Gas lobby

EU and member state decision-makers need to agree robust new rules to get the chemicals industry in line and paying its way in full.

The IPCC says the world is in the last-chance saloon, yet fossil-gas executives eye deals next week in Vienna at the European Gas Conference. Climate and cost of living activists have other ideas.

Our new report maps Germany’s 'brave new hydrogen world'. Which looks a lot like the old world: prolonging fossil fuel use and continuing its extractivist logic. We show who is driving the German – and thus EU – hydrogen hype, who benefits, and the negative impacts for prospective green hydrogen export countries.

COP27 was dubbed the ‘gas COP’, with record-breaking numbers of fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance. However, much less attention was paid to how this could also have been called ‘hydrogen COP’, with a myriad of events and deals sealed by companies and governments, many with a focus on extracting resources from Africa.

18 out of 20 COP27 sponsors directly support or partner with the fossil fuel industry, helping it to advance its climate-wrecking agenda.

The fossil fuel industry’s unprecedented access to European decision-makers since the Ukraine war has allowed them to protect their record-breaking profits while households struggle to pay their bills. As well as delaying and weakening measures that could have addressed the cost of living crisis, industry lobbying also secured public support for new gas infrastructure.

The new EU Energy Platform Industry Advisory Group, created at the request of oil and gas majors like Shell, BP, Total and Eni, represents a conflict of interest on a colossal scale. These alliances must be stopped if we are to have any chance of breaking Europe’s fossil gas habit, addressing fuel poverty, and averting climate crisis.

Civil society groups urge the EU to reject an upcoming proposal by the European Commission on the certification of carbon removals. The new report demonstrates how the oil and gas industry uses it as part of their flawed ‘net zero’ plans to keep fossil fuels flowing, risking catastrophic climate impacts.

EU plans to import renewable hydrogen from North Africa represent the latest neocolonial resource grab couched in green language

New study shows EU’s plan to drastically increase imports of renewable hydrogen from North Africa is not realistic from a cost or energy perspective.

Lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO) has obtained recent meeting documents from the European Commission (EC) that reveal that major fossil fuel companies are influencing the EU’s response to the energy crisis.

The invasion of Ukraine has exposed Europe’s dependency on Russian oil and gas. Its imports are directly funding Putin’s war efforts, to the tune of €20 billion in March alone.