The current policy trajectory takes us to a global warming of 3.2°C relative to the pre-industrial era by 2100 (GIEC, "climate change 2022"). For a global warming of more than 1.5°C, many human and natural systems will face severe risks with partly irreversible impacts and increased damage. However, as the last IPCC Group III report underlined, the emissions linked to existing and currently planned fossil infrastructures already exceed the cumulative net emissions of the scenarios allowing us to limit warming to 1.5°C. In this context, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) reminded us in 2021, no more new fossil projects have a place to reach zero net emissions in 2050 ( and only a drastic, immediate and sustainable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (between 40% to 70% by 2050), would result in a slowdown of global warming.
Yet the French multinational TotalEnergies and other oil majors continue to develop new oil and gas projects ("carbon bombs") around the world. TotalEnergies, which presents itself as a company committed to the energy transition, is the international oil firm that has approved the most new oil and gas projects in 2022. Each of these projects takes us a little further away from a world with a decarbonized economy.
Its EACOP pipeline project in Uganda and Tanzania, linking the Tilenga and Kingfisher wells in Uganda, is emblematic of the oil majors' carbon bombs. Despite the conclusions of the IEA and the IPCC, TotalEnergies insists on developing the world's longest heated oil pipeline (1.443 km). This project will emit, over the announced 25 years, more than 379 million tonnes of CO2e (including oil combustion). This pipeline endangers areas of particularly sensitive biodiversity and its development has already contributed to documented human rights violations in Uganda and Tanzania. This project, repeatedly postponed, makes no sense in a world that will see rapid decline in fossil fuels; but, perhaps TotalEnergies believes that the oil sector will be able to slow down the energy transition.
In the face of much criticism, TotalEnergies defends the idea that it is simply "meeting demand" by developing its oil and gas projects. As a group of scientists has pointed out, this argument, which is one of the 12 "discourses of climate delay," is fallacious in several respects. First, it deliberately fails to distinguish between demand and need. Today's energy demand is by no means solely driven by need; witness the debates over private jets. Second, producers have always sought and still seek to steer future energy demand towards fossil fuels; the latest example being the record number of fossil fuel industry lobbyists at COP27 and the lack of mention of a planned exit from fossil fuels in the final text. We can and must collectively redefine our needs, especially the richest and northern countries, and thus reduce the demand for fossil fuels. At the same time, we can and must organize a planned exit from fossil fuels and orient future demand towards decarbonized energies as much as possible. According to the head of the IEA, if we reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, "existing oil and gas fields and coal mines will be more than sufficient to meet the growth in demand.
You have 41.88% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.