According to a recent study on behalf of Transport & Environment (T&E), Europe’s oil majors’ investments in biofuels refining are eight times bigger than hydrogen.
In fact, T&E accuses oil producers of not being serious about investing in genuinely clean fuels, but choosing the easy, unsustainable biofuels option.
Where Europe’s oil giants Shell, BP, Total, ENI and Repsol are investing in hydrogen, only part of this is truly ‘green’. Most of their investments are going towards decreasing the carbon intensity of their refinery operations, not for developing green transport fuels
the study says.
As Geert Decock, electricity and energy manager at T&E, added “oil producers are promoting hydrogen as their big bet for the future, but in reality their investments in green hydrogen are pitiful. Instead they are focusing their new refining capacity on biofuels which cannot sustainably supply the world’s transport needs.”
Furthermore, the study notes that of the refining sector’s €39 billion in planned investments for alternative fuels up until 2030, almost 75% will go towards increasing biofuels production.
€2 to €3 billion will be invested in new advanced biofuels (HVO) plants alone, doubling production capacity to 10 megatonnes by 2030.
This is four times higher than what can be sustainably sourced in the EU
according to T&E’s analysis, which further explained that oil companies are investing around €6.5bn in so-called ‘low carbon’ blue hydrogen to clean up their production processes. “This is double what they are spending on producing green hydrogen and e-fuels, which could be used to clean up aviation and shipping.”
Where oil producers are investing in hydrogen, most is going towards replacing dirty grey hydrogen operations with blue hydrogen, which still uses polluting fossil gas. Instead of wasting their time on easy, short-term solutions, oil refiners should switch to producing green hydrogen and e-fuels for ships and planes today
concluded Geert Decock.
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