Big oil companies have made flashy climate pledges in recent years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and combat the climate crisis, but a new report suggests those plans don’t stand up to scrutiny. ing.
Oil Change International, a research and advocacy group, is researching and researching the impact of climate change on eight major international oil and gas producers based in the United States and Europe: BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Total Energies. An examination of the plans revealed that none of them met the global restrictions. Scientists have long warned that breaching this threshold, which would raise temperatures by up to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, could have dire consequences.
“There is no evidence that major oil and gas companies are serious about energy transition,” David Tong, global industry campaigns manager at Oil Change International, who co-authored the analysis, said in a statement.
There was no immediate comment from any of the companies.
The report’s authors used 10 criteria to rank each aspect of each company’s plan, ranging from “completely consistent” to “severely inadequate,” and found that all eight companies scored “very poorly” on nearly every criterion. The results were found to have been rated as ‘grossly inadequate’ or ‘inadequate’.
U.S. companies Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil each rated “severely inadequate” on all 10 criteria.
“America’s fossil fuel companies are the worst of the worst,” Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. program manager for Oil Change International, said in a statement.
The authors also found that companies’ current oil and gas drilling plans could raise global temperatures by more than 2.4 degrees Celsius, possibly causing climate destruction. These eight companies alone are on track to use 30% of the world’s remaining carbon budget to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the study found.
The authors divided their evaluation criteria into three categories: the ambition to curb fossil fuel exploration and production, the integrity of the methods used to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and the fair and It is an effort to oversee a ‘human-centered transition’.
In terms of ambition, the report found that none of the eight companies have plans to halt fossil fuel exploration or halt approvals or new mining projects.
Six of the eight companies (excluding Shell and BP) have a clear goal of increasing oil and gas production. Meanwhile, Shell plans to increase gas production while keeping oil production stable, suggesting that overall production may also increase.
Shell has been technologically reducing its fossil fuel production in recent years. However, the company did so by selling assets to other companies that continued mining rather than shutting down operations. This is an approach that is inconsistent with guidelines for calculating corporate emissions under the GHG Protocol, the global standard for measuring global warming pollution, and could also lead companies to depart from the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. There is. the authors say.
Meanwhile, BP plans to increase oil and gas production in 2023 by 2.6% over 2022, increasing production this year but keeping it flat in 2025.
Both companies have started Selection subject new extraction Recent projects.
Eight companies also met few completeness metrics. Analysts say no companies have set comprehensive targets to curb emissions quickly and consistently, and none plan to rely on questionable methods to meet climate goals. It is said that there is These methods include carbon capture and storage, which does not yet exist at scale, and accounting approaches such as carbon offsets, which are associated with human rights violations and do not themselves reduce emissions. Contains tricks.
All eight companies also “failed to meet basic standards for just transition plans for workers and the communities in which they operate,” and none met “basic” human rights standards. Some had human rights policies on their books, but none had presented sufficient plans for adhering to them, the authors say.
The report was supported by more than 100 climate change organizations internationally. This marks his fourth annual “Big Oil Reality Check” by Oil Change International.
Since the report was first published in 2020, many oil companies have withdrawn their climate change pledges as fossil fuel prices soar.
“The Big Oil Reality Check data shows these companies’ dangerous efforts to profit at all costs,” Tong said.
This follows a report published in March by think tank Carbon Tracker, which found that the production and transition plans of 25 of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies are all consistent with the core goals of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. It turned out that it wasn’t.
