General Electric has touted its commitment to achieving net-zero
carbon emissions by 2050.1
It does not appear from publicly available
information, however, that General Electric has fully considered the
risk that decarbonization on activist schedules might entail.
Claims about the need for decarbonization at all, but especially by
some activist-generated date certain, are based on a long series of
assumptions that are either counterfactual or insufficiently examined.
For decades, for instance, claims have been made that action must
be taken before some date, or it will be too late.2
If those claims were
right, it’s too late for decarbonization to matter now, so we should be
building up economic resources to deal with climate change. If they
were wrong, then the odds are high that current claims are also wrong.
General Electric’s decarbonization will be meaningless if other
countries do not follow the same decarbonization schedules, and there
is abundant evidence that they will not.3
The United States government
has never mandated net-zero by statute or authorized regulatory
action4
, and is unlikely ever to do so; this contravenes the assumptions
of “stranded asset” analysis. If decarbonization is neither required nor
technologically feasible, General Electric will lose significant markets
and revenues to private equity firms and (less clean-producing)
state actors, thus harming shareholders while also harming the
environment. These and all relevant considerations should be fully and
objectively examined.