Our ambition

In affirming its ambition to be a major player in the energy transition and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, together with society, TotalEnergies has committed to profoundly transforming its production and sales while continuing to meet the energy needs of a growing population.

To do that, we are reinventing and diversifying our energy offering to promote renewable and decarbonized energies, as well as sparing, well-considered use of fossil energies. Since the beginning of the decade, we have moved resolutely to transform our energy model in order to become a multi-energy company and major player in the energy transition.

In 2050, TotalEnergies would produce: 

Approximately 50% of its energy in the form of low-carbon electricity with the corresponding storage capacities, i.e. around 500 TWh/year, which means it will need to develop around 400 GW of renewable capacities;

Around 25%, or the equivalent of 50 Mt/year of low-carbon energy molecules, either in the form of biogas, hydrogen or synthetic liquid fuels as a result of the circular reaction: H₂ + CO₂ (“e-fuels”);

Approximately 1 Mb/day of hydrocarbons (almost four times less than in 2030 – in line with the decrease envisaged by the IEA’s Net Zero scenario), mainly liquefied natural gas for around 0.7 Mboe/day, or 25 to 30 Mt/year, and very low-cost oil for the remainder. In particular, this oil would be used in petrochemicals to produce around 10 Mt/year of polymers, two-thirds of which would come from the circular economy.

To achieve our ambition of carbon neutrality by 2050, together with society, we have set ourselves global greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, with intermediate objectives for 2025 and 2030.

Offsetting residual emissions with natural carbon sinks

We have undertaken a major transformation that gives priority to “avoiding” and “reducing” emissions. Voluntary offsetting of residual emissions with NBS (Nature Based Solutions) carbon credits will only be used from 2030 and progressively until 2050, to offset Scope 1+2 residual emissions (i.e. around 10% of the global footprint).

That’s why we invest in natural carbon sinks – ecosystems that naturally sequester carbon – through forestry, regenerative agriculture and wetland protection projects.

Oil

We are pursuing our strategy of reducing our sales of petroleum products by 40% by 2030, so that we neither sell nor refine more fuels than we produce oil.

Our share of petroleum product sales has already fallen from 66% in 2015 to 55% in 2019, and is set to reach 30% in 2030. By 2050, this share could fall to between 15% and 20%. Substantial investment is still needed to meet global oil demand.

Given global demand and the challenges of a just transition, our ambition is to maintain our oil production by 2030. This calls for new projects to be launched to compensate for the natural decline in the fields. We sanction them on performance criteria, notably in terms of technical costs and carbon intensity. We operate our fields with strict safety, emissions reduction and environmental impact requirements. The cash flow generated by these activities is helping to accelerate our investments in renewable energies.

Gas

For TotalEnergies, natural gas is a key energy for the energy transition. As a fossil fuel, it emits half as much greenhouse gas as coal when used to generate electricity. This abundant and easily accessible energy source makes it a valuable ally in helping coal-dependent countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Within the gas markets, our priority is liquefied natural gas (LNG), which enables gas to be transported anywhere in the world. In 2022, with sales of 48 Mt, we consolidated our position as the world’s 3rd largest LNG operator. 99% of these LNG sales were to countries committed to the transition to carbon neutrality, providing them with an alternative to coal and fuel oil.

Our LNG growth strategy requires us to be exemplary in terms of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the value chain. Our priority is to eliminate methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas with 28 times the warming power of CO₂ and a short atmospheric lifetime, making the fight against methane emissions one of the priorities of global warming mitigation efforts.

At the beginning of 2022, we set ourselves some concrete and very ambitious targets for the next decade: -50% in 2025 and -80% in 2030, compared with 2020. These targets cover all our operated activities and go beyond the 75% reduction in methane emissions from the coal, oil and gas sectors between 2020 and 2030 in the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Net Zero by 2050 scenario. We are also maintaining our target of a methane intensity of less than 0.1% on our operated gas facilities. By 2022, our methane emissions fell to 42 kt, a 34% reduction on 2020. In addition, we work alongside our partners to implement best practices on our non-operated assets as well.

An integrated global LNG player

Renewable electricity (wind and solar)

We are continuing to expand in the renewable energies market (wind and solar), with the aim of becoming one of the world’s top five producers of renewable electricity. Our goal is to produce 100 TWh/year of electricity by 2030.

