Energy Exchange

In 10 short years, the climate impact of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry has moved from abstract understanding to a widely-recognized fact. Scientific studies conducted around the world have quantified the risk that methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, poses to climate.

Studies have also demonstrated that the oil and gas supply chain is among the largest industrial sources of methane and that reducing oil and gas methane is one of the most immediate and cost-effective ways to limit near-term climate warming today.

Some in industry have begun to respond. Companies like BP and Shell, and coalitions like the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative and One Future have committed to methane reduction targets and begun public reporting. Meanwhile, a group of companies, working with the United Nations Environment Program, European Commission, EDF and others have raised the ambition of another multi-stakeholder initiative — the Oil and Gas Methane Partnership — to improve the scope and rigor of methane management and reporting.  These commitments are important, especially when they are made publicly and demonstrate the oil and gas industry’s commitment to playing a role in the transition to a low-carbon economy.

If the 2010s was a decade of awareness and words, the 2020s must be a decade of action and results. We must move past press releases announcing that companies will reduce methane emissions and begin seeing and believing they are actually doing it.

EDF’s new whitepaper, Hitting the Mark: Improving the Credibility of Industry Methane Data, provides industry a roadmap to the most critical piece of genuine methane action: good data. Hitting the Mark follows the 2018 publication of EDF’s Taking Aim, which presented criteria for establishing an environmentally ambitious methane target. Read More »

Hundreds of diplomats and heads of state will converge on the United Nations this week to discuss urgent actions to prevent catastrophic climate change. Just a few blocks away, CEOs and other top executives of the world’s largest oil and gas companies will host a meeting of their own, where they will also be talking about the climate, aiming to showcase the industry’s efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions.

It’s just a 10-minute walk between the two, but the symbolic journey is more like a thousand miles — and oil and gas producers are still struggling with the first steps. Their New York gathering, part of something called the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), could reveal important signs as to how serious they are about picking up the pace.

That challenge is stark: The world’s economy needs to reach net-zero greenhouse emissions by the end of this century if we are to have better-than-even odds of limiting warming to two degrees. Net-zero means not putting more carbon into the atmosphere than we can take out. To hit the global goal, Europe, the U.S. and other advanced economies must get to net-zero by 2050.

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