anyone sees BP acting in a way that is counter to what I say here today, then I want to hear about it because I believe that earning back people's trust is essential if we are to stand a chance of fulfilling our purpose, and that starts being completely frank with each other, with admitting when we've got it wrong or don't know the answers. Those of you who know me know this is true, I for one will not have all the answers. It might be helpful if I try to anticipate some of the questions that you might have. First, the big one. Does this mean that BP is getting out of oil and gas? What I can tell you is we will increasingly focus our investments on the highest quality barrels and drive returns and cash flow, not production volumes.
With that, you can expect oil and gas production to decline gradually over time. Does that mean we'll be producing and refining hydrocarbons in 2050? Yes, very likely. Does that mean we'll be producing and refining less of them in 2050? Yes, almost certainly. Our aim is that any residual hydrocarbons will be decarbonized, and in a world that is serious about net zero, they will have to be. We can only reimagine energy if we are financially strong, able to pay the dividend our owners depend on, and generate the cash needed to invest in new and low and no carbon businesses. Next question. Are we committing more capital to non-oil and gas activities? Yes, we will over time. I think we'd all agree the goal is not just to spend more money.
It is to invest wisely into businesses that will make a difference to the world. Businesses that we can develop at scale in areas where we have unique capabilities, something that we can add, and where we can deliver competitive returns. We don't plan to commit to an arbitrary or preset number. Make no mistake, we aim to invest more and more in low carbon businesses over time, and by consequence, less and less in oil and gas. We'll come back, and I know there'll be questions. We'll come back to what those businesses might look like in September. That brings me to one more question for now. Where are the near-term targets to back up our long-term ambition? I think John Rigby was asking this very valid question. Where are the near-term targets? I appreciate you want more than a vision.
You want to see milestones. You want to see near-term targets. You want to see ways to measure. As I said at the start, we don't have those for you today, but we will have more to say on this in September, and in the months and years ahead. I'll say this now, we don't expect progress to be a straight line, but make no mistake, the direction is set. We're heading to net zero, and there is no turning back. That brings me to my second core theme for today, reinventing BP. Why would we do that, arguably, when we're in our best shape ever? We're performing more safely, more reliably, more efficiently than ever. The strategic choices and the investments we have made over the past decade are paying off. As a result, we're heading into a period of increasing, growing free cash flow.
We're in great shape, and we need to be. The demands on us are greater than ever. People are demanding more choice, more convenience, more flexibility. The demands of our investors are changing as well as they increasingly prioritize sustainability alongside performance. We heard that from Larry Fink of BlackRock in his latest letter to CEOs. BlackRock is putting sustainability at the center of its investment approach, as are many of our big shareholders. The demands of governments are also changing as they look to energy companies to help deliver their own net zero agendas. We want to support Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government here in the U.K. with its net zero target by 2050. We want to support Ursula von der Leyen and the EU Commission as they work through the detail of their ambitious European Green Deal.
COP26 is fast approaching. We want to support governments and industry sectors all around the world as they come to Glasgow with new low carbon aspirations. We asked ourselves if we have the right model for the changing demands of consumers, investors, and governments. The answer was no. After many decades, it's actually 110 years, we will be retiring the upstream-downstream model that has served us so well. We will replace it with one that is more focused, more integrated, and faces the transition head on. We will focus on four core capabilities: operations, customers, low carbon, and innovation. Gordon Birrell, first of all, will head up production and operations. It will be the operational heart of BP, bringing BP's operations together in one place to focus on driving safety, efficiency, and value growth.
The Customers & Products business group will focus on customers as the driving force for the energy products and services of the future. Emma Delaney will head up the business and focus on customer experience and expansion in rapidly changing markets. Our new Gas & Low Carbon Energy business will unite various energy teams currently dispersed around BP to create focused low-carbon solutions. It will also pursue the development of decarbonization technologies and potential moves into new value chains such as hydrogen and CCUS. Dev Sanyal will lead that business. Innovation and Engineering will bring added momentum and transparency to our venturing and launchpad investments and be a catalyst for creating value from disruptive opportunities such as digital. It will also house our engineering discipline and a safety and operational risk team focused on assurance. David Eyton will lead that team.
These four highly focused business groups will work with three integrators, which we are elevating in importance to facilitate collaboration and unlock value. Strategy and sustainability will ensure that sustainability is embedded at the top of the organization and will form a single groupwide approach to strategy and capital allocation. Giulia Chierchia will lead that team. Giulia joins BP from McKinsey, where she is the global head, or was the global head of the downstream practice and is our first external hire at this level in over a decade. I strongly believe that fresh thinking from the outside will help us. Regions, cities, and solutions, as the name suggests, will build relationships with regions, cities, and large corporations looking to develop the integrated energy and carbon solutions that can bring emissions down at scale. Leading that team will be William Lin.
Trading and shipping will be run by Carol Howle and will harness the deep expertise we already have in our existing trading and shipping businesses. These are areas where BP already has world-leading expertise in the integration of businesses, customers, and markets. By elevating its position to the top of our new structure, it can more effectively help the whole organization capture new commercial opportunities and add value. Finally, four teams will serve as enablers of business delivery. Finance will be headed by Murray Auchincloss. Legal will be led by Eric Nitcher, People and Culture by Kerry Dryburgh, and Communications and Advocacy by Geoff Morrell. Together, the leaders of each of these 11 teams will form the new BP leadership team, and they're all here today.
These are all, in my mind, and I hope in yours, exceptional, purpose-driven people. It has been a privilege to work alongside them on the ambitious goals that we're laying out here today. Their immediate job over the next two quarters is to establish their teams and develop our new strategy. I'm confident that our new leadership team, along with all our people, have the skill and the will to ensure BP grows and prospers and competes and wins on a way to a net zero world. I recognize that we are taking a lot on, and we need to be very thoughtful as we work through this. That is why at the start, alongside reimagining energy and alongside reinventing BP, I gave equal emphasis to BP performing while transforming.
I want to reassure you that as committed as I am to this transformation, I am equally committed to some fundamental principles that have served us well. First, our commitment to safe and reliable operations remains unchanged. Safety will always be our core value, and I believe our new structure will strengthen safety performance. Second, our investor proposition remains unchanged and will remain unchanged in September when we lay out more detail on our near-term plans. This includes our commitment to growing sustainable free cash flow and distributions to shareholders over the long term. This includes maintaining a strong financial frame, including the focus on deleveraging the balance sheet and capital staying within a disciplined frame of $ 15 billion-$ 17 billion. It includes delivering on our 2021 free cash flow targets, and it includes staying focused on costs, driving waste out of the system, and pursuing efficiencies.
A lot of work has gone into this to date, but we have a lot more to do, obviously. There will be change, and many of you will want to hear more. Where are the nearer term milestones? What are the businesses you are going to grow? How competitive are they? How big can they be, and at what pace? As I said earlier, we will share more with you over time, with the next installment being in September. This is a multi-year journey, and today is just the beginning. To sum up, this is, we believe, a big moment in BP's history. We are changing, and I hope I have conveyed some of the excitement that we have about that. We'll still be an energy company, but a very different kind of energy company, leaner, faster moving, lower carbon, and more valuable.
On the way, we are aiming to earn back the trust of society to be wanted, not just needed. We're aiming to be valued by our shareholders as a force for good, as well as a provider of competitive returns. We're aiming to be a motivating, inspiring place to work for all the exceptional people in our company and the generations that will come after them. This isn't going to be easy, but nothing worthwhile ever is. We are better because of your challenge, your willingness to engage, your beliefs. Dialogue matters. It's about solutions, not about positions. That is what the world needs more than ever. My mother, who you can tell I was very fond of, told me that we were given two ears and one mouth, and we should use them in that proportion. Maybe it was very personal advice, I'm not sure.
Apart from a very brief recap, let me try to follow her good advice. From all I have said, there are three things that I hope you take away from today. First, BP is setting out to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner, as well as helping the world to get there. Secondly, we are taking on a fundamental reorganization of the company, possibly the most wide-ranging in over a century. Finally, we commit to performing while transforming, operating safely and reliably as well as delivering on the promises we have made to our shareholders. Thank you all for listening. I really appreciate it. Now I'd like to ask Alix Steel to join me on stage. Some of you no doubt already know Alix. She covers our industry for Bloomberg.
