By Jennifer Hiller
HOUSTON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Chevron Corp plans to setgreenhouse gas emissions targets and tie executive compensationand rank-and-file bonuses to the reductions, the oil major saidin its latest climate report released on Thursday.
The move is a first for a U.S. oil major and focuses on thecompany's oil fields. More investors have been pressuring SanRamon, Calif.-based Chevron and other big oil companies toreduce emissions that contribute to climate change.
Chevron said that by 2023, it will reduce its methane andflaring intensity by 25 percent to 30 percent from 2016 levels,and said the goal would be added to the scorecard thatdetermines incentive pay for around 45,000 employees.
"It’s about the mindset and the culture of the company,"said Chevron Vice President Mark Nelson, noting that includingmost of its global workforce would "harness" ideas from allemployees.
Chevron, though, does not address reducing the company'sfull carbon footprint, said Danielle Fugere, president ofinvestor group As You Sow, and so “will not achieve thereductions needed to stabilize the climate and reduce growingeconomy wide and thus portfolio wide risk to investors."
Among other oil companies, London-based BP andFrance's Total have set short-term targets on reducingcarbon dioxide emissions from their own operations.
Royal Dutch Shell in December announced it wouldlink executive compensation to reducing carbon dioxide emissionsstarting in 2020, including Scope 3 emissions from fuels sold tocustomers around the world.
Chevron said it does not support establishing Scope 3targets.
Exxon's climate report, published on Tuesday,includes a goal of reducing methane emissions from operations by15 percent and flaring by 25 percent by 2020 compared with 2016levels.
Chevron's target aims to reduce emissions and flaring as apercentage of production, but does not set a total emissionsgoal - a measure activist investors prefer. The targets willapply to Chevron's operations as well as assets it has a stakein but does not operate itself, the company said.
"This is the first public, industry-led, link betweenmethane targets and joint ventures we’ve seen, and we areinterested in how they will actualize and validate this," saidIsabel Mogstad of the Environmental Defense Fund.
Methane, the main component of natural gas, has more than 80times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide in the first20 years after it escapes into the atmosphere, scientists say.(Reporting by Jennifer Hiller;Editing by David Gregorio and Phil Berlowitz)
