TotalEnergies SE (NYSE:TTE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 17 of 18

We will become a key player. And again, being able to grow our renewable business by 6, 7 gigawatt per year, we are among the largest one compared to the large — and so I think we can — and we’re mixing that with our capacity to use the balance sheet to integrate that in a larger platform, trading, et cetera, will allow us to deliver this profitability. So it’s a commitment. It’s also part, by the way, of our net zero ambition that we have and on which we are serious about it. But at the end, for me, is positioning the company on the long term on a profitable business because we are convinced that the world will need more electricity, and more electricity means higher prices.

Operator: The next question is from Alessandro Pozzi of Mediobanca.

Alessandro Pozzi: I have two. Going back to the emissions, I think they became — they came in below target in ’22, but they were still up year-on-year. Part of it, I think — most of it was driven by CCGT. And I was wondering if you can give us perhaps a target for 2023, how you see Scope 1 and Scope 2 emission evolving. And also — I’m also seeing that Scope 3 have come down, and I was wondering what are the main drivers for the reduction in Scope 3. That’s the first question. The second question is on refining. Of course, the EU ban came into effect on the 5th of February. I was wondering how you see the market for diesel in Europe with the ban. Will we be able to source more diesel from somewhere else or it’s going to be as tight as — especially in the second part of last year? And also on refining, of course, we are seeing protest in France. Is that going to have an impact on Q1 margins? That’s all for me.

Patrick Pouyanne: Okay. Emission targets for ’23, as I announced that we will lower the 25% target to 38%. I think the target for ’23 should be something like under 40 million tonnes. So we’ll have to repeat at least and lower the same performance in ’22. No increase. So we are accelerating the target. There was — the Board has made a linear decrease, I think. So probably 39.8% exactly, if you want the figure. Jean-Pierre is putting that on the paper. On refining, diesel market, honestly, it’s — the source of the product is diesel. There is a strange machine, which is organized in the world, which is . You — India and China are buying Russian crude and they transform it in an Indian and Chinese diesel, which will come to Europe.

I’m not sure it’s good for the climate. It’s not good for the cost. It’s not good for the customers, but that will happen. So I’m not worried about finding diesel. It will be just more expensive, but it’s a cost. So question for is it real — does it has — does the market has already anticipated or not the disruption of the Russian diesel in the spread of the diesel, which were quite high? By the question mark, I mean, it’s difficult to answer to this. Normally, they anticipate, but there is a cost issue of transportation cost. The margin for the time being, I don’t know. It’s difficult for me to predict on Q1 ’23. What I have observed since the beginning of the year is that the margin in January were higher than in the last quarter. They came back probably because the market was anticipating again distress.

So we see increasing . I think we are today at an average since the beginning of the year above $100 per tonne probably. So again, this market is still strong. It’s weakening. And so we’ll see. But again, as — it’s difficult to understand what the operators in the market are taking into account or not, but this is what I think.

Operator: The next question is from Henri Patricot of UBS.

Page 17 of 18