Low carbon opportunities

In 2024, supporting operational emissions reductions objectives, monitoring global efforts to reduce emissions and prioritizing lower carbon opportunities for future competitive investment included: 

• Reducing operational emissions through monitoring, measurement, retrofits, new designs, and reporting at both a source and site level.
• Assessing the use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
• Securing high-quality nature-based and technology offsets to mitigate residual, hard-to-abate emissions.
• Suspending our blue ammonia project on the Gulf Coast due to market immaturity and the pace required for commercial investment.
• Evaluating potential low carbon power projects including enhanced geothermal system opportunities, and exploring electrification efforts at many of our operations.
• Evaluating other opportunities that have significant adjacency to our skill sets, through the lens of competitive returns. Advancing emerging technologies by participating in joint industry partnerships and pilots.

Geopolitical factors have changed substantially over the last five years as global priorities have shifted. This underlines the importance of monitoring signposts and adjusting our business accordingly. Our evaluation suggests that further market maturity, market adoption and related policies and regulations remain uncertain for commercial scale use of hydrogen and CCS.

We will continue to approach low-carbon efforts with the same discipline we follow in our traditional business investment and capital allocation process. This includes keeping costs low, leveraging competencies, identifying viable economic opportunities, and anticipating and managing risks while focusing on projects with competitive returns potential.

In our Canada business unit (BU), the Surmont CCS initiative advanced with the completion of early stage engineering. Project efforts included definition of capture systems for boiler flue gas and the development of the technical and economic foundations. This initiative forms a cornerstone of our carbon capture strategy, supporting long-term emissions reductions and regulatory alignment in both base and future assets.

Significant momentum was also achieved through our involvement in the Pathways Alliance CO₂ transportation and storage project. During the reporting period, engineering contributions and commercial support were provided to help progress a regional CCS project and support Canada’s broader climate objectives.

Voluntary carbon offsets

We believe that voluntary carbon offsets are likely necessary to mitigate residual, hard-to-abate emissions. We continue to monitor the progress of the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, an independent governance body that aims to set a global standard for high integrity, and their Core Carbon Principles. In 2024, we aligned our guidelines for company participation in the voluntary carbon market with these principles and continue to strengthen our due diligence efforts regarding developer experience, technical requirements and rigor as well as stakeholder engagements that support local communities. Our commitments also include an investment in Climate Asset Management’s Nature Based Carbon Fund and multiple technology projects including offsets from plugging orphan wells.

In accordance with California’s Voluntary Carbon Market Disclosure Act (AB1305), ConocoPhillips did not retire any voluntary carbon offsets or renewable energy credits (RECs) in 2025. Read more about our historical disclosures.