TITLE: Air pollution: Only 5% of countries meet WHO recommendations for fine particles
https://english.elpais.com/climate/2024-03-19/air-pollution-only-5-of-countries-meet-who-recommendations-for-fine-particles.html
EXCERPT: Only seven of the 127 countries analyzed by the Swiss air quality technology company IQAir in 2023 complied with the new safety limits set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for suspended particulate matter smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter (known as PM2.5), a type of particulate matter deriving in part from fossil fuels and linked to around one million premature deaths each year worldwide. That only 5% of the states surveyed now meet these guidelines — which the WHO tightened in 2021 after surveying the scientific literature on the health effects of pollution — demonstrates the huge challenge nations face in making sure their citizens are not exposed to unsafe air.
The seven countries that are below the WHO maximum, set at an annual average of five micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3), are Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand.
At the other extreme — with the worst air quality due to the presence of these small suspended particles — are Bangladesh, which exceeds the WHO recommendation by more than 15 times, Pakistan (14 times more) and India (10 times more). They are followed by Tajikistan, Burkina Faso, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates, all of which exceed the maximum levels of PM₂,₅ by between 8.5 and 10 times.
In addition to the 127 countries studied, the analysis by the IQAir platform, which has been producing such reports for six years, includes seven other regions and territories associated with other nations. The global picture does not change much by including these regions, as the degree of compliance with the new WHO thresholds for fine particles — which are capable of entering the lungs and even reaching the bloodstream, causing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases — remains very low.
TITLE: Fossil fuel majors miss the mark on climate targets
https://www.dw.com/en/fossil-fuel-majors-miss-the-mark-on-climate-targets/a-68617638
EXCERPT: Nearly a decade on from the historic 2015 Paris Agreement, oil and gas companies are nowhere near meeting targets to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) — a goal that itself is becoming increasingly unlikely.
That's the assessment of the latest report from Carbon Tracker, a London-based think tank that monitors how financial markets and investments can affect climate change. The evaluation compared 25 of the world's largest oil and gas companies, including BP, TotalEnergies, PetroChina and Saudi Aramco.
"Companies worldwide are publicly stating they are supportive of the goals of the Paris Agreement and claim to be part of the solution in accelerating the energy transition," said Maeve O'Connor, an oil and gas analyst at Carbon Tracker and author of the report.
"Unfortunately, however, we see that none are currently aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement," added O'Connor.
The report aims to hold companies to account, and influence climate action by making investors aware of the risks of continued reliance on fossil fuels, the burning of which is the largest contributor to planetary heating.
After analyzing public data, Carbon Tracker judged each oil and gas company in five key areas: investment plans, recently approved projects, production plans, emissions targets and executive remuneration policies, which may be used to reward CEOs to boost production.
The company to come off best in the ranking was British oil giant BP, though its barely passing grade of D isn't anything to write home about. And a more detailed analysis by Carbon Tracker pointed out that BP "is still exploring for new reserves across six continents and planning a significant increase in its [liquefied natural gas] portfolio."
Among the major oil and gas companies analyzed by Carbon Tracker, BP was still the only one aiming to cut its production by 2030. Three other European companies — Spain's Repsol, Equinor in Norway and UK-based Shell — have committed to keeping production volumes flat. Chesapeake Energy, based in the US, was set to drop production in 2024 but its longer term strategy remains unclear.
Most companies evaluated by Carbon Tracker, however, were still planning to expand their fossil fuel production in the next decade. At the extreme end, American multinational ConocoPhillips is aiming to increase production by 47% over the next five to eight years, compared with its 2022 output.
TITLE: Oil Execs Happily Admit They’re Not Worried About Climate Policy
https://newrepublic.com/article/179949/exxon-conocophillips-oil-climate-change
EXCERPT: For the last few years, oil and gas industry executives have talked a big game about their commitment to an “energy transition”—not their own transition, necessarily, so much as a coming global zeitgeist whose arrival they anticipate. Corporate leaders didn’t provide many details about what exactly would be transitioned to or away from or metrics for evaluating when such a transition could be said to have happened. Mostly, nobody asked.
That’s started to shift, as industry leaders appear to be embracing a somewhat novel concept for them: honesty. At an energy conference being held in Houston this week, CERAWeek by S&P Global, some CEOs seem to be giving up the act entirely. “We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas,” Saudi Aramco Amin Hassan Nasser said in Texas this week. ExxonMobil chief Darren Woods—whose company is suing its own investors for asking it to strengthen internal climate targets—struck a similar tone. “We’re not on the path to make net-zero by 2050 currently, and one of the challenges here is that while society wants to see emissions reduced, nobody wants to pay for it,” he asserted on Monday at the same conference, sometimes referred to as the Super Bowl of energy. On Tuesday, ConocoPhillips CEO Ryan Lance even offered a rare expression of gratitude to the Biden White House, which has overseen record levels of oil and gas production: “Thank you to this administration.”
There’s still plenty of griping, especially about Biden’s alleged “ban” on approving new liquefied natural gas export facilities; in reality, it’s a temporary pause that has no bearing on facilities that are already operating, under construction, or that have gotten a green light from federal officials to move forward. But that the top brass of the oil and gas industry is striking an ever-so-slightly more copacetic tone should concern those of us who are not making millions of dollars off the extraction, production, transportation and sale of hydrocarbons.
TITLE: Gulf Coast Petrochemical Buildout Draws Billions in Tax Breaks for Polluters
https://prospect.org/environment/2024-03-19-gulf-coast-petrochemical-buildout-tax-breaks-polluters/
EXCERPT: A booming petrochemical buildout on the Gulf Coast has drawn billions of dollars in public subsidies from state tax abatement programs despite regular violations of pollution permits, according to a new report released Thursday.
The Environmental Integrity Project, an environmental nonprofit based in Texas and Washington, D.C., compiled data on all U.S. plastics projects built, expanded or proposed since 2012, almost all of them along the Gulf Coast.
The report identified 50 plastics complexes built or expanded in the last 12 years, 33 in Texas. Together they have drawn a total of $1.65 billion in property tax breaks through the state’s Chapter 313 program for energy and manufacturing companies, which the state legislature replaced last year with a new but similar program.
That’s a tiny dent in Texas’ $250 billion annual tax revenue, but it’s just one visible slice of the total concessions corporations receive to do business in Texas, and it represents lost income that would have gone primarily to the state’s public schools, which are struggling with shortfalls in teachers and funding.
Now, companies are proposing to build an additional 42 plastics plants, 24 of them in Texas, according to the 73-page EIP report, “Feeding the Plastics Industrial Complex.”
“The industry is expanding rapidly, and more communities are being asked to consider public subsidies,” it said. “None of the state programs we examined require industries to follow the terms of their state pollution control permits.”
While Texas hosts the most new plastics production, the most generous tax breaks come from neighboring Louisiana, among the nation’s poorest states, where three projects alone drew $6.5 billion in local discounts since 2013. All operating projects considered in the EIP report claimed a total of $9 billion in exchange for commitments to economic development and job growth.
That money would have otherwise funded local schools and public services, said Alexandra Shaykevich, research manager at the Environmental Integrity Project. Instead, it’s given to highly profitable corporations that are often foreign-owned and likely would have located near the nation’s major oil and gas resources with or without local tax incentives, according to her group’s report.
Most facilities reviewed by the EIP reported repeated violations of their pollution permits, Shaykevich said, but those violations never jeopardized their tax subsidies.
“I think if companies can’t obey the law they shouldn’t be rewarded with taxpayer money,” she said.