Contribution short abstract

This contribution addresses the panel's call to build common understandings of the ways through which oil and gas companies obstructs meaningful climate action towards campaigning against the misbehavior of the fossil fuel industry

Contribution long abstract

Oil and gas companies claim to be allies in the transition to a decarbonized economy. This intervention will introduce research that helps undermine this false idea. Specifically, two collaborative academic works will be presented:

1) An analysis of the renewable energy assets of 250 of the largest oil and gas companies. The research at issue finds a marginal contribution to global renewable energy deployment of these companies, and that their renewable generation represents a tiny proportion of the total energy production. This work was published this year in Nature Sustainability.

Full reference:

Llavero-Pasquina, M., & Bontempi, A., 2025. Oil and gas industry’s marginal share of global renewable energy. Nature Sustainability, 8(11), 1254-1258. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01647-0

2) A review of existing empirical evidence on the role of oil & gas companies in the sustainability transition, in support of the pledge to exclude them from climate negotiations. Particularly, such a role is discussed in terms of (i) irreconcilability of their narratives with facts; (ii) their historical liability; (iii) ongoing conflicts of interests; (iv) the industry’s obstructionism of climate action. This is unpublished work.

Contribution short abstract

We define false climate solutions by engaging with Gramsci’s conceptions of hegemony and trasformismo. We propose a model of reproduction of power within and between three power domains: ideas, infrastructure, and institutions. We analyse 48 EJAtlas case studies involving fossil fuel companies.

Contribution long abstract

In response to mounting political and social pressure to transform their business models, the fossil fuel industry is attempting to portray itself as “part of the solution” to the climate crisis by emphasising its investments into renewable energy, biofuels, green hydrogen, carbon capture and storage, and carbon offsets. However, environmental justice organisations have labelled these technologies as “false solutions” that do not address the root causes of the climate crisis and entrench environmental injustice and fossil fuel companies’ power. In this paper, we formalise and operationalise a definition of false solutions by engaging with Gramsci’s conception of hegemony and incumbent strategies, in particular the concept of trasformismo. We extend neogramscian theory by proposing a model of reproduction and reinforcement of power within and between three power domains: ideas, infrastructure, and institutions. Empirically, we explore the environmental conflicts that arise around the deployment of false solutions through a global analysis of 48 case studies in the EJAtlas and a coding methodology that identifies processes of power reproduction and reinforcement. We show that false solutions comprise an array of technologies that prolong fossil fuel hegemony and neutralise socio-political pressures for systemic transformation, thereby sustaining current extractive economic models that reproduce environmental conflicts and injustices.

Contribution short abstract

The Climate Discourse Observatory at University of Miami’s Climate Accountability Lab have developed CLAIMS (Climate Language and Influence Monitoring System): a tool that automatically detects greenwashing in oil & gas companies' social media posts at scale.

Contribution long abstract

There is a growing need for tools that can detect false and misleading claims by fossil fuel companies in order to help inform climate accountability efforts such as lawsuits, advertising complaints, political investigations, and grassroots organizing. Based at the University of Miami’s Climate Accountability Lab, the Climate Discourse Observatory has developed CLAIMS (Climate Language and Influence Monitoring System): a tool that automatically detects greenwashing in oil & gas companies' social media posts at scale. By prompt-tuning the GPT5 Large Language Model from OpenAI, CLAIMS reliably classifies text in social media posts from fossil fuel producers according to a novel typology of “green” and “fossil fuel” messaging. Comparing the results to the real-world operations of carbon majors, we report the first quantitative evidence of greenwashing by fossil fuel companies on social media. In collaboration with the Algorithmic Transparency Institute, we have built an accompanying interactive CLAIMS dashboard that yields real time insights that may be relevant to ongoing accountability initiatives.

Contribution short abstract

In this paper, we use internal documents to compare BP's internal research on biofuels with the company’s public advocacy on biofuels. We find that since at least 2016, BP was informed of the failures of the company’s biofuels research and warned about the technology’s limited scalability.

Contribution long abstract

In 2022 and 2024, as part of a multi-year investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s “role in spreading climate disinformation and preventing action on climate change”, the United States House Senate Budget Committee and the House Oversight Committee released over 4,500 internal documents from fossil fuel companies. This is the first academic study based on these documents.

In this paper, we use these documents to compare fossil fuel company BP's internal research and commentary on biofuels with the company’s public advocacy on biofuels. We find that since at least 2016, top executives at BP have been informed of the failures of the company’s biofuels research, warned about the technology’s limited scalability, and notified of biofuels’ limited viability as a climate solution compared to wind and solar energy. Rather than wind down public advocacy, however, BP instead continued to promote biofuels through consumer-facing advertisements, release misleading statements about the scalability of biofuels in annual reports, and lobby for the expansion of biofuels to various governments. These misleading promotions of biofuels from BP continue today.

