Top Oil Firms' Climate Pledges Failing on Almost Every Metric, Report Finds (theguardian.com) 124
Major oil companies have in recent years made splashy climate pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and take on the climate crisis, but a new report suggests those plans do not stand up to scrutiny. From a report: 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. The report's authors used 10 criteria and ranked each aspect of each companyâ(TM)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. 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.
"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. The report's authors used 10 criteria and ranked each aspect of each companyâ(TM)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. 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.
Governments also... (Score:1, Insightful)
If major western governments of the world can't meet their climate goals, how could we expect oil companies to do better?
Re:Governments also... (Score:4, Informative)
Well it' lobbying from the oil companies that forms the major obstacle to governments meeting their climate goals.
Designated scapegoat (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's politicians and bureaucrats that respond to the lobbying that enables all of the above. And it's voters that elect the susceptible leaders.
So it's you. But you don't want to hear that. You do, however, enjoy hating on the designated scapegoat, as we're doing here.
Re:Designated scapegoat (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well, I suppose we can accept their apologies & promises to do better next time, right? Again.
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You are literally alive because of the petroleum industry. Who could possibly have reaped a greater reward than that?
Quite probably. However, the continued rewards they reap by externalizing the costs (pollution, CO2, etc) is becoming an existential threat to modern society. Make them bear those costs and you just might see changes being made.
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Think how dumb the average person is, you're dumber than that if you think u/newbie_fantod personally elected every politician there is globally just because he may have voted in one of their elections. In fact I have reason to suspect he isn't satisfied with the current politicians. So instead of telling him "It's you" you should have said "It's those other guys".
Re:Designated scapegoat (Score:5, Interesting)
The Oil Companies KNEW in NINETEEN mf' SEVENTY-FIVE that burning massive fossil fuels would cause exactly what we're seeing play out.
So they lied and created propaganda. But you go ahead and blame smokers for lung cancer caused by lies of Tobacco companies.
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Re: Governments also... (Score:3)
Restaurants use gas even when they don't have to because it's cheap. You can get a lot of heat for little money. But gas is gradually being outlawed for new construction, so it will go away. The only way in which this is a loss is for grilling, where gas is far superior to induction or resistive heat. For every other purpose, electric gives good results if your equipment is any good.
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If major western governments of the world can't meet their climate goals, how could we expect oil companies to do better?
Governments are too busy perverting climate science into carbon credits and shuffling that shit around to fool the public to bother meeting any sort of target. Or even thinking about any target. They want to paint a rosy picture of competence, not actually *BE* competent. Competence isn't profitable. Setting up enough smoke screens to allow companies to continue to profit from our demise is. Your mileage will not vary, because if you ain't in the billionaire class, no one has time to bother explaining it to
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perverting climate science into carbon credits
It's an old and reliable strategy. People are concerned about XYZ? Create an agency that can initially solve problems of the day, but later allow that agency to be captured by those it regulates. Then, when people complain that nobody cares and nothing is happening, a politician can say "We'll clean up that corrupt agency" as part of their campaign or simply blame the agency for inaction after their capture. In the final analysis, the agencies generally do more harm than good and end up protecting the same
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Regulatory capture is about the agency capturing those it regulates, not the other way around. If companies were allowed to capture the agencies they would cease to exist soon after such capture as those agencies are a net loss.
You have that completely backwards; it's always meant the co-opting of a regulatory body by the industries they are meant to regulate. A quick search will bring up multiple pages that corroborate that. Here are some examples:
https://www.investopedia.com/t... [investopedia.com]
https://www.cambridge.org/core... [cambridge.org]
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"People in western countries are not in a hurry to voluntarily give up the lifestyles they've enjoyed all their lives to meet new "green" metrics".
General public response: "Well, DUH"
Film at 11......back to you Bob.
Oh Jesus f****** Christ (Score:2, Troll)
Of course here I am explaining in like Ronald Reagan said if you're explaining you're losing.... This is why we can't have nice things
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Why bother? (Score:2)
The only commitments corporations have are to their shareholders. Why spend money on expensive energy projects when the subsidies dry up?
Cutting plant food was a dumb goal anyhow. Spend money on something sensible that makes a real difference, such as eliminating microplastics.
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The only commitments corporations have are to their shareholders.
Which is about the most damning thing you can say about them.
