Latest findings by the Guardian has shown that France is Europe’s biggest supporter of “carbon bomb” extraction projects that hold enough fossil fuels to pump out more than a gigaton of CO2 each.
Since world leaders gathered in the French capital to sign the Paris agreement in 2015 – where they promised to try to stop the planet heating by 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – French banks have financed companies planning or operating carbon bombs amounting to $154bn,the findings show.
Experts say that the carbon bombs are the 425 biggest fossil fuel extraction projects in the world. Beneath them, there is enough coal, oil and gas to burn through humanity’s carbon budget to stay within 1.5C four times over.
In her reaction, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, a climate scientist at CEA Paris-Saclay who co-chaired the physical science section of the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said fossil fuel companies and banks have implemented a cynical strategy.
She noted that despite an aim to become carbon neutral by 2050, they were “acting now to increase the use of fossil fuels and thus emissions – deliberately ignoring one of the strongest scientific findings relating cumulative CO2 emissions with global warming levels”.
The research undertaken by the French NGOs Data for Good and Éclaircies, together with European media outlets including the Guardian and Le Monde, found that French banks poured more money into the companies operating these projects than those of any other country in Europe, behind only those of China and the US.
The research found that the four French banks – BNP Paribas, BPCE Group, Crédite Agricole and Société Générale – together invested $17.8bn in 2022 in companies planning or operating carbon bombs. Over the six-year period from 2016, the recipients ranged from oil and gas companies in the US to state-owned energy companies in countries from Brazil to Saudi Arabia to China.
The original database of carbon bomb projects came from a research paper that counted 425 coalmines, oilfields and gas fields with potential lifetime emissions greater than 1 gigaton of CO2, according to reports. French researchers then matched them up with data on operators from Global Energy Monitor and data on financiers from Banking on Climate Chaos, an NGO report covering the 60 biggest banks.
For some projects, the information did not match up with the data used to identify the companies and banks. Some others were out of date or had an unclear operation status.
Lou Welgryn, who is the co-president of Data for Good, which led the research, said: “There is very little public and reliable data available to identify fossil projects worldwide, their total reserves, associated greenhouse gas emissions, and the actors involved.
Speaking further, she said, “This opacity, in some cases, leads us to underestimate the number of projects associated with a company or the financial flows between a bank and companies operating carbon bombs.”
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
