World’s first public global fossil fuel database launched
On Monday, a first-of-its-kind database for tracking the world’s fossil fuel output, reserves, and emissions will go live, coinciding with climate negotiations at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. Data from approximately 50,000 oil, gas, and coal resources in 89 nations are included in the Global Registry of Fossil Fuels. This encompasses 75pc of worldwide reserves, production, and emissions and is open to the public for the first time for a collection of this magnitude.
Until, private data and analysis of the world’s fossil fuel consumption and reserves were available for purchase. The International Energy Agency already keeps public statistics on oil, gas, and coal, but it concentrates on demand, whereas this new database focuses on what has yet to be consumed.
Carbon Tracker, a non-profit think tank that studies the impact of the energy transition on financial markets, and the Global Energy Monitor, an organisation that follows a range of energy initiatives throughout the world, created the register.
Corporations, investors, and scientists already have some access to private fossil fuel data. Carbon Tracker founder Mark Campanale expressed optimism that the register will enable organisations to keep governments responsible, such as when they grant permits for fossil fuel exploitation.
The database’s publication and an accompanying study of the collected data coincide with two crucial sets of international climate talks: the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which begins on September 13, and COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, in November. Data like that published in the register might equip environmental and climate groups in their efforts to persuade national leaders to adopt tougher regulations that result in lower carbon emissions.
World’s first public global fossil fuel database launched
And we are in desperate need of carbon reductions, according to Campanale.
The developers discovered that the United States and Russia had enough undeveloped fossil fuel beneath to exhaust the world’s remaining carbon budget. That is the amount of carbon the world can afford to release before reaching a specific level of warming, in this case 1.5 degrees Celsius. It also demonstrates that these reserves would yield 3.5 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, which is greater than the total amount of emissions produced since the Industrial Revolution.
According to the database, we have significantly more carbon than we need as a global community, more than enough to overflow the bathtub and flood the bathroom in Jackson’s analogy. As a result, he believes that investors and shareholders should hold decision makers at the world’s top oil, gas, and coal firms accountable when they authorise new investments in fossil fuel extraction.
Campanale hopes that the data will be used by the investing community, “who ultimately control these firms,” to begin challenging the investment plans of companies still seeking to develop oil, gas, and coal operations.
“Firms such as Shell and Exxon, as well as Chevron and their shareholders, may utilise the research to really begin to pressure the companies to move in a whole other way.”
