After pressure from investors, ExxonMobil also sets itself climate target for 2050: ‘net zero' emissions

ExxonMobil is also the last of the major international oil companies to set a climate target for 2050. The American oil and gas company announced this on Tuesday. ExxonMobil’s climate plan is weaker than that of European competitors such as Eni, BP and Shell.

ExxonMobil to aim for ‘net zero’ CO₂emissions in 2050 for its own activities, such as oil extraction and refining. This means, for example, that the installations must be equipped with CO₂-capture. However, the oil company does not set itself targets for the amount of fossil fuels it wants to produce or supply, so it is possible that ExxonMobil will produce more fossil energy in the future. Last spring, ExxonMobil said it expects its global production of oil and gas to remain flat through 2025.

ExxonMobil received an unprecedented blow from shareholders last year for its lack of climate policy. At the May 2021 shareholder meeting, the tiny activist investor Engine No. 1 managed to have three supervisory directors appointed, against the advice of the management, to ensure ambitious climate policy.

Limited climate target

The American oil and gas companies ExxonMobil and Chevron (which also imposed a limited climate target for 2050 last October) are years behind their European competitors in terms of sustainability.

ExxonMobil aims to achieve an intermediate target of 20 to 30 percent less ‘CO . by 2030₂-intensive production. The company announced its goals for the coming decade last month. In the Netherlands, for example, ExxonMobil wants to reduce the CO₂reducing emissions from its large refinery in the port of Rotterdam, by using that CO₂ filter it out and put it in the ground under the North Sea.

Also read: Activist shareholders are calling on the climate – especially for themselves

ExxonMobil’s climate targets do not exclude production growth in fossil fuels. According to ExxonMobil, its climate plan is “in line with the Paris Climate Agreement” that the United Nations concluded in 2015 to limit global warming.

The question is whether critics will be satisfied with that. Milieudefensie’s groundbreaking lawsuit in the Netherlands against oil and gas company Shell revolved around the question of how specific companies’ climate goals should be. In that case, the court ruled that Shell’s CO₂emissions by 2030 by at least 45 percent (i.e. in an absolute sense) to comply with the Paris Climate Agreement. Shell has appealed against that ruling.

Major polluters

Last week, Milieudefensie wrote to 29 other ‘big polluters’ with the question whether they were prepared to set the same climate target as the CO₂reduction imposed by the court on Shell. ExxonMobil is one of the recipients of that letter.

Retrieval of NRC Regarding ExxonMobil’s response to this, a spokesperson for the company in Irving, Texas, US responded in writing that “we have published our net-zero ambitions.” The company declined to comment on the question whether ExxonMobil sees Milieudefensie’s letter as preparation for a lawsuit.