TOTAL recently announced that it invested US$ 490 million in a joint venture with Adani Green Energy. The joint venture will host 2.1 gigawatts of operational solar power projects previously fully owned by Adani Green Energy and its subsidiaries. The two companies now hold 50% each in the new joint venture.
A new report from independent financial think tank Carbon Tracker has concluded that the world’s seven leading oil and gas majors must cut production by an average of 35% by 2040 if global emissions are to be reined in and kept “well below” 2°C, in accordance with the Paris Agreement’s commitment.
Some years back I visited one of the major automobile manufacturers with some investor clients of mine. We met the CTO of that particular company, who asked us “what is the biggest mistake the automobile industry has made in the last century?” Despite the varied responses from the audience, we were all surprised by his answer: “We never controlled the fuel value chain” and to that he added “and we won’t make the same mistake with electric cars.”
The globe’s five largest publicly-traded oil and gas majors — ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP, and Total — invested over $1 billion in misleading climate-related branding and lobbying since in the three years since the Paris Agreement.
Global oil companies are plowing billions of dollars per year into solar and into energy storage, as more nations seek to switch their energy sources away from fossil fuels.
Three big-name European energy companies — Ørsted, Total, and Elicio — announced on Monday plans to partner to bid for the Dunkirk offshore wind farm project for a power capacity of up to 600 megawatts (MW).
Supermajors are taking on more renewable energy commitments lately as they prepare for a less carbon-intensive future. Some of them are going a step further, coupling these green commitments with humanist causes such as providing access to energy to part of the one billion people all over the world who have no electricity.
Two new reports published within days of one another have outlined the difficulties inherent in continuing anything close to “business-as-usual” for oil and gas companies around the world, and the increasing pressure to begin transitioning to low-carbon operations.
New research from the Transition Pathway Initiative dug into the world’s ten largest public oil and gas companies to develop a bottom-up picture of their long term emissions glide paths and came back with some not-so-surprising conclusions. The research found that only two of the ten companies have publicly committed to reducing emissions as required to achieve the Paris climate agreement.
Oil and its allies are doing what they can to delay the day of reckoning, but it’s just a matter of time before fossil-powered vehicles join sailing ships, horse-drawn carriages, and bowler hats in making the transition from necessary to nostalgic. What will Big Oil do?
