The biggest listed oil and gas giants must cut production by more than a third by 2040 to keep emissions within targets laid out in the landmark Paris climate deal, an industry watchdog said yesterday.
Britain-based think tank Climate Tracker said that current rates of emissions from the energy majors would see the world’s carbon budgets surpassed within decades due to an inexorable rise in oil and gas output.
The 2015 Paris Agreement enjoins nations to limit temperature rises to “well below” 2°C and to a safer cap of 1.5°C if at all possible.
To hit these targets, the world must undergo a drastic drawdown in emissions of planet warming greenhouse gases.
Because carbon dioxide contributes to global warming at a known and predictable rate, scientists can calculate Earth’s “carbon budget” for a range of temperature rise scenarios.
Carbon Tracker estimated that at current emissions rates — and emissions are still rising annually — the carbon budget for a 1.5°C temperature rise would be exceeded in 13 years.
For 1.75°C — already a level deemed far from safe by the world’s leading scientists — that budget would be exceeded in 24 years, the watchdog said.
It used the International Energy Association’s BD2S climate scenario to predict a rise of 1.6°C, then compared that to data assessing the emissions trajectories of major oil and gas projects.
The analysis showed that the listed majors on average needed to cut production by 35 percent within two decades to stick to the 1.6°C path.
“There’s a finite limit for any carbon that can be released for any given level of global warming and that implies that if we are going to have a good result under Paris or any other climate target, fossil fuel production is going to need to shrink,” Carbon Tracker senior oil and gas analyst Andrew Grant said.
“While companies may all say they support Paris — whatever that means — they still plan to keep producing more oil, gas and coal,” he added.
The study found that the needed production cuts varied significantly between companies.
US energy giant ConocoPhillips faces cuts of 85 percent by 2040, whereas British-Dutch major Shell would only need a reduction of 10 percent, it said.
A ConocoPhillips statement said it continues “to manage GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions in our operations and to integrate climate change-related activities and goals into our business planning.”
A Shell spokesperson said the company does not make production projections.
“What we have been clear about already however is our ambition to reduce our net carbon footprint, and have introduced short term targets against which we will measure progress,” she said.
Most listed energy companies insist their business plans are in line with the Paris Agreement goals.
Several companies have committed to reducing the intensity of emissions, while leaving the door open for increased production with energy demand set to rise for decades yet.
“At the same time as reducing that intensity they are getting bigger and want to produce more fuel,” Grant said.
The report found ExxonMobil faces a 55 percent production cut to stay on course for the Paris climate targets.
Italian giant ENI and Chevron face 40 percent and 35 percent reductions respectively, the report said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last