Our climate ambitions

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Climate ambitions

We’re going for net zero, but what does that really mean?

Society has to move faster towards a net-zero future, so ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option. Climate change presents a fundamental challenge to society, and it is a shared challenged in which we believe our industry can play an important role. Equinor intends to be a leading company in the energy transition.

Here’s how we will achieve our climate ambitions:

Equinor’s Energy Transition Plan

In March 2022, we launched our first Energy Transition Plan, demonstrating how we will achieve ambitious climate targets with concrete actions. It was endorsed by our shareholders at our annual general meeting in 2022.

Major changes must happen even before 2030, so our plan puts particular emphasis on initiatives in this decade.

By 2030, our plan is to:
• Halve emissions from our operated fields
• Invest more than 50% in renewables and low-carbon markets
• Reduce net carbon intensity by 20%, including emissions from the use of the products we sell

Download our Energy Transition Plan here (PDF)

Download our Energy Transition Plan and other climate-related documents:

Reducing emissions

We aim to remain an industry leader in carbon efficiency

We know that our emissions must be reduced, and it starts with us and how we work with suppliers and partners. It’s about how we make our work more efficient, how we replace gas turbines with electric power, or how we use drones in tracking our methane emissions.

We are assessing numerous large and small initiatives across our company that will reduce emissions daily.

Remaining emissions will be compensated either through quota trading systems, such as EU ETS, or high-quality offset mechanisms. In addition, we plan to invest in the protection of tropical forests as soon as a well-functioning market is in place for the private sector.

Wind turbine — Photo: Sander Weeteling / Unsplash

Growing in renewables

We bring our offshore experience one step further

Driven by the opportunities within the energy transition and an increasing demand for electricity from renewable energy sources, Equinor continues to build its renewable business. We primarily focus on offshore wind, both bottom-fixed and floating, but we also explore opportunities within onshore renewables.

Our aim is to be a global offshore wind major, while strengthening our industry-leading position on carbon efficient production.

New value chains for carbon

We increase our development within carbon capture and storage

How do we stop CO₂ from reaching the atmosphere and contributing to global warming? Capturing and storing CO₂ underground is and will be an important building block for our net-zero ambition.

We have a long history of storing CO₂ at fields such as Sleipner in the North Sea, and we will build on this experience when we partake in developing full value chains for carbon capture and storage, such as through our ownership in Northern Lights JV together with Shell and Total. We increase our development within carbon capture and storage

Carbon capture, utilisation and storage

Exploring hydrogen

We look to convert natural gas to hydrogen while capturing carbon

We believe hydrogen will be a key contributor to the energy transition because it is an effective and environment friendly energy carrier.

We are already looking into early-stage opportunities for converting natural gas to clean hydrogen, while capturing and storing the CO₂. It is still early days, but we see this as an exciting opportunity for natural gas in the future.

Hydrogen - here's what Equinor is doing today

Enabled by new technology

We make it all happen thanks to new digital tools and technology

We’re just seeing the beginning of how digital tools can help us deliver energy in a more efficient way, both when it comes to emissions and cost.

Our digital front-runners are exploring tools and ways of working with big data and machine learning that will enable the whole company and our collaborators in reaching our ambition of net zero. We are seeing the contours of a new wave of digital transformation which drives sweeping change.

Digitalisation