Analysis Of 25 Years Of Lies And Greenwashing On Climate Collapse From Four Of Planet's Biggest Oil & Gas Companies

[hatrack]

Four of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies have spent the last 25 years deceptively portraying themselves as leaders in addressing climate change while simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production and failing to meaningfully rein in their planet-heating emissions, according to a report released Thursday that examined over 300 of the companies’ climate-related advertisements from 2000 to 2025.

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Ads touting the companies’ emission-reduction initiatives, the report found, tend to overinflate the impact of these actions and create a misleading impression that the companies have dramatically lowered their overall emissions. But in reality, the actions typically are limited to oil companies’ operational emissions, such as reducing flaring, and do not account for emissions generated by their products, which make up the vast majority of their carbon pollution.

Furthermore, ads highlighting future plans or promises to reduce emissions and transition to low-carbon business models are misleading, the report says, especially considering that the companies are now rolling back their green commitments. “In 2024, less than four years after advertising plans to change their business plans to support a shift towards net zero emissions, BP and Shell both abandoned goals to significantly reduce emissions and lower the carbon intensity of their businesses,” the report says. Some other ads from these companies published since 2000 depict them embracing renewable energy like wind and solar, but as the report says, this obscures the reality that oil companies’ actual investments in renewables are miniscule: “One analysis found that between 2010 and 2018, BP spent only 2.3 percent of its total capital expenditure on renewables, Shell spent 1.3 percent, Chevron spent 0.23 percent, and ExxonMobil spent 0.22 percent.”

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In addition to promoting what the report calls the false solution of natural gas, oil companies have used advertising to highlight and push false promises about carbon capture and storage and about hydrogen, claiming these technologies are key to a low-carbon future. Carbon capture technologies have existed for decades and have failed to sequester more than a miniscule amount of global emissions. Most carbon capture and storage operations also end up using the captured CO2 to extract more oil—a process known as enhanced oil recovery—which critics say cancels out much of the supposed climate benefit and serves to further prolong the fossil fuel era.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11122025/big-oil-deceptive-climate-ads-false-solutions/

[NNadir]

1. We haven't seen the slick ads here rebranding fossil fuels as"green hydrogen."

Maybe the marketing person gave up.

I can't say I miss those ads.