The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Oil Companies are Dropping Renewable Goals — With Plans to Expand Fossil Fuels
Dear Diary. I love old expressions like every leopard shows their spots and hawks can’t guard the henhouse. These kids’ sayings are very true in the adult world when it comes to criminals and some organizations like oil companies. It is very rare for people and organizations to change their natures unless prodded to do so with good guidance and discipline.
These days due to a very corrupt Trump, oil companies have very little incentive to change their spots and are in fact reverting back to behavior from the 1980s. If our climate isn’t already out of control now due to their past behavior, it will be explosively bad come the 2030s and beyond if new oil company plans come to fruition.
Here are more details from Grist:
Oil companies are dropping renewable goals — and more importantly, expanding fossil fuels
And that could drive an emissions spike.
Anna Barclay / Getty Images
Tik Root Senior Staff Writer
Published Mar 07, 2025
Last week, British Petroleum announced that it was slashing more than $5 billion in planned green energy investments. It was a marked departure from the early 2000s, when the oil giant branded itself as “beyond petroleum,” and even 2020, when the company targeted a 20-fold increase in its renewables portfolio.
“Today, we have fundamentally reset BP’s strategy,” said BP’s CEO, Murray Auchincloss, as part of the most recent announcement. “This is a reset BP, with an unwavering focus on growing long-term shareholder value.”
BP isn’t the only oil giant rolling back its climate commitments. Shell and Norway’s state-controlled Equinor have also made similar moves recently. But, while the news has caught headlines, experts say that the moves will have little impact on the larger renewables industry — and that, from a climate perspective, the companies’ proposed increase in fossil fuel production is much more alarming.
“I don’t see the watering down of renewables targets as particularly significant. The oil and gas sector accounts for a negligible share of clean energy investment,” wrote Rich Collett-White, an analyst at Carbon Tracker, a nonprofit think tank researching the impact of climate change on financial markets, in an email. According to the International Energy Agency, the sector accounts for only 1 percent of the overall industry.
“Clean energy investment is still increasing globally — it’s just not coming from the oil and gas sector,” said Collett-White. “The changes they’re making to production targets are more significant.”
Greenhushing, explained: Why companies have stopped talking about their climate pledges
At the same time that BP cut its renewables portfolio, it said it was going to invest $10 billion more in oil and gas. The company is now aiming to produce 2.4 million barrels per day of fossil fuels by 2030, which is a 60 percent jump from its 2020 target. That 900,000 barrel difference amounts to about 387,000 more metric tons of carbon dioxide each day — which is equivalent to around 90,000 gas-powered cars operating for a year.
“Even before these renewable rollbacks, almost all the oil majors were locked in to new oil and gas production,” explained Kelly Trout, research director at Oil Change International, an advocacy organization aiming to facilitate a just transition to clean energy. A report from the organization last May found that six of the eight largest oil companies had explicit goals to increase oil and gas production. Since then, Trout says that has grown to seven companies, with Shell being the only exception.
These commitments come at a time when the oil market already shows signs of saturation. Of the 2,206 active leases in the Gulf, only a fifth are producing oil, according to records from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which regulates offshore drilling. Collett-White says that, climate aside, Carbon Tracker “would caution against locking in new, high-capex long-cycle developments that would need high oil/gas prices to be competitive.”
Nonetheless, President Donald Trump has urged the United States to “drill, baby, drill.” In the first month since retaking office, his administration has declared an “energy emergency” aimed at enabling the government to ramp up fossil fuel extraction, reversed a moratorium on liquefied natural gas exports, and installed a former natural gas executive as the head of the Department of Energy. At the same time, Trump has also frozen much of the money from President Joe Biden’s landmark climate bills, the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Oil companies don’t want to be known for oil anymore
“Trump and the current administration is giving these companies a pass to keep their polluting practices,” said Mahyar Sorour, the director of the Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy program at the Sierra Club. “It is no surprise that these companies are following [Trump’s] lead.”
In BP’s announcement, the company is similarly distancing itself from its previous commitments to clean energy. “Our optimism for a fast [energy] transition was misplaced,” said Auchincloss. “We went too far, too fast.“
Rollbacks like BP’s are in some ways laying bare what activists have long argued: The commitments were insincere from the start. “Many of these tactics have been simple greenwashing,” said Sorour, adding that momentum will continue regardless. “We are well on our way to a green energy transition.”
Now that oil companies have made their intentions clear, Trout is watching whether investors and governments will respond with any pushback against the production increases. Meaningful reductions in planet warming emissions, she said, can’t happen without phasing out fossil fuels — a future oil companies clearly aren’t envisioning.
“We’re not going to solve the climate crisis simply by adding renewable energy on top of fossil fuels,” she said. “It’s a truth telling moment.”
Next Article
Big banks abandoned a voluntary climate alliance. Now, critics are calling for new laws..
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is more new February 2025 and Winter 2024/25 climatology (summer for Southern Hemisphere):
Here is More Climate News from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)