Do all roads lead to Paris?: Comparing pathways to net-zero by BP, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil

Abstract

Many oil majors have pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 while transitioning to clean energy. While achieving this requires transformative actions like downscaling hydrocarbon production, offsetting emissions with carbon credits is rapidly mainstreaming as a shortcut to decarbonisation. Although abundant research has contested the climate benefits of offsets, scholarship on oil majors’ climate actions has not examined their offsetting activity. We therefore focus on the world’s largest publicly traded majors — BP, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil — to examine if their net-zero strategies reflect a shift away from fossil fuels and to assess their offsetting behaviour. We firstly use three indicators to examine (i) the scope of emissions covered, (ii) plans to scale down fossil-fuel production and (iii) reliance on offsets. We then leverage a novel dataset built from company and third-party documents, along with offset-registry data, to assess what offsets are used and how these link to core business activities. Results show that no major’s decarbonisation pathway encompasses a business-model transformation away from fossil fuels. This is evidenced by missing plans to curb the production and sales of hydrocarbons and by a reliance on offsets to reach net-zero emissions and to decarbonise energy products. Moreover, results point to questionable climate benefits for offsets, since most derive from historically implemented emissions-avoidance projects that do not physically remove atmospheric carbon in the present. These findings challenge the appropriateness of claims about ‘carbon-neutral’ hydrocarbons, showing how net-zero strategies omit the urgent task of curbing the supply of fossil fuels to the global market.