Emissions Accounting Framework and How Big Oil Uses It To Fake a Green Narrative

When major oil companies talk about cutting carbon emissions, they aren’t technically lying. But they also aren’t telling the whole story—in fact, they are usually leaving out about ⅔ of the story. 

To better understand what these major oil companies are promising, we must first understand what’s called the Emissions Accounting Framework. This structure separates a company’s carbon footprint into three categories known as the Burn, Buy, or Beyond scopes. 

Scope 1 emissions, also known as Burn, refer to all of the greenhouse gasses emitted by a company’s assets. In other words, what emissions are generated by the heating, cooling, and daily operating of a company’s facilities. What emissions are generated by their company owned vehicles? 

Scope 1 emissions are the easiest to measure–and also reduce–since they are completely owned and controlled by a company.

Scope 2 emissions, also known as Buy, refer to anything that a company consumes but is generated offsite. For example, Scope 2 emissions are indirect because they are created by the offsite companies and utilities who generate the electricity or gas or water needed to run an office building, a factory, a refinery, etc. 

Scope 2 emissions can also be easy for larger companies to control if they have the means and desire to cut energy-use, design smarter facilities, and invest in electric vehicles or renewable energy sources.

Scope 3 emissions, also known as Beyond, make up over 70% of a company’s emissions, so of course this is where things get much more complicated. There are 15 categories of Scope 3 emissions that move throughout a product’s value chain, which include employee commuting, business travel, sourcing of supplies, packaging materials, and the way consumers use and dispose of a product. Since Scope 3 emissions are so difficult to quantify, most companies simply don’t.

Scope 3 emissions are also heavily dispersed by individual consumers. They are aptly named because once sold, these emissions move beyond a company’s control and become dependent on the individual consumer’s choices. If they are purchasing oil or gasoline for their car, is it a fuel efficient car? Does their catalytic converter work (or exist)? Does their fuel tank leak? How many miles do they drive each day?

Once emissions involve individual consumers, most companies argue that it’s not their responsibility to regulate consumers’ decisions or actions. (That argument would be sound if those same companies didn’t spend millions of dollars each year lobbying for deregulations that shape the framework for every decision consumers are able to make.) 

And that Dr. Frankenstein-esque-washing-my-hands-of-this mentality brings me back to my original point: When oil and gas majors talk about cutting their emissions by 90%, usually they are talking about their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions only, which usually make up no more than 30% of the emissions produced by their products. Many of these big carbon-neutral plans (a sneaky-little term for another day) don’t include one of the most polluting phases of energy and materials production: disposal. Instead, these huge companies with record-breaking and constantly-growing profits are placing the responsibility of disposal on the consumer. And this wouldn’t be such a huge burden if these products were actually disposable.

Now we have a country-sized island of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean, a mountain range of fast-fashion in Chile’s Atacama Desert, and 417 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that speak clearly to the gap between industry and consumer responsibility that exists in Scope 3. And most companies think it is up to the consumer to bridge that responsibility gap. (Reduce, re-use, recycle, drive less, turn off your lights, take shorter showers, eat locally and in season, have smaller families, use local transportation, buy electric cars, buy reusable water bottles, buy metal straws, buy carbon offsets.) 

(Please don’t buy carbon offsets.)

While these big oil carbon-neutral pledges sound good, and makes us feel like these powerful people and institutions are going to save us from ourselves, these pledges are not made in good faith. 

When an oil company claims they will cut their emissions by 90%, we assume that means everything that company does and produces–including our own emissions when we consume those products–will be cut by 90%. But in most cases, these companies are only talking about their own operational emissions.

These pledges mean that the oil companies themselves will switch to the renewable energy that they’ve fought against for decades. After lobbying against electric vehicles and keeping them unaffordable for the masses, they will electrify their fleets. They will lower their carbon dioxide emissions while growing their emissions of other, less regulated greenhouse gasses like methane, all while tripling their plastic production.

These companies talk a big, green game, but when you look at what they’re actually saying, it becomes obvious they don’t believe in their own pledges or the sustainability of their “cleaner” technologies. This disingenuous messaging is made most clear by a leaked internal PR presentation from Shell that told employees the following: “Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense.”

In order for oil companies to truly cut their emissions in meaningful ways, they need to spend more time with Scope 3—in the Beyond emissions. They need to be responsible for their product through it’s entire life-span and help consumers bridge the responsibility gap in ways that don’t just look good on paper or sound good at Climate Change Conferences.