Members of Greenpeace demonstrate against industry and fossil fuels on August 22, 2023 in La Défense, near Paris (AFP/Alain JOCARD)
A few months before the COP28 in Dubai, at the beginning of December, pressure is increasing on the oil giants, accused by environmental NGOs of gradually abandoning their decarbonization objectives to please their shareholders or their bankers.
“The problem (…) is the fossil fuels themselves, period”, launched the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, designating in June oil, gas and coal as responsible for the furnace which ignited Hawaii, Canada or Greece this summer.
Fossil fuels are “incompatible” with the survival of humanity, added Mr. Guterres, who is hosting an international climate ambition summit in New York in September even before COP28 chaired by a Gulf oil company boss.
A bullet picked up by Greenpeace in a report published on Wednesday which accuses European gas and oil companies of “doing nothing” for the energy transition and of “not respecting their climate commitments at all”.
According to the NGO which analyzed the 2022 results of the 12 main European oil and gas companies, 92.7% of their investments on average were devoted to fossil fuels last year. And only 7.3% was directed to “sustainable energy production and low-carbon solutions”.
Greenpeace also criticizes the fact that the production of renewable electricity – which does not emit CO2 and therefore does not contribute to warming the planet – of these 12 companies represents only 0.3% of the volume of energy that ‘they produce, against 99.7% coming from oil or gas.
– “To change direction” –
The NGO denounces the lack of a “coherent strategy” of these majors when most of them have committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2050, and have reaped historic profits in 2022.
Greenpeace calls on European governments to implement “strict regulation of the fossil fuel industry” to force it “to change course” by “stopping all new oil and gas exploration projects”, and by “reducing its production of fossil fuels”.
“Less than 1%” of TotalEnergies’ energy production “came from renewable energy sources” in 2022, asserts the NGO, while 88% of its investments were still directed towards fossil fuels and the group plans “to increase its production of gas and oil in the years to come”.
Figures not denied by the French hydrocarbon giant, which rather argues the progress: “TotalEnergies’ investments in the energy transition have increased from 2 billion euros in 2020 to 3 billion in 2021, then 4 billion in 2022”, a said the group in a brief response sent to AFP.
“In 2023, TotalEnergies will invest nearly 5 billion euros in renewable and low-carbon energies, and will thus devote for the first time more investments in low-carbon energies than in new hydrocarbon projects”, adds the French group.
“TotalEnergies is the oil group most involved in the energy transition,” even said its CEO Patrick Pouyanné in mid-June in an interview with JDD.
Oil companies are “forced to pay high dividends so that pension funds keep their shares”, warns for his part Robert Bell, professor of management at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York in a column published on August 19 in the daily Le Monde.
In particular, it shows how Shell “fell into the trap of the stock market”, with the ousting of its “visionary” CEO, engineer Ben van Beurden, who “committed the unpardonable sin of cutting dividends” when he was trying to “turn the company into a renewable energy giant”.
The same is true for BP “which also had a visionary CEO”, according to Mr. Bell: “he changed the name of the company to Beyond Petroleum”, made “significant investments in renewable energies” before “suddenly resign” for a private matter. “The company subsequently shifted its focus to oil,” says Bell.
The expert doubts the assurances of the oil companies on their commitments in terms of energy transition. “It is doubtful that an oil company can lead the world out of oil,” he quips.
© 2023 AFP
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