Oil Companies and Renewable Energy

From the American Energy Society:

In 2018, oil majors invested 1% of their combined budgets on clean energy.

Of the $18B that oil majors plan to invest in clean energy in the next five years, more than half will come from Norwegian state-owned energy company, Equinor.

Total will double its gross global renewable energy capacity to 6 gigawatts (GW).

Excluding Equinor, the total renewable investments by oil majors will decline over the next three years

All this supports the theory I’ve been propounding from before the launch of 2GreenEnergy in 2009.  At that time, my brother happened to ask me, “OK, let’s admit that the world will eventually power itself with energy from its nearest star, but why won’t the traditional energy companies take us there?”

Two main answers:

Capability: Oil exploration and the manufacturing of solar panels, wind turbines and the like have very little in common with each other from the perspective of core competency.  Even geothermal is not as closely aligned to oil exploration as one might guess at first glance.

Motive: Extracting, refining, and selling oil is profitable–a fact that’s been proven since the days of the robber barons. There is no incentive to disrupt this; in fact, there is every incentive to do whatever is necessary to keep all this in place, even if this means “dirty tricks” and a poisoned planet.