The “carbon bombs” which worsen climate change, a responsibility shared between States, businesses and banks

2023-11-01 18:00:05

Qatar, Mozambique, Norway, United States, China, Canada… In the four corners of the world, 422 “carbon bombs” threaten humanity’s chances of containing climate change within livable limits.

These fossil fuel sites contain the largest known reserves of coal, oil and gas in the world. Once extracted and used by humans for transportation, heating, powering industry or producing plastic, the energy from each of these deposits has the potential to release more than 1 billion tonnes – or a gigatonne – of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) in the atmosphere.

The 294 carbon bombs currently in operation have a joint emissions potential of 880 gigatons of CO2e: enough to exhaust humanity’s remaining “carbon budget” to contain the rise in global temperatures below 1.5°C. This budget amounts to 500 gigatons, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But the situation could get even worse, because 128 other carbon bombs are still in the planning stage. Once put into operation, these sites could add 300 gigatons of CO2e to the atmosphere, and definitively exhaust the maximum carbon budget to stay below 2°C, estimated at 1,150 gigatons.

TotalEnergies, number two

The mapping of these 422 super-emitting sites, carried out in 2022 by a group of academics led by German researcher Kjell Kühne, made a big splash, lifting the veil on the reality of a fossil fuel sector far from aligning with the objectives of the Paris climate agreement. Unprecedented research carried out by the French NGOs Eclaircies and Data for Good now allows us to understand the industrial and financial players who allow these timed climate bombs to exist. Revealed by The world and a consortium of international media before their publication on the site CarbonBombs.org Tuesday October 31, this data makes it possible to link the 422 carbon bombs to hundreds of companies, banks and states.

By aggregating several data sources, including those from the Global Energy Monitor, the NGOs managed to identify 454 companies linked to carbon bombs, for which they play the role operator or shareholder. Among them, we find 126 American groups, rather specialized in oil and gas, such as ExxonMobil or Chevron, and 125 Chinese groups, mainly invested in coal extraction, such as China Energy or China Coal Xinji Energy.

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