Big Oil Goes Green

newsweek.com:

It's not just that these projects involve bigger money, which will grow exponentially if new technologies work. That's still peanuts for oil majors, which put only 4 percent of their total 2008 profits into alternative-energy investment. It's that companies are actually beginning to think about alternatives not just as a tool for greenwashing (throw up a few solar panels here, sponsor a conference on wind energy there) but as real businesses that might one day turn real profits--or at least help make fossil-fuel production more profitable.

Read the whole story: newsweek.com

Comments

[ResidualSelfImage]

KISS
Just tax coal use payable to the states.

[dieselis]

Big Oil!!!!!! How do we overthrow these rackateers. Our Country is a prime canidate for insurrection. When said insurrection starts, it'll be foolish to let these said individuals come through without totally spoiling and looting of all assets. I'am not a war monger the writing on the wall is plain. The people have the power. Yet a corrupt few rule us like a rudder steers a ship. I in no means advocate war, but when war comes finish it. Clean our society by putting the profiteers in their place. Humanity and brotherhood a restored faith in God is what our country needs. It has little to do with religion and everything to do how I treat my brother I see daily. I know most here have no regard for God. God gets in our way when were required to sacrifice our wants and passions for the total good of mankind. We all are naturally selfish. These huge corporations made it off our backs and those gone on before us. All I'am saying it'll not change unless the population changes it. Were in the same boat. Why war against one another while our owners watch for entertainment and profit.

[RomeoMD25]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/20/the-top-10-lobbyists-on-t_n_205868.html

Exxon funding This Climate Bill

[HillBillyRealist]

There will be unanticipated impacts from increasing the price of energy...like food prises.

Getting food to the table, i. e., the food system, accounts for approximately 17% of the energy consumed annually in the US. Approximately 18% of this energy is consumed for on-farm food production; 82% is spent on food processing, transportation, marketing and preparation. Almost all comes from fossil fuels that will impacted by cap-and-trade legislation.

11% is for electricity (Coal/Nat Gas)
45% is fertilizer from (Nat Gas)
11% is for liquid fuel (Oil)
33% is for process heat (Coal/Nat Gas)

[research]

and can be replaced with BioCHar BioFuels from sewage, agriculture waste and all other organic waste stream. And msake moeny of the carbon negative part at the same time. Still, I am against the ACES cap and trade largest ever new derreiavatidves market bs.

just tax it a 1$ per ton.

[mamacat]

For some reason the link to the whole article didn't work for me, but I would still like to comment.

I am very leary of so-called investments into Green technologies by Big Oil, especially when the American oil corporations are still spending millions of dollars to prevent the expansion of alternative energy technologies. Still, I want to be an optimist, and I want to believe that the face of corporate greed and duplicity has changed into something more amenable to survival of the species.

Do any of the Big Oil companies invest as much into alternative energy development as companies such as General Electric? I was reading that that company has been investing about $6 billion a year into research and development of alternative energy, and spends zero dollars spreading propaganda about the dangers of windturbines and the other green technologies.

[research]

"tailor-made for developing and delivering biofuels."

This is the correct role for the oil and gas companies. They have the infrastructure and knowledge to turn organic wastes into all the fuels the world will ever need. When you add rooftop solar at 3 cent, we can supply all the world energy needs, cheaper, cleanly, safely and forever. see my profile for details.

[BassMonk]

Do the people at Newsweek have no idea what 'going green' means?

Or are they pushing petroleum PR? I wonder...

[SkiingGator]

i'm concerned exxon got its hands on the algae breakthrough. it has the potential of completely replacing petroleum and now the biggest oil co has that technology

[mamacat]

Me too. If history repeats itself, Exxon will work to suppress this technology, not to develop it.

[SkiingGator]

exactly

[sparky73]

who cares...they should all be out of business for r@ping the american people

[desertman]

It's easy. Stop buying gas.

[frappe]

The key to motivating real growth in green energy across America is tying in average homeowners by allowing the excess energy that their wind turbines and solar panels produce to be resold back to the utilities at a fair price.

[JohnSawyer]

Selling one's home energy production excess to the local utility is already possible in many areas, though I don't know how widely available it is.

[joebaggadonuts]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=how-much-in-subsidies-do-fossil-fue-2009-09-18

72 billion in direct fossil fuel subsidies over 5 years.

Gasoline is about 3 bucks a gallon. Subsidies to oil companies are priceless.

[rollingdivision]

Subsidized energy is very bad for the planet.

[Austintatious]

It remains to be seen if the big oil corporations will come around to assuming a legitimate role in promoting renewables, but here's the important thing to remember about these corporations.

They have an established history of gouging, whenever possible, of doing all they can do to prevent human beings, around the globe, from coming to the realization that human induced climate change is a reality, and of preventing renewables from having a fair chance to compete.

We can trust big oil about as far as you might throw the Republican elephant. That adequately reflects the amount of trust they have earned. All these warm and fuzzy commercials BP and Exxon run on Sunday morning, they're just more frauds perpetrated upon a still uneducated public.

It is also imperative that they never be allowed to obstruct the development of renewables, and therein lies the problem. That will require an honest and well intentioned Congress, the very opposite of what our Congress is today. Vigilance is the watchword.

[Tom Joad]

The global energy industry isn't going green. They are busy exploiting natural gas they have learned to mine from the 'source rocks' - those geological formations from which gas and oil originated. When they have exhausted the gas they can extract from so-called 'gas shales', they will exploit gas hydrate deposits found in the marine environment along the margins of all the world's continents. The global energy industry will never go green, but they will do anything for a buck...

[ImissBush]

yes rember when they saved america from runnin on non-polluting electric trollies

[BlackBuddha]

that was American no-how.

[ImissBush]

im sure theyve changed

[mamacat]

Yes, but they only bought up about 50 of the metropolitan light-rail systems in the U.S.A., including what was the largest and most heavily used light rail system in the whole world, the one that used to be here in Southern California. You aren't suggesting that they bought up all of those light-rail systems just so they could sell more petroleum, are you? Why, that would be downright traitorous and un-American!

Oh, wait, maybe that's why the Supreme Court fined them $5,000 (five thousand dollars) - to punish them for destroying so much of America's ability to do without gasoline and diesel.

[ImissBush]

the best court money can buy

[condor101]

Big Oil is doing everything to kill solar and wind energy production. This is just greenwashing.
People have to take control for themselves and Buy solar panels and small wind turbines and place them on their homes. Producing your own energy from the sun and wind is the only way to break from these evil companies.
We need to support companies that are making Solar Panels. I do.