Scores of big-ticket fossil fuel companies making claims of carbon-neutral products and dispatching them to markets as diverse as the UK, China, Japan, Mexico and India, in reality are little more than marketing gimmicks and amount to greenwashing, a new investigative report has claimed.
The new investigation 'Net-zero pipe dreams: Why fossil fuels cannot be carbon neutral' explores the troubling new trend of so-called carbon-neutral fossil fuels. It is brought out by Carbon Market Watch, a not-for-profit association with expertise in carbon pricing and a track record of policy work in international organisations and in the European Union.
The report assumes significance owing to the fact that the annual climate change conference due from October 31 at Glasgow in United Kingdom is to discuss net zero goals for reducing overall emissions to restrict global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial era. Net zero is extracting as much carbon as is released by an entity.
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"Illusory, opaque and baseless claims of 'carbon-neutral' fossil fuels overtly defy science and reason. This is nothing more than a desperate and shameless attempt by oil and gas majors to keep business-as-usual activities and hoodwink the public," said the lead author of the report, Carbon Market Watch's Jonathan Crook.
Burning fossil fuels, which have been buried in the ground for ages and will emit greenhouse gases affecting the atmosphere for centuries, cannot be offset with temporary storage in living ecosystems, like planting trees, the report pointed out and said, "The firms never disclose full details about the source of carbon credits, obstructing independent third-party review to gauge credibility and quality."
No firm publicly discloses the price paid for their credits, and also, no firm voluntarily discloses an estimate of lifecycle emissions for the specific fossil fuel cargo it is calling 'carbon neutral,' it said.
"One-third of claims do not even factor in Scope 3 emissions (related to the final combustion of the fossil fuels), despite the fact that these represent the vast majority of total lifecycle emissions," a release quoting Crook said.
The claims were made by oil and gas majors, such as Shell, BP, Total, Gazprom, Eni, Petronas, PetroChina, CNOOC, Cheniere and Occidental. They also involved major financial groups and traders like Macquarie, Mitsui & Co, Trafigura, Reliance Industries, and Diamond Gas International (a subsidiary of Mitsubishi), the report claimed.
Urging that at COP26, the governments must keep 1.5 degrees Celsius alive by committing to clear and binding fossil fuel phase-out plans that will nip this kind of greenwashing in the bud. Crook said, "Fossil fuel firms must take real climate action, and stop greenwashing, by setting in motion plans to phase out fossil fuels."
Asking policymakers and lawmakers to proactively design and implement regulations and legislation to prevent greenwashing, the report also appealed to the civil society organisations and the public that they should continue to apply pressure on polluters and policy-/lawmakers to move beyond fossil fuels, the release added.
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