Contribution short abstract

What do fossil fuel companies get out of academia? We examine how the fossil fuel industry embeds itself in academia by analyzing 130,000 EC funded research projects, data and documents obtained from Freedom of Information requests at Dutch universities and industry documents.

Contribution long abstract

What do fossil fuel companies get out of academia? Using data from over 130,000 European Commission funded research projects, data and documents obtained from Freedom of Information requests at Dutch universities as well as industry documents now in the public domain, we examine how the fossil fuel industry embeds itself in academia, and how it uses this to steer academic discourse and secure it social licence to operate.

We examine how universities are used to “generate agenda-setting content”, “provide thought leadership and research technology that could underpin [the] role for gas”. We do so by quantifying the shift in Europe away from explicit fossil fuel research goals and towards “incremental fossil” mitigation solutions such as CCS and hydrogen. In addition, we analyze how fossil fuel companies came to dominate research practice and government strategy simultaneously through industry, lobbying and co-opting ‘environmental’ organisations and allied research institutions.

Our research paints a picture where universities are unaware that they are being manipulated by an industry interested only in saving itself at any cost. We draw parallels to the tobacco industry since the 1990’s and other health-harming industries. By exposing their tactics, we hope that those in decision-making roles at institutions can avoid being (unwitting) enablers of climate obstruction and take steps to preserve academic freedom.

(re: presenting/attending, we can discuss with you which of us should present/attend if the contribution is accepted)

Contribution short abstract

We analyze approximately 6 thousand novel internal documents to show how five U.S. and European fossil fuel firms use ‘low-carbon’ technologies, doublespeak, and political alliances to preserve fossil infrastructures, shape policy discourse, and obstruct a transformative energy transition.

Contribution long abstract

Fossil fuel companies face growing scrutiny for their role in accelerating climate change and have shifted from overt denial to portraying themselves as climate leaders. This paper examines how corporations deploy “low-carbon” technologies to legitimate continued fossil fuel production, deflect accountability, and extend existing sacrifice zones. Drawing on 6,479 internal documents obtained by the U.S. House Oversight Committee in 2021, we use a text-as-data approach combining Named Entity Recognition and semantic similarity algorithms with qualitative coding to trace how companies construct narratives, cultivate political and academic alliances, and respond to public pressure.

Our research uncovers four core dynamics. First, we reveal widespread corporate doublespeak by juxtaposing internal and external communications of five fossil fuel firms, showing stark misalignments between public climate claims and internal strategies. Second, we illustrate a recurring “plug-and-play” script through which companies promote CC(U)S, biofuels, hydrogen, and gas as interchangeable solutions that preserve fossil infrastructures. Third, we map the evolving network of actors, technologies, and geographies that fossil incumbents mobilize, identifying key collaborations and opposition across time. Fourth, we analyze climate policy documents to detect linguistic similarities with corporate discourse, demonstrating the discursive diffusion of industry narratives into policy-making arenas.

These findings demonstrate how speculative ‘low-carbon’ technologies function as false solutions that enable fossil fuel incumbents to maintain political influence and economic control while appearing to support decarbonisation. The analysis offers the first systematic juxtaposition of internal and external corporate communications alongside a examination of similarities between corporate and policy discourse.

Contribution short abstract

I explore how Canada’s fossil sector has recently regained cultural and political dominance—branding itself as guardian of sovereignty, economic growth, and national progress. What does this entail for climate action and energy transition in Canada today?

Contribution long abstract

I explore how Canada’s fossil sector has recently regained cultural and political dominance—branding itself as guardian of sovereignty, economic growth, and national progress—and what this entails for climate action and energy transition now. Under PM Mark Carney, and in the shadow of a renewed Trump threat, the oil and gas sector have been rapidly recast as the nation’s security blanket and the credible core of a “responsible” transition. Industry and allies now sell a two-track story: hydrocarbons as the only pragmatic political and economic option in a world of evolving threats, and hydrocarbons as partners to emissions reduction through CCUS, hydrogen, and “responsible” LNG. This narrative is deployed in conjunction with institutional moves—pipeline agreements, regulatory rewrites, and budget signals—that translate storyline into advantage, allowing extraction to expand while climate targets remain the horizon for legitimacy. The effect is a restored hegemony: extraction read as common sense, dissent coded as naïve or anti-sovereign, and climate language folded into a growth-first agenda. The paper maps this consolidation across media, government discourse, finance, and policy instruments associated with Carney’s influence, showing how risk is laundered as prudence and how “credibility” is aligned with capital allocation. Set against continental pressures, the result is a Canadian variant of energy nationalism that narrows the field of the possible: by redefining what counts as transition, fossil capital slows structural change while claiming to deliver it—and in doing so, shapes the terms on which climate action can be imagined, debated, and enacted.

