Carbon emissions reduction: A new CO2 emission target has been announced by oil and gas companies
An alliance of oil and gas companies declared a new emissions target recently to reduce the “carbon intensity” of their actions over the next five years, but critics stated the plan didn’t go far enough.
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), a coalition striving to “accelerate the transition to a low-carbon future,” announced its member companies promised to reduce the intensity—or emissions per unit of output—of their aggregated upstream oil and gas services by as much as 13% from 2017 levels. That indicates they would decrease the carbon intensity of their actions to 20 to 21 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per barrel of crude oil by 2025—down from a baseline of 23 kilograms.
“An intensity target allows for the shifts that will occur across the portfolios of our member companies, as well as allow new members to join the target if required and others to adopt this metric as a benchmark,” OGCI stated in a statement. Yet some observers stated working after carbon intensity reductions is “low-hanging fruit” and an effort that should have been adopted by companies decades ago.
“They need to be phasing out the oil and gas ... and instead they are kind of making their fossil fuel production ever so slightly cleaner,” stated Lorne Stockman, a senior research analyst at Oil Change International. Making per-barrel emissions cleaner won’t make a genuine difference if production remains to rise, he continued. “We don’t just need to be a little bit cleaner a decade from now; we need to be ... cutting emissions 7, 8% per year to get to a 1.5 [degrees Celsius] target,” Stockman stated.
Andrew Grant, leader of oil, gas, and mining at London-based think tank the Carbon Tracker Initiative, told a target based on intensity “allows increases in emissions overall” and that the group average could let “poor performers off the hook.” “Having some targets to reduce carbon pollution is better than none,” Grant stated in a statement. “But the industry can never consider itself ‘aligned’ with the Paris goals when business plans assume steady investment in fossil fuel production on a planet with absolute limits."
Jennifer Layke, the global head of the energy program at the World Resources Institute, advanced further and described the target “weak” because it only includes upstream emissions. But OGCI declared the new target is “consistent” with reductions required across the industry to maintain Paris Agreement goals. Jerome Schmitt, chairman of the OGCI Executive Committee, stated on a YouTube video that the target is a “practical one” because it’s near term.
“It is pushing us to improve and reduce the collective emissions of the OGCI member companies by minus 9 to 13% to support the Paris Agreement aims,” Schmitt stated, continuing, “This target is covering about 30% of the oil and gas industries, with companies coming from everywhere in the world.” The target would cut the similar carbon emissions generated by energy usage in up to 6 million homes, according to the group.