She's kindly agreed, I think, to put me on the spot with her questions and then moderate a session for your questions. Alix, over to you.
How do you feel? You feel all right?
I feel better. Let's hope that feeling continues for the
I just wanted to say a little bit why I'm here, so you could also have some water. Typically, first of all, I should say I'm not being paid by BP. I don't own BP stock. I'm not employed by BP. It's unusual for an anchor reporter to do this. One of the reasons why I was very interested in it is because I've covered commodities for 15 years, and I talk to CEOs and analysts all the time, as well as investors, and the takeaway is that no one really knows how to deal with climate change, whether in an investor portfolio or on a CEO level, and companies are finally, I would say, pretty recently, really taking it quite seriously that it's not just a fad, it's going to sustain, and making that transition is quite difficult.
I was interested in having that conversation, and I think everyone's trying to figure it out as we go. That is why I'm here. To that point, congratulations.
Thank you.
You're welcome. Big news, yes. Let's say some naysayers might say, are you just capitulating to the protesters? You're just placating everything. It's all just about the pressure. It's not real. What do you say?
I think there are and will be people who say that. That's not why we're doing this. I guess in many ways, I feel like I have had the privilege, actually, over the last four months to have had an opportunity to step back and to get out on the road and meet with people and listen to people. This isn't meeting our friends in the industry. This is meeting all sorts of different people. People who may not be on the same side of the road as us, people who challenged me, pushed me, gave me some really hard-hitting feedback about our company and our industry. That's the reason that we have laid out what we have laid out today, because of people who've engaged with us and have shaped our thinking. There's a woman in the room here today who I won't name.
I don't think she would ever work for a company like ours because of her beliefs, but she has shaped my thinking more than any protest might ever do. She has pushed, challenged. She said, "I go to your AGM, it looks like you're a renewables company. Why don't you have a picture of an oil and gas facility? You say you have no influence, but I see Helge walking down the red carpet on his way to see the president in London. Don't tell me you don't have influence." She pushed, others pushed on some real hard truths, and that shapes us. Give you an example. Fred Krupp is on the line from EDF. We're trying to figure out what to do in this space. In my usual management leadership style, I went to Gordon and I said, "Let's cut our methane intensity target in half.
Let's cut it in half." He said, "Well, let's talk to EDF. They're who we work with in this space.
Environmental Defense Fund.
Correct.
Yeah.
Thank you. They came back and said, "No, don't talk to me about more cuts in your targets. We actually don't believe a lot of your numbers because the industry estimates methane emissions, doesn't physically measure it. So what you really need to do is measure." We said, "Fair enough." That's why aim number four, I guess, is that we'd already said we'll put measurement on our new facilities. Now we're saying today that on all of our major oil and gas facilities existing worldwide, by 2023, we will have measurement of methane in place. We'll publish the data, and we'll take that number and cut it in half. That's what dialogue does. Dialogue gets us in a place where we can be shaped.
To that point, not to interrupt you, but when you went around and talked to everybody, did you kind of have an idea of what you wanted to do, or did this really originate from these conversations?
A lot of it. I had a belief around two things. One is that we have to run a successful business. We have to run a good business. You have to be healthy to do something different. The second belief I had is that we had to change. To say that I had those 10 aims, or that our team, as they've worked on it, had those 10 aims, absolutely not. Those 10 aims are the result of dialogue. It's not just from NGOs and activists. I've met Mary Schapiro, I've met Conservation International, met all sorts of people. We spend a lot of time with investors. It's not just one dimension. It is a multi-dimension. It's not the pressure in London that has brought this about. It is the consequence of dialogue and engagement. That, I think, is very helpful.
I'm just surmising that I know, as a journalist, a lot of us are going to have issues with the lack of clarity on targets, and I know you keep saying, "We're going to get there. It's September." Is there a concern, though, that some of this will be looked at as greenwashing and the targets will get pushed down the road? External things might happen that might push out these targets and there's nothing to kind of measure it by. I feel like that's what investors struggle with. There's no metric to say, "Okay, check. I can go buy BP stock because check, it'll fit into my ESG portfolio.
I understand that. I think it would be premature for us to come out with a set of targets and milestones that this new team hasn't had a chance to engage in real detail, so that we own them. Every journey, in our world of sat navs, the first thing we do is type in a destination. Every journey has to begin with a destination. That's today's job. We're setting out a destination. Details have to come. You have to judge us by actions, not my words here today. Totally get that. I simply want to make the point that without a direction, in this case, an ambition to get to net zero, not just on our operational emissions, but on the carbon content of our production. We don't know how to fill in those near-term milestones. Come back with that.
People say 2050 is ages away. Someone said today he's leaving it for the next CEO to deliver on it or whatever. I don't know if that is a prediction on my tenure.
It was Greenpeace, and no, it was not. It was just sort of the idea that it's going to take a long time, I think is the point.
That you're not going to deliver on it. Helge, early on in his role, had an op-ed in the paper here in London that talked about we want a rapid transition. A transition that is delayed and suddenly is a right angle change that disrupts the world, it will be destructive to our company. We want a rapid transition. There is a finite carbon budget. This woman that I talked to, she said, "There's a carbon budget. It's running out." Every day you dig oil and gas out of the ground, you're taking from that budget. We're starting with a destination. The details will come. We understand that. We'll be judged by that. We get that. We did have to lay out where we are headed.
To that point, it was Greenpeace, one of the writers who said that your successor will make all the changes. They also said that, "There's a battle to protect our climate will be won or lost in 10 years," not 20, not longer, but in 10. Does that mean that you're looking at an oil business that's going to have to not have growth in the next 10 years? Does that have to be the case?
The way I would address the question of oil and gas is as follows. BP is going to be in the oil and gas business for a very long time. That's a fact. Why? Multiple reasons. Multiple reasons. We pay an $8 billion dividend every year. Not paying that is one way to make sure that we're not around to enable the transition, which we want to. We have commitments to governments that we must keep, and one way to generate the cash to enable us to invest in those new businesses is through that core business. Having said that, we will focus on cash, on returns, on margins. On margins. We want to have the highest quality portfolio possible. As I said, we will invest more in non-oil and gas and less in oil and gas.
The summation of all of that is that over time, you can expect the volume inside our upstream business to decline. Whatever hydrocarbons are left will be decarbonized through various means, through carbon capture, through hydrogen, through natural climate solutions. There are tools in the toolbox. That's what we are saying about oil and gas.
Does that mean that you sell assets that don't fit into that?
Portfolio will be a part of this. Part of the work that we are doing over the coming weeks and months and years. Well, certainly as we head up to September, we will be looking at that portfolio, for sure.
I guess I ask that because you could then make the argument, well, if you just sell something that you don't think you're going to be able to really produce well or it has too much oil, it's too expensive or whatever, someone else is going to do it dirtier than you. Isn't that just kind of sloughing off the opportunity?
Well, I obviously have heard that argument as well. I would just say two things on that point. The first is that we have 10 aims. The first are about helping BP get to net zero. The second are about helping the world get to net zero. We're not just talking today about if we sell an asset that we're done, so to speak. We're saying our ambition is to help the world get to net zero, as well as us getting to net zero. That's one point I would make. The second thing that I would say on that is that if we take some of that money and redirect it to growing new businesses that are low to zero carbon, that has to be a positive thing.
They use the word sloughing, I think is the most important part of that question.
You're going to have to.
That's a new word, right.
Well, what is it?
So-
I'm Irish.
Does that mean that?
Alix. This is an American
You have funny words. Does that mean that you would still want to explore for oil and gas, then?
I think the exploration question is a real one. I would draw people's attention to the fact that between 2013 and 2019, our exploration budget has come down by 66%. It's already down by two-thirds. Where we do explore, I think we'll be very focused on advantaged resource. There's no question that we have to look at our exploration strategy, and we will update the market on what that revised exploration strategy looks like when we come back in September.
How does Shale fit into that?
Shale?
Yes.
