Ihe trajectory of current policies leads us to a global warming of + 3.2°C compared to the pre-industrial era by 2100. With a global warming of more than 1.5°C, many human and natural systems will face serious risks with partly irreversible impacts and increased damage. However, as the latest report from group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed out, the emissions linked to existing and currently planned fossil infrastructures already exceed the cumulative net emissions of the scenarios allowing us to limit warming to +1.5°C. In this context, as recalled by theInternational Energy Agency (IEA) in 2021no new fossil fuel project has any place if we want to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and only a drastic, immediate and lasting reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (between 40 and 70% by 2050 ) would lead to a slowing down of global warming.
However, the French multinational TotalEnergies and the other majors continue to develop new oil and gas projects (“climate bombs”) all over the world. TotalEnergies, which presents itself as a company committed to energy transition, is the international oil firm that has approved the most new oil and gas projects in 2022. Each of them takes us a little further away from a world with a decarbonized economy.
Its Eacop pipeline project in Uganda and Tanzania, connected to the Tilenga and Kingfisher wells in Uganda, is emblematic of the oil majors’ climate control projects. Despite the conclusions of the IEA and the IPCC, TotalEnergies persists in wanting to develop the longest heated pipeline in the world (1,443 kilometers). This project will issueover the twenty-five years announced, more than 379 million tonnes of CO equivalent2 (including oil combustion). This pipeline endangers areas with particularly sensitive biodiversity and its development has already contributed to proven human rights violations in Uganda and Tanzania. This project, repeatedly postponed, is absurd in a world that will see the rapid decline of fossil fuels; but, perhaps TotalEnergies believes that the oil sector will be able to slow down the energy transition.
Redefining our needs
Faced with numerous criticisms, the multinational defends the idea that it would only ” respond to the request “ by developing its oil and gas projects. As a collective of scientists reminded (Release of February 23), this argument, which comes under the twelve “speech delaying climate action”, is misleading in several respects. First, it deliberately does not distinguish between demand and need. The current energy demand does not correspond in any case only to needs; evidenced by the debates on private jets. Secondly, producers have always sought and are still seeking to direct future energy demand towards fossil fuels; the latest example being the record number of fossil industry lobbyists at COP27 and the lack of mention of a planned exit from fossil fuels in the final text.
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