Carnegie’s Oil Climate Index, unveiled yesterday in DC
My coauthors and I just released the initial report about our Oil Climate Index (OCI), which estimates using public data and open source models the total lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from different oils. Where the oil is discovered, how it is extracted, how it is transported, and how it is refined all make a huge difference in total GHG emissions. In our initial set of 30 oils, we found that the highest emissions oil had 80% higher emissions than the lowest emissions oil.
That difference is big enough to matter, and that means investors and oil companies can affect their greenhouse gas emissions by the choices they make.
Here are the key “next steps” that emerged from the report:
The second phase of the OCI, which will be finished this summer (2015), will result in an additional 20 oils being added to the analysis, for a total of 50 oils from all over the world.
Here’s the full reference:
Gordon, Deborah, Adam Brandt, Joule Bergeson, and Jonathan Koomey. 2015. Know Your Oil: Creating a Global Oil-Climate Index. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. March 11. [http://goo.gl/Jly9Op]