Shale has the potential. We believe, we obviously did the acquisition of the BHP assets many years ago. This comes back to the question of advantaged resource, margin resource, and that's where we've been working hard, and I think Dave Lawler is here today, the person that runs the bpx energy on driving the cost structure down so that it's a more resilient business. Obviously, I know people have obviously written about flaring and the flaring performance of that business on a relative basis, on a percentage basis. It's the highest, I think, in the Permian. That's not an excuse, but that's a reality that we bought old assets that we need to develop into our new way of working, which will bring that number down. I have asked Dave, and we discussed it on Friday, to look at how we can accelerate that.
He is working on that, and I think over the coming couple of months, we may be able to announce something on that.
That kind of moves us to the Scope 3. Is what you announced Scope 3 or not Scope 3 in reality? It still is vague.
Yeah
At least for me.
I'm going to try something a little different. I'm going to draw. Is that okay?
Oh, okay.
If it-
This was not planned.
Well.
I did not know this was happening right now.
It kind of was planned because this is here, so it didn't show up.
I did not know about this.
That's okay, Scott. Transparency and honesty is important. This is a drawing that I have made over, in many meetings. I've probably drawn this 50x . With people like Rachel Kyte at Tufts, and when I do it, she says, "This really is different." Now, it's a simple drawing, so it's working. I just think about it in three ways. The first thing to say on Scope 3 is, in 2050, the world ain't going to be arguing about Scope 3 or not. They're going to be arguing about whether we reduced our emissions or not. Definitional arguments are interesting, but what matters is emissions and emissions reduction. Nonetheless, let's look at some numbers. The first number for BP is 50 million tons, and it's what's known as our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. I think it's 55. Is that right, guys? It's 55.
55 million tons, Scope 1 and Scope 2. Some companies have come out and done that to say we'll get to net zero on Scope 1 and Scope 2. Today, we have said we will get to net zero on Scope 1 and Scope 2. Of course, the real issue is that it's the carbon content of the product when it's combusted is the issue. People say, "Interesting, you take care of your operating emissions." What I'm really interested in is what happens when the product is combusted. That's about 85% of energy emissions is when the carbon is combusted. You get to the question of Scope 3, and let me address Scope 3. The classic definition of Scope 3 is as follows. It's the gas, natural gas, and the gasoline that we sell at a petrol pump, a petrol station or a gas pump in America.
This is for BP, about one gigaton or thereabouts. What's interesting about this number is that's not all our own products, right? We're buying products from many other companies, and we end up selling much more products than we actually dig out of the ground. Some of the product comes from BP, but as I said, we're also buying much more. We have a number of about a gigaton, and what we have said today is we're going to take the efficiency and intensity of that down by 50%. What really matters is the carbon that is dug out of the ground through oil and gas production. Every year, BP produces 2.6 million barrels a day of oil and gas, our upstream business. We don't combust all of that, but when it is combusted, 360 million tons is added to the system.
What we are saying today, this is about product combustion, which is what the whole Scope 3 argument is about. What happens when your product is combusted? The oil and gas that is dug out of the ground that results in 2.6 million barrels per day, the carbon content is 360 million tons, we are saying we will take that to net zero. If every barrel of oil and gas in the world was treated this way, the climate part, the energy part of the climate problem would be solved. It's absolute reductions of the carbon that's added to the atmosphere through production is what we firmly believe matters. When I have spoken to anybody, people say, "Intensity, interesting. Absolute reduction, that's what the world needs." Not on your Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, because that's interesting, but 85% of the problem is from your production.
When I showed that to Rachel and to other people, they said, "Now I get it," and I know the drawing's not the best. Nick's looking more confused than ever. When I show that to people, they say, "Right, now I understand." We can take the drawing away, but that's what we're trying to show.
When you get to that net zero for production, does that mean that you then offset it by buying a wind farm? Is it literally getting better at producing that oil, i.e. flaring less, for example?
Again, this is where it's really important. On the intensity metric, you can improve it by buying a wind farm and generating energy with zero carbon. For the metric that we say really matters to the world, the one in the middle, you can't do that. You have to take that number on absolute terms to net zero. The only way you can do that is to either let the business get smaller over time, which is what we have said we will let happen today, and any remaining production has to have its carbon offset or captured throughout a CCUS, hydrogen, natural climate solutions. There is no way of adding a wind farm to get your intensity down. That's in the very bottom metric. The one that matters is how do we take absolute emissions on the carbon content of oil and gas actually down?
That's what we're saying, and it's different, and it's quite significant, I think, for what has traditionally been an oil and gas company to say that.
What about the product emissions, though?
Yep.
They're your products. Don't you have to take responsibility for that in some capacity?
Well, responsibility, of course, is a wonderful term that lawyers would argue about definitionally for days and weeks and months and years and make a lot of money in doing that. I'm not going to talk about who's responsible or not. This is a complex system. I think anyone will accept that. Rather than sit here and debate responsibility, what we're trying to say is we're going to be taking responsible action. That's what the aims are about. They're about action that drive us to a different place.
Can you-
The carbon intensity of those customer products, we will make better. We make it better with better fuels. Tufan is here today. He and his team have done an extraordinary job. We make it better by building out a charging network around the world. We make it better through better lubricants or providing coolants for EVs. We make it better by building a business in Des area that is low or zero carbon. We make it better by putting tallow into refining system in the U.S. There are all sorts of ways where we can make the carbon intensity of our products better. We will do that. We will do that through the 50%. It matters. It matters hugely. The big point, I think, is the piece in the middle, which is absolute reduction in the carbon content.
When you walk forward.
Did the drawing help?
Actually, it did. It had an eraser, though. That was very cool.
That wasn't supposed to be the cool part.
Oh, sorry. No, it was great. The drawing was really wonderful.
We did practice that part.
Oh, thank you. If you take a look at the portfolio, you're saying the oil and gas or the oil portion will get smaller. That's where you get your returns, right? You have returns for oil and gas investments that can be plus 25%. For renewable investing, you're looking at 8%-10%. You need the cash flow from the oil and gas to fund the transition. You have to then sell that to investors. What about those who believe you're not going to be able to really generate the returns that you need to get the investors to believe you?
I think, there's clearly a lot of questions around that. First of all, I have a belief. I believe that we can and will generate competitive returns, so I have a strong belief, and the more I understand about the company, that we can and will do that. We have to prove that.
Like on a 25%+ level.
We have to prove that to investors. We really, really do. Alix , if you think about it, there has to be opportunity here. The world is spending $300 billion a year today on new energies. It takes $ 1 trillion to get to 2 degrees. It takes $2.5 trillion to get to 1.5 degrees. The problems are, and the challenges are integrated in nature. They're integrated problems. They're not a single problem that can be solved with a single solution. They're integrated. We have 6,000 engineers, 2,500 scientists. We have one of the world's largest trading organizations. We have a marketing company. We build massive projects. We operate plant. We're in 78 countries. We can solve big integrated problems.
For those that say, "Can you make a competitive return?" I say, "I believe yes." We'll give details on what those businesses will look like later in the year. I believe the problems are integrated, and we are one of the companies that can help solve those problems. I think equally, if we're being honest, a lot of people would look at returns in the oil and gas sector over the last decade and say they don't seem all that attractive in themselves. I think there's a real case here for opportunity in a sense.
That is a good point. Many investors would say that, so that is true.
Well, they would. The numbers of 25% and 20% do get bandied around, and of course, we have our own hurdles for our oil and gas business. I think, many investors here in the room today are looking at their portfolios and looking at any portfolio of any oil and gas company over the last decade and saying, "Something's got to change." I see opportunity.
Why is this not better left to Google, Amazon, and Tesla?
To do?
To change, because for a company that has the cash flow that doesn't come from an oil and gas, that can do all the cool new energy things in transition, and at least in Tesla's case, have the ability to think out of the box in a particular way and not moving a company around that's 110 years old.
We are-
Why are you not Elon Musk?
We are, I struggle enough being who I am.
I think Elon might struggle on that, too.
Maybe I'll give Nick a heads-up. Maybe we can get Nick a microphone. Just give him a little time to think. Maybe he'd rather than me answer why, but just to filibuster for him for a minute. I do think we have energy in our blood. We have been at it 110 years, and that tells you something, and it does mean that it's in our DNA. We have a lot to learn, of course. We've a huge amount to learn. We equally have a lot to bring to the table. Nick, you've been asked this question a few times, but you know.
Well, whether I'm Elon Musk or not?
Why are you not Elon Musk?
He is Elon Musk.
