NATURAL RESOURCES – fossil fuels- big oil

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fossil fuels – big oil

theguardian.com 8-3-2024 Oil industry has sought to block state backing for green tech since 1960s – Research shows industry lobbying against support for solar panels and electric cars while enjoying subsidies itself – by Ajit Niranjan

…FuelsEurope, which has also fought support for electric vehicles for more than a decade, pushed to weaken EU fuel efficiency standards in 2017 so they would allow combustion engine cars burning alternative fuels. Critics say the low-carbon fuels with which it wants to power cars are expensive, inefficient and in such short supply that they would be better used in planes and ships, which are harder to run on electricity. The oil industry had moved from denying climate change to derailing climate action, said Anna Krajinska, a vehicles analyst at the campaign group Transport and Environment, which was not involved in the analysis.

“The push for tech neutrality – particularly ‘carbon neutral’ fuels for road transport – is a disingenuous attempt to keep combustion engines burning fossil fuels,” she said. Some of the world’s biggest oil companies have invested in clean energy projects as they have come under increasing pressure from activists, investors and governments. Armed with big wallets and skilled engineers, they have argued they can lead the transition to a carbon-neutral economy.

But a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in November found that oil and gas companies accounted for just 1% of clean energy investments. It described the sector as a “marginal force at best” in the transition. Kenner said it was “ludicrous” to debate an individual oil company’s transition plans when the industry had spent so long fighting clean alternatives that threaten its market share. “As part of trade associations and lobby groups, they have been deliberately trying to undermine the same technologies that people want them to invest in,” he said.

The IEA report found that oil and gas producers would have to spend 20 times more of the capital on clean energy – rising from 2.5% in 2022 to 50% in 2030 – to line up with the Paris agreement goal of keeping the planet from heating 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Christina Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat and architect of the agreement, told the Guardian before the Cop28 climate summit in November that she used to believe the industry needed a seat at the table but had lost hope after seeing it use windfall profits since the war in Ukraine to enrich shareholders – instead of reinvesting them in clean energy…

theguardian.com 4-3-2024 Fury after Exxon chief says public to blame for climate failures. Darren Woods tells Fortune consumers not willing to pay for clean-energy transition, prompting backlash from climate experts – by Dharna Noor, Oliver Milman

cnbc.com 28-2-2024 Big Oil’s favorite climate solution is ‘like trying to push water uphill,’ climate chief says – Sam Meredith

  • Jim Skea, the head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warned on Tuesday that scaling up carbon capture and storage still faces significant challenges.
  • Alongside the net-zero strategies of some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, CCS features prominently in the climate plans of many world governments.
  • The International Energy Agency has called for the oil and gas industry to let go of the “illusion” that carbon capture is a solution to climate change, pushing instead for energy majors to ramp up investments in clean energy.

The head of the world’s climate science authority has compared the rollout of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to “trying to push water uphill,” questioning a technology that the oil and gas industry has long touted as integral to net-zero emission plans… Proponents believe CCS can play an important and diverse role in meeting global energy and climate goals, while some researchers, campaigners and environmental advocacy groups argue that these technologies are not a solution… Late last year, nearly 200 countries at the COP28 climate conference in the United Arab Emirates agreed to “transition away” from fossil fuels, in a text that the host nation hailed as the “UAE Consensus.” Some have expressed concern that the deal placed carbon capture alongside renewables as technologies that can deliver a shift away from fossil fuels…

The International Energy Agency has previously called for the oil and gas industry to let go of the “illusion” that carbon capture is a solution to climate change, pushing instead for energy majors to ramp up investments in clean energy. In a report released on Nov. 23, the IEA said the oil and gas industry faced a “moment of truth” where producers need to choose between contributing to a deepening climate crisis and shifting to clean energy. OPEC Secretary-General Haitham al-Ghais sought to push back at the IEA’s comments, saying the report “unjustly vilifies” the oil and gas industry.

