In the 70s and 80s, publications by Italian energy giant ENI, back then a state-owned company, warned of possible destructive impacts of fossil fuels on the climate and the planet, according to “ENI Knew”, a report by Greenpeace Italy and ReCommon. Yet, despite the risks connected to the extraction and exploitation of oil and gas, the company has continued to invest primarily in the fossil fuel economy.
The investigation includes input by Ben Franta, senior researcher in Climate Litigation at the Oxford Sustainable Law Program and one of the world’s leading experts on the topic, and by Christophe Bonneuil, current director of research at France’s largest public research institution, the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).
Franta and Bonneuil are among the authors of a 2021 study, according to which “Exxon, through the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA), coordinated an international campaign to dispute climate science and weaken international climate policy, beginning in the 1980s.” Since the 70s, ENI is also a member of IPIECA, an organisation founded by several international oil companies.
Read the report “ENI knew”