Of 52 Oil & Gas Majors, 2 Have Climate Proposals That Are Even Loosely Tied To Temperature Targets

[hatrack]

EDIT

In an analysis published in the journal Science, researchers at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, part of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LES), looked at both emissions disclosures and emissions reduction goals of the world’s top 52 public oil and gas companies, including Exxon Mobil, BP, and Suncor Energy. Of those 52, only 1 company, Occidental Petroleum, has announced plans to reduce emissions below the 1.5 degrees Celsius benchmark (the equivalent of about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050. Only one additional company, Royal Dutch Shell, has plans to bring its emissions intensity in line with the 2 degree warming limit. “No other company has set a target ambitious enough to beat the 2 degrees Celsius benchmark by 2050,” the authors write (though three others did come close).

Ultimately, this isn’t all that surprising, lead author Simon Dietz, a professor of environmental policy at LES, said via email. It’s in line with other research detailing how the world plans to keep burning oil and gas at rates incompatible with the Paris Agreement goals. This week, a United Nations Environment Programme report revealed that governments are on track to increase their oil and gas production to “more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.” “However,” he added, “given that an increasing number of [oil and gas] companies are announcing climate targets and presenting them as being compatible with the transition to a low-carbon economy, it is still disappointing to see that most fall short.”

Dietz and his team measured the current emissions intensities of oil and gas companies, including not only their operational (i.e. Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions), but also their Scope 3 emissions, which include the emissions from the use of their products once sold, like for energy in buildings or to fill a car’s gas tank. Just 23 companies disclose an estimate of their Scope 3 emissions, though; the researchers calculated them for themselves, based on a company’s energy sales and production data.

Scope 3 is where the “vast majority” of lifecycle emissions for oil and gas companies comes from, Dietz says; a company’s operational emissions make up less than 10% of their lifecycle emissions. That means companies need to consider Scope 3 emissions in their climate goals, “otherwise if they continue with business as usual and just focus on cleaning up their operations, then they are vulnerable to be totally out of line with the transition [to a low-carbon economy],” he says.

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https://www.fastcompany.com/90688457/only-2-of-52-top-oil-and-gas-companies-have-science-based-climate-targets

[GregariousGroundhog]

1. I suspect this analysis may not reflect some relatively recent announcements from BP

Bernard Looney took over as CEO in February of last year, and I get the impression that they are pivoting from fossil fuels to renewable electricity generation and electric vehicle charging networks.

BP currently claims they will produce 40% less oil in 2030 than they do now, and they also claim they will operate 50GW of renewable electricity generation by then. BP currently owns 14 GW of generation and has 9 more under construction.