Thank you, Bernard. No pressure. Good afternoon, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, I am Nick Boyle. I'm the Founder and CEO of Lightsource bp. I suppose to answer the question, it's probably appropriate that I maybe go back two years or so whenever we were just Lightsource. We did a deal with BP to become Lightsource bp just two years ago. Before that, we were asking ourselves exactly that question. At that point, we were called Lightsource. We were probably one of, if not the largest solar businesses in Europe. I'm sure many of you are not aware of that. We had exactly the same question. We had aspirations to build a global business.
We knew that in our own right, we didn't have the financial wherewithal, the strength, et cetera, to move into these new markets. Therefore, partnering with a large institution that was in the right place and could offer us that growth was something that was front and center. As a board, we sat down and we asked ourselves the question. What is the right industry that we should align ourselves with in order to make sure that we maximize our potential? We talked about tech. Is it a tech company? Is that the right partner for us? Is it utilities? Are they the right companies? Certainly from our perspective, what we were left with was the decision that without doubt, the best company for us to align ourselves with or the best sector was oil and gas.
Oil and gas companies have powered the world for the last 100 years. Certainly from our perspective, we believe that they are therefore in a perfect position to continue to power the world for the next 100 years. Oil and gas companies build large engineering projects, which at the end of the day, without that, how are we going to have this whole energy transition? They're used to doing that in remote places, in their case, significantly more remote even than the ones that we did. They're also used to power markets. They're also used to energy markets, huge trading capability, and the financial wherewithal to allow us to actually deliver. From our perspective, the decision that we made prior to going to the market was that an oil and gas company was definitely our preferred partner. We went to the market.
Luckily enough, the timing was good, and we had a significant number of interested parties to buy into Lightsource. Luckily for us, given my last statement, a fair percentage of those, in fact, the majority of those were actually oil and gas companies. I suppose the next question is why BP? From our perspective, from the very first meeting with some of Dev Sanyal's team in alternative energy, not only did we click with them, but there was a firm realization, an instant realization that these guys just got it. They got that the world was changing. They got that they wanted to be a significant part of this whole energy transition. They also realized maturely that it was different from the way that they had built their business thus far.
They saw that there was an advantage in aligning themselves with businesses sector champions like ourselves to learn from us. I don't say that lightly, but I suppose if we were able to deliver on our potential, BP then in turn was able to deliver on their huge potential going forward. We did the deal two years ago, as I said. Now it's still early days, but the world loves numbers. I am able to give some numbers. I can give you some now. What's happened since we did the deal just over two years ago? First of all, our pipeline. Pipeline is business that we haven't yet started construction but will construct over the next three or four years. That has grown eightfold since doing the deal.
The number of territories that we operate in has trebled, and our head count has doubled. In 2020, we will reach financial close on the same number of gigawatts as we had done in the entire eight years that we had prior to doing the deal with BP as part of Lightsource. Certainly from our perspective, we're extremely happy with how that's going. If you were to ask me what I would attribute that to, there are many different facets and many different reasons why it has worked so well. But if I may, I wouldn't mind just pointing out two that certainly for us are the ones that are top of the list. The first one is the brand. Now, we knew or assumed that the BP brand had massive value. Compared to Lightsource, clearly it was going to have massive value.
That's why we pushed so hard, although we were pushing against an open door to become Lightsource bp. We figured that that would afford us a level of gravitas that we clearly wouldn't have been able to have on our own. However, we underestimated the value of the BP brand a hundredfold. In every single area of our business, it has had a positive effect. I'll give one example. As you're all probably aware, in recent years in particular, there's been a huge growth in the concept of power purchase agreements, PPAs. PPAs are where large electricity users, and by inference there, large corporates, are choosing to enter into agreements because of price and because of the green nature of what we produce, enter into long-dated arrangements with businesses such as ours for us to deliver all or a significant percentage of their electricity long into the future.
The one thing you've got to be aware of is that this creates risk for these companies. It's extremely important they choose the right company to do these deals with. There's an old saying that no one ever got fired for bringing an IBM solution to the board. The Lightsource bp solution, as long as we're there on price, is exactly that. These large corporates, time and time again, have chosen to do deals with us on power purchase agreements because of Lightsource's track record, I hope, in terms of our ability to deliver solar. I believe far more importantly, that BP name, that financial strength, that 100-year-plus history that simply metamorphoses the proposition that we have for them. The other area I think very quickly is the people, which sounds a bit naff, but we, if I'm being honest, had expected a level of arrogance almost.
That's what we had expected that we would get. You guys are solar business, and we're the big oil and gas. We're established. I have to say we could not have been further from the truth. Every single department, no matter which area that was in, and indeed every single level of seniority, has welcomed us with open arms, and every single one of those people has taken a can-do and a productive and a supportive attitude to what we are, if you like, there to basically do and to help BP do. I have to say, these guys, I certainly am a big fan. I think it was the right decision for us. I'll end by saying, if ever there was an illustration that change is coming, the solar guy has the tie on and the oil and gas guy does not. Thank you.
What he said. Yeah.
I think Nick is very passionate about this, obviously, and it's one of the reasons we asked him here today. I have another example, and I know you want to move on to Q&A from the audience or whatever, but Tufan has done a deal in China, with Didi, who are the kind of Chinese Uber. I love this story because it's not what you would think. Didi owns 25% of the world's electric vehicles, not 25% of the EVs in China, 25% of the world's electric vehicles. They have chosen BP to be their charging partner as they build out a charging network. I said to the team, "Why did they choose BP?" They said, "Well, we have a history of building out retail networks, so building out charging networks makes sense." Okay, I can kind of see that.
They said, "And of course, we're the largest charger in the U.K." I said, "Well, let's be honest, we recently bought that company, so it's not like it's deeply in our DNA yet." What's really interesting is what happened when Didi came and started working with us. Didi said, "Oh, you have an operating management system." We said, "Of course, we have an operating management system.
It's how we run our operations." They said, "We don't have a safety management system for our driving fleet, and we really want what you've got." Here is a capability that we had that we ascribed zero value to, that we basically take for granted, and this other company is going, "This is the greatest gift you could ever possibly give me." I think it's an extraordinary story, which speaks to, and I hope not in an arrogant way, but the capability of some of these companies, ourselves included, and with the right attitude and the right will, can be a massive force for good in this new world, and that's what we're trying to set out to do.
I'll just ask one more question, then we can get to the Q&A, because I hear that a lot from different oil companies that want to be energy companies. They either leverage their existing businesses and then use that pipeline to help them get other businesses, or they do something completely different to diversify. That's, I think, why when people are looking at your plan and looking for targets of how much money you're going to spend on alternative investments, I know you're not going to give a target, but then how do we believe it? What are those assets going to be? Is it going to be wind, or is it going to be solar? Is it going to be something else that's going to generate the kind of returns that you need? Why not put a target on it?
The ambition is not to spend money, I don't think. It's a simple way for people to judge. I got that. What we have to do for our shareholders, and I believe for society ultimately, is invest in businesses where, A, the business will actually make a difference in the world. B, we can see scale. C, we add something unique, because otherwise the investor should go and buy it themselves. C, can generate a competitive return, or D, can generate a competitive return. That's what we're about. Some years, you might want to spend a lot because of an opportunity, and the following year, maybe not as much. It's very attractive to have a number, X% of your annual budget is being spent. I get that. I understand that that's an attractive way to measure.
What we have said today is the number will go up over time, and as it goes up, the investment in oil and gas will come down, and we'll come back later in the year and in the years thereafter and talk to that.
We have to judge it by the return of those investments when you make them? Is that what I mean? No?
You'll have to look at many, many things. The tests that I used earlier are, I think, the tests that matter to our shareholders. Are we adding something unique? You have to add something unique. Otherwise, people can go and buy the stock themselves. I believe we can add unique things. If there's an offshore wind business and we can couple that with gas that's decarbonized, couple it with a trading business, put it on a digital platform, that's the type of thing that we can do. That's distinct from just being in the wind business, pure play. We can add lots of things together. That's where we can make incremental return. Has it got scale potential? Because this is a large company, it has to generate large numbers in terms of sums of money.
It has to have scale potential, it's got to be competitive returns, and we have got to demonstrate that we add something unique to the equation. In answer to the question, do you think you can do that? I fundamentally believe we can do that. I hope Nick's little example, and it's a big example, obviously, is a way of describing that. I hope the little example from Didi is an example, and there are many more.
