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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Beyond darkness, there is light. Beyond a thorn, there's a rose.
AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Ever hear this ad?
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UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Beyond petroleum, BP.
RASCOE: This BP, or British Petroleum, ad aired in 2005. That was when oil companies were coming under attack for everything from oil spills to global warming. They began to invest in alternative energy. In other words, beyond petroleum. Shell and Chevron invested in wind and solar. Exxon Mobil put money into algae. Fast forward to today, they have all since doubled down on oil and gas. And BP's CEO just last week called it a reset. Nick Kusnetz covers fossil fuels and energy for Inside Climate News. Good morning.
NICK KUSNETZ: Good morning. How you doing?
RASCOE: I'm doing all right. So after years of touting their shift to green energy and being friends of the planet, why are oil companies now doubling down on fossil fuels?
KUSNETZ: Well, I think a big reason, certainly for BP, is money, really, and investors. BP, in particular, has been coming under a lot of pressure from investors because it's been underperforming. And American companies have really outperformed their European rivals, particularly Shell and BP.
And one of the biggest differences between the companies has been that the European companies have previously pledged to spend a lot of money on renewable energy, and the American oil companies really have maintained that they were going to be oil and gas companies.
RASCOE: At this point, this is about money, but wouldn't the time to invest in alternative energy be when companies do have cash? - because, presumably, with climate change, there will be, you know, issues with putting all this carbon in the atmosphere.
KUSNETZ: For sure, and there are definitely segments of the financial community that have been making exactly that case to them - that they need to prepare themselves for a future where oil and gas demand is falling, and they need to start diversifying and investing in other forms of energy. But I think the problem has been that that transition isn't happening as fast as some people have hoped when oil demand is continuing to climb.
RASCOE: You know, there was always a question of how committed these oil and gas companies were to shifting energy production. And so, I guess, like, what does it mean that BP is doing this reset? Were they putting a lot of money - really putting a lot of money into clean energy?
KUSNETZ: If you go back to 2020, soon after the Paris Agreement was signed and there looked like there was some real momentum behind taking action on climate change - and that's when a lot of the oil companies began to say a lot more about climate, and the European companies took on net-zero pledges. But as you said, I mean, a lot of people looked at these pledges really skeptically. They were long-term pledges, and they were just that. They were pledges.
And this was one thing where BP, at least, stood out from the other major oil companies, and it said it was actually going to reduce how much it spent on oil and gas, exploration and production, and it was going to reduce its oil output within this decade. And so it really stood out from that, and it said it was going to spend that money on renewables instead. And it started to do that. It was just the beginning of it. And BP now is basically saying that they're going to join with the American counterparts. They're going to increase their oil and gas spending once again and scale back how much they spend on renewables.
RASCOE: That's ultimately the question. With companies doubling down on oil and gas, unless investors or government push back or try to force changes, is it possible to meet climate goals, or is that not possible under these current conditions?
KUSNETZ: So one thing that the oil companies have said is that they, essentially, are responding to consumers that they're not going to lead the world off of oil and gas. They can only move as fast as consumers are moving. And, I mean, there's some truth to that. They're businesses, right? But I think what complicates a bit is when the companies are lobbying against policies that would actually speed that transition, you know, lobbying against policies that would quicken a move to electric vehicles, for example.
RASCOE: That's Nick Kusnetz. He is a reporter for Inside Climate News. Thank you so much for joining us.
KUSNETZ: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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