Contribution short abstract

New qualitative analysis of US energy regulatory archives finds that fossil fuel producers used greenwashing claims in construction filings for fossil infrastructure. Regulators accepted these claims, showing need for regulatory reform to advance US energy transition.

Contribution long abstract

Increasing fossil fuel use is incompatible with preventing catastrophic climate change above 1.5C. In the US, the federal energy regulatory commission (FERC) continues to approve new fossil fuel infrastructure despite known climate harms. To understand the regulatory dynamics underlying fossil energy buildout, this research analyzes filings from the US’s largest fracked gas producer (EQT) and FERC during the construction of a highly contested gas pipeline, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP). Qualitative analysis of digital archival data shows EQT's deployment of discourses of climate denial and delay to greenwash fracked gas and pipeline construction in regulatory proceedings. This analysis further finds that regulators accept these claims, showing vulnerability to climate obstruction narratives. Vulnerabilities to greenwashing narratives are exacerbated by current regulatory practices, including marginalization of community and environmental organization input, reliance on the regulated industry for technical expertise, and implicit assumptions of the inevitability and public benefit of fracked gas pipelines. These findings question energy regulators' ability to discern misleading and misinformative claims. To advance US energy transition, regulatory process reforms that mitigate the impact of greenwashing claims in filings are necessary.

Contribution short abstract

The captive audience of public-school presents a perfect venue to maintain fossil fuel hegemony. Petro-pedagogy is an effective arm of the climate obstruction regime in the United States, my work documents how widespread and how effectively it adds inertia to efforts to address the climate crisis.

Contribution long abstract

Petro-pedagogy is the term used to describe strategies fossil fuel companies use to exert their influence and social legitimation via educational spaces. In the United States, this type of corporate interference in classrooms is widespread and stretches back to at least the 1940s. It presents a formidable challenge in building a sustainable future because it is an effective way to reinforce fossil fuel hegemony in a guaranteed large subset of the population -- the captive audience of school-aged children in mandatory public education.

Petro-pedagogy takes different forms, including direct funding to schools, industry directly influencing curricula, free teaching materials like books or activity booklets, paid teacher training sessions, or free field trips to refineries and other fossil fuel assets.

Common climate delay discourses are initially seeded here, and they are repeated in other forms of media and political spheres throughout our lives. Discourses include fossil fuel essentialism, false solutions, responsibility shifting, and biased both-sided analyses.

While it can be argued that petro-pedagogy is merely a way these companies engage in corporate social responsibility and provide financial support at a time when school budgets are increasingly strained, I argue these efforts are also a calculated form of systematic indoctrination. My work documents the widespread nature of petro-pedagogy across the United States. I detail how the fossil fuel industry engages in this form of obstruction under the guise of community outreach, and how these efforts fuel the prevailing akrasia and agnotology holding us back from meaningfully addressing the climate crisis.

Contribution short abstract

This paper explores the role of false solutions in the mature and declining basins of the UK and Denmark, where capital’s capacity to reproduce itself through continued extraction is structurally constrained. In these cases, false solutions manage the contradictions of decline.

Contribution long abstract

Fossil fuel incumbents increasingly deploy false solutions to ensure control over energy systems and maintain profit, while accommodating and diluting demands for structural transformation. Existing analyses tend to conceptualise false solutions as global ideational, institutional, and technological strategies that legitimise incumbent power and neutralise pressures for fossil fuel phase-outs. Yet these approaches often overlook the material and political economic conditions in which such strategies are embedded.

This paper shifts attention to mature and declining basins, where capital’s capacity to reproduce itself through continued extraction is structurally constrained. In these late-stage regimes, false solutions serve not only to defend incumbents’ authority but also to manage the contradictions of decline - creating new accumulation opportunities and shaping the terms on which labour, communities, and the state confront an inevitable downturn.

Through a comparative analysis of the offshore fossil fuel industries in the United Kingdom and Denmark, we examine how incumbents mobilise false solutions - in particular, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies - to recalibrate industrial relations and align workers, unions, and policymakers with specific technological pathways. In contexts where investment in new extraction is flatlining and end-dates for production are increasingly salient, false solutions take on a distinct function: they operate as instruments of political economic restructuring that maintain legitimacy, reconfigure labour–capital relations, and create new sites of accumulation beyond the viability of continued extraction.

