The Path to Net-Zero

Key Takeaways

• European integrated oil majors have led the charge, acknowledging the inevitability of the transition, as well as the scale of the challenge, as they face the possibility that petroleum demand could peak in the next decade.
  
  
• U.S.-based oil and gas companies began to pay closer attention to environmental concerns in 2018 and 2019, when many began to issue yearly sustainability reports. But in most cases, their efforts were more acknowledgement of the issue than a plan for action.
  
  
• Aside from the majors, there are no North American producers, refiners or midstream firms with net zero emissions goals yet, but it is also much harder for companies in these fossil fuel-heavy sectors to truly achieve a net-zero status.

Key Takeaways

• Scientists have asserted that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial levels, the world will need to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050.
  
  
• Domestic electric and multi-utilities that own both electric generation and natural gas distribution pipelines have made the most net-zero carbon emissions pledges, followed by mining and then oil and gas companies operating on a global scale.
  
  
• Decarbonization actions by states, pressure from investors, and customer preferences have prompted many major companies to adopt decarbonization goals that they will continue to pursue.

Key Takeaways

• As of mid-July, 13 of the 30 largest U.S. publicly traded electric and gas utilities had set goals to achieve either zero or net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or earlier or have set a 100% clean electricity goal.
  
  
• Of the 30 largest U.S. electric and gas utilities, Avangrid in 2018 had the second-lowest carbon emissions intensity levels — surpassed only by Exelon — and will need to either buy carbon offsets or retire the only natural gas plant in its portfolio to achieve its net-zero target.
  
  
• Most electric utilities are counting on major advances in related technologies — such as carbon capture and sequestration, advanced nuclear reactors, green hydrogen, longer-lasting battery storage and carbon offset credits — to achieve their decarbonization goals.

Key Takeaways

• Miners are likely to increasingly be held to account not only for their own emissions but also for those that occur from the use of their commodities that turn up downstream in many sectors of the economy.
  
  
• Half of the global industrial greenhouse gas emissions in 2015 were traced to just 50 companies in heavy fossil fuel industries, including 20 mining companies, according to a report from the Carbon Disclosure Project.
  
  
• Several mining companies have not specified net-zero goals but are otherwise addressing climate change risks. For example, Canadian gold miner Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. has not set a net-zero emissions goal, but all of its sites are implementing initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, spokesperson Natalie Frackleton said.