LONDON (Reuters) – Top oil and gas companies have made little progress in turning away from hydrocarbons and towards the goals of the 2015 Paris climate deal, multinational nonprofit platform CDP said on Thursday.
Scientists say that by 2030 the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions by around 43% from 2019 levels to stand any chance of meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
The CDP’s Oil and Gas Benchmark report, published together with the World Benchmarking Alliance, said its latest assessment had shown the oil and gas sector “has made almost no progress towards the Paris Agreement goals since 2021”.
None of the 100 oil and gas companies it had assessed is set to cut its overall emissions “at a rate sufficient to align with a 1.5°C pathway over the next five years”, it said.
CDP has emerged as the world’s biggest repository of environmental data submitted on a voluntary basis by companies, which are under pressure from some shareholders to disclose how they plan to navigate the transition to a lower-carbon future.
The CDP said 81 oil and gas companies with extraction activities show “no significant reduction” in production before 2030, with production not expected to peak until 2028.
The world’s biggest Western oil and gas companies have set varying targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions from their operations and the combustion of the products they sell, with the latter, known as Scope 3, accounting for the lion’s share.
Less than a third of companies in the report had any Scope 3 targets.
Only three European companies assessed – Neste, Naturgy and Engie – are investing more than 50% of their budget in low-carbon technologies.
TotalEnergies, which sees no big cut to its emissions by 2030, Eni and Repsol are in the top 10, and Shell and BP in the top 20.
Big U.S. producers Chevron, Conoco and Exxon are in the top 40.
The lower ranks are dominated by state-owned firms from Russia, the Arab Gulf, Nigeria, Algeria, Libya, Venezuela, Iraq and Iran.
(Reporting by Shadia Nasralla; Editing by Jan Harvey)
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