Oil and Gas Climate Initiative Announces Progress Towards Methane Target, New Initiatives
The
Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) today announced further initiatives to
accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and support the goals of
the Paris Agreement, ahead of OGCI’s annual event in New York City.
First,
OGCI launched a new initiative to unlock large-scale investment in carbon
capture, use and storage (CCUS), a crucial tool to achieve net zero emissions.
OGCI’s CCUS KickStarter initiative is designed to help decarbonize multiple
industrial hubs around the world, starting with hubs in the US, UK, Norway, the
Netherlands, and China. The aim of the KickStarter is to create the necessary
conditions to facilitate a commercially viable, safe and environmentally
responsible CCUS industry, with an early aspiration to double the amount of
carbon dioxide that is currently stored globally before 2030.
Second,
OGCI showed progress towards its methane intensity target announced last year.
Members are on track to meet the methane intensity target, having reduced
collective methane intensity by 9% in 2018. In addition to the methane
intensity target, OGCI is now working on a carbon intensity target to reduce by
2025 the collective average carbon intensity of member companies’ aggregated
upstream oil and gas operations.
Third,
all OGCI member companies have pledged to support policies that attribute an
explicit or implicit value to carbon. Acknowledging the role that attributing a
value to carbon plays as one of the most cost-efficient ways to achieve the low
carbon transition as early as possible, OGCI supports the introduction of
appropriate policies or carbon value mechanisms by governments.
OGCI
Climate Investments, OGCI’s US$1 billion-plus fund, has nearly doubled the
number of investments in promising clean technologies over the year. The fund
now has a total of 15 investments in its portfolio. Climate Investments
actively supports these companies in deployment and scale-up as well as
continuing to search for additional opportunities in its focus areas.
In
a joint statement, the heads of the OGCI member companies said: “We are scaling
up the speed, scale, and impact of our actions in support of the Paris
Agreement. Accelerating the energy transition requires sustainable, large-scale
actions, different pathways and innovative technological solutions to keep
global warming well below 2°C. We are committed to enhancing our efforts as a
constructive partner with governments, civil society, business and other
stakeholders working together to transition to a net zero economy.”
“The progress towards our methane intensity target makes us confident that the actions we are taking deliver results. We are on track to reach our methane intensity target of 0.25% by 2025. Encouraged by our experience of working together on reducing methane emissions, we are now working on a target to reduce by 2025 the collective average carbon intensity of our aggregated upstream oil and gas emissions.”