Are oil & gas majors abandoning clean energy?

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In 2020, the top five Western oil & gas supermajors – ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and Total – saw combined losses of $76 billion. That was caused by the radical drop in energy consumption when Covid shut down the global economy.

That year, BP CEO Bernard Looney called for a 40% cut in oil & gas production in a decade, and promised to invest billions of dollars each year into renewables.

Two years later, thanks to a war waged by Russia that disrupted supply and a bounceback in global oil demand, high prices brought $200 billion in profits for those companies.

BP just decided that it would invest billions more in oil & gas production, rather than make the drastic cuts it initially proposed. Shell is doing the same, expanding fossil fuel extraction while keeping clean energy investments flat. And even with windfall profits, clean energy only accounts for 5% of oil company capital expenditures globally.

At one point, it seemed like there was a real shift happening in the sector. And now, with the global appetite for oil still growing, the allure of high profits is shifting investments back into extraction. 

This week: how will this new boom time for oil and gas companies impact investments in clean energy?

Plus, we’ll take stock of some of the hottest emerging sectors, like hydrogen, virtual power plants, and critical minerals recycling.

Jigar Shah and Katherine Hamilton are back on the show this week to dissect all of it.

Click here for a full transcript.

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