{"id":257746,"date":"2026-01-29T13:47:26","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/257746\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T13:47:26","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T13:47:26","slug":"after-decades-of-deflection-exxonmobil-moves-to-reshape-global-climate-accounting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/257746\/","title":{"rendered":"After Decades of Deflection, ExxonMobil Moves to Reshape Global Climate Accounting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cPollution is everybody\u2019s business,\u201d Imperial Oil, Exxon\u2019s Canadian affiliate, wrote in a 1970 report<\/a>, \u201cbecause essentially all of it results from the activities of men working to satisfy the needs and desires of men.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fast forward over a half century and Imperial\u2019s old argument is taking a new form. Today, ExxonMobil is seeking to upend how carbon emissions are accounted for \u2014 by changing the rules of the game.<\/p>\n

An ExxonMobil-backed initiative, Carbon Measures, is pushing to reshape how the world does the math on climate change. Their system, outside analysts<\/a> point out, leaves consumers holding the bag.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, ExxonMobil also is waging a legal war<\/a>\u00a0against moves to entrench<\/a>\u00a0the system most companies currently use to report<\/a> their greenhouse gas emissions, arguing it creates <\/a>a \u201cpolicy of stigmatization\u201d of Big Oil.<\/p>\n

The way the Carbon Measures coalition, a group with 23 member companies including energy, finance, and industry heavyweights, wants to run the numbers, critics say, all liabilities for fossil fuel emissions would flow away<\/a> from suppliers and towards customers \u2014 to each individual person. The buck would stop not at the top, but at the very bottom, landing on each and every consumer and dispersing responsibility as widely as possible.<\/p>\n

That means shifting big burdens \u201conto individuals who lack the tools, authority, and data\u201d that big polluters have, according to the commercial bank watchdog group BankTrack.\u00a0This month the watchdog called on Banco Santander<\/a>, one of Europe\u2019s largest banks by assets, to drop its support for Carbon Measures.<\/p>\n

Creating a competing system to track climate pollution could erase the advances already made with the current system, said BankTrack deputy director\u00a0Ryan Brightwell, and end up reducing transparency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a lot of work and a lot of progress over a period of many years to get to a position where there\u2019s relative agreement on the system,\u201d Brightwell told DeSmog. \u201cTo risk cracking that open at this point in the climate crisis, that\u2019s quite alarming.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carbon Measures argues its system for tracking emissions allows consumers to choose lower-emissions products.\u00a0\u201cWe are focused on reducing the carbon intensity of the products responsible for the majority of global emissions,\u201d Carmen San Segundo, Carbon Measures\u2019 head of global communications, said in a statement to DeSmog, \u201cand our members believe this will require a more precise carbon accounting system and effective policy.\u201d<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Stay up to date with DeSmog news and alerts<\/p>\n

Darren Woods, ExxonMobil\u2019s CEO, has said<\/a> that Carbon Measures shouldn\u2019t be seen as a delay tactic because the new plan can co-exist alongside today\u2019s widely used carbon reporting system, supplied by Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol. \u201cYou can do this in addition to that,\u201d Woods told Bloomberg in a November interview.<\/p>\n

But in October, the same month that Carbon Measures first launched, ExxonMobil also sued<\/a> to bring an end to California\u2019s climate disclosure laws. The oil major argued that the law compels the company to fully report its emissions in line with the GHG Protocol system in violation of the company\u2019s right to free speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn its public advocacy, ExxonMobil has consistently argued that those frameworks send the counterproductive message that large companies are uniquely responsible for climate change,\u201d the company wrote in its October 24 complaint<\/a>, \u201cno matter how efficiently they satisfy societal demand for energy, goods, and services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lisa Sachs, director of the Columbia Center on Sustainability Investment, called Exxon\u2019s argument \u201ca transparent delay tactic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bottleneck to decarbonization is not improper carbon accounting. It\u2019s the failure to implement well-known, technologically ready, and financeable system transitions,\u201d Sachs said. \u201cDisclosure and accounting debates have diverted time, attention, and political capital away from those real solutions; this latest initiative just adds fuel to that fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gone in a Puff of Accounting Smoke<\/p>\n

While the specifics remain in early development, Carbon Measures\u2019 approach represents \u201ca significant departure from established carbon accounting frameworks,\u201d according to the major law firm Covington, which published a guide to the coalition\u2019s proposal<\/a> at the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

Baked into Carbon Measures\u2019 model is the idea that when someone buys a product, they take on all of the pollution that comes with it.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a big break<\/a> from the world\u2019s current standards, which call on each company to disclose all of the ways it contributes to pollution: from its own activities, from buying energy, and from the products it sells. The idea is that tracking all three categories gives a more complete picture of a given company\u2019s impacts.<\/p>\n