Contribution short abstract

This paper examines how fossil fuel interest groups exert undue influence in UNFCCC processes. Through interviews and literature synthesis, it finds influence occurs via privileged access, information manipulation, and inaction in policy outcomes, shaping negotiations and promoting false solutions.

Contribution long abstract

The increasing presence of fossil fuel interest groups at UN climate conferences has intensified concerns about undue influence on international climate policymaking. However, the concept of undue influence in international governance remains poorly understood, and empirical evidence on how it is exerted is limited. To address these gaps, this paper explores fossil fuel interest groups’ influence within the UNFCCC processes. It identifies three key dimensions of undue influence: privileged access to international institutions, manipulation of information to bias decisions in favour of an interest group’s agenda, and resulting policies that advantage vested interests at the expense of the public good. It then examines how each dimension plays out in climate negotiations. Based on interviews with state negotiators and observers, as well as literature synthesis, the analysis finds that undue influence at UN climate conferences is primarily exercised through state delegations, whereby fossil fuel industry-linked actors use their privileged position to secure access to negotiations. In negotiations, information manipulation through censoring texts and blocking specific wording leads to lack of explicit language addressing fossil fuels, reflecting influence through omission. Non-negotiation spaces emerge as key arenas for disseminating disinformation and advancing “false solutions” to the climate crisis. The analysis shows that policy outcomes benefiting fossil fuel interests frequently take the form of inaction rather than overtly favourable decisions. The paper offers conceptual and empirical insights that contribute to anti-corruption scholarship and enhance understanding of UNFCCC processes.

Contribution short abstract

The petrochemicals sector also promote "false solutions" to maintain its hegemony. This paper analyzes how this industry obstructs the Global Plastics Treaty and the EU PFAS ban by concealing harm and delaying crucial regulation.

Contribution long abstract

Amid escalating global pressures to address the pollution dimension of the triple planetary crisis, the petrochemical sector employs the fossil fuel industry's "part of the solution" narrative. This strategy represents a clear case of promoting "false solutions" to maintain carbon lock-in, despite overwhelming evidence of the severe environmental and public health impacts of plastics and related petrochemicals.

This is particularly evident with Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS), petrochemicals of significant concern due to their persistence and toxicity. Following a pattern observed in the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, investigative journalism has revealed that the PFAS industry deliberately concealed knowledge of these harms from regulators for decades.

Against this background, and through a political ecology lens, this paper examines the sophisticated strategies, tactics, and narratives deployed by the petrochemical sector to obstruct two crucial contemporary regulatory efforts to address the problem of PFAs toxicity: the negotiation of the Global Plastics Treaty and the 2023 proposal to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) seeking a near-total ban on PFAS in the EU. The research focuses on the industry's efforts to perpetuate fossil essentialism by promoting delaying tactics, such as questioning scientific evidence and advocating for substitutions with chemically similar alternatives. The analysis draws on scholarship from international environmental law, regulatory governance and political ecology. Methodologically, the research combines case study analysis with interviews with journalists and regulatory experts. As a result, it will shed light on the petrochemical sector's sophisticated modes of obstruction, contributing to unveil the misbehavior of the fossil fuel industry.

Contribution short abstract

The fossil fuel industry has long weaponized academia to defend its business interests. Far less is known about the consulting firms that help broker these ties. Hundreds of emails obtained through a public records request reveal a powerful example.

Contribution long abstract

The fossil fuel industry’s efforts to obstruct action on climate change are well-documented. By contrast, the role of enabling industries has received less attention. Here, we report a case study demonstrating how one of the world’s largest consulting firms facilitated influential relationships in order to help their oil company clients vie for federal funding that would ensure the continuity of the natural gas market. Using a public records request, we have obtained emails between McKinsey & Company and the University of Houston showing that the consulting firm shaped the university’s Energy Transition Institute and co-wrote a bid for it to become one of seven U.S. hydrogen hubs eligible for up to $1.2 billion in funding from the Department of Energy.

The newly discovered documents illustrate McKinsey’s longstanding strategy to leverage academic ties to influence policy decisions in favor of their clients. The University of Houston’s Vice President for Energy and Innovation privately celebrated the viewpoints of a McKinsey senior advisor as “essential to shape student programs and research agendas that align with the greatest needs of the energy industry.” This investigation provides compelling evidence that consultancies are a key under-addressed node in the network of climate obstruction linking fossil fuel interests to universities and government.

