More than five years after the Paris agreement, most of the world’s oil companies no longer hesitate to proclaim loud and clear their desire to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Some, like Total, BP or Shell, have even set themselves ambitious targets and made commitments to invest in renewable energies. But are these promises serious?
The British NGO ClientEarth engaged in an edifying exercise of comparison: it crossed the promises of decarbonization and “green energy” of the global giants in their advertisements and the real investments visible in the activity reports. The result will not surprise the skeptics: according to the NGO of lawyers specializing in environmental law, “Some of the biggest oil companies are using deceptive advertising to downplay their contribution to climate change.”
No commitment
Supporting videos, the lawyers analyze, for example, the advertisements of ExxonMobil, the largest private oil company in the world. So in a clip, the American giant claims that it “Works on ways to respond to the risks of climate change, producing clean natural gas to reduce emissions from power plants, capturing CO2 before it arrives in the atmosphere and by exploring unexpected energy sources such as agrofuels produced from algae ”.
In reality, ExxonMobil (which operates in nearly 600 service stations in France with the Esso network), has not made any commitment to carbon neutrality and natural gas is not “clean”, since it actively contributes to fuel economy. global warming. And only 0.02% of the group’s investments are linked to agrofuels – half less than its advertising investments, notes ClientEarth with irony.
The Dutch Shell is also targeted for having multiplied videos with “influencers” to promote the “green” image of the group
The French Total has made serious climate commitments by 2050. But the devil is in the details, as is often the case with the climate. In publicity, Total explains, for example, without qualifying that it will have achieved carbon neutrality by 2050 – even though this commitment only concerns the group’s greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. The French giant also indicates that it relies on carbon capture and storage, but Total plans to capture only 1% of its CO emissions2 annually, according to the calculations of the NGO. Especially the lawyers note that the group has not planned to reduce its investments in hydrocarbons: to oil, it will increasingly prefer gas, which emits less CO.2, but also a strong contributor to climate change.
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