Oil & Energy
Why The Energy Sector Is Avoiding Full Emissions Disclosure
The tracking and disclosure of carbon dioxide emissions is at the heart of the energy transition as the first step towards reducing these same emissions. Yet for all the regulatory and activist effort to pressure businesses into full emissions disclosure, it has been tricky, because companies don’t want full emissions disclosure.
A recent study from ESG data provider Clarity AI has revealed that only a tenth of energy companies disclose emissions generated from oil and gas projects in which they participate as investors rather than operators.
The study used data from emission tracker Climate TRACE to show that the great majority of the 20 largest oil and gas companies in the world did not report so-called investment Scope 3 emissions, suggesting this could be problematic for investors.
Scope 3 emissions are the bane of companies’ existence in the current regulatory environment that has prioritized carbon dioxide emissions almost above all else. The pressure to track and report all scopes of emissions is enormous but it is particularly significant in Scope 3: the indirect emissions a company gets on its “bill” from working with suppliers and selling products to clients.
Now, per that Clarity AI study, it emerges that Scope 3 emissions are also the ones generated from projects where companies are only an investor—and they, too, need to be tracked and reported. The idea appears to be that no single molecule of CO2 should go unreported in order to arrest changes in the Earth’s climate.
For obvious reasons, oil and gas companies have been an especially big focus of Scope 3 emission disclosure and reduction efforts due to the nature of their activity, which abounds with all sorts of emissions. For equally obvious reasons, this focus has not made the industry happy, with the general argument being that responsibility for the emissions generated from the use of hydrocarbon products lies with everyone who uses them rather than the ones who produce them.
The reason that oil and gas companies do not want to report their Scope 3 emissions is pretty much the same as the reason for all other companies to be reluctant to do that — the massive amount of resources that would need to go into tracking all indirect emissions a company’s activities produce.
Tracking Scope 3 would involve tracking absolutely every step of the way that a product — or a service — passes from inception to market and that is one quite long way.
The argument of transition advocates is that investors are interested in this sort of information because it helps them make better informed decisions as they increasingly bet on a transition economy. Failing to report Scope 3 emissions, the argument goes, essentially means misleading investors.
Not everyone agrees that reporting all CO2 emissions to the last molecule is all that important, however. “Companies don’t have the incentive to report everything, … just because they don’t have the means to, or haven’t been able to measure it,” said Patricia Pina, the head of Clarity AI’s product research and innovation, told Inside Climate News.
Indeed, some transition advocates attach zero importance to detailed emission reporting, instead prioritizing direct and “decisive” decarbonization.
Commenting on the study to Inside Climate News, the head of the Erasmus platform for sustainable value creation at Ereasmus University in Rotterdam said that while it is understandable why oil and gas companies might not be enthusiastic about Scope 3 reporting, “we don’t really need them to do that. We need them to transition decisively to net zero and to invest massively in renewable energy”.
It appears, then, that not everyone in the pro-decarbonization camp feels equally strongly bout indirect emissions, specifically from investments. Yet the issue could yet become problematic for energy companies if enough pro-transition investors take it to heart as they did all other Scope 3 emissions.
On the flip side, climate-related shareholder resolutions have seen a decline in shareholder support over the past couple of years, which might suggest that investor interest in emissions, direct or indirect, is waning, replaced by things like returns.
This waning interest has coincided with companies beginning to revise their climate commitments, including emission reporting.
The latter trend was detected by the Energy Institute in its latest Statistical Review of World Energy, which revealed that the commitments companies made years ago were unrealistically ambitious.
In a sense, the corporate world woke up to the reality that lightning fast decarbonization is physically impossible and likely financial undesirable.
“Everyone got swept up in a wave of enthusiasm”, the head of sustainable investing research at one Dutch asset manager told the FT last month. “The reality is not so easy”.
Indeed, it appears that enthusiasm for everything from wind and solar to Scope 3 emissions reporting is weakening, to be replaced by a more level-headed approach to energy and corporate management.
By: Irina Slav
Researchers in Hong Kong and China have developed a new form of battery that is more eco-friendly and longer lasting than lithium ion batteries – and it runs on tofu brine. The new water battery is still in research phases, but if the technology proves to be scalable enough to hit commercial markets, it could be a game-changer for the energy and tech sectors.
“Compared with current aqueous battery systems … our system delivers exceptional long-term cycling stability and environmental friendliness under neutral conditions,” the research team, composed of scientists from the City University of Hong Kong and Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, Guangdong, said in a paper published this month in Nature Communications.
The researchers found that their battery model can be recharged over 120,000 times. “At over a hundred thousand cycles, this could mean a single water-based battery could last at least a decade or so,” states a recent report on the breakthrough from Interesting Engineering. “For applications like grid storage (solar farms, wind balancing), that’s extremely valuable,” the article went on to say.