Is an individual's only commitment to acquire the most money possible? Would/should we ever expect them to do anything else?
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People seem to love multi-lateral problems they don't have enough power or resources to solve, but hate problems where the answer is clear and it's uncomfortable.
Climate is all of the above. It's multilateral, individual people don't have enough power or resources to solve it, the answer is clear, and it's uncomfortable.
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They prolly knew that ... (Score:5, Insightful)
when they made the pledges. The pledges were made to divert criticism at the time. They will now make new promises that will be found to not be met in a few years time.
Re: They prolly knew that ... (Score:2)
Exactly. They asked the PR department to go tell a good story so that people would get off their backs. It's disingenuous green washing.
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Flex Fuel? what a joke! (Score:3)
I think that "Most Vehicles" need to be seriously qualified as "USA" vehicles, and as "Flex Fuel Capable". The "Flex Fuel" capability embraced by pretty much only big US car manufacturers wasn't much about actually slowing climate warming emissions, but for the CAFE bonus that allowed low MPG vehicles to remain otherwise unchanged. (https://www.motortrend.com/features/cafe-explained/)
In recent years, the USA consumes about ~450 million barrels of ethanol annually as motor fuel.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy2 [nrel.gov]
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Ethanol only has a very tiny benefit in terms of CO2 emission.
It was always about providing an extra market for corn growers, and a lessening of dependence on middle east oil.
Nowdays it would be better to use the land for solar and wind farms therefore reducing the amount of natgas burned for power production (sand of course shutter all coal fired power plants.
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Ethanol is an octane booster - it's the most environmentally friendly one we have right now. The first one was used in the original unleaded fuels (hint: tetraethyl lead is also an octane booster), but it wasn't too great for the environment.
Ethanol is also an octane booster. The fact that it has all those side benefits (aka subsidies)
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I mentioned Brazil intentionally. Brazil sells E100 right next to conventional gasoline. People buy whichever is cheaper at the time of purchase and use is widespread. Because of this, cars sold in Brazil need to be flex fuel. They're often the same exact cars we buy here in the US, so generally anything that is flex fuel there is also flex fuel here because it's cheaper to manufacture a car that has the same parts in both markets. That doesn't mean that manufacturers aren't taking advantage of tax credits,
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Octane is a measurement of the energy content of the fuel and that only truly describes gasoline and the maximum octane possible for gasoline is 100. That power boost from the octane is why racing sports often use ethanol instead of gasoline.
No, octane measures how resistant fuel is to igniting under pressure, same energy but put in a higher compression engine, produces more power. As for gasoline, it is a mixture of chemicals and some mixes are over 100, eg some types of aviation fuel, which uses lead to increase octane.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org],
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What is pure gasoline? White gas, with an octane of 50-55, I guess would be pure gasoline as it has no additives.
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Yep. It's exactly like Germany's weaseling [slashdot.org] over nuke plants two years ago [slashdot.org].
Standard political practice.
They know that we know. (Score:2)
when they made the pledges. The pledges were made to divert criticism at the time. They will now make new promises that will be found to not be met in a few years time.
As much as I despise the concept of Corporate Arrogance treating customers like shit, sometimes I wish they would just stop with the games already. Here, let me sum up the cut-the-shit response that’s at least honest if anything:
Climate pledge? Well, sure! We can (*snort*) meet those goals. Oh wait, I almost forgot. You still NEED us. Badly. How about we commit to a big Fuck You instead? That sound good to you? Yeah, we thought so.
Hugs and Kisses,
- Big Oil
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Which, to be fair, is exactly the context and outcome of national promises about climate loudly proclaimed at every climate summit, too.
Those pledges were highly successful (Score:2)
...at maximizing profits, not saving the planet.
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Someone has fed you some prime bullshit and you just ate it up and vomited it here. I doubt you're stupid enough to have come up on your own with the idea that profits and antipollution are identical. The truth is that without regulation, our rivers used to catch fire because dumping waste into it was more profitable than handling the waste. We also dump stuff into landfills and flare off (unprofitably burn) methane from oil wells.
The fantasy they tricked you into believing only works if there's profits in
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Yet, maximizing profits and reducing taxation on the population has caused historical reductions in pollution.
Neither assertion is supported by data. What data has shown, however, is that laws mandating pollution reduction have caused historical reductions in pollution.
