Total has announced that the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) has rolled out further initiatives to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and support the goals of the Paris Agreement.

OGCI comprises 13 oil and gas companies: BP, Chevron, CNPC, Eni, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Occidental, Pemex, Petrobras, Repsol, Saudi Aramco, Shell and Total.

First, OGCI launched a new initiative to unlock large-scale investment in carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), a crucial tool to achieve net-zero emissions. OGCI’s CCUS KickStarter initiative is designed to help decarbonize multiple industrial hubs around the world, starting with hubs in the U.S., U.K., Norway, the Netherlands and China. The aim of the KickStarter is to create the necessary conditions to facilitate a commercially viable, safe and environmentally responsible CCUS industry, with an early aspiration to double the amount of carbon dioxide that is currently stored globally before 2030.

Second, OGCI showed progress toward its methane-intensity target announced last year. Members are on track to meet the methane-intensity target, having reduced collective methane intensity by 9 percent in 2018. In addition to the methane intensity target, OGCI is now working on a carbon-intensity target to reduce by 2025 the collective average carbon intensity of member companies’ aggregated upstream oil and gas operations. 

Third, all OGCI member companies have pledged to support policies that attribute an explicit or implicit value to carbon. Acknowledging the role that attributing a value to carbon plays as one of the most cost-efficient ways to achieve the low-carbon transition as early as possible, OGCI supports the introduction of appropriate policies or carbon-value mechanisms by governments. 

OGCI Climate Investments, OGCI’s $1 billion-plus fund, has nearly doubled the number of investments in promising clean technologies over the year. The fund now has a total of 15 investments in its portfolio. Climate Investments actively supports these companies in deployment and scale-up, as well as continuing to search for additional opportunities in its focus areas.