This kind of lifespan would represent a drastic improvement over the battery technologies that dominate today’s market. Lithium-ion batteries degrade after between 1,000 and 3,000 charge cycles. This could prove revolutionary, as finding an alternative to lithium-ion batteries to power rechargeable devices is a major priority for Big Tech and the global energy sector.
Moreover, these tofu-brine batteries could prove safer and more environmentally friendly than lithium-ion batteries. According to the study authors, the full cells are environmentally benign and nontoxic and can be directly discarded to environments according to various standards.” Water based (also called aqueous) batteries can also potentially be cheap to produce as they rely on ingredients that are less rare in addition to being less hazardous.
Lithium is environmentally harmful to extract, prone to fires, and its supply chains are geopolitically fraught. Currently, China alone controls half of the global lithium market, and is rapidly increasing its stake. In 2024, more than eight in ten battery cells on the planet were made in China. This means that finding a battery model that can compete with lithium-ion batteries in applications like grid-scale energy storage and electric vehicles would have revolutionary implications for global markets.
Researchers around the world have been racing to develop battery models that could diversify the market and make it more competitive and resilient. These models range widely in size, components, and application, with models currently under development for next-gen sodium-ion batteries, quantum batteries, nuclear batteries, and even sand and dirt batteries.
Of course, the irony is that the leading alternatives to lithium-ion batteries are also being developed in Chinese labs. If this new tofu-brine battery proves scalable and applicable outside of a laboratory environment, it could just be another step toward Beijing’s goal of near-total domination of clean energy technology value chains and status as the world’s first and premiere ‘electro-state.’
China’s extreme advantage in global battery making gives it a major point of leverage in global economies as the world continues to electrify at a rapid pace. It is estimated that European demand for lithium in batteries will reach kilo tonnes (thousands of tonnes) of Lithium Carbonate Equivalent by next year, and North American demand will reach 250 kit LCE. it’s all but certain that the vast majority of that demand will be supplied by China.
Other nations are aware of the risk of this dependency, and are taking pains to protect and promote domestic battery manufacturing, but these efforts may be too little, too late. “For globally competitive battery manufacturing industries to emerge outside of Asia over the next ten years, companies will need to do far more than ensure regulatory compliance,” summarizes a McKinsey & Company report released in January. “Challenges will need to be overcome on multiple fronts spanning supply chains, talent management, operations and technology.”
By: Haley Zaremba
The Rural Electrification Agency (REA) says it will spend N100 billion in 2026 to deploy hybrid mini-grids for government agencies within and outside Abuja.
The Managing Directors, REA, Abba Aliyu, disclosed this while addressing newsmen on the sidelines of the 2026 budget defence session
The approved funds form part of the National Public Sector Solarisation programme, a component of the agency’s broader N170 billion budget proposal for 2026.
The initiative is designed to improve electricity reliability for public institutions while reducing operational costs and easing pressure on the national grid.
Aliyu explained that the agency’s total proposed budget for 2026 stands at N170 billion, with N100 billion of the amount dedicated specifically to the solarisation initiative targeting government agencies.
He said the hybrid mini-grid systems combine solar power with complementary energy sources to ensure an uninterrupted electricity supply.
“The total budget size for 2026 operations is N170 billion, out of which N100 billion had been approved for National Public Sector Solarisation.
Aliyu cited the National Hospital in Abuja as an example where similar infrastructure had been deployed to ensure stable power and cut operational expenses.He added that beyond the Solarisation
Recall that earlier in February 2026, REA signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to deploy solar power systems to 15 public institutions across Nigeria.
The project will be implemented under the Regional Off-Grid Electricity Access Project (ROGEAP), a World Bank-supported initiative aimed at expanding off-grid electricity access across West Africa and the Sahel.
ECOWAS will provide a $700,000 grant to fund the installation of solar photovoltaic systems in selected rural health centres and schools in the Federal Capital Territory, Niger, and Nasarawa States.
Oil & Energy
PIA: TotalEnergies Transfers OLO Oilfield HCDT Obligation To Aradel ……Says HCDT Enabled Completion of 100 Projects In 2 years
In his remarks, the Community Affairs Manager, Aradel Holdings Plc, Blessyn Okpowo, affirmed the company’s commitment to honouring all PIA obligations and continuing Total Energies’ community engagement approach.“We want to say that in line with the PIA, we will honour commitments and duties required of the settlor and we want to work very smoothly with the way TotalEnergies has worked with them,” he stated.
He recognised the Commission’s role in approving the Community Development Plan (CDP) before project start, underscoring regulatory excellence.The parties noted that between 2023 and 2025, the trust has enabled the completion of more than 100 community projects, spanning water supply, electricity, road infrastructure, education, and healthcare with a further 40 projects currently ongoing.
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