It is quite obvious that if the government takes less and makes it easier to start a business, then more people will come up with ideas to displace the existing wasteful processes that cause pollution
Not obvious at all. I'm not sure why you think that new businesses would displace existing polluting processes with non-polluting processes without any incentive to do so. They would use less-polluting processes if and only if there were an economic incentive to do so.
It seems to be a lack of understanding of the role of externalities in economic dec
What made anyone think they were ever serious? (Score:2)
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Just 'lip service', I'm sure. They won't actually be serious about it until if and when they can dominate the alternatives to oil.
I remember a long time ago when the petroleum companies started buying up solar power companies so as to appear as "energy companies" than just dinosaur burners. That didn't last long though because this was deemed a monopolistic practice, among other problems with regulators and shareholders. Any attempt by petroleum producers to dominate their competition will not go over well.
Maybe petroleum producers could get in on the carbon neutral fuels market without causing problems with regulators. Maybe. But
Shocked (Score:4, Funny)
Well I for one am shocked. Absolutely shocked. I can not believe they let this happen. These paragons of truthfulness and integrity must have be stopped in their noble efforts by malicious actors. Greenpeace probably. No, the Audubon Society and their evil friends the Sierra Club! Maybe terrorists too.
Absolutely not shocking. (Score:4, Funny)
As long as their pledges come with campaign cash (Score:2)
The failure of regulations! (Score:2, Interesting)
The correct way to get ahead of climate change is to demand all companies to submit information on the minimum levels of emissions that must be generated to operate. Build a non-tax payer independent board to oversee compliance, that can not be influence, and that board will review all submitted emissions proposals. That board will be solely funded by companies by charging open audit fees for
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Build a non-tax payer independent board to oversee compliance, that can not be influence, and that board will review all submitted emissions proposals. That board will be solely funded by companies by charging open audit fees for the emission reports and monitoring.
LOL. I highlighted the error in your plan.
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What people from outside "the companies"? You mean activists? Regular Joes on the street have personal needs and biases that often align with major energy companies. They want low power bills and cheap gas. Which is usually profitable for the energy sector (since it means they're selling in volume and their cost basis usually goes down more than retail prices for energy).
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There are no independent activists. And I think your goal is a poor one so no thanks.
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You're silly, all it needs is to have the cost of attempted bribery be high enough, eg a good chance of jailtime all the way up the chain of command. No, the problem is that the general population don't want to stop emitting CO2 -- I mean they do, only without the consequences. But we definitely could be doing way better without too high a cost, though coordinating a global effort is very hard.
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Nope, the reality is the US government doesn't care about climate change, especially the Republicans.
I think you'll find most governments and citizens in the rest of the civilized world (such as EU, UK and commonwealth) take this stuff pretty seriously.
Meanwhile, many if not most Americans remain uneducated and lazy enough to believe that climate change is just a totally made-up invention of their own personal nemesis of choice, instead of ever bothering to educate themselves by simply looking up some actua
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If you want to
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Consumers should not be the ones on the hook, regardless if I drive a F150 or Prius, I can't make a big dent, no matter how much I change.
Fining Amazon, Walmart, and the like for not lowering their CO2 emissions will leave consumers on the hook because they will pass the cost of these fines on to their customers. If the shift to lower CO2 emission energy means higher costs then that too will be passed on to their customers. If FedEx, DHL, and so on are fined for the diesel fuel they burn then that will be reflected in the prices of commodities, either directly in shipping costs or indirectly in the prices of products to cover the "free" shi
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I can't think of a single large company that is going to voluntarily spend money to solve a problem they aren't forced to solve. To make this fair, just base who has to follow the regulations based on how much a company brings in.
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You can legislate that the costs can't be passed
No, you can't.
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You can legislate that the costs can't be passed
No, you can't.
You absolutely can, even if it results in the company running at a loss and going bankrupt.
A better way to make sure costs aren't passed on is if a competitor is providing a comparable product at the unincreased cost. So for example, a company loses a patent lawsuit and has to pay, can't pass the costs onto customers due to competition, and goes bankrupt (but the other company doesn't).
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You absolutely can
Maybe you have a real life example. I'll wait LOL. Business is all about recovering input costs from output prices, and that includes fines and judgements and legal battles. If you want to run these companies you are probably going to have to buy them first.
