Each year, UN member states meet at the Conference of the Parties, better known as COP, to negotiate international climate agreements and assess global progress in reducing emissions. The 30th annual COP conference will begin on November 7 in Belem, Brazil, a city of about 2.5 million people on the banks of the Amazon. Depending on who you ask, COP is either the world's best attempt at collective action on climate change to date, or a massive forum for greenwashing: at last year's COP29, human rights NGO Global Witness found that oil and gas lobbyists vastly outnumber negotiators from the 10 countries most threatened by climate change.
“We truly believe that COP has been co-opted by the fossil fuel industry to the extent that we see thousands of lobbyists emerging every year,” said Patrick Gailey, head of fossil fuel investigations at Global Witness. “And they don't lobby for green energy.”
One of the long-standing arguments for giving oil and gas companies a seat at the COP table has been that, as suppliers of the lion's share of the world's energy, they should be partners on a global scale. decarbonization. “Coalitions must include incumbent energy companies, and especially oil and gas companies,” Ernest Moniz, who was energy secretary under former President Barack Obama. told CNBC at COP28 in 2023.
But a new study published in the academic journal Nature Sustainability appears to back up Gailey's point, showing how little fossil fuel companies are investing in renewable energy. The study authors analyzed the data Global Energy Monitoran open-source database that tracks the use of oil, gas, coal and renewable energy around the world to find out the extent to which large fossil fuel companies are participating in the deployment of renewable energy.
The researchers fully expected that investment by fossil fuel producers in renewable energy would be low, but not this Low: They found that of the 250 largest oil and gas companies, only 20 percent have completed any renewable energy projects at all. Overall, fossil fuel producers own just 1.42 percent of global renewable energy projects, and these projects account for a measly 0.1 percent of total energy production.
Marcel Llavero Pasquina, a researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona who co-authored the study with Antonio Bontempi, admits he was surprised by how little renewable energy activity is supported by oil and gas companies, despite going into the study with low expectations. “They have for so long pushed the idea that they are part of the transition, that they are allies in the fight against the climate crisis,” he told Grist. “I expected [oil and gas companies to own] about 5 percent.”
Llavaero Pasquina said he hopes his research will be used to exclude fossil fuel producers from any role in setting international climate goals.
The study comes as the World Meteorological Association says the planet is warming atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a record level this year. It also comes on the heels of moves by oil major BP. solutionEarlier this year to cut investment in renewable energy by about 70 percent.
“We continually see fossil fuel producers over-promising and under-delivering when it comes to spending on renewable energy,” said Global Witness's Gailey. “Every COP we have that continues to allow thousands of people who advocate continued use of oil and gas puts the goals of the Paris Agreement further out of reach. Every COP we allow them to enter carries a debt to future generations that will be paid in the form of climate impact.”