Embedded in that system is the idea that maybe both buyer and seller have some sort of responsibility that can be shared\u00a0\u2014 meaning that both should have an incentive to act.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil and other critics of that system see that as a serious flaw. If responsibility were borne by both sides, that\u2019d be a problematic \u201cdouble counting,\u201d the thinking goes.<\/p>\n

Carbon Measures\u2019 \u201cledger-style\u201d system solves this conundrum by treating pollution as a liability that polluters can transfer from seller to buyer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are buying a tonne of steel, you need to understand how much carbon went into producing that tonne of steel so that when it\u2019s sold, you\u2019re not only selling the asset of the steel but you\u2019re selling the liability \u2014 so to speak \u2014 of the carbon emissions that go along with it,\u201d Amy Brachio, Carbon Measures\u2019 CEO and the former global vice chair for sustainability at accounting consultancy EY, told FinTech Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Carbon Measures argues that approach gives consumers the ability to \u201creward\u201d less polluting options.<\/p>\n

\u201cA global ledger-based accounting system would improve the quality of product-level emissions data, allowing markets to identify and reward low-carbon production throughout the entire supply chain,\u201d Carbon Measures\u2019 San Segundo told DeSmog. \u201cAccurate and verifiable data would also allow policymakers to set product-level carbon intensity standards, creating a level-playing field and providing the right incentives for businesses to compete on innovation and low-carbon production.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a big benefit to having one gold-standard reporting system instead of a bunch of competing ways to run the numbers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen everyone relies on one credible global framework\u00a0\u2014\u00a0rather than competing systems\u00a0\u2014\u00a0it brings clarity to markets, builds trust, and helps low-carbon products scale faster, accelerating real progress on climate goals,\u201d a GHG Protocol spokesperson told DeSmog.\u00a0\u201cThe way forward is alignment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plus there\u2019s a big question that remains unanswered when following the logic of the system Carbon Measures proposes. What happens for the buyer, at the very end of the line? If all that liability winds up handed off to just a regular person, someone who\u00a0doesn\u2019t keep a set of climate books or have any obligation to start, do the liabilities just\u00a0\u2026 disappear?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt remains unclear how E-liabilities transferred to individual consumers (e.g., drivers or homeowners) would be tracked or managed over time,\u201d Covington analysts wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a \u201ccore tension,\u201d they added, with\u00a0using\u00a0a liability tracking system that \u201ccould fragment accountability for companies earlier in the value chain whose actions have the highest impact on aggregate emissions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil\u2019s Bane<\/p>\n

Today, over 20,000 companies use the Greenhouse Gas Protocol\u2019s framework<\/a> to report their emissions. The organization touts a 97 percent adoption rate among disclosing S&P 500 companies, making its system the most widespread in the world.<\/p>\n

For decades, the GHG Protocol has offered three basic stats<\/a> companies can track, reflecting the different ways companies contribute to the world\u2019s greenhouse gas pollution.\u00a0It labels their emissions\u00a0Scopes 1, 2, and 3<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first bucket, Scope 1, are pollution sources that companies directly own or run \u2014 say emissions from company vehicles \u2014 while Scope 2 emissions come from the electricity or energy companies buy offsite. Finally, Scope 3 is where companies report everything else \u2014 including \u201cuse of sold product<\/a>.\u201d That, for an oil giant, means counting the impacts of every gallon of gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel they\u2019ve sold.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Scope 3 emissions are the bane of fossil fuel producers, chemical manufacturers, steel, cement, and major agricultural companies. They reveal the climate-altering impacts of the products those companies sell \u2014 and it\u2019s not a pretty picture.<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil, for example, has seen its own reported Scope 3 figures largely increase since it first began making numbers public in 2021.\u00a0That\u2019s especially when it comes to the emissions from the company\u2019s oil and gas exploration and production activities, the company\u2019s most profitable segment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Note: ExxonMobil currently \u201cchooses not to report on the full range of Scope 3 emissions estimates called for under the GHG Protocol,\u201d the company noted in its October legal complaint challenging California\u2019s mandatory climate emissions reporting laws. That means these numbers do not reflect the company\u2019s full Scope 3 emissions, and cannot be compared to estimates prepared by companies that fully follow the GHG Protocol\u2019s standards. They are provided here only to illustrate how ExxonMobil\u2019s own reported figures have changed over time. Image Credit: DeSmog. Data Source: ExxonMobil\u2019s annual climate<\/a> and sustainability reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Independent estimates reveal that ExxonMobil single-handedly drove 2.76\u00a0percent of all carbon dioxide emissions from 1854 to 2023, a\u00a0report<\/a> last year from Carbon Majors found<\/a>.\u00a0That lands ExxonMobil among the top five all-time biggest contributors to the climate crisis, alongside \u201cthe former Soviet Union,\u201d \u201cChina (coal),\u201d Saudi Aramco, and Chevron.<\/p>\n

