Greenwashing
Big Oil
On 28 October, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives (Committee on Oversight and Reform) called a number of Big Oil figureheads to discuss fossil fuels and climate change:
- Darren Woods - CEO
ExxonMobil Corporation
- David Lawler - CEO
BP America Inc.
- Michael K. Wirth - CEO
Chevron Corporation
- Gretchen Watkins - President
Shell Oil Company
- Mike Sommers - President
American Petroleum Institute [1]
At the Committee’s hearing in October 2021, fossil fuel executives finally admitted under oath that climate change is real, that burning fossil fuels contributes to it, and that this is an existential threat to the planet. Yet none of them would pledge to end their financial support for efforts to block meaningful action on climate change. The Committee’s investigation has shown that, rather than outright deny global warming, the fossil fuel industry has “greenwashed” its record through deceptive advertising and climate pledges—without meaningfully reducing emissions. Documents obtained by the Committee show: Contrary to what their pledges imply, fossil fuel companies have not organized their businesses around becoming low-emissions, renewable energy companies. They are devoted to a long-term fossil fuel future.
- Despite BP previously rebranding itself as “Beyond Petroleum,” internal documents highlighted how carbon capture and storage (CCS), one of the energy technologies touted by the company, could “enable the full use of fossil fuels across the energy transition and beyond.”
- An internal Shell email discussing carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) warned an executive, “We want to be careful to not talk about CCUS as prolonging the life of oil, gas or fossil fuels writ large.”
- Chevron pays lip service to a “just transition” to cleaner fuels but provided talking points to an executive asserting that “[o]il and gas” are the “lower carbon solutions that ensures a just transition.”
Big Oil’s climate pledges and green advertising focus on unproven technologies the companies have privately admitted are decades away from implementation.
- Although Exxon spent at least $68 million advertising its research into algae-based biofuels, notes from an investor presentation obtained by the Committee show this technology is “[s]till decades away from the scale we need.”
- One Exxon public affairs manager warned that implying in an advertisement that algae can be deployed on a mass scale would be misleading, and “might create some angst with the research folks who
know that.”
Oil and gas companies have tried to create the impression that they are taking ambitious steps to reduce emissions—without actually doing so.
- Internal documents show that Exxon and Chevron sought to water down statements by the industry-led Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) to “remove language that potentially commits members to enhanced climaterelated governance, strategy, risk management, and performance metrics and targets” and to avoid any “explicit commitment for OGCI companies to align their advocacy with their climate related positions”—including advocacy for the Paris Agreement.
- Shell has touted its “Sky scenario” as an ambitious path to achieve netzero emissions, but internal emails emphasize this is “not a Shell business plan” and has “nothing to do with our business plans.”
- Internal Shell messaging guidance—which was developed to “insulate Shell” from lawsuits about “greenwashing” and “misleading investors” on climate change—calls on employees to emphasize that net-zero emissions is “a collective ambition for the world” rather than a “Shell goal or target.”
The guidance urges Shell employees, “Please do not give the impression that Shell is willing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to levels that do not make business sense.”
Big Oil relies on accounting gimmicks, tricky language, and delay tactics to claim the mantle of climate leadership while continuing to be a primary cause of an ongoing climate catastrophe.
- Internal documents show that in 2019, Exxon scrubbed a public statement about an executive’s speech at a private conference to remove a reference to a plan to increase production in the Permian basin by “1000% within 5 years.”
- After Shell posted on Twitter asking others what they would do to reduce emissions, a communications executive wrote privately that he agreed this could be seen as “gaslighting” the public, explaining: “We are, after all, in a tweet like this implying others need to sacrifice without focusing on ourselves.”