Research

Dispelling myths about North Sea oil taxes, jobs, profits and climate.

New analysis released today at the COP21 climate negotiations reveals that G7 countries along with Australia spend 40 times more on support for fossil fuel production than they do in contributions to the Green Climate Fund.

G20 country governments are providing $444 billion a year in subsidies for the production of fossil fuels. These governments are propping up the production of oil, gas and coal, most of which can never be used if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change, and undermining national climate commitments.

The states of Washington and Oregon are facing a quadrupling of their crude-by-rail terminal capacity to over a million barrels a day. This report examines the impact that expansion will have on unlocking carbon and thereby exacerbating climate change.

OECD countries support coal-fired power plants abroad by providing preferential financing through institutions called Export Credit Agencies (ECAs). These coal-fired power plants have significant costs, in the form damages to the health of local populations from air pollution, and the cost of climate-change causing emissions. This report finds that support for coal-fired power plants from the ECAs of OECD countries is implicated in tens of billions of dollars in local health impacts and climate change pollution each year.

The pipelines exporting tar sands out of Alberta are almost full, according to new analysis by Oil Change International. Without major expansion-driving pipelines such as Energy East, Kinder Morgan or Keystone XL, there will be no room for further growth in tar sands extraction and tens of billions of metric tonnes of carbon will be kept in the ground.

Oil Change International joins hundreds of organizations worldwide that have written to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) board calling on global reporting standards for extractive industries to include transparency from fossil fuel companies about the future viability of their oil, coal and gas projects in a warming world.

Market distorting subsidies to fossil fuels contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and impede the transition to sustainable, low-carbon development. In 2009, G-20 countries committed to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies in an effort to specifically address climate change and boost investment in clean energy sources. It has been five years since the G-20 commitment, yet very little progress has been made to end these subsidies.

With Shell in the Arctic, the scale and volume of the blowback from the environmental community has clearly caught the Administration flat footed. When confronted, they usually first mumble something about highest standards (which is completely irrelevant to the climate argument) but if pressed, the Administration and its defenders invoke a sober, scolding tone to explain: 1) We need oil and we will need oil for a long time. While we’re all concerned about climate, we’re still going to need oil and gas in the future and we might as well make as much of it as possible right here at home. 2) U.S. oil production is essentially irrelevant for climate, because “more oil production in one place generally means less oil production elsewhere – that’s how markets and prices work”. Together, these two arguments form what we can think of as the Convenient Lie that we can be serious about fighting climate change and also approve virtually all new fossil fuel infrastructure in the U.S. It’s the Convenient Lie that keeps us from dealing with the Inconvenient Truth.

There is a clear logic that can be applied to the global challenge of addressing climate change: when you are in a hole, stop digging. If we are serious about tackling the global climate crisis, we need to stop exploring, expanding, and ultimately exploiting fossil fuels. This is especially true for high cost, high carbon, high risk frontier projects such as offshore Arctic oil.