Let's Talk Fossil Fuels

What they're made from, how we use them for energy, and why they're the leading cause of greenhouse gases. Plus, the Big Oil money trail.

Nov 18, 2022

THE GIST OF IT

🍃 Fossil fuels are the remains of plants and animals from hundreds of millions of years ago which have turned into gas, oil, and coal.

🔥 We burn these fossil fuels to generate electricity, fuel transportation, and create heat.

💨 Burning fossil fuels releases millenia-old carbon dioxide, methane, etc into our air, land, and oceans as greenhouse gas emissions. 

🌞 To cut emissions and curb global warming, we have to drastically cut our reliance on fossil fuels for energy.

→ Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

What are fossil fuels?

Fossil fuels are the oil, coal, and gas that we extract from the ground. Over 90% of the fossil fuels we take from the Earth, we burn for energy. We use the rest to make things like plastic, lubricants, and steel. Here’s how fossil fuels formed:

Hundreds of millions of years ago (pre-dinosaurs), 🌱 plants, 🦐 plankton, 🧫 algae, and 🦠 bacteria died in water.
They were buried under the depth and pressure of millions of years of sediment.
All of that pressure and lack of oxygen created heat, and turned these dead organisms into oil, gas, and coal — what we call fossil fuels.1

Fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource. That means that we’re (quite literally) burning through them before they can be replenished. Renewable energy on the other hand (solar, wind, geothermal, etc) can be replenished.

Every step in the fossil fuel supply chain — sourcing, manufacturing, burning, and disposal — creates greenhouse gases (GHGs), which are the leading cause of climate change, by far.

How do we use fossil fuels for energy?

When fossil fuels are burned, they create heat, which is a form of energy. In 2021, 82% of the world’s primary energy was derived from burning fossil fuels. [Fig. A] In the US, 37% of total energy was used on transportation. The rest was used for powering residential, commercial, and industrial buildings and equipment. [Fig. B]

🚗 Transportation: To create energy in most vehicles, you burn gasoline (a refined product of fossil fuels) to create tiny explosions. Those explosions create the energy in gas-powered cars.
🏢 Energy and heat for buildings and manufacturing. Fossil fuels are burned at power plants. At most of the world’s largest plants, they’re burned to create steam, and that steam powers a turbine which drives a generator.

💡 In the US, you can learn which fossil fuels or renewables are powering your region using the EPA’s Power Profiler. Find your grid, the power mix your region uses, average emissions, and how your region compares to the national average.

How are fossil fuels powering climate change?

The main cause of climate change is a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and water, and 73% of those GHGs come from extracting and burning fossil fuels. Here’s why:

💀 Plants and tiny organisms died. Underground, their energy was concentrated into carbon, methane, and other chemical elements as fossil fuels.
🔥 We dig up and burn those fossil fuels for energy. When we do, we release all the carbon, methane, etc into the air and oceans as greenhouse gases.
🥵 Greenhouse gas emissions capture and emit heat for years creating deadly effects like extreme heat, flooding, and food shortages.2

Burning fossil fuels isn’t the only way to generate power. We can capture heat from the sun using solar panels, or motion from the wind using turbines. These renewable energy sources don’t require extracting or burning fossil fuels, so we can generate energy with a small fraction of the emissions.

When we decrease fossil fuel emissions, we can decrease greenhouse gases, and therefore the impacts of climate change. But most countries are still producing more fossil fuels in 2022 than they did last year. [Fig. C]

Historically, emissions have only reduced during periods of global crisis and financial downturn (COVID lockdowns, oil crises, financial crises).3 [Fig. C] But we can lower emissions without human or financial calamity.

Since 2005, at least 32 countries have grown economically while shrinking their emissions. It’s proof that it’s possible (if not urgently necessary) to have economic growth without raising emissions.

🗺 Want to see where your city’s emissions are coming from? There’s a new tool that pinpoints over 70,000 emissions sources — from cargo ships to power plants — using satellite data. Historically, a lot of emissions data is self-reported (and potentially under reported), so hopefully this tool will lead to more transparency and accountability. Use the Climate TRACE map to see which companies and industries are creating the most emissions around the world.

Who is funding fossil fuels?

Governments can regulate fossil fuel production and incentivize low-carbon alternatives, but companies are the primary backers of fossil fuel production.

Just 25 corporate and state fossil fuel producers account for 51% of industrial greenhouse gases, globally.4 In the top 25, there are some names you’ll recognize like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.

These companies have emitted a huge amount of greenhouse gases with little repercussions because of their immense power and financial influence.

Three hundred public companies own 98% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves.5 Some of these companies are investing in renewable energy, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing enough (er, anything) to actually phase out fossil fuel production.6 7 [Fig. E]

How Big Oil is cashing in on renewable energy

To stay within a 1.5°C carbon budget, fossil fuel companies would not only have to stop digging new wells and mines, they’d have to cut current production. In other words, the only way for us to curb global warming for a livable planet is for energy companies to drastically cut production of fossil fuels.8

Despite their lack of climate action, Big Oil companies are not short on climate talk:

📈 Setting goals, with no attempt to meet them: 25 of the top fossil-fuel-owning asset managers committed to cut emissions by 50% by 2030, but they haven't yet acted on these promises.9 And why would they when oil and gas producers are forecasted to double their net income to $4 trillion this year (despite staggering prices for consumers)?
🤥 Putting out misleading climate ads and messaging: One study estimates that BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and TotalEnergies spent $750m in 2021, pushing “green” initiatives in 60% of their communications (social media, ads, etc).10 But only 12% of their spending is forecasted for low-carbon action. [Fig. H]
🤝 Leeching onto climate efforts via sponsorship: Coca-Cola is one of the world’s top plastic producers. (Plastic is a product of fossil fuels.) Yet they’re one of this year’s big sponsors at COP27, the annual UN Climate Change Conference.

🌡 Why is 1.5°C so important? 

In 2015, 196 countries signed the Paris Agreement, an international climate change treaty. 

One of the most-referenced goals in the document is to limit global warming to 1.5°C. This number was calculated by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Based on their modeling, going above 1.5°C would drastically raise the risk of catastrophic weather and loss of life.

From one pocket, fossil fuel companies are funding shady sustainability claims, and from the other, they’re funding politicians’ campaigns.

That financial influence of fossil fuels in politics has a big ripple effect. For example, lobbyists are already planning to use a newly Republican House to divert low-to-mid income homeowners away from the thousands of dollars in rebates available for swapping to more efficient or renewable energy sources.

Koch Industries tops the list of oil and gas companies contributing to political campaigns. From ‘21 to ‘22, Koch Industries invested $23.7m into US candidates and party committees.

My last two cents on fossil fuels:

¢ “The growth of fossil fuels is incompatible with solving global warming. Acknowledging that basic fact is the beginning of any serious plan for oil and gas companies.” That’s actually from David Roberts, but I couldn’t have said it better.

¢ Be wary of how companies calculate their “net zero” claims, and don’t get distracted by Big Oil’s carbon credits and capture.

Imagine you’re holding a bucket under a faucet, and it’s overflowing. To avoid more spillage, you’d probably turn off the faucet before looking around for a new bucket. The faucet is oil, gas, and coal. New buckets are carbon capture. The carbon capture industry is still developing and carbon credits are questionable. Using less fossil fuels is the most impactful action we can take right now.