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Crude oil storage tanks at Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery and terminal, Saudi Arabia, October 2018. Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Last December’s UN climate talks (COP 28), held in the UAE, had an unlikely president: Sultan Al Jaber, who for eight years has headed the country’s state-owned oil company. Under his leadership, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has emerged as the world’s eleventh largest oil firm, producing over a billion barrels in 2021. ADNOC plans to invest at least $150 billion in the coming four years on fossil fuel expansion, which Jaber has pledged to keep going over at least two decades. By 2050 it is projected to be the world’s second-largest producer, after Saudi Arabia’s NOC Aramco, with an output nearly 50 percent above that of Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies combined.…  Seguir leyendo »

Huit ans après les Accords de Paris, la décarbonation de l'économie mondiale n'a guère progressé. 2023 a battu les records de consommation de charbon, de pétrole et de gaz. Depuis le début du siècle la proportion de combustibles fossiles a à peine baissé passant de 87% en 2000 à 83% en 2023. Et ce malgré 6000 milliards de dollars investis en 15 ans dans les énergies renouvelables.

Dans ce panorama peu satisfaisant pour le climat, le charbon reste la seconde source d'énergie en importance : en 2022 il comptait pour 27% de la consommation d'énergie primaire et 35% de la génération électrique.…  Seguir leyendo »

¿Qué falta para eliminar a los combustibles fósiles?

En medio de olas de calor récord, eventos climáticos extremos cada vez más intensos y costosos, y advertencias alarmantes de que el cambio climático literalmente nos está matando, los pedidos para que dejemos de lado los combustibles fósiles ganan intensidad... pero el sector de los combustibles fósiles está redoblando la apuesta con inversiones en nuevos proyectos petrolíferos y gasíferos, grandes fusiones corporativas, dando marcha atrás en sus compromisos climáticos y con falsas promesas de que puede seguir extrayendo sin contaminar. Tenemos que deshacernos de los combustibles fósiles, pero, ¿cómo?

Es poco probable que la respuesta surja de la Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (COP28) de este año en Dubái (organizada por un petroestado), que podría dar lugar a un compromiso político para abandonar paulatinamente los combustibles fósiles, pero no marcará la senda hacia un futuro sin ellos.…  Seguir leyendo »

La COP28 ouvre ses portes le 30 novembre à Dubaï dans les Emirats arabes unis. Les Emirats sont membres du G17. Vous ne connaissez pas le G17 ? Normal, il n’a pas d’existence formelle : il s’agit des pays dont les économies sont les plus dépendantes de la production et de l’exportation d’énergie fossile. Certains sont au Proche-Orient, mais pas tous. On en trouve en Afrique (Nigeria, Algérie, Afrique du Sud, Libye), dans les pays développés (Australie, Norvège), sans oublier la Russie, le seul membre du G17 à exporter à la fois du pétrole, du gaz et du charbon.

Depuis le démarrage de la négociation climatique, les membres du G17 s’illustrent par leur capacité de freinage et d’obstruction.…  Seguir leyendo »

In a world starved of good news on climate, it is welcome that investment in clean energy has grown exponentially and is now running at almost double the rate of investment in all new fossil fuels. This year solar alone will receive more capital than new oil-and-gas production. As a result of these dramatic shifts, global carbon emissions from energy use may peak next year.

But even as the arc of global emissions is finally beginning to bend, much more will be required to reach climate justice. First, clean-energy investment must rise from $1.8trn this year to around $4.5trn a year by the early 2030s.…  Seguir leyendo »

Las instalaciones de Shell Quest Carbon Capture and Storage cerca de Edmonton, Alberta, en julio. (Jason Franson/Bloomberg News)

The oil and gas industry has been impeding progress as the world struggles to put the brakes on climate change. This month’s global climate meeting in Dubai — COP28 — offers a unique chance for the industry to turn that around through a new alliance.

True, many influential environmental leaders regard the oil and gas industry as so compromised that it has no legitimate role in the climate effort. Their goal is a world powered exclusively by renewable energy and the extinction of the oil and gas enterprise by roughly mid-century. The industry continues to generate distrust among those leaders by lobbying against climate action and backtracking on prior commitments to invest in clean energy and reduce fossil fuel production.…  Seguir leyendo »

Occidental, an American oil major, recently agreed to buy Carbon Engineering, a Canadian carbon-removal company, for $1.6bn. The deal underlines big oil’s growing interest in carbon-capture technologies, which suck carbon dioxide from the air. What does it mean for the climate?

Suppose a trucker dumped a load of manure on your front lawn and then demanded a fee to haul it away. Big oil made the fuel that is cooking our planet, so the idea that it might profit from cleaning it up strikes many people as obscene.

