A new report has shown that although major oil companies have in recent years made splashy climate pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and take on the climate crisis, those plans do not stand up to scrutiny.
The research and advocacy group Oil Change International examined climate plans from the eight largest US- and European-based international oil and gas producers – BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies – and found none were compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels – a threshold scientists have long warned could have dire consequences if breached.
“There is no evidence that big oil and gas companies are acting seriously to be part of the energy transition,” David Tong, global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International, who co-authored the analysis, said in a statement.
None of the companies were immediately available for comment.
To come up with the findings, the report’s authors used 10 criteria and ranked each aspect of each company’s plan on a spectrum from “fully aligned” to “grossly insufficient” and found all eight companies ranked “grossly insufficient” or “insufficient” on nearly all criteria.
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The US firms Chevron, ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil each ranked “grossly insufficient” on all 10 criteria.
“American fossil-fuel corporations are the worst of the worst,” Allie Rosenbluth, US program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement.
Also, the authors also found that the companies’ current oil and gas extraction plans could lead to more than 2.4C of global temperature rise, which would probably usher in climate devastation. The eight firms alone are on track to use 30% of the world’s remaining global carbon budget to keep global average temperature rise to 1.5C, the study found.
The authors broke the assessment’s criteria into three categories: ambition to curb fossil fuel exploration and production, integrity of methods used to curb greenhouse gas emissions, and commitment to overseeing just and “people-centered transitions” away from fossil fuels.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