But at least as long as you keep coming up with these bonkers ideas my steady supply of gasoline and natural gas are safe.
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Dumbass, over 90% of businesses don't pass on their costs to their customers. Here's a few thousand examples: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab... [duckduckgo.com]
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Companies HAVE to pass on the cost of doing business to their customers.If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to stay in business.
It's not a bad thing that they would have to raise their prices because then they would be less competitive in the marketplace so customers would go to other places instead. It's called the free market economy.
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Unless you're using hard metrics, the overall engagement of the plan is pointless, because companies will do what they have been,
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It is pretty simple: if a company cannot be profitable without externalizing some of the costs, well, it should go bankrupt. Yes.
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>> Show me one plan that is absolutely going to reduce emission by penalty.
Tell them that unless they cut emissions, they will be removed from being listed on the stock exchange.
The totalitarian solution [Re:The failure of r...] (Score:2)
Ah, a plan-by-top-down-mandate system.
The correct way to get ahead of climate change is to demand all companies to submit information on the minimum levels of emissions that must be generated to operate.
What does that even mean? If you can reduce emissions by twenty percent but it doubles the price, does that mean you have to do so? A one percent reduction?
Build a non-tax payer independent board to oversee compliance, that can not be influence, and that board will review all submitted emissions proposals.
So, you're going to staff it completely with people who have not worked in the field, and are ignorant of the manufacturing process?
Political hacks, then, I assume?
The government then legislates that emissions must be reduced by 10%, per year,
So no new business can start, because unless they were already emitting, they can't reduce. So, you're eliminated innovation and new products.
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Would this be hard to implement?
"Hard" one word, yes. "Impossible" might be a better term.
You've described something that is simultaneously expensive, totalitarian, and a rigid bureaucracy, so "impossible" would be the best case scenario.
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In year 1, you get to emit 1000 kg, based on your numbers. Since you drive significant revenue, you have the funds to mitigate yourself, so in y
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This also shifts the responsibility from the consumer, who is objectively the wrong party, to the distribution, the right party.
I don't even why you say that. The consumer, of course, pays the higher price. Which is the case for most of the proposals proposed for carbon dioxide reduction.
And it still requires an answer to the question of how much emissions you "need" to operate, where "need" is not well defined.
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The consumer would pay nothing, you prevent the shift of cost, and because everything is open, open audit, open tracking, open license, you'd be able to see all the
Economics [Re:The totalitarian solution [Re T....] (Score:2)
The “minimum level to operate”, that would be your need, that's a very clear metric.
Unfortunately, no, in the real world it is not at all a clear metric. For any production, there will be some curve, cost addition as a function of pollution avoided. At what point do you define "minimum"? If it adds a million dollars per ounce of steel produced to reduce carbon dioxide by one gram per ton, is the "minimum level to operate" defined by the regulators assuming you implement that?
...The consumer would pay nothing,
The manufacturer spends a million dollars to upgrade their equipment to reduce carbon emission ten percent. Their p
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If you can't calculate a minimum level, you have everything so far out of control, you couldn't function. Maybe you don't have it offhand right now, but track it, calculate it, simulate it, and figure it out. Engineering is essentially figuring out numbers. Businesses can't stay alive without metrics, and any large company is going to have systems that can break down effectively everything to a granular level. Your mouse moves on
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You're still getting all of what I said wrong, and clearly intentionally.
If you can't calculate a minimum level, you have everything so far out of control, you couldn't function.
Wrong, because a “minimum level to operate” is not well defined. The more you spend, the lower the minimum is.
Did you actually pay attention to a single thing I said?
Again, the company sets their own minimum, you self report, then you monitor, so it's pretty clear if you grossly overestimated. If you report 1000 metric tons of CO2 / year, then you end up using 4000 metric tons, you better have a pretty good explanation on how you missed calculated by 3000 metric tons.
Wait, what? If you emit four times the "minimum necessary", you don't get a fine if you "have a pretty good explanation on how you missed calculated"?
If you're brining in excessive revenue, such that you can afford the upgrades and mitigate, then you're charged. This means if you're a steel plant, but your overall margins are so low you can't drive enough profit, then you're excluded. This means you don't have to pass that cost over to the consumer, because consumer based carbon mitigation doesn't work, it will never work, because the problem is not the consumer.
