Though not a big shocker that petroleum and oil companies continue to lack integrity and are poor at putting honor above profits, published in Science, a team of researchers looked at 52 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies and found that less than half of them had made some sort of pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
According to lead author, Simon Dietz, “The purpose is to test how ambitious companies’ stated climate goals actually are…they need to match or even outperform the industry-wide scenarios. Mostly they don’t.”
Dietz and his team found that only 2 of the 52 companies have plans that are enough to keep them on track with the goals of the Paris Agreement. They also found that less than half to the companies assessed have set emissions targets or provide sufficient clarity in their plans.
While 45 of the 52 companies provide data on their Scope 1 and 2 emissions (operational emissions, such as extracting and refining), only 23 reported their Scope 3 data (emissions from actually using their product down the chain of production). Scope 3 is where the majority of lifecycle emissions for oil and gas companies end up. The emissions from Scope 3 far outweighs the operational emissions of Scope 1 and 2.
Complicating things, Scope 3 emissions is largely voluntarily and oil companies can choose how to measure and report them, most likely making the numbers seem more favorable than they are. As a result, oil and gas companies enjoy a lot of wiggle room in hiding the damage they are actually causing the environment.
Also appalling is that only 28 of the 52 companies provided quantitative emissions target and data for researchers to project future emission pathways. All other companies’ data were vague and cannot be assessed by the researchers. Making it worse, for those 28 data where quantifiable goals were available to researchers, they found that the goals were “unambitious”. For example, the median target was a lousy 6.4% carbon reduction by the year 2037.
All in all, oil companies have no plans to actually take any actions that will save the planet as disaster nears as their goals were not compatible with keeping global temperature from rising 2 degrees Celsius. Researchers found that the source of failure from oil and gas companies were due to insufficient target reductions, or what is reported did not cover the company’s global emissions.
The authors wrote in their conclusion, “…as a group, the world’s largest public [oil and gas] producers are far from being aligned with limiting global warming to 2°C or below. Some companies have yet to set emissions targets, and some others provide limited clarity on what they cover and how they will reduce companywide emissions. Even for companies whose targets appear to be more ambitious, attention turns to the credibility of the strategies underpinning the targets.”
In other words, the men who run gas and oil companies are completely lacking in integrity, accountability, and transparency in their operations. Worse, they continue to jeopardize the future of everyone and our children with their lies to policy makers.
S Dietz et al. How ambitious are oil and gas companies’ climate goals? Despite many claims, the sector is not on track. Science 2021. 374(6566); 405-408
