"The head of the IPCC has compared the rollout of carbon capture and storage (#CCS) to "trying to push water uphill," questioning a technology that the oil and gas industry has long touted as integral to net-zero emission plans.
The International Energy Agency has previously called for the oil and gas industry to let go of the "illusion" that carbon capture is a solution to climate change, pushing instead for energy majors to ramp up investments in clean energy."
CCS is a cool technology (makes big profit for us) and
Fossil fuel companies are the ONLY people who can help you with that tech;
Never mind that the tech is unproven and expensive and –
What, the public doesn't want to pay for our profit, you'd rather have cheap wind and solar?
IT'S YOUR FAULT THAT THERE'S NO CLIMATE ACTION.
Why won't climate activists let us help WAAAAH.
It's the biggest bullies who shout the hardest that they are the victims.
ExxonMobil is suing investors who want faster climate action
"After #ExxonMobil sued the groups in federal court in Texas in January, Arjuna and Follow This withdrew the proposal and promised not to submit it to ExxonMobil again. But ExxonMobil refuses to drop its case."
"Under Biden, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has made it more difficult for companies to prevent these resolutions from moving to a shareholder vote by appealing to the regulator.
Exxon sidestepped the SEC and filed a lawsuit earlier this month against [Follow This and Arjuna].
Follow This founder Mark van Baal accused Exxon "of being afraid of its shareholders." "
That sound you hear is the crumbling of the social license to operate.
It's only a matter of time before the fossil fuel industry's stranglehold on society is loosened by the increasing number of options for clean energy, and when that happens people will drop them the way they cast off their cigarette butts. And most would crush those underfoot as well.
Image, via Cindy Baxter of Climate Action Tracker, from en event where Woods, Exxon's CEO, was getting some award.
"[#Exxon] is suing #investors to intimidate them from ever trying to influence corporate decisions.
“What they’re trying to do is silence shareholder voices, specifically to silence the voices of shareholders who are concerned about #ClimateRisk,” he added. “It’s noteworthy that a company like Exxon is so determined to shut down the conversation… amongst shareholders about these long-term risks.” "
Sounds like they're soiling their pants over "climate risk".
Exxon was one of the first to have its researchers verify risks oh GHG. It silenced them, now it wants to silence investors from saying anything about the climate crisis. They are afraid of being held accountable for their role in the climate crisis, and loosing their billions (trillions?) in windfall profits.
Being held accountable panics the industry. They want to keep the massive subsidies, and charge exorbitant, inflated, prices; all the while causing irreparable environmental damage without consequences. To be held accountable, wrecks their profit model.
The fossil fuel denial and disinformation campaign looks a lot like that of tobacco - because a lot of the same people were working it. The playbook for challenging them in court is also the same: #TheyKnew, and still peddled their product. I hope they get nabbed sooner rather than later; or that their investors abandon them, which results in the same thing.
“#Exxon has gone well beyond any other company that we’re aware of in terms of suing shareholders for trying to bring forward a proposal,” Cohen told the Financial Times. “There doesn’t seem to be anything other than an agenda of sending a message of shutting down shareholders’ ability to speak their mind.”
@CelloMomOnCars "Frankly, society, and the activist—the dominant voice in this [climate change] discussion—has tried to exclude the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies."
"#CalPERS, the biggest public pension plan in the United States, said on Monday it would vote against all #Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) board members at its upcoming annual meeting on May 29, citing the oil major's legal action against activist investors."
The nation’s third-largest public pension fund — the New York State Common Retirement Fund — said it would vote against 10 of 12 #Exxon board members, for failing to address climate change.
At least seven other shareholders, including the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, have filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission protesting Exxon’s actions and in some cases urging shareholders to vote against Exxon directors."
"Investors voted in line with all board recommendations at the virtual meeting. An average of 95% backed the re-election of 12 Exxon directors while proposals for reports on gender and race, plastics and social impact were rejected."
So far, "nearly all #CCS projects in the U.S. are actually enhanced-recovery projects that keep the oil and gas flowing."
Real, long-term CO2 storage requires the right site.
"But site characterization takes time that we don't have. The DOE spent more than 20 years evaluating Yucca Mountain. It spent some 14 years studying the New Mexico site."
But we need to HALVE CO2 emissions by 2030.
"Right now [CCS is] mostly a dangerous distraction."
"Its Wyoming-based Project Bison plans to capture 5 million metric tons of CO2 annually by 2030 - a tiny fraction of U.S. overall carbon emissions of more than 6 billion tons per year. The company hopes to use improve its technology and scale it up.
The oil industry sees the technology as a potential lifeline because it can remove carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels."
America’s #CornBelt Bristles at $8 Billion Lifeline
"After regulator pushback and vocal opposition from #farmers who don’t want to be anywhere near a project they claim tramples on landowner rights, Summit Carbon Solutions has gone back to the drawing board to revise the #pipeline’s path 6,300 times."
The Decatur, IL plant received $281 million in taxpayer dollars.
It produces ethanol from corn (grown using a lot of diesel and fossil fuel-derived fertiliser).
The plant has captured only 10-12 percent of the plant’s emissions at most.
"Some studies have shown that ethanol blended with gasoline is worse for the climate than straight gasoline because of the vast amounts of land needed to grow corn, plus emissions from making it and burning it in vehicles."
Lies, damn lies, and "carbon capture and sequestration"
"Projections of the size and scale of a future #CCS industry should come with heavy doses of scepticism."
Also:
"When the Australian reported that “#Australia could generate nearly $600bn in revenue”, what we are actually referring to is revenue for the organisations proposing #CarbonCapture and storage projects. Right now, that’s mostly oil and gas companies."
This makes explicit why the #FossilFuel industry is pushing so hard for "carbon capture" and "hydrogen with #CCS": It's an excuse to keep pumping oil and gas.
"Aramco is heavily investing in #CarbonCapture technology and aims to produce blue ammonia, which has a lower carbon footprint compared to traditional ammonia."
BUT
"It is very difficult to identify any off-take agreement in Europe [for blue hydrogen]... and they explained it's because of the high cost."
It is absurd.
But their lobbyists have managed to turn both CCS and hydrogen into quite a hype, and governments have started to fund those things. As if the fossil fuel industry was cash-poor.
"In 2023, total CO2 #emissions were about 37 billion metric tons. If we wanted to remove just this amount each year, to keep the carbon dioxide level from rising, it would require 764 gigawatts of power. It would probably take more than 1,000 nuclear power plants.
The takeaway is pretty clear: Any idea that we can maintain our current lifestyle and just suck the CO2 out of the air afterwards is a fantasy."
@CelloMomOnCars
I wonder how many square miles/kilometers of wetlands we'd need to restore and how much arable land we'd need to turn back to woodlands to accomplish the same thing.
We live near a busy highway.I think about these things as the cars stream by.
I once did another back-of-the-envelope estimate, and arrived at about 225 mature trees required to soak up the CO2 emitted by a single Prius driven 15,000 miles a year.
It's not only the emissions, it's also the physical and mental health of the commuters, their productivity, and the cost to maintain the road infrastructure.
The return to office push is basically just employers and landlords wanting to get their money on the real estate they own or rent, that's all.
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