With that, there'll be some mics floating around. We've got an early hand wave right there. Right in the front. We also have some questions from the people who are watching online. Yeah, right there.
Christyan Malek from JP Morgan, thank you for an excellent Q&A and the session by Alix, also congratulations, Bernard. The two questions I have, sort of trying to work through this 30-year horizon that you've painted, the first is, at this point in time, the world's got too much oil. You're an oil company selling oil, the world has got too much of it. It's commoditized. Imagine a scenario where we go into a, let's call it another super cycle, the world needs that oil, obviously, needs everything else. In that scenario, I want to understand better how you frame your capital frame in terms of resisting the temptation to invest more, not less, in oil.
At that point, surely, every oil company out there is going to be looking for the best barrels, the best returns, and giving the best dividends out there. You competing in the financial markets, is there a scenario in a bull market for oil, God forbid, that we go back into an upcycle where you have FOMO? That's the first question.
FOMO, I know.
Fear of missing out on giving.
Got it.
Better dividends and buybacks.
Got it.
The second question is, sort of tipping it on its head really, is the demographic of demand. You're solving for providing more energy in a low-cost environment, yet most of the incremental energy is coming from countries in the world that can't afford renewables wind. I'm originally from Egypt. Tell them to go long renewables when they're trying to fix poverty. How do you solve for that in terms of being able to provide low-cost energy in a world that is screaming for it, but in large chunks of the world where most of the incremental demand for energy is coming from, they can't afford anything but the very thing that you produce, which is oil and gas?
Christyan, thank you. Thanks for coming. Thanks for two thoughtful questions. I'll try, because I know you want to get through questions here. I guess the first thing I would say is that FOMO is costly. The fear of missing out is a costly endeavor, and I think our industry has learned that the very hard way over the last decade. Chasing price with more investment doesn't end up very well. It's not a good story. If we have learned anything as an industry over the last decade, and BP certainly has, it is that capital discipline is at the absolute core of attaining and maintaining our shareholders' trust. Therefore, if there is a cycle, you will not see us chase it with more investment. That is exactly what we should not and will not do. That's the first thing that I would say.
To that, capital productivity and the need to drive efficiency into the system where we can do more with less, as we have done. Our projects that we laid out in 2016, 35 of them, today cost 25%, I think $15 billion less, Looney, than they did when we laid that out in 2016, and we are not done. We should drive that further. That's the first thing. On energy, I was in Cairo yesterday. I have been to Azerbaijan.
I have, again, in listening as I've gone out, people have said, "You know this argument about 2 billion people in Africa, they need the energy, therefore, that's your license to continue to do what you do." People have said, "You know, that doesn't actually ring very good for us," some of the people that I talk to, because they said, "These are the people who, in many cases, stand to be most impacted by climate change, and why is it that they can't leapfrog to some of the new stuff?" I am very encouraged by Minister Pradhan in India, Minister Mammadov in Azerbaijan. Minister Mammadov in Azerbaijan talks about 27 GW potential in renewable power in his country. If you've ever been to Baku, I think you have, it's a windy place. It's not just wind, it's solar. They have enormous resources.
Sometimes there's a feeling that these countries are sort of left behind. When I'm in Mauritania, I was at the U.K.-Africa Summit two weeks ago, and I signed a memorandum of understanding with the president, and the purpose of the memorandum of understanding was to ensure that the discovery that we made, called Orca, would be developed with renewable energy, and that we would explore that. These countries care. Yes, they need energy to lift themselves as they should. India, our forecast says that the number of cars in India will grow sixfold, Spencer, over the next 20 years, I think. It's still less cars than the United States. Sixfold, still less than the United States. These countries have every right to the energy that they want. Our job is to help provide it to them in a way which is least damaging to the environment.
It's the end and the opportunity in that rather than the here's why we have to keep doing what we're doing is what we're trying to turn on its head. It's a great question.
Seems like still selling oil and gas to India, to places like that, like Egypt.
They will need it. The question is, can we decarbonize it? Can we make it more resilient? Can we offer them better products? That's what we have to try and do.
Okay, you were flagging me. You were waving me down right there. We'll do the guy who's waving.
Thank you very much. My name is Leo Hickman. I edit a website called Carbon Brief, which reports on both climate science and energy and climate policy. My question for you is around, four years ago, the world's nations in Paris agreed to keep or limit global warming to well below, quote, "2 degrees Celsius and aspire to 1.5 degrees Celsius." That translated in the IPCC 1.5 report that came out a year ago, or a bit more than a year ago, said that globally, emissions this decade, the 2020s, need to fall by 45%. Translated into oil and gas, that's about roughly the same in terms of what those emissions from oil and gas sector mean. What you've laid out today is not compatible with that scenario.
Is BP, and are you admitting to the world now that we're going to miss 1.5, and we're not even going to really meet the two degree goal agreed by all the world's nations in Paris four years ago? Thank you.
Leo, thanks for the question. First of all, you shouldn't read that into what we've said today because we've said nothing about a 2030 target. I don't quite know how you can draw that conclusion. What we've said today is that we will be net zero in the carbon content of our oil and gas production and our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 2050. Paris, as you quite rightly said, calls for well below two degrees and an aspiration to get to 1.5 Degrees, which results in net zero in the second half of the century. We're saying 2050, instead, we're actually going beyond that, we're saying or sooner, we will be advocating in those second five points for that to be accelerated as quickly as possible.
The second thing I said is that we will come back with near-term milestones to which we will no doubt talk about 2025 and 2030. Leo is quite right to challenge on what those numbers look like and will they be consistent with some of the numbers that he said. That's for later in the year for us to have that debate. What we have laid out is entirely consistent and many would say ahead of Paris. That's the work that we have to do. Steel?.
I'm going to take a question from someone who's also listening online. This is quite interesting, actually. This comes from I can't read that far.
You love interesting questions.
I do. From University of St. Andrews, asking about the BP work culture and how workers are responding to that because it does seem like you're going to have to, this is my own editorial, you have to change your workforce or at least trim it down or something, or change who's working for you in this transition. How do you sell it? What do you tell them? What are you hearing from them?
Well, I think if I may, I should address our team because they are all hearing this at pretty much exactly the same time as everyone in the room. There is enormous anticipation of today inside the company, and I think enormous excitement about what's coming. To those of you around the world who work for BP, I'm first of all incredibly grateful for the support that I have got as we have led up to this. It has been nothing short of overwhelming. This is a lot of change. Today we have talked about a new purpose, a new ambition, a new organization, a new leadership team, and of course, we haven't even talked about ways of working, which over time we will want to continue to change.
I think in the organization, and they will tell me because we're all wired up on Yammer, there will be excitement about this, but equally, there will be angst and nervousness, and I understand that. We will be doing a lot of engagement and a lot of communicating over the coming days and weeks to hear from the organization, to hear what's on their mind. Mental health is something that I have spoken about that's very important to me, and I am anxious about people's mental health in this time of change because it does affect different people differently, and I want people to be able to talk openly, share what's on their minds. Now this is a bit random, but we have people in the room today from BP who are hearing some of this for the first time. Some of these, have you heard of One Young World?
Well, they will tell you about it. Is there anybody here who's one of our delegates to One Young World? Oh, it looks like there's a One Young World camp back here.
What's Young World? What is it?
Well, they'll tell you.
Oh. They're not miked.
Who wants to take the mic? Go for it.
Oh, there we go.
Just tell folks who your name is.
Hello, everyone. My name is Rishi Dorai, I work in the group strategy as a Carbon Management Analyst with BP. It's a pleasure to have co-led our One Young World program for the company for the last couple of years. One Young World, it's a U.K.-based charity that runs annual summits in different parts of the world every year to bring together young people who try to come together to solve some of the world's most pressing issues in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Now, I think companies like BP have shown huge commitment to sending young leaders in the company to attend summits like this and engage in real conversations to bring about lasting and impactful change. I think some of the folks we have in the room here today are part of that delegation.