Contribution short abstract

This study investigates how companies use LinkedIn Ads to promote greenwashing and technosolutionist narratives around the energy transition. More than half of the 2,800 analyzed ads promoted misleading environmental claims, normalizing disinformation and reinforcing climate delay.

Contribution long abstract

Greenwashing has become a central component of the broader ecosystem of environmental disinformation, reinforcing climate-delay narratives and shaping public debates on sustainability. This study investigates how ads on LinkedIn have been mobilized to promote misleading claims about the energy transition in Brazil by focusing on the prevalence of greenwashing and on how it is used to distort the climate debate. We collected ads from the LinkedIn Ads Library using an iterative sampling strategy based on keyword searches, combining API requests with scraping. We retrieved 2,800 relevant ads, which were qualitatively coded for signs of greenwashing and classified according to the company’s business sector. The results showed that 1,476 ads (52.87%), published by 389 companies (42.5%), leveraged greenwashing. High-impact sectors, such as oil and gas and mining, frequently promote allegedly “clean” or “sustainable” solutions, even when their practices cannot be considered fully green. The analysis highlights the rise of technosolutionist narratives that promise rapid, technology-driven fixes to systemic problems, thereby neutralizing climate justice demands and displacing political and social dimensions of the transition. These strategies normalize environmental disinformation, reinforce climate delay and hinder transformative change in the energy system. By demonstrating how corporate advertising operates as a device for meaning-making and social legitimation, this study offers insights to understand and challenge power-reproduction strategies of polluting industries within the context of the energy transition. Overall, the analysis shows that LinkedIn is a strategic space for reputational environmental communication, in which consistent patterns of potential greenwashing emerge across sectors.

Contribution short abstract

Within finance and banking, fossil fuel investments are incentivized and climate obstruction narratives are dominant. This paper reviews climate obstruction narratives in banks and financial institutions and explores how finance obstructs fossil fuel phaseout.

Contribution long abstract

Transformative changes for climate justice requires phasing out fossil fuels. But fossil fuel phaseout has been constrained by pervasive climate obstruction in finance and banking. Climate obstruction refers to intentional efforts to deny the severity of the climate crisis and to slow or to block policies or actions that would reduce the severity of climate instability. This paper argues that climate obstruction and the blocking of fossil fuel phaseout are manifested through simplistic narratives and narrow framings that permeate the financial sector. A critical element of this is the attempt to minimize and downplay the threat of economic and financial instability associated with climate disruptions. A typology of dominant narratives that prevent and delay financial innovations for climate justice is proposed. Revealing climate obstruction within the financial sector and banking is an important step in the paradigm shift that is required to phaseout fossil fuels and transform the economy toward climate justice.

Contribution short abstract

We estimate participation and interest in fossil energy sources and their climate change effect using Poly Market data and other information to estimate the sources of such information and how they could be from disturbing foundational origins beyond emerging controversies.

Contribution long abstract

The contemporary climate crisis confronts an underexamined obstacle: the systematic deployment of religious discourse within populist political frameworks to legitimize corporate resistance to decarbonization. This study examines the structural convergence of religious authority, right-wing populism, and corporate strategic behavior in shaping climate governance outcomes across the United States and Canada. Following the Trump administration's ascendance, Christian nationalist rhetoric, divine exceptionalism narratives, and anti-globalist theological framing have reconfigured environmental discourse and normalized climate science rejection, demonstrating significant transnational diffusion into Canadian corporate and political spheres.

We identify two interdependent mechanisms. First, religious elites exercise epistemic authority over corporate decision-makers through theological reinterpretations that diminish climate urgency, providing normative scaffolding for continued inaction. Second, corporations engage in strategic theological appropriation, adopting religiously coded discourse to cultivate legitimacy within conservative faith constituencies and defend extractive economic models.

Critical evidence emerges from longitudinal survey divergence analysis. Comparative examination of two decades of polling data reveals systematic deviation between projected belief trajectories and observed attitudinal patterns. Predictive models anticipated an 18–25 percentage point decline in climate skepticism among religious conservatives (2005–2025); empirical measurements document only marginal reductions (≤6%), with several Canadian provinces exhibiting increases of 4–7 percentage points since 2016. These persistent gaps constitute evidence of sustained discursive intervention disrupting expected knowledge diffusion.

This interdisciplinary panel synthesizes insights from political theology, corporate political ecology, and critical discourse studies to interrogate how religious narratives become infrastructural components of climate obstruction regimes, examining ideational, material, and institutional dimensions of power.