Greenpeace accuses European oil and gas companies of failing to meet their climate commitments. The NGO calls on governments to force a halt to fossil fuel production in order to preserve the climate.
The gap between claims and reality: European oil and gas companies under fire from Greenpeace.
“European oil and gas companies are not at all committed to the transition” even if “they claim to be”, Greenpeace’s Jakub Gogolewski told AFP.
In the middle of a heatwave, he presented an analysis of a 110-page report written by Steffen Bukold, a German political scientist specializing in energy. The report compiles the 2022 results of twelve European groups, including BP, TotalEnergies and Shell. Only 0.3% of their total production was in renewable energies.
On average, “only 7.3% of investments” by the 12 companies were in green energies, while 92.7% financed activities linked to fossil fuels such as gas and oil, which emit CO2 and heat up the climate, denounces the environmental NGO. “And the situation got worse in 2023”.
Maintaining production despite promises: Fossil fuel industry resistance to climate targets.
The majority of European oil and gas companies plan to “maintain or even increase their oil and gas production until at least 2030”, even though most of them have committed to eliminating their CO2 emissions by 2050, notes the NGO.
Under the slogan “The thermometer is exploding, thanks to the fossil fuel industry”, a few activists built a fake oil derrick on Tuesday in the La Défense business district just outside Paris, where TotalEnergies is headquartered. As was the case with coal, the NGO is calling on European governments to regulate the activities of energy companies to force them to “reduce” their own industry, as “self-regulation doesn’t work”.
Call for government regulation: Greenpeace insists on binding measures for the energy transition.
The NGO would like to see the Member States and the Commission set “a binding target for reducing oil consumption”, said Mr. Gogolewski.
The report, entitled “The Dirty Dozen”, compiles data from the 2022 annual reports of six international oil majors based in Europe, namely Shell (UK-Netherlands), TotalEnergies (France), BP (UK), Equinor (Norway), Eni (Italy) and Repsol (Spain) and six national oil and gas companies (OMV (Austria), PKN Orien (Poland), MOL (Hungary), Wintershall Dea (Germany, subsidiary of BASF), Petrol Group (Slovenia) and Ina Croatia (Croatia).
