Exxon’s Plan to Hit Net Zero Carbon Emissions: LOL

Exxon introduced on Tuesday it could set a objective to be internet zero by 2050, thus proving oil firms are identical to you and me: susceptible to look strain and prepared to fudge a number of numbers to look good. Unfortunately, Exxon’s fudged numbers maintain much more sway over the destiny of the planet than my bench press private report.

Exxon’s announcement comes after years of the corporate getting completely hammered for being the worst investor-owned oil firm on the subject of doing one thing, something about local weather change. Just final 12 months, the firm acquired wrecked by its personal shareholders in a climate-related revolt. With the web zero pledge, Exxon joins the ranks of Chevron, BP, and Shell in pretending to have a local weather plan in step with a liveable planet. (Let’s additionally pause to snigger for a minute at how Exxon CEO Darren Woods mentioned BP and Shell have been partaking in a “beauty match” after they set internet zero objectives in 2020. Welcome to the pageant, Darren.)

Every local weather pledge by oil firms is principally nugatory, at the least by the metrics that matter like preserving carbon air pollution out of the environment and winding down new oil exploration. The Exxon net zero pledge is especially weasely, although, for a number of causes.

The first is what it truly covers. The firm mentioned its plan is to get Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions to internet zero. For these not initiated in Big Oilese, these are the emissions from extracting, refining, and transport fossil fuels. They account for just 20% of Exxon’s total emissions. The lion’s share of emissions tied to Exxon’s enterprise—generally known as Scope 3 emissions—come from burning the oil and fuel the corporate ships to market.

Exxon’s pledge to have its operations attain internet zero by 2050 is like saying you’ll give up smoking whereas nonetheless shopping for cartons of cigarettes and handing them out to high school children. Sure, your most cancers threat could also be rather a lot decrease however it’s not precisely a public well being success. Among the ways in which Exxon will cut back emissions utilizing “lower-emission fuels” to dig up extra fossil fuels, so it’s even sneaking a cigarette on the hearth escape once in a while itself.

The firm additionally mentioned it could plow $15 billion into “lower-emission initiatives” over the following 5 years. Obviously, Exxon isn’t going to zero out its emissions in 5 years and “lower” may conceivably be a begin. The firm wrote {that a} “significant share” of that cash will go into “scaling up carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and biofuels.” That’s good, however every of those applied sciences has to this point confirmed borderline ineffective at reducing emissions—and in some circumstances, may truly result in larger emissions. What they’re helpful for, although, is permitting Exxon to maintain digging up oil and fuel whereas promising that’s it’s making an attempt actually laborious to determine tips on how to repair this entire large supply of carbon air pollution factor. 🥺🥺🥺 Or as Woods put it within the press launch asserting the massive plan, “We will create shareholder value by adjusting investments between our existing low-cost portfolio and new lower-emission business opportunities to match the pace of the energy transition.”

The firm additionally talks rather a lot about reducing carbon depth alongside the best way. That principally means its operations will develop into extra environment friendly at digging up oil and fuel. This is a really handy metric for Exxon as a result of it may level to emitting much less carbon per barrel of oil extracted, even because it extracts extra oil.

None of this even will get into how obscure internet zero objectives truly are within the first place. Companies are asserting them like they’re going out of fashion, however there’s no accepted metric for tips on how to get there. Could Exxon simply say screw it, purchase a bunch of questionable carbon offsets, and say it made it to internet zero even sooner than anticipated? Absolutely! Would that be dangerous for the local weather? My pals, it could!

Look, it’s very good Exxon and different oil firms are placing out these broad plans. But it additionally exhibits the utter futility of permitting company actors to set the local weather agenda. There’s no accountability and little or no consideration paid to the physics at hand or unbiased science that exhibits we have to finish new fossil gasoline exploration this 12 months or threat lacking out on the 1.5-degree-Celsius (2.7-degree-Fahrenheit) goal within the Paris Agreement. What’s wanted is a strong, international response led by governments with their residents’ greatest pursuits in thoughts reasonably than companies seeking to maximize shareholder worth.

“Sound government policies are needed to accelerate the deployment of key technologies at the pace and scale required to support a net-zero future,” Exxon wrote in its internet zero roadmap.

On that, I believe we will all agree, even when Exxon might have a barely totally different concept of what these “sound” insurance policies look like than almost everybody else.