BP to go Green

The big oil majors have for many years been paying lip service to clean energy and climate change issues. Despite having massive cash flows and also pioneering some key technologies in the clean energy area, firms like Chevron, Exxon, Shell, BP, and others never really put serious effort or investment into renewable energy and other related green areas as they did not want to rock the boat in their bread and butter oil and gas businesses.

In fact, many of the major companies funded and supported climate change skeptic organizations for years. However, the tidal wave of momentum on global warming and climate change is finally sweeping these giant powerful global companies to change their strategies. The COVID crisis has accelerated the support and drive towards acting against climate change both by citizens and the governments. Employee pressure has also driven many big corporates to take a pro-green stance with Amazon forced to come out with a net carbon zero plan.

The oil and gas supermajors are now facing an existential crisis with their oil and gas businesses being the key contributors to global warming. While Shell has earlier come up with a green plan and starting investing in EVs, solar and wind energy, BP has also joined the bandwagon with a serious reset of its overall corporate strategy. The company now wants to invest massively in green energy with a target of 50 GW coming from wind and solar energy by 2030 up from around 2 GW it currently has. The company will also stop investing in major new assets in oil and gas and plans to decrease its overall production. It will increase its green fuel production by a factor of 10x and massively ramp up investment into setting up EV charging infrastructure and hydrogen production.

This change in strategy in my view has come a bit late and seems more forced than proactive. The company really has no choice with the world moving towards RE and green energy and BP will be left out if it does not change now. Even with this change, it will be difficult for BP to survive as it does not seem to have the DNA to thrive in a green world. With much lower returns in RE, it remains to be seen how its bloated cost structure will cope.