At UN, Big Oil Talks Wind Farms, CO2 Capture; Meanwhile, Exxon Spent .2% Of Capex On Renewables
On Monday, as world leaders gathered at the United Nations climate summit and discussed the urgency of slashing carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, 13 of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies presented their defense at a forum across town. But most of their proposals appeared designed to perpetuate the use of oil and gas for decades to come, rather than transition quickly to cleaner options.
The companies promised a program to invest in technologies to scrub carbon dioxide from the air, although big questions remain about scaling up that technology. They also promised to cut down on leaks of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from wells and pipes, and reaffirmed support of a tax on the burning of oil, gas and coal.
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However, new data from the financial think tank Carbon Tracker indicates that, since 2018, major oil companies have invested at least $50 billion in fossil fuel projects — like Shell’s $13 billion liquefied natural gas project in Canada and BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Equinor’s $4.3 billion deepwater oil project in Azerbaijan — that would not be financially viable if the world were to meet the 1.5-degree target. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest energy companies last year devoted just 1 percent of their capital investment to low-carbon energy sources, a separate study from the Carbon Disclosure Project found. Equinor, among the top performers, put only about 2 percent of its investment in renewables; Exxon Mobil’s investment in renewables was one-fifth of one percent.
With prices for renewable energy like wind and solar falling faster than even the most optimistic projections, the reasoning behind backing new oil and gas exploration has started to wear thin. “You can sense there was angst in the room,” said Jules Kortenhorst, the chief executive of the energy think tank Rocky Mountain Institute, who attended a Sunday cocktail party for the executives. “I think they are struggling to reconcile in their minds what that means for their industry.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/23/climate/oil-industry-climate-investment.html