Oil & Gas Climate Initiative: Joint Collaborative Declaration – six missing commitments

This morning member companies of the Oil and Gas Climate initiative (OGCI), who provide nearly 10% of the world’s energy,  issued a Joint Collaborative Declaration to “express [their] collective support for an effective global climate change agreement [at COP21].”

You can read the declaration here, which was signed by the CEOs of BG, BP, Eni, Pemex, Repsol, Royal Dutch Shell, Saudi Aramco, Statoil and Total.

In it they say: “We recognize the general ambition to limit global average temperature rise to 2°C, and that the existing trend of the world’s net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is not consistent with this ambition.”

They caution: “neither our contributions nor those of any one industrial sector alone will be enough to address the challenge of climate change; it can only be met by each part of society making an appropriate contribution.”

They add: “Governments face a dual challenge. The world needs more energy as populations and economies grow. Yet this energy has to be provided in a sustainable and affordable manner.”

The state that: “Governments set the conditions within which we produce and use energy and have a critical role to play in creating clear stable policy frameworks that are consistent with a 2°C future.”

And conclude that: “Our companies will collaborate in a number of areas among the following, with the aim of going beyond the sum of our individual efforts.”

The areas of collaboration are efficiency, natural gas, long-term solutions (R&D), energy access, partnerships and multi-stakeholder initiative.

CEO of the Carbon Tracker Initiative Anthony Hobley said: “In the run up to the Paris climate conference we are seeing a plethora of climate focused initiatives from the industry, full of fine words and likely intent. To have credibility any initiative such as this must come up with more than warm words, it must set out concrete and quantitative commitments to take action. Anything less should be seen as nothing more than a cynical attempt to deflect the momentum for action, transparency and focus on the industry.

“At Carbon Tracker we will measure this initiative and the industry by the concrete and quantitative commitments the companies involved set themselves to deliver. We shall be judging and measuring these commitments by reference to their contribution in delivering a climate secure global energy system.”

Carbon Tracker believe there are six concrete quantitative & measurable commitments that are missing from today’s OGCI CEO Declaration:

1) Commitment to work towards effective carbon pricing at both a globally and national level

2) Declaration puts onus on Governments to first create policy framework but lacks commitment to consistently lobby for this

3) Commitment to stress test business models for future lower demand 2ºC consistent scenarios to avoid value destruction

4) Commitment to 2ºC consistent emissions energy transition targets over the next 30 years to 2050

5) Concrete commitment to bring all natural gas and fugitive emissions across full supply chain to below 1%

6) Concrete & quantitative commitment to increase R&D spending on clean energy & renewable energy