Actually, many of the things that you've heard about today come in principle from some of the lessons that we've learned from others through some of these really impactful conversations, not least of which is the purpose statement. Which was actually one of the key inspiring moments of one of our One Young World activities a few years ago. I think the key thing for us is our young people are really motivated and engaged in this space. We really want to see the companies we work for have an impact in a social sense, in a societal sense. I think seeing some of the changes we've seen today, it's deeply motivating and deeply energizing as we look ahead to the future.
What's it like to be a BP delegate in the past at One Young World?
It's not always been easy. You're often in a very young and progressive audience, and there's a lot of pressure coming representing oil and gas. People are very much thinking ahead to the future, as we've seen with London as the epicenter of our climate activist agenda. It's not always easy coming with a BP logo behind you, but I think having the real conversations we've had, showing the impacts we've made in the societies in which we operate, and I think today, first and foremost, we'll have a really lasting agenda as we go forward.
Thank you.
Impressive. I guess right there. Blue shirt. Yeah.
Thanks. Thanks, Bernard. You have kind of ripped up the rule book a little bit today with that upstream, downstream change in terms of the structure.
Could you just give us your name?
Sorry. It's Lydia Rainforth from Barclays.
Almost everyone knows Lydia, but not probably everyone here.
Hey, I'm from New York, man.
Just in terms of that new structure, what is it you actually want to get out of it specifically? Is it about driving returns? Is it about being able to accelerate the energy transition, or do you think you need that new organization to be able to do both of those? Thank you for addressing that, the impact that you think it can have on the staff. When you talk about in the past, that look and feel of to change the way it looks and feels working for BP. Can you just talk us through a little bit more of that and what you want to see?
Very good. Thank you, Lydia. In terms of the reorganization, we wanted to focus the company on the things that we believe matter and that in the long run, that will be good for shareholders in society. The first of that is the Production and Operations Business Group. This is all about operating excellence, and no better person to lead that than Gordon. At the core of our company is the operations of the company and will now be in one place. One place driving safety, driving reliability, driving efficiency, productivity. That is what that is about. The Gas and Low Carbon is about growing a new low to zero carbon business. That is what society wants. That is where there is growth potential. Dev's job is to figure out how we do that in the best possible way, and he will do that.
Emma's running customers and products. It is looking more and more. We talk a lot in our company about governments, government relationships. We need to talk as much about customers and customer relationships in the future as we have governments. Emma's role would be to find out what our customers want and how we can grow business in that area. Finally, is innovation being led by David and I. It is about innovation. It is about figuring out how we can actually create new businesses from technologies that might have one day only been applicable or that were discovered in oil and gas. We have something called LDAR, which is about fiber optics. You have seen it in our wells in Azerbaijan, but imagine that being a sensing company. These are the types of things that the innovation arm will look at.
They are what we're trying to focus on, customers, operations, low carbon, and innovation. Four separate things. In terms of the look and feel of the company, we've talked in the past about we'd love to be a cool company, and people say I'm too old.
You're on Instagram.
to be cool. That's definitely interesting, so to speak.
I'm barely on Instagram.
Someone said, "Well, what does cool look like?" Cool for us and the look and feel that we want the company to feel much more like a cool company is inclusive. People come to work today, they feel included regardless of their ethnicity, age, sexuality, whatever. They feel included. A cool company is agile. It doesn't have layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy and decisions that take months. That's not what a cool company is. A cool company is digital. It looks digital. It feels digital. It acts digital. These are the types of things, are more agile and more inclusive, that's why we're saying we've gone from two segments, upstream, downstream. We're not going to three or four. We're going to one. It's BP. We want it to be inclusive.
We want to make it more agile with time. Increasingly digital will be both disruptive, I think, and an enormous opportunity for us. We intend to double down in that space.
At the front.
Yeah, Steve.
I'd just like to circle back to the climate question that you had before because I think it's really important for people to understand how much of an end game goal, the primary new goal here is to decarbonize your production and go all the way to net zero. A good rule of thumb, and it's a correct rule of thumb still for all the climate modeling and science that's taken place, is that the world to get to 1.5 degrees would have to decarbonize, hit net zero at about mid-century, about 2050. To get to 2 degrees, you're going to have 30 years or so more, 2080 or so. BP is a global company.
If everyone does what BP has just committed to do, then the oil and gas sector will hit net zero in 2050, sort of full stop. For those people who are suspicious greens, and with some cause, right? The thing is that a little over a year ago, BP made a methane announcement that was similar, 0.2%. If you do the calculation, that basically takes oil and gas methane out of the climate budget. No negligible impact on global warming. Because of the way the organization is structured with so many outside partnerships, you saw the repeated communications, even during the meeting to Fred Krupp, who is only aligned with getting the climate in order. They have all kinds of oversight that they built into the interaction. When they got it right, everybody said they got it right.
When they got it wrong, everybody screamed, and they've taken corrective action. These are competitive people, and they've made a hard target now. The sort of scary competence and competitiveness that have worried people, that's sort of aligned with the green interest. I think this is a profound change, this announcement, especially the one headliner.
To piggyback off of that real fast. To point, if everyone did this, it would fix the problem, but what if everyone doesn't do this? You operate in Iraq, Russia, you mentioned Azerbaijan. I can't imagine Russia being super pumped about this or how do you deal with that? It's great you're doing it, but what about everybody else?
Well, I think it is important to look at facts on many of these things, because I think there is sometimes, and I'm not suggesting that people in this room have this view, but there is sometimes a feeling that it's only the people in our part of the world that care, and the people in other parts of the world don't really care. I have to be honest that that is not my experience. Now, we all may have different starting points. I get that. To suggest that this doesn't matter to Azerbaijan is wrong. We just did not win their first solar and wind contract in Azerbaijan, where they have, I think, taken 425 MW of renewable power. They have a big agenda. Russia, we have a long and deep partnership with Rosneft. That is very clear. I would encourage people to look at some facts.
First of all, Russia is a signatory to the Paris Agreement and is, from what I'm told, on track to meet its INDCs. Rosneft published its first sustainability report in 2006. I would encourage people to look at the evolution of those sustainability reports for every year right up to last year. They have just formed a subcommittee on climate and sustainability. We have just seconded Tyrone Kalpee, an environmental expert from BP, into Rosneft to focus exclusively on carbon and sustainability. They dropped their methane intensity down by 48% in 2018. We may have different starting points, but I would not be of the view, based on experience, that it's only us in the West here who care. Angola has some of the most stringent offshore water regulations that we operate in. The same, Gordon, is true in Azerbaijan.
I think we look at facts, we engage in dialogue. Rosneft has signed up to the Methane Guiding Principles, as has SOCAR in Azerbaijan. These countries and these companies care. It may not be the popular thing to write in the media, and they may have a different starting position. What we do is we try to help, and we try to influence. I think by being in and being part of the dialogue, we would argue we can have a greater impact than if we're not. That's what we're trying to do.
To add onto that, then that will also dovetail with a question from online. With Rosneft, you have that stake. You can't affect change. You can't make them do anything, though, with it. How open do you think they are in listening? If not, do you sell it?
We have two board seats on Rosneft. We don't control Rosneft. Remember, this is a two-way street. To think that the learning just goes from BP to Rosneft is not right. This is a company that's drilling thousands of wells a year, operating in some extreme conditions. We can actually learn a lot from them, too. We have two board seats. They want our input, particularly on matters like this. I was in Russia last week or the week before, I was in Moscow. They absolutely want to learn and to understand this agenda. We asked Rosneft would they consider joining the Methane Guiding Principles?
They join. They turn up. They participate. They want to be part. They're like any one of us. People want to be included and part of the dialogue. And I think all too often, there's a sense of others being wrong and we, whoever we are, being right, and as I said in my talk, I don't think this is a time to be entrenched in positions. I'm in this position, you're in that position. We are here today because of dialogue with people in this room that has made us better. Dialogue matters. That's where business interests and commercial interests coming together can have a real impact.
That dovetails with a question here. Thank you for making this bigger for me. Carlos Thorne is BP Location U.S.A. He asks, "How can we influence customers of our products, like the automotive industry, air travel, to get on board with these ambitions? Thank you." Same kind of question. How do you influence that part of it?