fortune.com 27-2-2024 Exxon Mobil CEO on the ‘dirty secret’ of Net Zero: ‘People who are generating the emissions need to be aware … and pay the price’ – By Jane Thier

npr.org 29- 2-2024 ExxonMobil is suing investors who want faster climate action – By Michael Copley

…ExxonMobil’s lawsuit points to growing tensions between companies and activist investors calling for corporations to do more to shrink their climate impact and prepare for a hotter world. Interest groups on both sides of the case say it could unleash a wave of corporate litigation against climate activists. It is happening at a time when global temperatures continue to rise, and corporate analysts say most companies aren’t on track to meet targets they set to reduce their heat-trapping emissions…

…After ExxonMobil sued the groups in federal court in Texas in January, Arjuna and Follow This withdrew the proposal and promised not to submit it to ExxonMobil again. But ExxonMobil refuses to drop its case. Arjuna declined to comment. The firm said in a court filing that ExxonMobil”s climate targets aren’t as ambitious as those of other big oil and gas companies, and that its shareholder proposal was meant to “foster better investment outcomes by addressing the material threat that climate change poses” to the company…

guardian.com 9-2-2024 The world is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels – except for in three key sectors | Fossil fuels – Dramatic changes in energy industry and EVs reducing fossil fuel use, but shipping, aviation and industry a long way from net zero – by Oliver Milman

economicsfromthetopdown.com 10-2-2022 A Case Study of Fossil-Fuel Depletion – by Blair Fix

ideas4development.org/en/real-dependence-gdp-fossil-fuels/

oilprice.com 2-2-2022 The Lack of Fossil Fuel Investment Is Hindering The Energy Transition – Last week, the CEO of Saudi Aramco announced that the global clean energy transition is “not going smoothly.” – Underinvestment in fossil fuels has led to soaring prices across the globe. To make the energy transition work properly, the world needs to find a balance between renewable and fossil fuel investment, at least in the short to medium term. – By Michael Kern

elements.visualcapitalist.com 30-1-2022 Charted: $5 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Subsidies – By Govind Bhutada

Fossil fuel subsidies
visualcapitalist.com/charted-5-trillion-in-fossil-fuel-subsidies/

phys.org/    24/3/2021   Fossil fuel companies get $62B a year in implicit subsidies, economist reports   by Bob Yirka 

” … As Kotchen notes, fossil fuel providers in the U.S. are not made to pay for the costs associated with use of their products. Burning oil and coal, he notes, produces air pollution, which, in addition to contributing to global warming, also adversely impacts the health of people breathing polluted air. Such products also lead to road damage and congestion due to travel delays. He notes that all of the side-effects of using fossil fuels have costs. Currently, such costs are borne by taxpayers, not the companies that produce the product. Because the fossil fuel companies do not have to pay such costs, Kotchen refers to them as implicit subsidies. In this new effort, he has added up all of the associated costs from fossil fuel use to find out just how much these implicit subsidies come to each year.

Using data for the years 2010 to 2018, Kotchen found that they add up to approximately $62 billion on average for each year. He notes also that there are very few large fossil fuel companies providing their products to buyers in the U.S., which means that each of them gets a very large piece of the pie. He found, for example, that Peabody Energy Corp received approximately $1.56 billion of the pie, while Arch Resources received just over $1 billion. He also found that producers of natural gas were also getting implicit subsidies—EQT Corp, for example, received approximately $696 each year, while Exxon Mobil received approximately $688 million. He noted that coal producers were receiving the most benefit from implicit subsidies. …”

read whole articel at phys.org

see also at phys.org  10/2020  fossil-fuel-subsidies-global-reform

phys.org 2021 The producer benefits of implicit fossil fuel subsidies in the United States – by Matthew J. Kotchen s of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2011969118Journal information:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

resource use

academia.edu    2013    Developing Resource use Scenarios for Europe   by  Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Willi Haas, Daniel Hausknost, Irene Pallua , Dominik Wiedenhofer

academia.edu 2024 Fossil mentalities: How fossil fuels have shaped social imaginaries
Matthias Schmelzer, Melissa Büttner