The world’s 250 largest oil and gas companies are responsible for less than 1.5% of renewable energy generation worldwide, according to a new analysis. The findings cast doubt on the fossil fuel industry narrative that it is helping solve the climate crisis by investing in renewable energy development.
In recent years, fossil fuel companies have pledged to make drastic cuts in their own emissions and have emphasized their green energy initiatives, as part of a strategy to maintain the social and political acceptance necessary to continue doing business in a world increasingly focused on decarbonization.
But until now, there has been no quantitative analysis of the industry’s contribution to the green transition. “I think the article resolves the debate on whether the fossil fuel industry is honestly engaging with the climate crisis or not,” says study team member Marcel Llavero-Pasquina, a postdoctoral researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. As to the answer, he doesn’t mince words: “Their interest ends with their profits.”
To reach this conclusion, Llavero-Pasquina and his UAB colleague Antonio Bontempi mined a series of existing corporate structure and energy production databases. They identified the world’s 250 largest oil and gas companies responsible for 88% of global production of hydrocarbons, as well as 344 subsidiaries, 193 acquisitions, and 172 sister companies of these firms.
Next, they identified 3,166 wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal power projects that the companies own directly, through subsidiaries, or via acquired companies.
Only 20% of the largest oil and gas companies own a currently operating renewable energy project at all, the researchers report in Nature Sustainability. Renewable energy represents just 0.13% of the companies’ total primary energy extraction, the researchers calculated.
The oil and gas giants own 1.42% of global renewable energy capacity currently in operation. About half of this is via acquired companies, suggesting their investment is largely financial rather than a matter of active operations.
“I have been researching the fossil fuel industry for a decade, and I knew their renewable energy operations were tokenistic. But even I did not expect their share of renewables to be this low,” Llavero-Pasquina says. “I felt deceived by their intense media campaigns.”
Sister companies, meaning renewable energy companies that are directly owned by the parent companies of oil and gas firms, are responsible for about 10% of renewable energy capacity in operation. “This figure is largely attributable (94%) to the sister companies of Chinese state-owned firms,” the researchers write.
By far the company with the largest amount of installed capacity is TotalEnergies with 14.6 gigawatts of renewable power generation in operation – more than 3 times the capacity of the next runners-up and still just 1.59% of its total primary energy extraction.
“The companies with the largest share of renewable energy in their total production are TAQA (9.02%) and Pampa Energia (6.68%), whose core business is in the power sector” rather than oil and gas production, the researchers note.
Oil and gas companies tend to invest in larger renewable energy projects, and in geothermal and offshore wind projects where the firms’ drilling and offshore operations experience provides an advantage.
The oil and gas companies do have a larger share of renewable energy projects planned or under construction. But this capacity amounts to just 4% of the plan, agreed to at the UN climate conference in 2023, to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030.
As well as evaluating oil and gas companies’ commitment to fighting the climate crisis by their contributions to renewable energy development, the researchers argue, the firms should be judged by the fossil fuel infrastructure they decommission and the amount of fossil fuels they leave in the ground.
Source: Llavero-Pasquina M. and A. Bontempi. “Oil and gas industry’s marginal share of global renewable energy.” Nature Sustainability 2025.
Image: © Anthropocene Magazine.