To learn more about natural gas and renewables, visit Partnering With Renewables.
- BP: Natural gas offers a cleaner alternative to coal for power generation and can lower emissions at scale. It also provides a valuable partner for renewables intermittency, delivers heating at the high temperatures required by industry and is increasingly used in transportation. Across BP’s scenarios, natural gas grows robustly, overtaking coal as the second-largest source of energy by 2030.
- Shell – Shell’s net-zero emissions with a customer-first strategy invests heavily in renewable energy resources across its value chain to reduce emissions and produce renewable power. By 2030, Shell’s ambition is to provide a reliable electricity supply to 100 million people who don’t have it today, raising quality of life and health around the world. Examples of how Shell is working toward this goal: Shell is partnering with the Clean Cooking Alliance to provide households with clean cookstoves and fuels; Shell developed a community-run solar-powered energy kiosk in the Logpan village in New Ibajay, El Nido, the Philippines – which is close to Shell’s offshore activities in Palawan. Shell’s energy kiosk offers small solar home systems for individual households, but also manages a solar-powered water pump, which provides villagers access to safe and filtered water.
Renewable Investments:
BP — BP has been in the renewable energy business for over 20 years. The company remains one of the largest operators among its peers, and is expanding in areas where it sees opportunities for growth.
- Solar: BP has partnered with Lightsource, Europe’s largest solar development company. It is investing $200 million over three years and holds a 50% stake in the company.
- Biofuels: BP has partnered with Bunge, a leader in agriculture, food, and ingredients, to create a global scale, highly efficient producer of sugarcane ethanol in Brazil called Bunge Bioenergia. Ethanol produced from sugarcane is one of the most carbon efficient biofuels available globally, with lifecycle GHG emissions around 70% lower than conventional hydrocarbon transport fuels.
- Biopower: The company is creating this low carbon power source by burning bagasse, the fibre that remains after crushing sugarcane stalks. In 2018, BP generated 892 gigawatts per hour (GW/h) — enough to supply power to 1.25 million people in Brazil.
- Wind: BP has significant interests in onshore wind energy in the U.S. It operates 10 sites in 7 states and holds an interest in another facility in Hawaii. The net generating capacity from its U.S. portfolio is enough to power almost 400,000 homes.
- BP has partnered with Tesla to test how effectively wind energy can be stored at the Titan 1 wind energy site in South Dakota.
- BP is also using renewable energy in its operations, such as using solar pumps for chemical injections and to prevent freeze offs, and using solar-powered generators in place of thermal electric ones.
- EQT – EQT has installed solar panels on several compressor stations generating renewable energy in order to fuel its operations.
- Equinor – Equinor’s goal is to become a global offshore wind major. By 2030, renewable energy can potentially represent 15 – 20% of Equinor’s annual investments. Examples of how Equinor is investing in renewable energy:
- Equinor operates 3 windfarms off the coast of the UK, as well as other wind projects offshore the UK, Germany, and U.S;
- Equinor operates the first floating wind farm and is currently building the world’s largest wind farm – Hywind Tampen in the North Sea
- Equinor is a partial owner of a solar field in Brazil and has invested in two new companies in the solar energy industry;
- Equinor has established a new business area for New Energy Solutions and the fund will invest up to $200 million USD over a period of four to seven years in projects focus on renewable technology and CCS.
- Shell – Shell is expanding its solar and wind businesses. In the short term investing $2-3 billion in Renewables and Energy Solutions with long term goals of providing 560 terawatt hours of clean power as a service a year by 2030 to over 15 million customers. Examples of renewable energy investments for Shell:
- Shell has invested in a German company, Sonnen, that makes home batteries which allow people with solar panels on their roofs to store electricity they are not using immediately in those batteries;
- Shell is a 50% shareholder in Atlantic Shoresin New Jersey, which is working to develop an offshore lease area capable of generating 2.5 gigawatts (GW) of wind power;
- Shell is a 50% shareholder in the Mayflower Consortium, which is working to develop a lease area off the coast of Massachusetts that will have the potential to generate 1.6GW of wind power capable of powering more than 680,000 homes.
Renewable Natural Gas
- ExxonMobil – ExxonMobil’s polyolefins facility in Baton Rouge runs on landfill gas, which reduces the plant’s natural gas bill and also allows it to keep garbage-produced methane out of the atmosphere. According to the State of Louisiana, using this landfill’s natural gas to run the boilers is equivalent to removing 59,000 cars from the road.
- BP – In 2017 BP acquired the upstream segment of Clean Energy Fuels’ renewable natural gas business and signed a long-term supply contract with Clean Energy to support the firm’s continuing downstream renewable natural gas business. The deal allowed the companies to accelerate the growth in renewable natural gas supply and meet the growing demand for natural gas vehicle fuel. Link: https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/news/press-releases/bp-and-clean-energy-partner-expand-renewable-natural-gas-transportation-fueling-capabilities.html
Learn more about NGSA member actions in our blog post as well as our graphic Reaching Climate Goals with Natural Gas.