Only 7.3% ($7.09 billion) of companies’ 2022 investments went towards green energy, rest 92.7% ($87.95bn) spent on fossil fuel business: Greenpeace report
Governments must also agree on a detailed roadmap to phase out oil and gas across Europe, nonprofit Greenpeace said. Photo: iStock The Net Zero pledges of European Big Oil were were not followed through in 2022, according to a report by nonprofit Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The share of renewable energy produced by the 12 biggest oil and gas companies was just 0.3 per cent of their combined energy production, while the rest came from oil and gas production.
The report, The Dirty Dozen: The Climate Greenwashing of 12 European Oil Companies, was published August 22, 2023. The companies are deceiving the public about their willingness to curb their climate-damaging impact by transitioning to renewable energy sources, according to the paper that analysed the 2022 annual reports of the 12 companies or the ‘dirty dozen’.
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Of the dozen, six are the largest oil companies worldwide — Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor, Eni and Repsol. The other six play a central role in the energy transition in their European home markets: OMV (Austria), PKN Orlen (Poland), MOL Group (Hungary), Wintershall Dea (Germany), Petrol Group (Slovenia) and Ina Croatia (Croatia).
Profits increased by an average of 75 per cent in 2022 and revenues by 70 per cent, showed the analysis.
However, investments climbed just by 37 per cent. Only 7.3 per cent ($7.09 billion) of the companies’ 2022 investments went towards green energy and the remaining 92.7 per cent ($87.95bn) for funding fossil fuel business, the report said.
The report accused oil and gas companies of publishing misleading information on their practices and promoting dangerous distractions like carbon capture and storage (CCS). In most cases, the biggest part of emissions — those from the sale of oil and gas — are simply ignored.
On June 15, 2023, as part of the United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres criticised CCS as a method of greenwashing.
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The report noted that BP, Shell, Equinor, Wintershall and TotalEnergies reduced their investments in low carbon or renewable products in 2022, compared to 2021.
Shell invests only about nine per cent of its budget in real low carbon. For BP and Equinor, the share is even lower at just three per cent. BP has been advertising its renewables ambitions for many years; however, its 2022 reports had no number that would show the amount of wind and solar power they have generated that year.
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Although the majority of the 12 companies analysed have publicly committed to reaching Net Zero by 2050, not a single one of them has developed a coherent strategy to achieve Net Zero, the report stated.
Like most oil companies, Equinor, Eni and OMV are committed to the goal of being a Net Zero company by 2050.
The nonprofit called for European governments to strictly regulate fossil fuel companies. This regulation should require green infrastructure investment, it said, adding all infrastructure over the North Sea must be decommissioned.
Governments must also agree on a detailed roadmap to phase out oil and gas across Europe, it further said. The report called for increased regulations on international oil companies, including a general ban on advertising.
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