None of the government entities have published any plans to reduce their combined operating and customer GHGs, on any schedule, let alone by 2050
When the greenhouse gases consumers discharge when they use energy and mineral products are assigned to the companies that make those products, less than 230 global companies — and their customers — account for over 80 per cent of anthropogenic GHG releases.Article content
The 50 top emitters and their customers account for almost 60 per cent of total manmade GHG discharges. Thirty-six of those companies are directly government-owned or indirectly government-controlled. None of the government entities — such as Saudi Aramco, Coal India and Petrobras — have published any plans to reduce their combined operating and customer GHGs, on any schedule, let alone by 2050.
It is therefore irrational to expect global GHG cuts to be realized by forcing the 14 remaining, publicly traded top emitters out of business. The government-owned entities will simply scoop the private shareholders’ abandoned market shares. That is one of many reasons that the government of Canada’s “net-zero” plan does not add up. The plan says that Canada’s oil and gas producers will be required to cut GHGs from their Canadian resource extraction and processing operations to just under 60 per cent of current discharges. That is a lot — maybe even a pipe dream. But the government of Canada also forecasts that Canadian crude oil and gas production will increase at a rate of 1.0 per cent to 3.
When one does the arithmetic, however, we see that if Canada’s net-zero plan is successfully implemented, for every tonne of carbon Canadian oil and gas producers might cut in their Canadian operations they are expected, on average, to discharge an incremental two to three tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere, due to growth in petroleum product sales and use.