Our target for gross installed renewable energy capacity (worldwide) in 2025 is secure, and we are already working on projects to reach our goal of 100 TW/y by 2030. The acquisition of 100% of Total Eren’s capital in 2023 and its integration within the company will contribute to this.

The intermittent nature of solar and wind projects creates a need for flexible generation and storage capacity to meet demand at all times and guarantee grid reliability.

Our portfolio of controllable power generation from gas-fired plants reached a capacity of 5.6 GW in 2022. Eventually, these capacities will be decarbonized, either through their supply (biomethane or low-carbon hydrogen), or through the sequestration of their CCS emissions.

For storage, we rely on Saft’s technological expertise. Our goal for 2030: 5 GW of storage capacity deployed worldwide.

Biomass

Vegetables oils, used cooking oils, animal fats fo biofuel production, organic waste for biogas production... Biomass is a renewable energy source of the future, enabling the development of low-carbon molecules. It is now an immediately available solution for rapidly reducing the carbon  footprint of mobility and replacing natural gas. A real challenge, since by 2030, the share of renewable energy used in transport will have to reach 14% in the European Union

Expanding our biofuels offering

Today, biofuels emit less than 50% of the CO₂ equivalent of fossil fuels over their life cycle, and therefore represent a way of decarbonizing liquid fuels.

Among these biofuels, we favor the manufacture of Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) for the decarbonization of the aviation sector, while the road sector has options other than biodiesel for decarbonization, notably electricity.

To avoid land-use conflicts, we develop solutions based on the priority use of waste and residues from the food industry. The agricultural raw materials used comply with sustainability and traceability requirements: carbon footprint, non-deforestation and effective land use.

In 2022, we stopped sourcing palm oil and its derivatives and have set a new target of increasing the share of circular feedstocks (used oils, animal fats) to over 75% of the feedstocks used to produce biofuels by 2024.

Accelerating in biogas

Biogas, produced by the degradation of organic waste, is a renewable gas composed mainly of methane. Compatible with existing gas transmission and storage infrastructures, it has an important role to play in decarbonizing the use of gas products (power generation, heating).

In this essentially local market, we are rapidly gaining momentum. Our objective is to achieve a biomethane capacity of 2 TWh/year by 2025 and 20 TWh/year by 2030 worldwide.

To this end, we are forging strategic partnerships with players in the agricultural, waste and wastewater treatment sectors to develop growth platforms in Europe and the United States.

Hydrogen

Hydrogen acts as a gateway between a primary energy source and its end uses. We are interested in the production of more low-carbon hydrogen, which concerns:

• Renewable hydrogen (commonly known as “green hydrogen”), produced either by electrolysis using electricity from renewable energy sources, or by any other technology using exclusively one or more of these same renewable energy sources and not conflicting with other uses enabling their direct valorization.
• Low-carbon hydrogen (commonly known as “blue hydrogen”), produced by converting fossil fuels, but whose CO2 emissions are captured for reuse or storage, using carbon capture and storage (CCS) processes. Low-carbon hydrogen also refers to hydrogen produced by electrolysis, using electricity from low-carbon energy sources, notably nuclear (commonly referred to as “yellow hydrogen”), with a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the entire life cycle compared with hydrogen produced using existing techniques.

To meet our ambition of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, together with society, we are working with our suppliers and partners to decarbonize all the fossil fuel hydrogen (commonly known as “gray hydrogen”) consumed in our European refineries and biorefineries by 2030. This effort aims to reduce CO2 emissions by 3 million tons a year.

The hydrogen production capacities currently under development will contribute to our ambition of increasing new molecules – biofuels, biogas, hydrogen and e-fuels** – to 25% of our energy production and sales by 2050.

Through these projects, we aim to position ourselves as a pioneer in the mass production of renewable, low-carbon hydrogen to meet growing demand. This ambition will be particularly necessary to help decarbonize heavy mobility.

Carbon neutrality: an ambition shared with our customers

We are actively working to make carbon neutrality a shared ambition with our customers. The key to making an effective contribution to the energy transition is to gradually transform the way in which our customers consume energy.

As a result, we are pursuing a marketing policy geared towards low-carbon products, and will be reducing our offer for certain uses for which competitive low-carbon alternatives exist.

Accompanying our customers towards low-carbon mobility

Transport accounted for around 25% of global CO2 emissions in 2021. Our conviction: tomorrow’s mobility does not call for a single solution, but a range of complementary ones.