Chevron CEO Tells Investors to ‘Plant Trees’, Says Company Won’t Invest in Renewables

In an interview with CNBC that aired Wednesday, Mike Wirth, the CEO of Chevron, mentioned that it might not put money into renewable vitality, as a substitute permitting its shareholders to make use of cash earned from the corporate and “let them plant trees.” Glad he got here proper out and mentioned it!

The interview got here on the heels of an investor assembly this week, the place Wirth and different Chevron executives offered the corporate’s Energy Transition Spotlight, specializing in how Chevron says it’s investing extra in energies that may assist save the planet. Chevron is America’s largest oil firm, taking the title from Exxon final fall, and is the biggest investor-owned source of world carbon emissions since 1965. If there’s any oil firm that might profit from turning over a greener leaf, it’s this one.

Wirth added a bit of Big Business context to his “let them eat cake”—sorry, “plant trees”—feedback. “One of the things we’ve chosen not to go into is wind and solar,” Wirth continued within the CNBC interview. “These are technologies that are relatively mature. There is plenty of capital that’s available. The returns in wind and solar are actually being bid down, and we’ve concluded that management in our company can’t create value for shareholders by going into wind and solar.”

Again, this interview was airing on CNBC, so this may sound nice to aware investor sorts. If wind and photo voltaic are such a crowded house, why not put money into applied sciences that might assist the planet and additionally want extra funding? If you solely take note of Chevron’s press releases about its investor assembly, it seems like the corporate is actually genuinely making an effort to vary the sorts of vitality it creates. As CNBC reported, Chevron introduced Tuesday it’s “more than tripling its capital investment in its lower-carbon energy businesses,” pledging $10 billion over the following 8 years to this part of the corporate, a hefty leap up from the $3 billion earmarked earlier than. Capitalism can save the planet, you guys!

But let’s poke this bear a bit, lets? “Lower-carbon” is, first off, an fascinating time period. As journalist Amy Westervelt pointed out, it’s one in all an rising variety of buzzwords Big Oil has began utilizing to persuade most of the people that they’re engaged on this complete local weather change factor—whereas hiding the truth that they’re persevering with to provide merchandise that drive up emissions. It’s a ineffective phrase that merely sounds nicer than “something that will fry the climate a little more slowly than what we’ve been doing for decades.”

Accordingly, Chevron’s Energy Transition presentation is heavy on the corporate’s investments in applied sciences that may drive down emissions within the manufacturing of oil and gasoline, which is type of like switching to smoking gentle cigarettes whenever you’ve acquired lung illness. There’s additionally a complete part of the presentation dedicated to carbon seize in addition to hydrogen—two types of costly, early-stage applied sciences that look nice on paper however have but to be confirmed at scale apart from serving to corporations greenwash.

As Bloomberg chief vitality correspondent Javier Blas identified on Twitter, all this funding in numerous applied sciences isn’t coming on the expense of fossil fuels. In truth, Chevron has introduced it’s bumping up its general capital expenditure via 2025, that means it’s nonetheless spending billions in extracting much more oil and gasoline.

“The incremental investment in low carbon is NOT coming at the expense of lower spending in its traditional oil and gas business,” Blas wrote. “Think about have your cake and eat it.”

After all, $10 billion over 8 years for an organization that earned $4.5 billion within the first 6 months of 2021 alone feels type of like chump change.

In the investor assembly, Wirth launched the brand new funding focus with feedback that proclaimed “climate change is real” and that “human activity, including the use of fossil fuels, contributes to it.” In the identical speech, nonetheless, he parroted latest oil trade speaking factors—which have additionally been the longtime favourite of local weather denial teams—that vitality (learn: oil and gasoline) “enables modern life” and is “lift[ing] billions out of poverty.” (Wirth has beforehand mentioned that he thinks population growth will preserve fossil fuels in enterprise for many years.) Wirth additionally reaffirmed Chevron’s dedication to a carbon tax—the naked minimal coverage that the entire trade is on board with, because of the truth that they’ve poisoned the dialog sufficient to ensure it by no means occurs—whereas holding his firm from committing to any type of net zero target.

Regardless of how Wirth and different executives could attempt to spin their firm’s continued funding in fossil fuels as by some means cleansing up their act, the partitions are beginning to shut in. Chevron’s new funding comes on the heels of a shareholder revolt this spring, when greater than 60% of the corporate’s buyers went towards the advice of the Chevron management and voted to drive it to account for the emissions attributable to burning the oil it sells. In March, a coalition of inexperienced teams filed an FTC criticism towards Chevron, alleging that the corporate is deceptive the general public in its claims that it’s working to cut back emissions. And on Thursday, the New York Times reported that the House Oversight Committee has referred to as Chevron and different oil giants to testify earlier than Congress because it investigates how the trade unfold misinformation concerning the local weather disaster. We’ll see if Wirth remains to be content material with letting others plant bushes after that.