Wait, what? If you say you can't afford to lower carbon dioxide emissions because your margins are low, you get a pass?
Your scheme gets more and more unworkable.
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Hence, you hold large compani
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OK, so you plan boils down to, you believe the corporations make buckets of money, so you'll just make a law that they have to reduce emissions, and they will do it bceause they have buckets of money and they won't raise prices because they already make buckets of money and they don't care.
Yeah, right.
You don't know engineering or economics.
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Governments can absolutely legislate that, they pass dumber laws. There is a law in Canada I can't be critical of Islam, so I can't call the prophet Muhammad an epileptic, retarded pedophile, and founder of one of the most dangerous religious bodies that has heavy terrorist influence. I could be fined and charged for that statem
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I'm sorry your government won't allow you to be critical of Islam. But you want that government to set up a bureaucracy that mandates pretty much totalitarian control of production because it will be efficient and effective. Right.
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Amazon shipped me a package that was four nested boxes, that had in them plastic wrap, and bubble wrap. One box 1/2 the size would have do
Oil Change International (Score:2)
What are they charging to do a change on an International Scout if I bring my own filter?
I hope they don't dump the used stuff down the storm drain like they did last time.
Well not every metric (Score:3)
Doing pretty good on the profit for big oil metrics
I'm amazed (Score:3)
...that anyone is stupid enough to have taken big oil's promises at face value.
The promises did exactly what they were meant to do...kick the can down the road. Nothing more.
Self-policing never works (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times do we have to hear "We don't need legislation, the industry will police itself" before we all acknowledge that it's never been true and never will be? Corporations lie to the public. Regularly. Always.
I will keep bothering my elected officials to ignore the corporate promises and pass laws with teeth. And if/when they ignore me, I'll vote for other politicians. I hope everyone does that so we can apply some amount of pressure that matches the corporate lobbyists, but I realize that's unlikely. But it's all I have that I, as an individual, can do.
Yay activists (Score:1)
Activists from a special interest org discover that the companies they're sworn to destroy aren't aligned with their own interests. Surprise, surprise. And of course oil companies made climate pledges that don't go "far enough". Any climate pledge that does, given the technology of 1-5 years ago (or however long ago these pledges were made) would result in economic contraction which does not favorf any for-profit corporation.
Then don't buy their stuff. (Score:1, Troll)
Whenever there's a business that does something some people don't like the typical immediate response is to call for a boycott. You don't like that the fossil fuel industry isn't lowering their CO2 emissions? Boycott them. Not only do I expect that to work in lowering their CO2 emissions it is by definition going to lower their CO2 emissions, it will work in lowering CO2 emissions from fossil fuels because of how we attribute CO2 emissions to the fossil fuel industry.
I've mentioned this before to people
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"I've mentioned this before to people that if they don't like the fossil fuel industry then they can stop buying fossil fuel products and the typical response is that somehow they are powerless to not buy fossil fuels."
Maybe they can't totally give up fossil fuels, but they can reduce the amount that they use.
If you have natgas heating in your home you could turn down the thermostat a couple degrees.
If you have a gas or diesel car, you could drive a little bit slower, and cut out unnecessary trips. Next tim
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Most economic activity relies on diesel fuel at some point in the supply/service chain.
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Replacing gas cars with EVs does nothing but move the emissions elsewhere
You know full well that replacing gas cars with EVs makes it possible to charge them from solar/wind power, removing the emissions rather than moving them, so why post this?
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Replacing gas cars with EVs does nothing but move the emissions elsewhere
You know full well that replacing gas cars with EVs makes it possible to charge them from solar/wind power, removing the emissions rather than moving them, so why post this?
You should have quoted the rest of his sentence instead of snipping it exactly where you did.
I believe what he means is "charge them from solar/wind power" IS the moved emissions, because as the post he replied to says, "Most economic activity relies on diesel fuel at some point in the supply/service chain." That is the context for when he says EVs just move the emissions "and increase mining, which then requires even more diesel".
Yes, it's true that
after the EVs have been fully supplied and manufactured an
Failing on Almost Every Metric (Score:4, Funny)
Well US companies don't do metric.
Duh? (Score:2, Flamebait)
No, *really*? (Score:2)
Why is anyone surprised? (Score:2)
Good. (Score:2)
Good. Every successful climate pledge costs me money, with no change in actual global ghg rates.