Woodside Energy revealed that it is relying entirely on outdated climate science, when faced with questions from Greenpeace Australia Pacific at its AGM in Perth today.
Woodside CEO Meg’O’Neill repeatedly returned to references to a 2018 IPCC report when questioned on the company’s strategy to align with the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees or below.
“Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill is once again misleading investors about Woodside’s climate strategy, relying on old data from a 2018 IPCC report that has since been superseded. Woodside is ignoring the latest climate science and reports from the International Energy Agency, which clearly state that there can be no new gas fields if the world is to stay within 1.5 degrees of warming.
“The 2018 IPCC report that Woodside is leaning on so heavily to justify its claims assumes extraordinarily high amounts of carbon capture and storage – 220 times above what the world currently successfully captures and stores. This is just not feasible in any way. The IPCC has since updated its carbon capture and storage assumptions to much lower levels, still at a very high cost to deploy.
“Woodside itself has no plans for carbon capture and storage for the gas fields it plans at Scarborough and Browse, and the spectacular failure of CCS at Chevron’s Gorgon plant reveals the folly of relying on this experimental technology.”
Investors entering the AGM this morning were confronted by a sombre visual statement from Greenpeace Australia Pacific activists holding signs depicting recent devastating Australian climate impacts including record-breaking bushfires and floods, with the line “Climate change, sponsored by Woodside.”
Woodside faced a barrage of climate questions during a gruelling AGM, which saw a significant shareholder vote of 35% against the re-election of director Ian McFarlane.
Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter, who attended the AGM, said that Woodside failed to answer crucial questions about the climate impact of its gas expansion plans for the Burrup Hub.
“Woodside Chair Richard Goyder offered the Greenpeace team and I a meeting today, and I look forward to the opportunity to once again ask Woodside’s leaders the crucial questions on climate that they bluffed their way through at today’s AGM. Woodside is Western Australia’s largest energy company and should be leading the state’s renewable transition. But what was on offer today was the same tired, misleading nonsense, relying on outdated climate data and fantasy projections on future gas use that are completely at odds with current and credible science and modelling.”
—ENDS—
Notes to editors
Images from the Greenpeace Australia Pacific protest outside Woodside’s AGM can be found on the following link: https://media.greenpeace.org/Detail/27MZIFJLW7N62
