iea int'l energy agy

oddly belated?

exxonknewS 12 23

...“Oil and gas companies are under pressure, desperately trying to preserve their social license through recycled pledges,” said David Tong, Global Industry Campaign Manager at Oil Change International, which last year published a report finding that Exxon’s climate commitments are “grossly insufficient” to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Woods and his fellow oil company representatives are also using COP to push for unproven technologies that will prolong the lifespan of climate-wrecking fossil fuels. In an interview with Bloomberg at COP, Woods said the energy transition would require an assortment of “solutions” — including hydrogen and carbon capture — and “we need big companies to help with that.”

Woods rejected the IEA’s recent assessment of carbon capture as an “illusion,” telling Reuters that “you could say that about electric vehicles, about wind, about solar.” But according to the IEA, “The key actions required to bend the emissions curve sharply downwards by 2030 are well understood, most often cost effective and are taking place at an accelerating rate. The scaling up of clean energy is the main factor behind a decline of fossil fuel demand of over 25% this decade.”

Yet unlike the billions it invests in carbon capture, Exxon is spending almost nothing on renewable sources of energy, while lobbying against the transition away from its core products.

“It’s no surprise that Exxon is pushing for the continued use of fossil fuels,” said Jessica Green, Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. “Exxon is in a fight for its life. Real progress on climate change isn’t about more carbon markets or net zero pledges, it’s about putting the oil and gas industry out of business.”

A larger strategy

Woods’ deflections at COP are part of a larger strategy of “corporate issues management,” said Supran, which “the fossil fuel industry has been pioneering for decades.”

“It means having your fingers in all the pies, anticipating future threats to your business and neutralizing them through decades of 360-degree public affairs strategies,” he said.

Exxon has been working to shift the narrative outside of COP, too. “On November 30, the first day of COP 28, The New York Times included a full-page greenwashing ad from ExxonMobil,” Brad Johnson documented in Hill Heat on Monday. “Reuters coverage of Al Gore’s criticism of ExxonMobil’s presence at COP 28 was smothered by greenwashing ads from ExxonMobil. The Punchbowl News political newsletter today is Presented by ExxonMobil.” Yesterday’s Power Switch newsletter from Politico was Presented by ExxonMobil, too.

While the oil giant’s greenwashing may have ramped up around COP, it’s also a years-long affair — aided in large part by many of the same media outlets interviewing Woods at the conference. A major analysis of Big Oil’s advertising between October 2020 and October 2023 found that “many of the world’s most trusted English-language news publications help fossil fuel companies mislead readers about topics like the promise of carbon capture, the potential of ‘renewable biogas,’ and how much the industry contributes to the energy transition,” according to Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green.

The analysis, published by Drilled and DeSmog this week, found that Bloomberg Media Studios last year created a video for Exxon promoting carbon capture and hydrogen; Politico organized 37 e-mail campaigns for Exxon; and Exxon sponsored more than 100 editions of Washington Post newsletters in 2022 alone, as just a few examples.:}:

Ultimately, it’s up to the media, policymakers, and other major institutions to determine whether the oil companies still responsible for fueling climate catastrophe are allowed to have a platform to stand on — or whether, like Big Tobacco, their time to influence the debate about their products’ harm is finally up.

most dangerous, energy

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/jp-morgan/

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the world's most influential energy forecaster. Providing in-depth policy advice to dozens of national governments, the IEA has long been a friend of fossil fuel executives, regularly encouraging evermore fossil fuel development, even in the face of evermore dire climate warnings. But all that started to change last week.

The IEA released a special report that represents the agency's first attempt at modeling an energy pathway that is compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the aspirational goal of the Paris Agreement.

Perhaps the single most important sentence in the 224-page report is this one: "There is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net zero pathway." In other words, if we want to curtail global warming to 1.5°C―and thus slow the rate of species extinction and prevent millions of early deaths―we cannot invest a single dollar more in expanding the fossil fuel industry.

Compare this with JPMorgan Chase. In October of last year, Chase, the world's largest funder of fossil fuels, announced that it was going to align its business model with the Paris Agreement. The pledge came only after years of campaigning by activists and was widely welcomed. The most exciting part of the announcement was Chase's promise to release 2030 climate targets.

Well, Chase just released those targets―and they are worse than even the most pessimistic among us feared.

Rather than actually reducing the overall greenhouse gas emissions associated with its lending, Chase has created a convoluted accounting trick known as "carbon intensity", pledging that by 2030, it will achieve a 15% reduction in the "carbon intensity" of the oil and gas firms it finances.

The most important thing to know here is that reductions in "carbon intensity" and reductions in "actual greenhouse gas emissions" are two very different things.

Imagine you are the CEO of an oil firm. Your company owns 1,000 oil wells; it doesn't own any windmills. Now Chase gives you a $10 billion loan. You use that loan to buy 400 new oil wells and 200 windmills. You now own 400 additional oil wells. This means you are digging up and burning more oil than ever before; your overall contributions to climate change have gone up significantly. But because you are now also profiting from wind power, the "carbon intensity" of your company has gone down―an accounting trick that enables your oil company to both expand oil production and meet Chase's callow climate targets.

What it boils down to is this: While the IEA states that there can be no new investment in the expansion of fossil fuels, Chase doesn't plan to reduce its investments in new fossil fuel supply at all within the next decade.

This is concerning (not to mention deeply immoral) for a number of reasons: Chase is the first major US bank to commit to 2030 climate targets; by setting the bar so devastatingly low they have made it easier for other Wall Street banks to engage in similar acts of greenwashing. Just 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for 71% of all history's climate pollution; if Wall Street is willing to give them a pass, it is basically passing on climate action of any sort.

The fact that the media has largely fallen for Chase's big climate lie is also of concern. "JPMorgan Chase Pledges to Cut Carbon Emissions in Lending Portfolios," read one uncritical Bloomberg headline. Even the normally rigorous Guardian recently fawned about how Wall Street is acting on the climate crisis.After years of the media's failure to accurately report on the climate crisis, it is upsetting to see major media outlets fail like this.

All of this would, of course, be less alarming if the White House understood that companies like JPMorgan are a major part of the problem―and that regulating them is a major part of the solution. But that is far from the case."No government is going to solve this problem," said US Special Climate Envoy, John Kerry in arecent interview. "The solutions are going to come from the private sector."

Kerry's words are especially alarming. Whether it's sustainable investing funds that are riddled with fossil fuels, insurance companies building coal mines, or banks making empty climate pledges, it's clear that Wall Street cannot be counted on to solve the climate crisis for us.

We need a government that is willing to step in, stop the money pipeline to climate chaos, and force Wall Street to treat global warming like the crisis it is. As the IEA has made abundantly clear that starts with ensuring that not a single dollar more goes toward expanding the fossil fuel industry.

Alec Connon is the coordinator of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, a coalition of over 160 organizations working to stop the flow of money from Wall Street to the fossil fuel industry. He is also a writer. His first novel, The Activist, was published in 2016. Follow him on Twitter: @alecconnon

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