This Just In: Oil Majors Will Not, Cannot Shift To Renewables - Guardian Op/Ed

[hatrack]

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Ever since Forum for the Future was established in 1996, we’ve spent a lot of time asking ourselves when that exit moment for an oil major might happen. One of our very first projects was with BP Solar, investigating the future market for solar power in the UK. We were predictably upbeat, as were our immediate colleagues in BP Solar. But the rest of the company paid not the slightest attention to our report.

There have always been good, far-sighted people in the big oil and gas companies. From time to time, they’ve succeeded in getting sufficient traction amongst their senior colleagues to make the prospect of becoming ‘genuinely integrated energy companies’ – investing as much in renewables, storage and energy efficiency as in hydrocarbons – more or less realistic. That’s what provided the Forum with the rationale to continue working in partnership with BP and Shell. Our corporate guidelines mean we can only partner with companies that are at least capable of conducting their business ‘on a truly sustainable basis’.

But with BP that moment came and went under the leadership of John Browne; and with Shell, that ‘integrated agenda’ pretty much died after Mark Moody-Stuart moved on. In both companies, the hydrocarbon supremacists rapidly regained the ground they’d lost; doing renewables as Corporate Social Responsibility was fine, but anything that threatened to go seriously ‘beyond petroleum’ was deemed to be deviant heresy.

EDIT

Without some kind of truly traumatic shock to the system (‘Macondo x 10’, as one of my erstwhile and most trusted colleagues in BP once described it), we came to the conclusion that it was impossible for today’s oil and gas majors to adapt in a timely and intelligent way to the imperative of radical decarbonisation. Although a small proportion of our total funding comes from oil and gas majors (for specific projects we believe have the potential to transform part of their value chain) and from companies that are involved in the offshore energy supply chain, we felt we had no option but to end our long-standing partnerships with both Shell and BP.

EDIT

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/15/it-is-impossible-todays-big-oil-companies-adapt-climate-change-jonathon-porritt

[Demeter]

1. What difference does it make?

there aren't any buggy whip manufacturers nowadays, struggling on with state subsidies...although since there are still horses and buggies, there might be one firm or two left in the world.

There is a progression for companies as for people...birth, life, death. Let it be.