The world’s main oil and gasoline firms declare they’re main the power transition. They spend billions on PR to model themselves as a part of the answer. The information we’ve reviewed tells a special story.
The place a speedy transition to renewables is going down, incumbent fossil gas companies have virtually nothing to do with it. Evaluation by one in every of us reveals that the biggest 250 oil and gasoline firms solely personal 1.42% of worldwide renewable power, and simply 0.01% of the power they extract comes from renewable sources.
For many years, many Indigenous peoples and environmental activists have accused the fossil gas business of providing “false options”. These are initiatives that amplify the business’s inexperienced credentials whereas leaving its core enterprise mannequin untouched. Our analysis helps their case.
We argue that fossil gas firms’ deployment of renewable power, biofuels, carbon seize and storage (CCS), inexperienced hydrogen and carbon offsetting isn’t designed to oppose decarbonisation, however to handle the dialog round renewables. False options sign compliance whereas serving to to mute requires a systemic transformation.
Mapping the delay
Drawing on the World Atlas of Environmental Justice, the world’s largest environmental battle database primarily based on the Autonomous College of Barcelona, we mapped and analysed 48 initiatives run by fossil gas companies. These ranged from biofuels to CCS and forest restoration schemes, in addition to some renewable power initiatives which can be owned and utilized by these companies.
Llavero-Pasquina et al
Crucially, we discovered that these had been not often displacing fossil fuels. As a substitute, they justify additional use of oil, gasoline or coal.
As an illustration, CCS services are sometimes linked to “enhanced oil restoration”. That includes CO₂ captured from an influence plant or manufacturing unit being injected into wells to squeeze out extra fossil fuels from underground reservoirs – an method that really extends the lifespan of oil fields. The business’s personal paperwork again this up: the World CCS Institute’s 2025 standing report lists 77 commercially services in operation world wide. Of those, it notes 33 had been developed to boost oil restoration.
Likewise, “clear hydrogen” is commonly used to greenwash initiatives which can be truly constructed on continued gasoline manufacturing. Even renewables can develop into false options. We discovered photo voltaic and wind farms constructed particularly to energy refineries and oil and gasoline drilling. These initiatives don’t decarbonise the grid, they merely make it simpler and cheaper to extract fossil fuels.
New tech, previous injustices
False options do greater than lock in fossil gas dependence. Throughout the 48 instances there have been examples of land conflicts. Carbon offset schemes typically contain excessive emitters paying to guard or restore a forest or different ecosystem, to “make up” for his or her emissions. However in observe, they’ll result in the enclosure of beforehand frequent land and the lack of communal or Indigenous rights. Biofuel plantations can displace smallholders, changing native meals methods with industrial-scale farms.
Indigenous and conventional communities are disproportionately affected by false options. Many initiatives are sited on ancestral or sacred land with out significant session or consent.
Resistance to those initiatives is commonly framed by the fossil gas business and its supporters as hostility to local weather motion or a type of nimbyism. However our information means that, in lots of instances, these communities are against initiatives that perpetuate the fossil gas economic system.
We additionally discovered proof of governments channelling public subsidies to fund many of those initiatives. Such instances quantity to a direct money switch from taxpayers to personal firms for guarantees that ship minimal emissions reductions.
They’re, subsequently, in impact serving to to delay the tip of the fossil gas period.
But these initiatives have enabled politicians to say they’re local weather leaders with out having to confront a strong business.
After inspecting these 48 conflicts, one lesson turns into unmistakable: false options are usually not experimental missteps. They’re in impact serving to to delay the tip of the fossil gas period.
