Fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground and be priced differently in the markets, if the world is to meet the challenge of the Paris climate agreement, says the head of Britain’s climate watchdog. Chris Stark, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, which advises the government of the United Kingdom on reducing emissions and adapting to global warming, told National Observer that while fossil fuels will still have to be used for decades, “that has to be accompanied by a strategy to take us off them in the future.” “Put bluntly, if we are to meet the emissions targets that are implied by the Paris agreement, then we know already that we have too many fossil fuel reserves out there,” Stark said Monday in an interview at the British High Commission in Ottawa.

Stark became the chief executive of the UK climate committee on April 16, 2018 after previously being the director of energy and climate change for the Scottish government. He explained that developing all of the reserves of oil, gas and coal would make it impossible to meet the goals of the Paris climate deal, reached in 2015. If we don't meet those targets, he said it indicates a problem since there hasn't been sufficient investments that would allow us to adapt to a changing climate. He also said that the current market needs to assess all the risks and impacts of fossil fuels and incorporate these factors into the price that we pay for these energy sources. “The idea of disclosing those risks more explicitly to the market is going to be a really important driver of getting the investment patterns right in the future,” he said. Stark was in town to meet with Canadian MPs and government officials, as well as civil society members, to offer up expertise.

An independent office to give advice and hold the government accountable for its climate change commitments. We would do well to follow the UK's lead through @theCCCuk. https://t.co/IlrIqypamL — Nate Erskine-Smith (@beynate) February 26, 2019 His comments add to concerns raised by the International Institute for Sustainable Development that a large portion of Canadians’ retirement savings and pensions rely on fossil fuel reserves and are therefore exposed to deep financial risk, if the aspirational goals of the Paris Agreement were to be abruptly implemented into Canadian financial markets, in the absence of an orderly plan. “Politicians have to be grown-up about it too," @ChiefExecCCC told @OttawaCarl . "Being grown up is about taking big decisions at the right moment, being supported of course by the economics and the evidence.” A recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling that prioritized environmental cleanups over repaying loans is already leading to Canada’s “big five” banks and dozens of other financial institutions taking the decision into account when calculating credit availability to fossil fuel firms. Credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service said the ruling could mean banks will be less willing to lend to oil and gas producers. Stark said it was “possible” it would get to the point where his committee would recommend that a large portion of Canadian oilsands assets can’t be burned, as British researchers concluded in a 2015 academic paper in the journal Nature. “I don’t speak with any authority about the Canadian position — but what we really need are big market mechanisms that encourage people to do the right things, for markets to do the right things, and for the big corporate interests then to follow that,” he said. “That will be a mixture of things, including potentially saying some tough things to the oil and gas sector globally.” The markets are already speaking for themselves, he added. Clean energy technology and renewable energy are becoming less expensive by the day, such that he predicted it would soon be cheaper to electrify road transport in the U.K. than to do nothing. “The interests of government should be in reducing the costs of the good things, it seems to be, and then the market will deliver." Chris Stark, U.K. Climate Change Committee chief executive, on Feb. 25. He said he was "hearing from the (Canadian federal) government about their desire to see some sort of body" in an "independent watchdog role.” Photo by Andrew Meade

Minister's staff consults with U.K. committee exec Stark's committee, staffed with a 30-person secretariat, was created 10 years ago as a statutory body under the U.K’s Climate Change Act 2008. It provides advice, conducts research, monitors progress on targets and engages with organizations and people to share evidence. The “tripartite” arrangement of the committee, with Parliament as “enforcer of action” and government as the administrator of emissions reduction plans, “seems to keep everyone in the right place," said Stark.