The oil industry has fought against government support for clean technologies for more than half a century, the Guardian can reveal, even as vast subsidies have propped up its polluting business model.
The same incumbents were happy to lobby for government support when they were getting started, and had continued to benefit from it since, said Dario Kenner, a visiting research fellow at the University of Sussex who trawled through decades of public statements from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and FuelsEurope.
Kenner documented dozens of examples of the oil industry pressuring governments to hold back support for renewable energy, restrict funding for the development of clean technologies and weaken environmental rules that favoured their uptake.
The IEA report found that oil and gas producers would have to spend 20 times more of the capital on clean energy – rising from 2.5% in 2022 to 50% in 2030 – to line up with the Paris agreement goal of keeping the planet from heating 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
Christina Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat and architect of the agreement, told the Guardian before the Cop28 climate summit in November that she used to believe the industry needed a seat at the table but had lost hope after seeing it use windfall profits since the war in Ukraine to enrich shareholders – instead of reinvesting them in clean energy.
The API said: “America’s natural gas and oil industry is working to address the risks of climate change and build a lower-carbon future, while simultaneously meeting the world’s growing energy needs.
The original article contains 1,235 words, the summary contains 265 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The oil industry has fought against government support for clean technologies for more than half a century, the Guardian can reveal, even as vast subsidies have propped up its polluting business model.
The same incumbents were happy to lobby for government support when they were getting started, and had continued to benefit from it since, said Dario Kenner, a visiting research fellow at the University of Sussex who trawled through decades of public statements from the American Petroleum Institute (API) and FuelsEurope.
Kenner documented dozens of examples of the oil industry pressuring governments to hold back support for renewable energy, restrict funding for the development of clean technologies and weaken environmental rules that favoured their uptake.
The IEA report found that oil and gas producers would have to spend 20 times more of the capital on clean energy – rising from 2.5% in 2022 to 50% in 2030 – to line up with the Paris agreement goal of keeping the planet from heating 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
Christina Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat and architect of the agreement, told the Guardian before the Cop28 climate summit in November that she used to believe the industry needed a seat at the table but had lost hope after seeing it use windfall profits since the war in Ukraine to enrich shareholders – instead of reinvesting them in clean energy.
The API said: “America’s natural gas and oil industry is working to address the risks of climate change and build a lower-carbon future, while simultaneously meeting the world’s growing energy needs.
The original article contains 1,235 words, the summary contains 265 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!