MONTREAL – Individuals need to get their heads round the concept that fossil fuels are “probably dead,” the CEO of Canadian Pacific Railway said Wednesday.
“I’m not maybe as green as I should be however i occur to think the weather is changing (and) they’re not going to fool me anymore,” Hunter Harrison told a J.P. Morgan transportation conference in New York.
The veteran rail executive said the transition to alternative fuels will be long, but new investments in traditional energy sources will dry out because of environmental hurdles.
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The country’s second-largest railway has witnessed shipments of crude drop because of declining demand due to the dramatic fall in oil prices. Thermal coal shipments have also waned.
Harrison said the rail industry will need to adapt to a shift to renewable power sources, just as it did within the 1990s when the U.S. Climate Act wiped away 29 percent of the business at Illinois Central Railway that he ran at the time.
“I believe that it’s a challenge moving forward, but rails have historically handled those changes really well over time and continued to outlive making it,” he said.
Company spokesman Jeremy Berry said later that Harrison was talking about the “overwhelming trend” towards sustainable energy and the need for all segments of the economy to understand the ever-changing energy landscape.
Greenpeace welcomed Harrison’s view, saying it marks a reversal from the 1990s when railroads denied climatic change because they relied so much on coal.
“I believe he’s just recognizing the new realities and searching to visit in which the puck goes rather than where it has been,” said Keith Stewart, environmentally friendly group’s head of climate and energy campaign.
“And our political leaders would prosper to recognize that renewable energy may be the method of the future and we have to be taking a look at the way we can get ready for a world that’s going beyond non-renewable fuels.”
Under the new Liberal government, Canada was among countries late this past year that helped push for any objective of limiting climatic change to around 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The Calgary-based railway also said it filed a resolution with U.S. securities regulators it plans to introduce to Norfolk Southern shareholders at its next annual meeting as part of its effort to acquire the Virginia-based railway.
The motion calls for shareholders to request Norfolk’s board to take part in discussions with CP Rail that wouldn’t preclude discussions along with other parties.
“This is type of our last effort, the very last thing we know to complete and that we hope it will work,” Harrison said. “And if not, we are going to return in and run our railroad.”