I think, first of all, we can, of course, influence customers. Customers have to make their own choices, but we have an ability to have a big impact. I was in Germany last week. We have 2 million customers per day in Germany. I was shocked. 2 million people every day come to an Aral station that is owned by BP, a deal that John did many years ago. I think we have hundreds of billions of touch points with customers every year in the world. We can influence, and what I would like us to do is to more and more encourage Well, first of all, I think it starts with sometimes some education and transparency on our products, on the carbon content, on how you can reduce your carbon traveled, and so on and so forth. I think we can do a lot.
I don't subscribe, somebody said, that's in this room, that I would hate to be in an oil and gas company's marketing department because it sounds like they think they don't have any influence on their customers. Of course, we have influence on our customers, I want that influence to be a good influence, and a force for good influence. I believe we can do that through further transparency, and through offering people better products. I was in Gelsenkirchen, one of the second-largest refining and chemical complex in Germany. They are looking at how to make, A, their refinery a net zero refinery, and B, how they can deliver fuels which are far more environmentally efficient, whether it's through co-processing, e-fuels, blending, all sorts of solutions, hydrogen. Lingen, one of our other refineries in Germany, has hydrogen being developed from alternatives.
These are the types of things that I need to learn much more about, but we can influence, and I do want that influence to be a force for good influence, and that's what we'll set out to do. It's a great question.
Oh, you're standing up, so okay. Go ahead.
I think it's going to be a really easy one.
Would you be prepared to cut the dividend to hit some of these targets? If not, why not, given that people like the world's biggest asset manager, Larry Fink, said there are some things that are more important than shareholder returns in the short term?
it's Simon? Is that right?
Simon Jack.
Simon.
I was waiting for the dividend question. That was a good one.
The question on the dividend, I think, is very simple. I have met many investors over the last several months. Helge has met with many shareholders over the last several months. Every conversation that we have had with the owners of our company comes to three subjects, typically. Get your gearing down, get it back in range, make sure that dividend is protected and sustained, and please do something in the energy transition. Depending on where you are in the world and depending on who you're talking to, the order of importance varies. Sometimes people want, first and foremost, to be on the energy transition. Sometimes people only want a dividend. In almost every conversation, Simon, all three have been present, and our job is to deliver on all three. That's what the owners of the company are asking us to do.
I do not believe, as some people may subscribe, that it is an unsolvable problem. I believe it is entirely solvable. BP will get its gearing into the range that we have set out. BP will, as I have said today, commit and remain committed to its distributions policy, we will partake fully and wholly in the energy transition, that is what we have laid out here today. That's how I would answer that question.
Can you promise then that you'll never cut the dividend?
Promises, promises. I'm very clear with what we said today. We said that when we come back later in the year, that our commitment to our distribution policy, our commitment to capital discipline, our commitment to gearing, our commitment to cost and waste and digitization does not change.
That's not a yes or a no. He's like, "Can we wrap this up now?" I'm asking because if you take a look at what happened to Shell, when they made all these commitments and then they had to dial back their buyback growth because they're trying to do everything at the same time, how do you not do that?
First of all, BP is in excellent shape. We have invested a lot of money over the last several years in 35 major projects, 23, I think, of which are online and 12 to come online. We have major 2021 free cash flow targets, which drives the breakeven of this company down to around $40. This is a very resilient business. We will run that business resiliently. We'll run it well. We will pay that dividend. We will get that gearing down, and we will take part in the transition. People, I think that investing in the transition means more capital on top of what you're already spending. What I've said today is the following: Our capital frame remains unchanged.
We will increase our investment in low to zero carbon, and as we do that, by definition, from the first statement, our investment in oil and gas will, over time, come down. That is how we solve that equation.
Okay. I feel a lot of pressure right now to pick all of you. In the back with the sweater. You, right there. Yep, you. You.
Thank you. It's Emily Gosden from The Times. You said, Bernard, that you'll still be producing oil and gas in 2050, albeit less than today. Could it still be millions of barrels a day that you'll be producing in 2050? Do you think you could produce that kind of level and still credibly hope to meet these targets? There's obviously a finite amount of offsetting that it's possible to do. Can you give any sense of how you would credibly decarbonize millions of barrels a day of production? Thank you.
Emily, thanks for your question. I will delay some of it to later in the year. I'm not going to get drawn into how much oil we're going to be producing in 30 years' time. Sometimes it's hard to judge what we're going to be producing next year sometimes. I'm not trying to be cute with my answer, but it is a long way away. What I have said today is that we will be producing less oil and gas in 2050 than today. I think that's almost inevitable. There are a number of scenarios as to what that volume will be, and there are a lot of decisions that we will take over the weeks and months and years ahead. What I have said today is that if we are, and whatever amount that amount is in 2050, it will have to be decarbonized.
Not just because we have said that we're going to be net zero in 2050, but if the world has any chance of meeting its net zero targets, it will have to be decarbonized, and that is what we will do. How will we do it? We will do it with things like carbon capture. Yes, people say you as an industry have talked about this for a very long time, and it's never gone anywhere. I get that. I do believe the technology exists. I am very excited about Net Zero Teesside. Very excited about creating, I think, the first gas-powered power station, Pratima will correct me if I'm wrong, that we will decarbonize.
I have a bigger hope and dream that we can actually build a net zero industrial park in Teesside, which may have carbon being taken from local steel manufacturing, which may have cement being manufactured there, which takes carbon out of the atmosphere. Why not? Now is the time, with the government's ambition here in the U.K., for us to lean into this. This is the sort of thing that we have to do to prove to people like Emily and her readers that we are actually serious about doing this. It's not just carbon capture. natural climate solutions, I am far from an expert. People within the NGO community have a lot of differing views on this. I spoke to Conservation International. They actually think that this can be a really good thing. I speak to other people. They're less sure about it.
They see it as an excuse to continue to do what you want to do. From what I understand, they are an absolute tool in the toolbox. They have to be high quality, and I'm particularly interested in the impact on local communities, where these natural climate solutions or offsets or whatever are taking place. We have to make sure that there is a net positive impact there. No number for production in 2050 because it is 30 years away. It will be less than it is today. Whatever number it is, because of what we said, we will decarbonize it, and we have that journey to go on.
You can see then why people get worried about the dividend or that you're going to spend more to do it.
I have been really, really clear. I hope that we have some objectives to do. We have our gearing to get into range. We have a dividend that needs to get paid, and we have an energy transition to invest in. The last thing that I would want is for people to think that that's the singular focus of what we're trying to do. That's been the focus of today's conversation, as in our 2050 goals. Perform while Transform. It is there for a reason. It is there to reassure people that we, as a leadership team that has been announced today, are as committed to delivering on those commitments and promises that we have made to our shareholders as we are on delivering that energy transition and that net zero space. I do not believe that they need to be incompatible.
I do not, and the team does not believe that they need to be incompatible. That's what we will do.
Thank you. Paul Kelso, Sky News. Bernard, you're an oil man your entire career. When did you have the realization the stuff you devoted your life to digging out of the ground was the problem that the world needed to address? If I could ask you again, personally, you talk about the priorities of the people you speak to, but personally, which number matters more to you, hitting these carbon targets or the dividend?
Remind me of your first name?
It's Paul.
Paul. Paul, thanks. The first thing I would say is that John is here with us, and John is here for many reasons, but he is credited with many as being the first leader in our sector to acknowledge climate change in 1997 at Stanford University, where he gave a great speech. I have had the privilege, as have many of us in the room, of working with John for many years after that. This is not an epiphany that has somehow happened overnight. We, in many way, take our leadership from John many years ago. There is no question that the expectations of society are changing and have changed incredibly fast, particularly over recent years and I would say even over recent months.
My ability to go out and to listen and engage has been a huge part in me getting to the place where today we lay out these ambitions. On your second question of which is more important, it's a great question to ask. It's also an easy question to answer. They're all important, and in many ways, they serve each other. If BP is not financially viable, if you start from a place, Paul, if you start from a place, and it's for everyone to form their own view, and some people do not have this view. If you start from a place that we can be a force for good to help make this transition happen. Actually, the people I speak with do actually think that.
They actually think that a company like ours, actually assuming it has the right attitude, has to be a part of the solution. If you assume that we are a force for good in the transition and can help make that transition happen, then by definition, we have to be financially strong because that is how we will make that transition. For us today, the 2021 cash flow targets, the commitment to our distribution policy, the commitment to the balance sheet, the commitment to capital discipline, the commitment to cost structure, these are the things that represent a strong, healthy company. That is why my team and I will be working incredibly hard to drive that home. It's not like there's some massive conflict. It is that in many ways, they reinforce each other, and that's how we will manage it. Thanks for your question, Paul.
