- BP – BP has set out ambitions to lower emissions from natural gas, develop more efficient and lower carbon fuels, lubricants, and petrochemicals, and to offer low carbon products to its customers.
- In 2019 BP Ventures made an investment of $30 million in Calysta, Inc., an alternative protein producer, that will use BP’s natural gas to produce protein for fish, livestock and pet feeds.
- Lowering the carbon content in its chemicals: BP’s PTAir, used to make items such as clothes and plastic food packaging, has a carbon footprint almost 30% lower than the average European PTA. BP is creating 20+ carbon neutral products and services through the use of advanced technology and the company’s offsetting program, Target Neutral.
- In 2018, BP launched the Advancing Low Carbon accreditation program, which aims to inspire every part of BP to identify lower carbon opportunities. Since the program’s inception, its businesses have been encouraged to change the way they operate, with over 50 projects achieving accreditation for delivering a better carbon outcome.
- Equinor is using virtual reality to make models of drilling platforms to use as a tool for more efficient mapping of errors and faults.
- Equinor has ongoing innovation challenges that result in awards of money to companies to research new technologies. For example, Equinor has invested in:
- Ampaire (US) is developing an electric aircraft, electric planes could reduce emissions by 99%;
- Crux OCM (Canada) uses artificial intelligence and real-time optimization to enable autonomous pipeline operation, reduce operational risk, and increase volumetric throughput by up to 4%;
- Opus 12 (USA) aims to convert CO2to fuel and other valuable products, and the technology will contain the CO2 conversion power equivalent to 37,000 trees in a volume comparable with a suitcase.
- ExxonMobil – Since 2000, ExxonMobil has invested $16.5 billion in R&D across all its businesses. Examples of that investment:
- Mitigating emissions in company operations and providing products to help customers reduce their emissions;
- ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics, Inc. (SGI) have worked together to develop a strain of algae able to convert carbon into a record amount of energy-rich fat, which can then be processed into biodiesel;
- Solar panels are baked in special resin with a solution developed by ExxonMobil in the 1990s.
- Shell – Shell’s net-zero emissions with a customer-first strategy calls for billions in investments through 2050 on innovative technologies like CCUS as well as nature-based-solutions. Shell continues to reduce emissions across its global businesses through innovations in CO2 and methane reductions through cutting edge optical cameras and other imaging technologies. Shell spends $1 billion per year on research, with more than three thousand people (about 3.5 percent of Shell’s workforce) involved. There are 1,400 research projects ongoing. Examples of Shell’s research projects:
- Using CT Scanning technology to look for corrosion in pipes more than a kilometer under the sea;
- Shell became the first branded fuel retailer to sell hydrogen at one of its retail sites in the UK.
Learn more about NGSA member actions in our blog post as well as our graphic Reaching Climate Goals with Natural Gas.