New Japanese research unmasks four of the major oil companies that are increasingly talking about ecological transition. In most cases, their commitment on paper does not turn into facts
He is about to end up run over, his mother saves himThe big oil companies talk more and more often about climate, green energy and respect for the environment. But in the vast majority of cases it's all crap. In other words greenwashing. The commitment in defense of the planet remained only on paper, without turning into concrete actions. This is denounced by a recent Japanese study published in the prestigious Plos One magazine. The research focused on some of the most important oil multinationals: the European ones BP e Shell and the US Chevron e ExxonMobil, responsible for around 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions over the past 50 years.
The details of the research
To confirm the lack of consistency between words and deeds, the Japanese researchers identified 39 keywords in the annual documents published by the companies in the period between 2009 and 2020. These terms were then divided into four categories: transition, emissions, climate change and clean energies.
@PLOS ONE
As for Shell, one of the first oil giants to announce that it wants to fight the climate crisis, the words most used in its reports are "low carbon energy," renewable energy "and" clean energy ". Shell promised to invest around 1% in clean energy a few years ago, but it hasn't kept the promise.
Similar speech for BP, whose keywords examined by the study were very recurring especially in 2019.
BP increased the use of words in the “climate change” category from 22 to 326 over the period 2009–2020. The “transition” category also increased significantly over the study period, from 50 to 418, reflecting a greater discussion on a low-carbon business model. In 2009, the CEO considered BP an "oil company", while in 2021 BP supported the transformation into an "integrated energy company" and committed to move to net zero emissions.
Specifically, the European multinational had announced that it would do so 1,6 billion euros in 2020 in favor of green energy production, but stopped at 750 million. So the goal of being able to allocate 5 billion within the next 8 years seems rather utopian.
Chevron, on the other hand, is the only oil major in which words related to environmental protection and clean energy are less common.
"The word" climate "was only mentioned 45 times for the entire study period and was missing from the 2009-2011 annual reports, compared to 171 mentions of BP in 2020 alone," the study reads.
Finally, as far as ExxonMobil is concerned, key climate-related terms have only increased since 2014. And while other companies publish full reports every year, this company has only presented summaries (except for 2020).
Considering that total usage of normalized keywords decreases significantly in 2020 (when a full report was available), for other years the results appear to be inflated by the shortness of annual report summaries. Aside from that, ExxonMobil results show an increase in discourse on "emissions" and "low carbon" energy. But the low frequency of keyword mentions in the “climate change” and “transition” categories reflects poor attention to these issues.
The energy transition remains a mirage
The Japanese research then focused on several cases of misleading advertising: in too many cases oil companies pretend to be green gas and fossil fuels. And although they talk more and more often about "clean and environmentally friendly energy", in reality they have never presented a clear roadmap on the concrete steps to be taken in favor of the ecological transition.
Once again, no major has proposed an integrated and concrete roadmap to achieve these emissions reductions. , these commitments were not observed. nAll four majors have been lagging behind in fully disclosing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel products produced and sold.
In short, many blah blah blah from the oil lobbies. And few - very few - facts ...
Source: PLOS ONE
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