National oil and gas conglomerate PTT Plc has announced its commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 15% within 2030 in a move to help the government fight climate change.
The company also plans to achieve carbon neutrality, a balance between carbon dioxide emissions and absorption, within 2040 and a net-zero goal by 2050.
The net-zero campaign covers more gases, with the same aim of striking a balance between emissions and the absorption of greenhouse gases, which are blamed for causing global warming.
The commitment will set a direction for PTT which will allocate 32% of its budget for scaling up new businesses aimed at curbing greenhouse gases between 2022 and 2050.
Auttapol Rerkpiboon, chief executive and president of PTT, said the PTT board has yet to finalise the amount of the total budget.
Plans to reduce greenhouse gases will be carried out by all of PTT's seven SET-listed subsidiaries.
At present, PTT's upstream and downstream petroleum businesses emit 45 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
Total greenhouse gas emissions in Thailand stand at almost 247 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually.
To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, PTT will use additional electricity of 12 gigawatts in total from clean energy sources and adopt new technology to save energy at its factories.
Another way to help the company achieve its net-zero commitment faster is an afforestation project covering 2 million rai nationwide, which will eventually help cut carbon dioxide emissions by 3 million tonnes per year.
The project, which starts this year, will be implemented over the next 10 years.
PTT will plant trees on 1 million rai while the remainder will be done by its seven subsidies.