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In the UK, despite hundreds of millions being spent and no commercial projects in operation, a further £25 billion has been promised in new subsidies for Carbon, Capture and Storage (CCS) and Hydrogen. This is greater than the supposed £22 billion black hole that the previous Conservative Government left the new Labour government. If Labour is looking for a quick fix to find money to fund the winter fuel allowance, they should scrap these wasteful handouts to the fossil fuel industry.

It is clearer than ever that the climate crisis requires a rapid and managed phase-out of fossil fuel production. Reducing the wasteful practice of emitting methane into the atmosphere does not give the gas industry a pass. They need to clean up and wind down. And they need to start now.

The American Petroleum Industry’s greenhouse gas reporting template obscures the U.S. oil & gas industry’s massive responsibility for the climate crisis.

Five decades on from the first CCS project, the technology remains riddled with problems, unproven at scale, and not fit for purpose. It is beyond time to focus on the real solutions to the climate crisis and injustice that the fossil fuel industry has wrought. Neither CO2-rich gas or LNG qualify.

Last year, we rated ExxonMobil as "grossly insufficient" on all ten of the criteria. There are tiny steps forward in the new announcement, but nothing that changes any of our ten metrics from "grossly insufficient" to "insufficient," let alone to even "partial alignment."

Communities in Houston, Florida, Louisiana, Puerto Rico, and California are just beginning the long road to recovery from disasters made worse by climate change. It would seem downright irresponsible to increase taxpayer handouts to spur fossil fuel production at a time like this. But that’s exactly what’s being proposed in Washington.