CEOs of oil and gas giants vow to work toward halting climate change
by Canadian Manufacturing.com Staff
Companies responsible for producing 10 per cent of world's energy aim to reach major agreement in Paris
PARIS—The chiefs of the largest oil and gas companies on the planet are pledging their support to an effective climate change agreement ahead of the COP21 climate change conference in Paris.
“We recognize the general ambition to limit global average temperature rise to 2 C, and that the existing trend of the world’s net greenhouse gas emissions is not consistent with this ambition,” the companies said in a joint statement.
The members of the Oil and Gas Climate initiative, including BP, Repsol, Royal Dutch Shell, BG, Total and numerous others, together provide nearly 10 per cent of the world’s energy.
“Going forward, we will continue in our efforts to help lower the current global emissions trajectory. However, neither our contributions nor those of any one industrial sector alone will be enough to address the challenge of climate change; it can only be met by each part of society making an appropriate contribution,” they added.
Pointing to their achievements to date—a reduction of about 20 per cent from operations over the past 10 years—the companies said the challenge of meeting energy demand while cutting emissions is significant.
“For us as energy suppliers, and for energy consumers, the challenge is that meeting growing energy demand with lower emissions is likely to be more complex, at least in the short term,” they said.
To tackle the challenges, the oil and gas giants have pledged their support to finding a “progressive pathway for addressing climate change” at the COP21 talks.
In addition to the declartion, the OGCI companies set out the key areas they will focus on:
- Efficiency: optimising efficiency of their own operations; improving the end-use efficiency of their fuels and other products; and working with manufacturers and consumers to improve the efficiency of road vehicles.
- Natural gas: contributing to increasing the share of gas in the global energy mix, ensuring it results in significantly lower lifecycle emissions than other fossil fuels for power generation; eliminating ‘routine’ flaring and reducing methane emissions from their operations.
- Long-term solutions: investing in R&D and innovation to reduce GHG emissions; participating in partnerships to progress carbon capture and storage; contributing to increasing the share of renewables in the global energy mix.
- Energy access: developing projects to provide people with access to energy in partnership with local and national authorities and other stakeholders.
- Partnerships and multi-stakeholder initiatives: seeking opportunities to accelerate climate change solutions by working collectively or individually in industry and other initiatives.