ExxonMobil\u2019s 2023 climate \u201cprogress report\u201d<\/a> spends nearly a full page critiquing the GHG Protocol framework and Scope 3 reporting.\u00a0The document argues it \u201cprovides limited insight for a company like ours into how it might substantially lower its emissions, short of shrinking, discontinuing operations, or outright divesting operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, the obvious conclusion from looking at Scope 3 data is that the most effective way for energy companies to curb emissions is by moving away from producing fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

Instead, ExxonMobil prefers to focus on how it\u2019s cutting its own fossil fuel pollution, allowing the company to argue that its emissions are falling even as it remains deeply committed<\/a> to producing more oil and gas.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Woods testified before Congress<\/a>, touting emissions cuts at ExxonMobil sites, which he described as the company\u2019s \u201cown\u201d emissions. \u201cWith respect to emissions, ExxonMobil has already reduced its own greenhouse gas emissions by 11 percent between 2016 and 2020,\u201d Woods testified, \u201cand has set new plans for further reductions through 2025.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Long History of Avoiding Blame<\/p>\n

In the business press<\/a>, ExxonMobil\u2019s support for Carbon Measures has been received, as Bloomberg put it, as \u201ca willingness to engage in ideas to reduce emissions\u201d and \u201ca departure from its historical stance, which has included advertorials sowing doubt about climate science that ran in the 1980s and 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n

But a closer look shows that Carbon Measures\u2019 approach is a continuation of one of the longest-running strategies in ExxonMobil\u2019s playbook \u2014 focusing on consumers\u2019 responsibility for oil pollution.<\/p>\n

For decades, the companies that make up ExxonMobil today, including Exxon, Mobil, and Canada\u2019s Imperial Oil<\/a>,\u00a0pushed the idea that pollution is demand-driven.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs individuals, we may not approve of each and all of this multitude of activities,\u201d Imperial Oil\u2019s 1970 report continued. \u201cYet as members of the society which sanctions and encourages them, we must accept responsibility for all the consequences, both the desirable and the undesirable which include the pollution caused by the improper disposal of the inevitable waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

That messaging shows up again and again in the company\u2019s documents related to climate change and air pollution, from the 1960s through the 2020s. DeSmog has collected examples from ExxonMobil reports, speeches, Congressional testimony, and advertisements in the timeline below.<\/p>\n

Timeline of Events \u2013 (Click arrows to browse)<\/p>\n

From the 1960s through the 2020s, ExxonMobil highlighted consumers\u2019 responsibility for climate change and oil\u2019s air pollution, as illustrated in this timeline.<\/p>\n

In 1998, shortly before the merger of Exxon and Mobil, Mobil CEO Lou Noto addressed climate concerns at an employee forum.\u00a0There, he offered rough\u00a0numbers showing the massive impact of shifting responsibility to consumers. \u201cOur customers using our products probably count for 95 percent of those emissions,\u201d Noto said, calling the remainder \u201cthe five percent that we\u2019re responsible for.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same pattern can even be seen in the company\u2019s advertorials. In their landmark 2021 study<\/a>, climate disinformation researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes found, as they put it, \u201cExxonMobil advertisements worked to shift responsibility for global warming away from the fossil fuel industry and onto consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers found that internally, ExxonMobil seemed more likely to use phrases that suggest pollution is driven by supply, rather than demand, in contrast to the company\u2019s public stance.<\/p>\n

And of course, oil and gas companies aren\u2019t simply passive sellers. The industry has worked hard to entrench demand for fossil fuels, most recently by marketing<\/a> natural gas power to data centers<\/a>\u00a0at the heart of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today, ExxonMobil is continuing to pour money<\/a> into projects that will produce oil and gas for decades to come.<\/p>\n

In early November, Carbon Measures and the International Chamber of Commerce put out<\/a> a \u201ccall for interest\u201d for accounting experts to help develop the details of the new guidelines. Carbon Measures announced its first round<\/a> of appointments on January 19, with more expected later this quarter.<\/p>\n

The new accounting standards, if they attract sufficient corporate backing, are expected<\/a> to roll out sometime between 2027 and 2030.<\/p>\n

Sachs, the Columbia climate finance expert, emphasized that we already know how to effectively cut carbon pollution: starting with clean-energy standards, electrification mandates, and measures that phase out fossil fuel demand. But, she noted, oil companies have consistently\u00a0opposed those types of policies.<\/p>\n

She told DeSmog, \u201cNo one should mistake Exxon\u2019s support for disclosure frameworks as an effort to solve the climate problem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cPollution is everybody\u2019s business,\u201d Imperial Oil, Exxon\u2019s Canadian affiliate, wrote in a 1970 report, \u201cbecause essentially all of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":["post-257746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}