Call to Action to the Fossil Fuel Suppliers

The Oil, Gas and Coal suppliers, produce and distribute fossil fuels to industry and individuals and currently our society functions on this source of energy. The suppliers themselves release carbon dioxide and fugitive methane in their operations and most importantly everyone that uses fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide. This industry is responsible directly or indirectly for almost all of the increase in carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, and a significant part of the increase in methane concentration as well. Unless these powerful industries use their money and associated political power to fight climate change and push for solutions that start with themselves, neither our civilization nor the companies will survive.

The major conclusion from the COP28 conference was that fossil fuels must be phased out if we are to abate climate change. This brave conclusion, while obvious to everyone, simply shows that fossil fuel producing nations simply refused to admit the obvious for 28 years. We just hope that Governments and Companies will take this seriously and act on it before it is too late.

The Call for Action for fossil fuel companies is simple but extremely important:

On the political front, change from fighting against climate change to fighting for incentives for phasing out fossil fuels over time.
On the technical front:
- invest a part of your profits in new technologies for reducing your carbon footprint.
- invest into renewable fuels as well as carbon capture projects.
- Once the technologies are proven, increase their scale to attain the required phasing out of your carbon footprint.
Eliminate fugitive methane emissions within the next few years.

More specifically for each of the 3 sectors:

For the Oil Industry:

Our call to action to the Oil Industry is to urgently invest part of their profits in technologies and plants to replace fossil fuels and continue to provide energy sources to the consumers and gradually switch from fossil to renewable fuels. We believe this is possible without significantly changing our way of life and this is an opportunity for Oil Companies to remain in business.

For the Gas Industry:

The American Gas Association (AGA) has developed a plan to achieve net zero by 2050 which includes a multi-tier approach to control and reduce GHG emissions. The production of Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) is a big part of their plan by converting organic feedstock into Biomethane using technologies such as anaerobic digestion, thermal gasification and methanated Hydrogen (methane made from captured Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen). Progress so far has been slower than expected and our call to action for the gas industry is to accelerate their program if the 2050 target is to be met.

Most of the fugitive methane emissions come from the gas industry and we believe it is criminal not to fix this low hanging fruit but yet so damaging emission.

For the Coal Industry

Coal is at the heart of all climate change conversations since it is clear that without a major reduction if not elimination of the use of coal, we will not reach net zero. Needless to say, the elimination of coal is a major political issue that needs to be tackled carefully but surely, so the plan to achieve a significant reduction needs to be carefully developed so as to ensure successful implementation. We applaud the International Energy Agency (IEA) for ushing for a planned and careful reduction and even elimination of coal.

Since the elimination of coal is so important, we support a progressive balance of incentives and strong penalties. For example, in the UK, coal power plants became unprofitable once a carbon tax of 18 Pounds per ton was levied by the Government in 2015. and this led to a dramatic decline in coal power from 40% in 2012 to less than 1% by 2020 (S. Sharpe, Five Times Faster, Cambridge University Press, 2023). The UK Government then followed with a complete ban on coal power plants that will be effective as of October 1, 2024. Commitment to stop building and financing new coal, plants have been made at COP26 by many countries around the world.

A call to action to all Countries is to follow the example of the UK, not to only stop building new plants but also to phase out existing plants.