European energy firms doing nothing to tackle climate change, says Greenpeace

Greenpeace has accused major European gas and oil companies of doing nothing to transition towards cleaner energy and "just pretending" to be working towards their climate commitments.

Contrary to public perception, wind and solar power production by big oil companies is still surprisingly low, according to the environmentalist group.

"European companies are not transitioning at all, they are just pretending," Greenpeace campaigner Jakub Gogolewski told AFP.

The NGO was presenting, in the middle of a European heatwave, an analsysis of a 110-page report written by German energy expert Steffen Bukold.

It compiles the 2022 results of 12 European energy groups and finds that only 0.3 percent of their total production was generated by renewable energies. The remaining 99.7 percent came from oil and gas production.

"There was a one-sided fossil dominance of investments in 2022: 92.7 percent on average were invested in the continuation of the fossil oil and gas path and only 7.3% in a change towards sustainable energy production and low-carbon solutions," Greenpeace said.

"You cannot let these companies self-regulate... that's why we ask the governments to step in for the well-being of the citizens, because self-regulation in the industry does not work," said Gogolewski

On the western edge of Paris, under the slogan, "The thermometer is exploding, thanks to the fossil fuel industry", a number of activists built a fake oil derrick in the La Defense business district, where TotalEnergies is headquartered.

The Greenpeace report, entitled "The Dirty Dozen" lists data from six international oil majors based in Europe; Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor, Eni and Repsol along with six national oil and gas companies (OMV (Austria), PKN Orien (Poland), MOL (Hungary), Wintershall Dea (Germany, subsidiary of BASF), Petrol Group (Slovenia) and Ina Croatia (Croatia).