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 This is unpublished work.