We have time for just one or two more. I'd love to hear from a shareholder, if a shareholder has a question. No. Okay. Yep. Yeah.
Osvaldo. Osvaldo.
Wait. Did you pick one?
No.
Okay.
Thank you. Ron Bousso from Reuters.
You're a shareholder, Ron?
You tricked me.
I'm not a shareholder.
That is the requisite.
Reporters are so sketchy.
Not a shareholder.
Keep going. We love Ron.
My question is, what is your message to your peers today? I'm thinking not only the European ones, but also the Exxon, Chevron, who seem to have lagged a bit in the pace when it comes to the transition.
Thanks very much. Well, I'm a week in my job, or two weeks or whatever it is, and I am not one to certainly give anybody any advice. I have a lot to learn, I think, from the other companies. These are all great companies. We have a lot of respect for the companies that we compete against, and oftentimes we partner, and we bump into them all over the world. I will learn from their approaches. I'm very open to learning from what they're doing, the things that have worked, the things that haven't worked, and we should do that just as much as we learn from our own learnings. For me, Ron, this is not a space for competition. We've long said in safety that safety is not a source of competitive advantage. Safety, hurting people.
We share incidents, we share learnings, we help each other. We go and meet with each other in industry forums. My hope is that trying to help the planet meet its goals and its aspirations, we should think about the same way, which is who doesn't want to try and help the world do what the world clearly needs and what society wants? I hope we can work together, and I think we are working together like that. It's not for me to give them any advice. They're great companies. I have a lot of admiration for them, and I will learn a lot from them over the coming months and years.
Such a diplomatic answer from the CEO. I will pivot off of that and say, I think that the idea behind it is a good one in that there is a big divide between U.S. companies and European companies in how they're treating climate change.
Yeah.
BP straddles that since there's so many of your shareholders in the U.S. It's like, how do you talk to your Houston employees? How do you deal with that in a way that, say, Total and Shell don't have to in the same way?
Shell has a huge organization in the United States, so I don't think they're any different from us.
Yeah, your shareholder base h as a huge presence in the U.S.
We have shareholders in the U.S., and again, I just think it's, I guess one of my own learnings in life and in leadership is that it's just very dangerous to generalize. I really believe that. I was in Boston in January, and Craig is here. Where is Craig Marshall? We met four or five investors. Craig's the head of investor relations for BP. We met four investors in the morning, and in the afternoon, we went to the Harvard Kennedy School, and we went to Tufts University. Those investors, they had different views. I met investors that day that were as focused on the transition as any shareholder based here in London. I don't think that we can say it's U.K. or it's Europe, U.S. I genuinely believe that there is much more common ground than people might think.
Were our employees in the U.S. three years ago as anxious about this subject as maybe people in Europe? In general terms, probably not. Has that shifted in the last three years? I can absolutely guarantee you that is a fact. We think of our stakeholders as staff or employees, shareholders, and society. The reality is that in this moment in the world's history, those wants and needs are coming together, not drifting apart. Shareholders, Matt is here. Shareholders want a competitive return. They also want to invest in a company that's doing good in the world. Why wouldn't they? Society wants BP to be a net add to the world, our staff, our shareholders, and members of society.
In many ways, this is converging, and it's easy to paint a picture of the U.S. and Europe and so on, but you really have to get into the detail, I think. I think things are coming together more than people might imagine.
Are you calling it?
No.
Is he calling it? He's calling it.
Is Geoff calling? One more question.
One more, one more, one more. Oh, gosh, it's so stressful. Okay, you were in the middle.
Hello. Véronique Dupont with AFP. In the wake of the last few questions, you said you would stop investing in corporate reputation. Will you also stop, or invest less in lobbying to influence regulations?
Véronique, thank you. It's a great question, and I guess one of the things that has taken me a little bit by surprise is the feeling in civil society that we say one thing in public, and behind the scenes, we're lobbying to prevent some of the things that we say in public. Because I've been with the company for 28 years, that sort of duplicity is not something that I experience in our company. I initially struggled with that because it's not who we are. Nonetheless, when you look at evidence and put yourself in other people's shoes, as we always should, I think, I can see why people might feel like that. We said we're pro a carbon price, but then people saw us in Washington State lobbying hard against a price on carbon. It was with good reason.
We believed, and I don't think we were wrong, that the particular proposal had major flaws in that it was excluding certain industries when the whole point is to create a level playing field. I can understand how someone would say, "Hold on, you said that, and you're lobbying against that methane regulation in the U.S." Angeline is here. She reported on that. She said, "Well, on one hand, you say you're pro methane deregulation in this case, and on the other hand, you seem at least to be lobbying against it." That has been one of the things that I think we have taken very strongly on board.
We are making it very clear here today that we want to make sure. In fact, one of the first calls that we will have with the entire organization will be in a week or two, where we sort of, in the nicest possible way, lay down the law, which says that in our company, we have a very clear corporate position. If you are lobbying or asking for help or providing input on policy or whatever the language is locally, you need to make sure as a country head or whatever, that it is consistent with the position of the company. Importantly, if in doubt, you call and we talk about it. That will be one of the things that we will do.
If we are to rebuild trust and transparency is the currency for trust, if we are to rebuild trust, we cannot be seen to say one thing and do something else. This is something that we're very focused on. That's why I said, Véronique, in my remarks, that I have no doubt that we won't get this right because we have to make sure that everyone now gets lined up. If you see an example where we said one thing today, call us out on it. Tell us. We're up for that. What we said with Geoff is that we will shut down our major reputation advertising programs like Possibilities Everywhere, which I have had a lot of feedback on, and redirect that money to advocating for policy that promotes the transition.
The great thing about this is that as we describe the new businesses that we can get into, charging being a great example. Charging is a great example. On the one hand, we can look at regulation or policy which is designed to accelerate charging build-out, electrification. Could be seen as a threat to our fuels business, right? Of course. Understandable. If we're also in the charging business, which we increasingly are over time, there's an opportunity of how we can build that quickly and build that network. In answer to your question, we are absolutely very clear on the position on lobbying, where we want to make sure that any lobbying that we're doing is in support of the goals that we lay out today. The devil is always in the detail because not all regulation is good regulation.
Not all policy is good policy. You have to get into details, and you have to be willing, all of us, to understand and have a dialogue, which is what I come back to maybe as a main theme, which is, as long as we can talk about these issues and challenge each other, I have a hope and a belief that we can do some of these things. When we become entrenched in positions, that's when I think we really have a problem.
There we go. For the Q&A part, thank you very much for hosting me. I appreciate all the conversation, and I will turn it back to you.
Very good. Well, Alix, thank you all very much for your time. Alix, I think, did an absolutely brilliant job. We should give her a round of applause. The return is I now have to do a 30-minute live interview on Bloomberg Television.
13 minutes.
13 minutes. This will be very interesting. It's not my favorite thing, I have to say. Anyway, I'm not sure we'll be sending out a link to that one. Alix, thank you. I just want to thank my entire team. The people who have produced this great event today, obviously. People have worked night and day to do what we've had to do over the last several months. There isn't a chance that I could name everybody, but I can assure you that there are people in their company who have put their heart and soul into this. Heart and soul. This is what people in our company want. I just want to thank the team that has helped to pull this together and actually roll this out today. They've done an extraordinary job, and I am very grateful to them all.
I want to thank you all for coming and taking your time. Some of you have traveled, which it means a lot to me and to us, I really want to acknowledge that. Thank everybody for watching online. It's an extraordinary number of people, but you've taken your time. The BP employees that are on the web, as I know there are in probably every center around the world, I really appreciate what you all do, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing your feedback. We have two live webcasts tomorrow, one in the morning, one in the evening, where we will listen now to your feedback. I look forward to getting out and working with you and getting to know those of you that I don't know, that will all come in the weeks and months ahead.
We are on LinkedIn, Instagram, Yammer. You can connect in that way and provide your views. I want to wish everybody a safe journey home. As in the spirit of the day, we do have a one-minute video to close it out. With that, I'll leave you all to go. Thank you very much. We'll play the video.