The oil and gas industry has made “almost no progress” since 2021 to align itself to the Paris Agreement goals, new research by the non-profit platform CDP showed on Thursday.
No oil and gas firm in the world has plans to phase out fossil fuels, according to the World Benchmarking Alliance and CDP, which have assessed the world’s largest oil and gas companies, including ExxonMobil, BP, and Saudi Aramco.
The review showed “a dangerous lack of progress towards global climate goals from the sector. There has been little advance – and alarmingly even some decline – in oil and gas companies’ progress on limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees,” CDP said.
The companies haven’t invested enough in low-carbon energy, either, according to the report.
“The seven major oil and gas companies made a record $380 billion profits last year but despite this, investment to reach a low-carbon economy has fallen dangerously short,” CDP said.
To halve the sector’s Scope 1 and 2 emissions, oil and gas firms need to invest $600 billion by 2030 into low-carbon solutions, and this is not happening, the assessment found.
“Scope 1 and 2 methane emissions must be reduced by 60% by 2030, yet only 29 companies have even disclosed targets to reduce methane emissions by 2030.”
Some institutional investors have already expressed disappointment at the pivot from supermajors BP and Shell who doubled down on oil and gas in their updated strategies earlier this year.
Last week, The Church of England said it was dumping all remaining oil and gas majors from its portfolio for failing to align with the 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway. The Church of England will now exclude from its portfolio BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Eni, Equinor, Ecopetrol, Occidental Petroleum, Pemex, Repsol, and Sasol, “after concluding that none are aligned with the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, as assessed by the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI).”
