ENI has known the impact of fossil fuels since the 1970s

Since the early 1970s, the Italian oil and gas giant ENI has been aware of the huge damage caused by fossil fuels to the planet's climate.This is what the second report attests ENI Knew, recently published by Greenpeace Italy And ReCommon.The organizations authoring the report have in fact examined publications that they already contained in libraries and archives, including those of ENI itself obvious indicators on the climate risks linked to the growing consumption of oil and gas.Which did not, however, stop the action of the multinational.

The document remember how, already in 1969, the company had entrusted one of its study centres, the Institute for Studies on Economic Development and Technical Progress (ISVET), the task of creating a technical-economic investigation on environmental matters, entitled “Public intervention against pollution;evaluation of the costs and economic benefits connected to a project to eliminate the main forms of air and water pollution in Italy".Following suit, in the years immediately following, ENI founded TECHNICAL, a company intended to deal with “clean-up”, and the magazine Ecos, whose name was selected, as the company itself explained, “because it was short and easy to remember:it referred to the 'E' of 'ENI' and 'energy', but also to the words 'economy' and 'ecology'".

In the introduction to the summary report of the ISVET investigation, preserved in the Marconi Library of the CNR in Rome, Greenpeace Italia and ReCommon found a passage in which it appears that ENI was well aware of the harmful consequences ofCO2 input in the atmosphere resulting from exploitation of fossil fuels.“The carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere, according to a recent report by the UN Secretary, given the increased use of mineral fuel oils, has increased over the last century by 10% on average in the world;towards 2000 this increase could reach 25%, with catastrophic consequences on the climate”, we read in that fragment.

Similarly, in the "First report on the environmental situation of the country", presented in 1973 in Urbino by TENECO - which highlighted how "In the man-atmosphere system, contrary to what was tacitly believed until not long ago", human activities “cause transient alterations or stable changes in the structure and quality of the atmosphere, as well as the development of some of its important phenomena" - in a summary table of the list of "main polluting compounds emitted during the different phases of industrial operations and the related sources in relation [...] to gas" CO2 was also reported, whose "increase in the atmosphere" was considered a "potential cause of climate variations".TENECO again, in 1978:“It is assumed that with the increasing consumption of fossil fuels, which began with the industrial revolution, the CO2 concentration will reach 375-400 p.p.m.in the year 2000 […].This increase is considered by some scientists to be a possible long-term problem, above all because it could modify the heat balance of the atmosphere causing climate changes with serious consequences for the biosphere”.

The contents published by Ecos magazine in 1988 were also similar.“The enormous development of combustion processes over the course of this century – we read in the July/September issue – has led scientists to fear thatgreenhouse effect which could lead to climate changes with shocking effects on the entire Earth's ecosystem."And again, in the October/December issue:“While scientists continue their investigations to delve deeper into the nature of the phenomenon and quantify its possible consequences, it is necessary to work from today, to the extent possible, to contain the phenomenon of the emission of carbon dioxide".In the same issue, it was considered "logical to expect some increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere" with respect to the consequences of which "scientists agree on a 'global warming', i.e. on a probable increase in temperature of the atmosphere".

The authors of the report recall that, if "in the 1980s on the one hand ENI published in its own magazine warnings on the greenhouse effect", on the other hand it carried out "advertising campaigns that they promoted natural gas, composed mostly of a climate-changing gas for the planet such as methane, describing it as a 'clean' fuel."The document also underlines that, approximately 50 years ago, ENI became part of theIPIECA, an organization founded by a series of international oil companies which, according to some studies released in recent years, constituted the tool used by the US fossil giant Exxon to coordinate, starting from the 1980s, an "international campaign to challenge climate science and weaken international climate policies.”The document reports the analysis carried out on the topic by Christophe Bonneuil, historian of science, currently director of research at the largest French public research body, the Center national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), among the authors of the study “Early warnings and emerging accountability:Total's responses to global warming, 1971–2021”, which recalled how IPIECA, “although it never described itself as a pressure group”, from 1988 to 1994 “clearly became a channel through which oil companies the whole world have shared information and strategies relating to the work of the United Nations on the road to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the details of the negotiations on the Convention on Climate Change”.According to the historian's reconstruction, the group followed three specific areas of work:“Editing the state of the science of climate change induced by the possible accentuation of the greenhouse effect, including key areas of uncertainty;study response strategies "without regrets", that is, in any case advantageous for the industry;consider improvements in energy efficiency and the substitution between different fossil fuels as answers to the global warming favorable to industry".Therefore, implementing “a coordinated strategy for delay mitigation actions of climate change and ensure that no serious climate policy emerges from Rio."

Last May, Greenpeace Italia and ReCommon they have sued ENI Spa, as well as the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, which together control approximately 30% of the company's share capital, accusing the fossil multinational of the country of past, present and future environmental and climate damage.«ENI – stated the appellants – has significantly contributed in recent decades to the making of Italy dependent on Russian gas before and from that coming from other areas of the world Then".Therefore, «we contest ENI's violation of the Paris Agreement and would like to remind you that, as already sanctioned by various international courts, continuing to contribute to global warming generates impacts associated with serious violations of human rights».ENI has reacted suing for defamation to Greenpeace Italia and ReCommon.

[by Stefano Baudino]