- By Esme Stallard
- Climate and science reporter, BBC News
Image supply, Haidar Mohammed Ali/AFP/Getty Images
A brand new report is warning in opposition to the enlargement of oil fields
The world’s oil and fuel business has been warned it faces a “second of reality” at subsequent week’s UN local weather talks.
Dr Fatih Birol, head of power watchdog the International Energy Agency, was talking because the IEA revealed a brand new report on the way forward for fossil fuels.
He stated the sector should select between contributing to the local weather disaster or “turning into a part of the answer”.
Last yr fossil gasoline firms had been accountable for simply 1% of world funding in renewable power.
The publication of this report only a week earlier than the beginning of the UN local weather summit, often known as COP28, isn’t any coincidence. The IEA will wish to put strain on governments attending the convention to get an settlement on decreasing using fossil fuels.
“The uncomfortable reality that the business wants to come back to phrases with is that profitable clear power transitions require a lot decrease demand for oil and fuel, which suggests scaling again oil and fuel operations over time – not increasing them. There isn’t any method round this,” Dr Birol stated.
This yr’s convention can also be controversial as a result of a serious oil producer is host.
In the run as much as COP28, the person who will chair the local weather talks, Sultan Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, has been criticised for prioritising a expertise often known as carbon seize and storage.
Carbon seize stops many of the CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels in energy stations from being launched into the ambiance, and both re-uses it or shops it underground. But it’s costly and in its infancy.
Some critics say fossil gasoline producers hope to make use of the expertise to permit them to proceed counting on oil and fuel
Dr Birol stated that assembly the world’s local weather targets “means letting go of the phantasm that implausibly massive quantities of carbon seize are the answer”.
The report estimates that primarily based on present oil and fuel consumption the world must seize or take away some 32bn tonnes of carbon in an effort to cease temperatures rising by greater than 1.5C above pre-industrial ranges, seen as a key threshold to restrict the consequences of local weather change.
Dr Steve Smith, government director of Oxford Net Zero and CO2RE on the University of Oxford, instructed the BBC the report was nonetheless calling for funding within the expertise however that it should come alongside different measures.
“It goes hand in hand with emissions reductions, making an attempt to do carbon dioxide removing concurrently not reducing our emissions is like being in a rushing automotive and making an attempt to push the brake and accelerator on the similar time,” he stated.
Image supply, Getty Images
This yr’s convention is controversial as a result of a serious oil producer is host
The oil and fuel business is likely one of the largest buyers in carbon seize and storage however got here beneath heavy criticism within the report for not investing sufficiently in renewable power.
The world’s complete clear power investments are estimated at about $1.8tn (£1.44tn), in keeping with the IEA. But fossil gasoline producers are accountable for simply 1% of that – or $18bn – with the remainder coming from governments and different industries.
Brendan Curran, senior coverage fellow on the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, stated: “This report from IEA highlights that regardless of that cacophony of claims from oil and fuel producers, the precise ranges of funding within the transition to internet zero sector are negligible and the business is not actually doing wherever close to sufficient. This is throughout a interval when oil and fuel firms have been recording file income.”
The fossil gasoline business reported revenues of $5tn in 2022 – a file excessive. And earlier this yr BP and Shell rolled again on earlier commitments to chop oil manufacturing following file income.
As nicely as criticising fossil gasoline firms the report additionally warned international locations in opposition to drilling for oil as a way to offer power safety. Earlier this yr UK PM Rishi Sunak granted new North Sea oil and fuel licences as a part of efforts, he stated, to enhance the UK’s resilience to risky power markets.
Dr Birol instructed the BBC that he would not touch upon individual international locations however that any new fossil gasoline tasks introduced in the present day would face “not solely local weather dangers however business dangers”, as a result of by the point the oil reaches the market in seven or eight years’ time world oil consumption can be declining.