Critics argue that big oil is using carbon removal as a tool to protect its core business.…  Seguir leyendo »

Smoke rises from a coal-fired power plant on Friday in Indonesia. (Aditya Aji/AFP/Getty Images)

As the United Nations marks Climate Week in New York, heading into a global climate summit later this year, it’s time to train the spotlight on one critical, stubborn issue: the growth of unabated coal.

The world has seen recent progress on climate change, including momentum for tripling the deployment of renewable energy sources, thanks to Indian leadership at the recent Group of 20 summit. But the proliferation of unabated coal — coal used to produce energy without steps to eliminate emissions — threatens to negate any such advances.

Tripling renewables without also halting the building of new dirty coal plants would be like training for a marathon while smoking five packs of cigarettes a day.…  Seguir leyendo »

Transmission towers in Soweto, South Africa, September 2022. Siphiwe Sibeko / Reuters

The 28th annual UN Climate Change Conference will begin on November 30 in Dubai, coming on the heels of the UN secretary-general’s Climate Ambition Summit in late September. The task facing the two hosts is stark: to jumpstart credible multinational action on climate change where previous summits have failed. Evidence is mounting that a climate apocalypse is coming, and fast. This past summer, large swaths of the United States and southern Europe sweltered in temperatures over 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and exceptional wildfires and floods hit Canada and South Asia.

In 2020, UN scientists still considered it unlikely that the world’s average temperature would rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the late nineteenth century’s average—the threshold that, once crossed, would launch a phase in which the scale and speed of warming will outstrip the world’s ability to predict or manage its impacts.…  Seguir leyendo »

La invasión rusa de Ucrania ha cambiado por completo el panorama energético europeo. La UE deberá reconfigurar con rapidez su abastecimiento de energía sin dejar de liderar la transición energética. La publicación del plan REPowerEU por parte de la Comisión Europea sirvió para marcar una hoja de ruta inequívoca: acelerar la transición energética y reducir a cero las importaciones de hidrocarburos procedentes de Rusia mucho antes de 2030 (Comisión Europea, 2022a), y la cuenca mediterránea cumplirá una función vital en las iniciativas de diversificación de energías fósiles y renovables. Al mismo tiempo, los países socios del Mediterráneo (PSM) parecen haberse adentrado en una fase de renovado interés por las energías renovables y el despliegue del hidrógeno, ya que están actualizando sus planes de mitigación del clima y cada vez les es más acuciante dotarse de mejores capacidades en materia de adaptación climática.…  Seguir leyendo »

Quito, 14 de agosto de 2023: la comunidad indígena Waorani se manifiesta a favor del referéndum para poner fin a la explotación petrolera en el parque nacional Yasuní. Martin Bernetti/AFP

En un referéndum celebrado el domingo 20 de agosto, unos 13 millones de ecuatorianos decidieron que el país prescindiría de las ganancias económicas derivadas de la explotación del bloque 43, situado en gran parte en el Parque Natural Yasuní y responsable del 12 % de la producción nacional de petróleo del país.

La pérdida de ingresos fue el principal argumento esgrimido por el gobierno saliente. La petrolera nacional Petroecuador estimaba en 14 500 millones de euros las pérdidas que supondría detener el proyecto en veinte años.

Pero los ecologistas relativizaron las cifras esgrimidas, alegando que no tenían en cuenta la gran fluctuación de los precios del petróleo, los costes de producción y, sobre todo, los daños causados a los ecosistemas.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘We must strengthen our democracy if we are to protect our planet.’ Photograph: José Jácome/EPA

Days ago, voters in Ecuador approved a total ban on oil drilling in protected land in the Amazon, a 2.5m-acre tract in the Yasuní national park that might be the world’s most important biodiversity hotspot. The area is a Unesco-designated biosphere reserve and home to two non-contacted Indigenous groups. This could be a major step forward for the entire global climate justice movement in ways that are not yet apparent.

This vote is important not only for Ecuador and for the Indigenous peoples in the Yasuní, who now have hope of living in peace in perpetuity. It is also a potential model for how we can use the democratic process around the world to help slow or even stop the expansion of fossil fuels to the benefit of billions of people.…  Seguir leyendo »

El cambio climático y el obstruccionismo de los productores de combustibles fósiles

Mientras el mundo lidia con la confluencia sin precedentes de devastadoras inundaciones, incendios descontrolados y sequías, el debate sobre la manera de encarar la creciente crisis climática se ve cada vez más distorsionado debido a que las grandes empresas difunden falsas soluciones y alientan narrativas engañosas.

