Having talked the talk for two decades, Louise Kingham CBE is a woman now relishing the chance to walk the walk.
In a 20-year stint as chief executive officer of the Energy Institute, the 48-year-old took a determined lead on defining issues such as the energy transition and female representation in the boardroom.
Today, she is living both as bp’s new UK head of country and senior vice president for Europe, one of the biggest jobs in British business.
It is a hot seat made even hotter by the lightning-rod debate around the future of oil and gas exploration triggered by the COP26 conference in Glasgow.
As an advocate for change, her views have long been consistent with the path that many in the energy sector are now taking – and she has consistently lobbied, as a critical friend, for the industry to “do things better”.
Few have a better understanding of issues that will define the role that bp – and the wider energy sector – will play in our society over the next 30 years.
That makes her boots the perfect pair to be on the ground in the UK as the organisation delivers on chief executive officer Bernard Looney’s aims of shifting bp from an ‘international oil company’ to an ‘integrated energy company’.
It is a strategy which is bold in its vision; bold in its objectives; and bold about the role bp will play in the planet’s shift to net zero emissions.
And Aberdeen – a city bp has called home since the mid-1960s – will again be at the heart of the action.
The company wants a 10-fold increase in its low carbon investment by 2030. This includes building partnerships with 10-15 cities globally, with Aberdeen among the first to be confirmed.
It wants to increase its developed renewable energy generating capacity from 2.5GW to around 50GW, including its bid for a 2.9GW offshore wind lease in the North Sea which it hopes will result in Aberdeen becoming its global offshore wind centre of excellence.
It is seeking to become a major player in the hydrogen fuel market and is already working with Aberdeen Harbour Board to explore the use of hydrogen as a clean marine fuel.
And while it seeks to cut hydrocarbon production by 40% by the end of this decade, the oil and gas it does produce will be focussed on regions like the UK where it already has infrastructure in place.
“Our role is to promote best practice, including the faster transition to a low carbon energy system,” Ms Kingham said, speaking to Business Bulletin from her home in Buckinghamshire.
“Aberdeen has been obviously important to bp’s past, having been in Scotland for 100 years and in the North Sea for more than half of that.
“It is also a very important city in our new strategy. We’re looking at the next 100 years here.
“The energy transition presents an enormous opportunity for both bp and for Aberdeen, where we have built up vast skills and experience that are directly transferable to emerging energy industries.”
New UKCS projects
As one of the North Sea’s major players from the start, bp has had a key role in shaping the UK’s oil and gas industry over the last 50 years.
And while COP26 triggered heated debate around future exploration and production of hydrocarbons, meaningful energy transition requires deep pockets to become reality. And bp is not shying away from where the cash to fund its enormous transition will come from.
In a recent interview with Time Magazine in the US, Bernard Looney said the company will continue to sanction and develop new oilfields, naming Norway and the Gulf of Mexico as two regions where that will happen.
“Revenues from oil and gas allow us to fund new technology,” Ms Kingham told us, confirming that while its overall output will fall, bp is also looking “to develop production” in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS).
The new strategy will focus on going after what Ms Kingham describes as “the best hydrocarbons” in regions where the company already has infrastructure in place, with the lowest possible emissions.
Alongside this, is a commitment to “do things better”, one of Ms Kingham’s mantras from her days at the Energy Institute, where she was a passionate advocate for efficiency in the industry.
One area where bp and its North Sea peers need to do better is flaring, the deliberate burning of unwanted gas into the atmosphere.
A report published last year by the investigative news arm of Greenpeace revealed that almost 20m tonnes of CO2 was released into the atmosphere in the five years to the end of 2019 by North Sea flaring and venting.
The UK’s oil authorities have allowed the controversial practice to continue, almost 50 years after routine gas flaring was banned by Norway’s government.
It is a problem which doesn’t square with the bp’s new objectives, and one it is taking a lead in tackling.
The company reduced its North Sea flaring by almost 45% last year compared with 2019, and it plans to eliminate routine flaring across all bp operations here by 2027.
A ‘greening’ business
That work to cut emissions is as active on land as it is at sea, as is demonstrated by bp’s ground-breaking net zero partnership with Aberdeen City Council.
And after a robust tendering process, bp was selected in October as the preferred bidder to help build a green hydrogen production hub in the City.
The commercial partnership aims to establish the Granite City as a “world-class” base for hydrogen, and a key part of the Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub programme will involve the creation of Scotland’s first scalable facility capable of producing green hydrogen.
Options being explored to power the facility include a new photovoltaic solar farm and green power purchase agreements. A private wire grid connection to generate hydrogen for buses, heavy goods vehicles and large vans is also on the cards.
A final investment decision on the selected development concept is expected in 2023 and it is hoped phase 1, which involves delivery of the £215m project, will be up and running from 2024.
Future phases could allow production to be scaled up through further investment, allowing the low carbon fuel to be supplied to rail, freight and marine operations. Hydrogen could also be used to heat homes and potentially exported.
Ms Kingham added: “Our strategic partnership is all about helping the city to understand what an integrated energy system looks like, to get to climate positive as quickly as possible.
“It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to create that bridge and introduce these new projects, alongside what will be continue to be a very busy North Sea.”
The jewel in the crown of its new projects is bp’s joint ScotWind bid with EnBW to create 2.9GW of offshore wind capacity off the Aberdeen coast – enough to power around three million homes.
Within an overall £10bn of identified investments, bp plans to create a global offshore wind centre of excellence in Aberdeen, vastly expand its electric vehicle charging network in Scotland, and invest in hydrogen infrastructure and Scottish ports.
It has also committed to take forward a multi-million investment in a skills accelerator, supported by Xodus, which would create entry level energy transition jobs and reskilling ‘hundreds of oil and gas workers’.
Ms Kingham says bp “wants to play a leading role in Scotland’s energy transition” just as it did in the UK’s oil and gas sector all those years ago.
Indeed, she admits that had it not been for bp’s dramatic pivot towards that transition, the role might not have been right for her.
Thankfully, it is, and you can’t help but feel that she is the right woman in the right job at the right time to help lead a reasoned debate about our future energy mix here in the UK.