TPI's latest report, entitled ‘Carbon Performance Assessment in Oil and Gas’ was released this week and includes an explicit focus on the industry’s ‘Scope 3’ emissions, i.e. the emissions that derive from burning a company’s products in electricity generation, industry and transport. These emissions account for the largest share of these companies’ life-cycle emissions, often accounting for over 80% of a company’s carbon emissions footprint.

Key findings of this new research include:

• Shell and Total are the only oil and gas majors to have so far set long-term ambitions that would result in a large reduction in their carbon emissions intensity. These ambitions are compatible with the emissions pledges made by governments in 2015 as part of the Paris climate agreement. However, they are not yet ambitious enough to align with a pathway to limit global warming to 2°C or below before 2050;
• BP, ConocoPhillips and Eni have set targets to reduce the emissions from their own operations over the coming decade. These targets only reduce the companies’ carbon emissions intensity by a small amount as they are focussed only on their operational emissions;
• Five of the ten largest oil and gas companies still have no quantified targets to reduce their emissions: Chevron, EOG Resources, ExxonMobil, Occidental and Reliance;

It is clear that to achieve a significantly smaller carbon footprint, oil and gas companies need to set and publish targets that address the emissions from burning their sold products, not just the emissions from their own operations.

The diagram below shows carbon intensity pathways for the top ten oil and gas companies versus low-carbon benchmarks.



The methodology in the discussion paper seeks to make the best of the current state of disclosure, but TPI notes that at present the leading players do not provide consistent, consolidated disclosures of emissions and energy production that cover all key sources. The full report is linked to below.