Scientists have said that fossil fuel companies are currently on track to far exceed production in line with Paris Agreement climate goals.

A new study in the journal Nature Climate Change evaluated the current growth trajectories for 142 of the largest coal, oil, and gas producers. It measured these against a series of ‘pathways’. In particular, these are scenarios for keeping the world below 1.5C of warming on pre-industrial levels.

Significantly, the research found that the companies are projected to produce amounts of coal, oil and gas that would push the world well beyond ‘safe‘ warming limits. Pathways to Paris

The study looked at the companies’ trajectories against different 1.5C scenarios. The shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) model potential fossil fuel production futures.

All three study SSPs represent pathways that the models consider consistent with 1.5C. However, each scenario will require different levels of mitigation from carbon removal technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS). This is a process by which carbon emissions are captured from industrial facilities and then stored deep underground.

The three separate scenarios comprise of a “green road”, a “middle of the road”, and a “fossil-fuelled development” pathway. Using these, the study author quantified “production budgets” for the 142 companies. This is the amount of coal, oil, and gas a company can produce whilst keeping in line with each of these scenarios.

The study found that if the companies maintained the growth rates measured between 2010 and 2018, they would soar past even the “fossil-fuelled development” production budget by 2050. Specifically, the corporations would produce 17% more coal and 3% more oil than this budget. Moreover, this would still rely on the use of CCS to remove 45% of coal and 1% of oil emissions.

By comparison, the “middle of the road” scenario anticipated greater use of gas. In contrast however, it expects less coal and oil production. Under this, the study authors found that companies would exceed their production budgets for coal, oil and gas by 65%, 33%, and 53%, respectively. Similarly, this would require CCS. Companies would need to remove 13% of coal, 7% of oil, and 14% of gas emissions through the technology. Production instead of emissions

Notably, the study stands apart from similar research on fossil fuel company compliance with Paris climate goals. Instead of measuring company emission projections, it focuses directly on production.

In view of corporate moves angled at greenwashing emissions pledges, the study suggested that it provided:

a simple and transparent method to evaluate a wide range of fossil fuel companies against climate scenarios.

For example, fossil fuel companies have tended to solely measure ‘scope 1’ and ‘scope 2’ emissions. These are the greenhouse gases directly related to their operations. In effect, they consider only the emissions from the exploration, extraction, and production of fossil fuels in their net-zero targets.

As a result, oil majors often do not account for the emissions that consumers generate from the burning of their products. These downstream GHGs are referred to as ‘scope 3’ emissions.

However, since this study evaluates overall production, it prevents companies from shifting responsibility for scope 3 emissions.

A recent report found that a majority of the world’s biggest companies do not have credible plans for meeting net zero. As the Canary’s Tracy Keeling highlighted, the research found that fossil fuel company pledges were “largely meaningless”.

What’s more, on 11 August, nonprofit Global Witness exposed the “COP28 President’s ‘hypocritical’ oil firm”. The organisation found that Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) had produced 14 times more emissions in 2022 than it had reported. The upcoming climate summit’s president sultan Al Jaber heads the national oil company. Unsurprisingly, the disparity centred round its failure to include its scope 3 emissions. Circumventing industry greenwashing

Moreover, fossil fuel companies have doubled down on dubious rhetoric to maintain their production. As the Guardian has previously reported, the idea of ‘carbon intensity’:

has become a favorite of banks, oil companies and other big businesses.

This is a metric to assess the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions generated for an activity. For instance, this could include the quantity of GHGs emitted in manufacturing a product.

At the COP27 climate summit, a United Nations (UN) expert working group launched a report to counter greenwashing. In particular this targeted corporations, investors, and other “non-State entities”. The publication presented a series of recommendations that these actors should take to avoid greenwashing. Notably, it stated that:

Non-state actors cannot focus on reducing the intensity of their emissions rather than their absolute emissions

However, a PLOS One journal study found that some fossil fuel majors have been doing exactly that.

The UK government has also recently applied this slippery concept to its so-called “energy security” plans. Sunak invoked the metric to hypocritically argue the climate benefits of permitting hundreds of new oil and gas licenses in the North Sea.

Therefore, the Nature study stated that by focusing on “comparing fossil fuel ‘production’ to Paris-compliant fossil fuel demand projections” it shifted the focus “from ‘intensity’ to ‘absolute’ measures”.

In other words, the study assessed whether companies are genuinely preparing to take concrete climate action. In the case of fossil fuel corporations, this would require massively reducing polluting production. Of course, it should come as no surprise that these climate criminals are not doing this. Fossil fuel delegates hijack climate talks

The new study comes as nations gear up to meet for climate talks in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. World leaders will convene for the United Nations COP28 climate summit at the end of November. They will hash out plans for meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C commitment.

Already, oil and gas majors have weasled their way into influential roles at the conference. Fossil fuel delegates have also filled previous climate negotiations. Since nations signed the Paris Agreement, five of the biggest oil companies alone have brought over 400 lobbyists to UN climate talks. COP28 is not about to buck the trend. COP28 president sultan Al Jaber has said that he plans to welcome fossil fuel producers to the talks.