El sector de los combustibles fósiles es un claro ejemplo. En un esfuerzo desesperado por desviar la atención de su responsabilidad histórica por el cambio climático, las empresas petroleras y gasíferas han promocionado diversas soluciones tecnológicas especulativas... pero la cruda realidad es que se trata de tácticas para paralizar los cambios y seguir contaminando.

Dada la urgencia de la amenaza del cambio climático, debemos unirnos para apoyar a la única solución real: el abandono paulatino, rápido, equitativo y completo de todos los combustibles fósiles.…  Seguir leyendo »

El discurso de las grandes petroleras dice una cosa. La realidad, otra

Si has estado escuchando a las principales compañías energéticas del mundo en los últimos años, es probable que pienses que la transición a la energía limpia está en marcha. Pero, dado que el consumo de combustibles fósiles y las emisiones siguen aumentando, no está avanzando con la suficiente rapidez para hacer frente a la crisis climática.

En junio, Shell se convirtió en la última de las grandes compañías petroleras en frenar sus planes de recorte de la producción de petróleo después de que anunció que ya no reducirá la producción anual de petróleo y gas hasta el final de la década.…  Seguir leyendo »

Cottbus is the base of the coal miner Leag, whose plans to expand renewables in eastern Germany won it praise © Patrick Pleul/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

There is a saying in the swath of eastern Germany known as the Lausitz that captures both the beauty of the region and the curse of its geology. “God created the Lausitz”, goes the expression. “But Satan put coal underneath”.

Local people did a deal with the devil over the past 100 years: they let mining machines carve chunks from the lush green forests, destroyed centuries-old villages to dig up millions of tonnes of the dirty lignite that lies under them and polluted the planet in the process. In exchange came thousands of jobs and the pride found in powering the German economic juggernaut.…  Seguir leyendo »

En defensa de los parques industriales verdes

A lo largo de la historia, la evolución de las tecnologías energéticas ha incidido en la ubicación de la producción. En los albores de la Revolución Industrial en el siglo XVIII, las fábricas normalmente estaban ubicadas cerca de ríos de cauce rápido o bajo molinos de viento, porque necesitaban estar cerca de su fuente de energía. La introducción del motor a vapor permitió que las empresas establecieran sus bases en cualquier lugar adonde el carbón se pudiera enviar a bajo costo.

El petróleo, cuyo transporte era aún más económico, distendió aún más la conexión entre la ubicación de una empresa y su fuente de energía.…  Seguir leyendo »

A solar plant in Uyayna, Saudi Arabia, April 2018. Faisal Al Nasser / Reuters

In the last few years, the global energy outlook has been transformed. The rise of populist politics and a growing sense of urgency about climate change have roiled debates about energy policy in wealthy countries, generating a dizzying mix of new industrial policies. The COVID-19 pandemic made it far harder to predict fuel prices and consumption patterns and forced many countries to confront their connections to fragile multistate supply chains and legacy petrostates. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine shattered any remaining fantasies of self-reliance, pushing Europe to reconsider its dependence on Russian resources and forcing the United States to acknowledge the Gulf’s persisting leverage in energy markets.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Fossil fuel companies and their executives don’t need our money. In fact, they use it against us.’ Photograph: Canadian Forces/Reuters

Canada is on fire from coast to coast to coast. Thousands have been evacuated, millions exposed to air pollution, New York a doom orange and even the titans of Wall Street choking.

Catastrophic flooding in Pakistan, back-to-back cyclones in the Pacific islands and droughts in Africa haven’t been enough to create a tipping point for action. Now that climate impacts have hit the economic capital of western power, will it spur governments in the global north to get serious?

A lack of scientific knowledge about climate change is not the barrier. Nor is a lack of cleaner, safer, cheaper energy alternatives.…  Seguir leyendo »

One of my most harrowing, and motivating, meetings of the past few months was with Johan Rockström, a fellow Swede and globally leading researcher of climate impact at the Potsdam Institute. He told me that although we are trying to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, today’s projections show a trend towards a 2.8-2.9°C increase. That would mean a very different world from the one we currently live in.

We now have 10-15 years to halve our carbon footprint, and batteries are a key technology to replace the use of coal, oil and natural gas before it’s too late.…  Seguir leyendo »

A worker checking solar photovoltaic modules used for small solar panels at a factory in Haian in China’s eastern Jiangsu province. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

There is something ironic, almost poignant, about Europe’s furious response to the Biden administration’s flagship climate law. For the past six or seven years, European officials have spoken regularly about how a climate-friendly economy was the future. “I am convinced that the old growth model that is based on fossil fuels and pollution is out of date”, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, declared in 2019. It was time to embrace a “new growth strategy”, she said, one as much about “cutting emissions” as “about creating jobs and boosting innovation”.

That’s exactly what the Inflation Reduction Act is designed to do.…  Seguir leyendo »