Remember when the fossil fuel industry was constantly discussing climate change? In 2020, as oil prices plummeted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, major oil companies highlighted their efforts to reduce carbon emissions and promoted various energy “innovations” like Exxon Mobil’s algae fuel transformation, Chevron’s carbon capture, and BP’s green hydrogen production. Critics labeled these as “greenwashing,” arguing they were minor sustainable investments meant to divert attention from the pollution inherent in their core operations.
However, oil companies quickly shifted focus. By 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, oil prices surged due to supply disruptions. The oil giants then pivoted to a new narrative: fossil fuels were crucial for “energy security” and were here to stay. According to a report by Clean Creatives, which urges PR firms and advertisers to cease working with fossil fuel clients, this shift was evident in their analysis of over 1,800 ads, press releases, and social media campaigns from BP, Shell, Exxon, and Chevron between 2020 and 2024.
Nayantara Dutta, head of research at Clean Creatives, commented, “Oil companies are not trying to follow the winds of the sustainable transition anymore. They’re not trying to necessarily look like the good guys.”
From 2020, when global leaders appeared ready to address climate change seriously, the political atmosphere has shifted significantly due to wars, political turmoil, and rising costs. As a result, big businesses, politicians, and the media have become quieter on climate issues. The Clean Creatives report is one of two recent studies exploring how oil giants, who benefit from a lack of global climate action, altered their messaging during this period. This research indicates that their eco-friendly language had already started to wane before Donald Trump’s return to office.
As oil companies aim to expand their natural gas infrastructure, they must strategically market it to the public. To construct more pipelines, plants, and wells, they require not only official government permits but also informal public approval, known as a “social license to operate,” to maintain legitimacy and prevent opposition like protests and legal challenges. “They hire the best PR agencies in the world to try to basically dupe you into believing that they’re socially responsible,” remarked Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Brown University.
Following the Ukraine invasion, companies began framing increased production as essential for national security and economic stability, irrespective of location. This rationale often broadened to suggest a global need for more fossil fuels. An ad in 2022 stated, “Energy demands are rising, and the effects are being felt everywhere. That’s why at Chevron, we’re increasing production in the Permian Basin by 15 percent, and we’re projected to reach 1 million barrels of oil per day by 2025.”
However, the current situation is challenging the notion that fossil fuels are vital for stable and affordable energy. The U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran has led to the largest oil supply disruption in history, with approximately 15 percent of global supply halted in the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route off Iran’s coast. Gas prices in the U.S. have soared, with the national average for a gallon of gas rising 87 cents in a month. This situation has sparked interest in electric vehicles, highlighting the vulnerability of reliance on fossil fuels to gas price fluctuations. Meanwhile, natural gas prices have jumped in Asia and Europe, where leaders are advocating for increased nuclear energy investment to navigate fossil fuel price shocks. “The energy security argument about natural gas is kind of being turned on its head,” Brulle noted.
This chaotic scenario led Jennie Stephens, a climate justice professor at Maynooth University, Ireland, to reflect on what might have happened if the world had embraced renewables sooner. “If we had been able to commit collectively to a global fossil fuel phaseout, we would be in a very different position, right?” she remarked.
Stephens’ recent study, published last week in the journal Energy, Sustainability, and Society, revealed that when oil companies discuss renewables, it often reinforces negative views about wind and solar energy. Along with colleagues from Northeastern University and Columbia University, Stephens examined how BP, Exxon, Shell, and the French oil company Total Energies addressed solar, wind, and other sustainable energy in their reports from 2016 to 2022. “We found out that they were talking about renewables as kind of in service of expanding fossil fuels,” Stephens stated. Sometimes, this was literal, like Total’s recent floating offshore wind project designed to power an oil and gas platform. After 2020, companies more frequently highlighted the drawbacks of renewables, such as their costs and intermittency, according to the study.
Simultaneously, oil companies withdrew from the narrative of being “partners” in the “energy transition” and began retracting their climate commitments in 2023. That year, they advanced the idea that fossil fuel expansion could occur alongside emissions reductions, as detailed in the Clean Creatives report. It suggests that companies moved from greenwashing to “gaslighting,” sowing public doubt about the necessity to halt fossil fuel infrastructure development—a step the United Nations’ primary climate science body deems essential for meeting the Paris Agreement’s climate objectives. “We call it gaslighting because they’re confusing people about what the truth actually is and about what their operations are achieving,” Dutta explained.
In 2024, the narrative shifted further, with oil and gas companies asserting that fossil fuels are an integral part of modern life, focusing on talk of a “balanced energy future.” “The specific vocabulary being used is ‘responsible, balanced, pragmatic,’ to make people feel like the logical solution is an investment in fossil fuels,” Dutta noted. Although Clean Creatives’ analysis concluded in 2024, she said the general message persisted into 2025, with companies adapting by emphasizing fossil fuels as vital to technological progress, especially for data centers supporting AI.
The ongoing oil shock, along with declining costs for solar and wind power, presents a dilemma for oil companies and the narratives they promote. “The argument for energy security and cost are now not on the side of fossil fuels, and so they’re kind of in a real rhetorical problem here,” Brulle commented. “So I’m sure that the PR companies that are being hired by the oil companies are going to have to do some real interesting work to continue to justify fossil fuel expansion.”