In July, a leading UK climate scientist and former head of the UN’s key climate body said that he does not believe the world will prevent warming above 1.5C. If that proves true, the Nature study shows clearly who is to blame. As the world careers from one climate crisis supercharged disaster to another, the fossil fuel felons responsible have no intention of changing course.

  • 👁️👄👁️
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    471 year ago

    Literally execute fossil fuel company execs. Killing the world unapologetically is the greatest crime of all. They have no remorse, continue to do so, and get filthy rich. Unredeemable.

    • @[email protected]
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      151 year ago

      Seriously the only route they’ve left available to us.

      But that will never happen so we’re fucked I guess.

      • BrokebackHampton
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        121 year ago

        They operate on our collective belief that it will never happen.

        If we want to change that we have to start with the thought that it can happen, I’m all for firing squad but if we have to settle at bleeding them dry to cover the very (very) costly climate catastrophe they have brought upon us, so be it.

      • CIWS-30
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        81 year ago

        This is the reason why they’ve made sure only their brainwashed nutjob militias have all the guns. And also why the police are a bunch of classist racists too, along with much of the military (which primarily recruits from the south).

        I don’t want to put my conspiracy hat on, but it also might be why “liberal” politicians try to get states with tons of activists to have the strictest gun laws. I’m not a second amendment wingnut, but if the corpos and their fascist storm troopers every decided to start a shooting war with the civilian population, I have no illusions about who’d probably win, given that the average civilian is just a coward who’ll back off and comply when even slightly threatened with violence.

        • @[email protected]
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          51 year ago

          I think it’s more likely that buying politicians left and right is a safer and cleaner strategy. In the US it’s also very effective to capture the Supreme Court, so you can get things like Citizens United as legalize political bribes entirely.

          I think that, because even an organized militia of activists won’t be able do something against a professional one. You gotta capture the one with the monopoly for violence (the police and the state). When you compare with what happens everywhere else in the world, you can see the same strategy everywhere adapted to the different weaknesses for government capture (pay the dictator, pay the oligarchs, buy the media etc.).

          • @[email protected]
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            1 year ago

            I think that it’s more likely the case that a revolt through not “doing the work” would be successful in the United States. Sure we had armed fights in labor movements, but what I think really moves the needle is people just saying fuck you I won’t work under these conditions. Those atop the pyramid rely much more on other’s labor to sustain themselves.

            This is why they also want to keep you poor and drain the social safety net: so that you cannot afford to miss a single paycheck and have no recourse to working all day every day just to feed yourself and your family.

            • @[email protected]
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              11 year ago

              Strikes basically. Yes, I agree. Money only makes them powerful because we need it to buy goods from them.

        • @[email protected]
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          41 year ago

          People have to be a lot more desperate and there has to be an obvious line to the suffering they’re feeling and the oil CEO’s to make that happen I think.

          As it stands they will do anything and everything to divide the people against each other as oppose to against them and they’re doing a good job of it.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 year ago

      People tend to forget, that labour unions were a compromise created after workers got angry of the exploitation so much that they raided the factory owners and killed them.

      • @Moebius
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        41 year ago

        I hope you don’t have a retirement fund……

          • @Moebius
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            -11 year ago

            Huh? I think you missed my point. He said kill shareholders, if he has a 401k then he would be killing himself.

            Yes I know there are “green” funds, no I don’t think it matters.

    • @[email protected]
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      01 year ago

      Who will you buy your oil from then?

      We need to change the way we make energy. Killing oil companies is a secondary consequence of switching to renewables

      • 👁️👄👁️
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        81 year ago

        Every day is record heat temperatures and we need the nuclear option at this point. Scum of the earth should be purged. They cannot be rehabilitated and are one of the biggest threats to Earth’s existence.

        • @[email protected]
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          41 year ago

          If we stop consuming oil today, clean turkey, billions of people die.

          Maybe there’s a less “Thanos Snap” solution to this problem, yeah?

          • @[email protected]
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            11 year ago

            Just switch everybody to electric and solar. And wind. Electric cars are becoming more ubiquitous so forcing local municipalities to pass laws requiring all gas stations and parking lots to host charging stations hooked up to solar panels would help. Force municipalities to upgrade the power grid. Then force states to replace coal plants with nuclear ones.

            It isn’t hard. It’s just everyone else was convinced nonviolence was more important than anything else, including their own planet. We could’ve done this any time we wanted to, but no one did. So here we are.

            Oh, also we can get NASA to help, too. Start building space solar power stations which would alleviate the problems with on-surface solar power collection. Start mining calcium and magnesium from NEAs and lunar regolith and use it to alkanize the oceans and get the fucking CO2 out of it. Put NASA’s budget to work for us. It would alleviate the education problems we suffer, too.

              • @[email protected]
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                11 year ago

                Fair. Nothing of that big a scale can be built overnight. But it still has to happen if we want to avert climate catastrophe.

        • @[email protected]
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          21 year ago

          Cool. And what happens to the company? We can for sure just shut down all oil companies today, and what happens then?

          People buy oil. They give these companies money because we want what they have. We need to change our behaviours or the polluting does not stop. It just means our money goes to a new oil company.