The world\u2019s 250 largest oil and gas companies are responsible for less than 1.5% of renewable energy generation worldwide, according to a new analysis. The findings cast doubt on the fossil fuel industry narrative that it is helping solve the climate crisis by investing in renewable energy development.<\/p>\n
In recent years, fossil fuel companies have pledged to make drastic cuts in their own emissions<\/a> and have emphasized their green energy initiatives, as part of a strategy to maintain the social and political acceptance necessary to continue doing business in a world increasingly focused on decarbonization.<\/p>\n But until now, there has been no quantitative analysis of the industry\u2019s contribution to the green transition<\/a>. \u201cI think the article resolves the debate on whether the fossil fuel industry is honestly engaging with the climate crisis or not,\u201d says study team member Marcel Llavero-Pasquina<\/a>, a postdoctoral researcher at the Universitat Aut\u00f2noma de Barcelona in Spain. As to the answer, he doesn\u2019t mince words: \u201cTheir interest ends with their profits.\u201d<\/p>\n To reach this conclusion, Llavero-Pasquina and his UAB colleague Antonio Bontempi<\/a> mined a series of existing corporate structure and energy production databases. They identified the world\u2019s 250 largest oil and gas companies responsible for 88% of global production of hydrocarbons, as well as 344 subsidiaries, 193 acquisitions, and 172 sister companies of these firms.<\/p>\n Next, they identified 3,166 wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal power projects that the companies own directly, through subsidiaries, or via acquired companies.<\/p>\n Only 20% of the largest oil and gas companies own a currently operating renewable energy project at all, the researchers report in Nature Sustainability. Renewable energy represents just 0.13% of the companies\u2019 total primary energy extraction, the researchers calculated.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The oil and gas giants own 1.42% of global renewable energy capacity currently in operation. About half of this is via acquired companies, suggesting their investment is largely financial rather than a matter of active operations.<\/p>\n \u201cI have been researching the fossil fuel industry for a decade, and I knew their renewable energy operations were tokenistic. But even I did not expect their share of renewables to be this low,\u201d Llavero-Pasquina says. \u201cI felt deceived by their intense media campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n Sister companies, meaning renewable energy companies that are directly owned by the parent companies of oil and gas firms, are responsible for about 10% of renewable energy capacity in operation. \u201cThis figure is largely attributable (94%) to the sister companies of Chinese state-owned firms,\u201d the researchers write.<\/p>\n By far the company with the largest amount of installed capacity is TotalEnergies with 14.6 gigawatts of renewable power generation in operation \u2013 more than 3 times the capacity of the next runners-up and still just 1.59% of its total primary energy extraction.<\/p>\n \u201cThe companies with the largest share of renewable energy in their total production are TAQA (9.02%) and Pampa Energia (6.68%), whose core business is in the power sector\u201d rather than oil and gas production, the researchers note.<\/p>\n Oil and gas companies tend to invest<\/a> in larger renewable energy projects, and in geothermal and offshore wind projects where the firms\u2019 drilling and offshore operations experience provides an advantage.<\/p>\n The oil and gas companies do have a larger share of renewable energy projects planned or under construction. But this capacity amounts to just 4% of the plan, agreed to at the UN climate conference in 2023, to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.<\/p>\n As well as evaluating oil and gas companies\u2019 commitment to fighting the climate crisis by their contributions to renewable energy development, the researchers argue, the firms should be judged by the fossil fuel infrastructure they decommission and the amount of fossil fuels they leave in the ground.<\/p>\n Source: Llavero-Pasquina M. and A. Bontempi.\u00a0\u201cOil and gas industry\u2019s marginal share of <\/a>global renewable energy<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0Nature Sustainability\u00a02025.<\/p>\n Image: \u00a9 Anthropocene Magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world\u2019s 250 largest oil and gas companies are responsible for less than 1.5% of renewable energy generation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[55464,1477,42731,55465,242,4419,85,46,5536,141],"class_list":{"0":"post-79061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-big-oil","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-daily-science","11":"tag-energy-decarbonization","12":"tag-environment","13":"tag-fossil-fuels","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-renewable-energy","17":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}