Tuesday, May 12, 2009
No more research
President Barack Obama wants to spend $150 billion over the next decade to create “a clean energy future” by developing alternative sources of energy. But the most important players in this ambitious plan—oil companies—don’t want to participate. Despite the rhetoric many in the industry employ about their investments in “green” technologies, the fact is oil companies continue to spend very little on research-and-development for non-fossil fuel energy sources.
According to Michael Eckhart, president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, an industry trade group, the top five oil companies have spent around $5 billion over the last 15 years to develop sources of renewable energy—a mere 10% of the roughly $50 billion funneled into the clean-energy sector by venture capital funds and corporate investors during this period. “Big Oil does not consider renewable energy to be a mainstream business,” Eckhart told the New York Times. “It’s a side business for them.”
It’s become even less than that for some companies. Royal Dutch Shell has decided to freeze its research and investments in wind, solar and hydrogen power, and focus its alternative energy efforts on biofuels. It also has sold off much of its solar business and pulled out of a project last year to build the largest offshore wind farm, near London.
BP, a company that has spent nine years saying it was moving “beyond petroleum,” has been getting back to petroleum since 2007, paring back its renewable program.
“In my view, nothing has really changed,” Rex W. Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, said after the election of President Obama. “We don’t oppose alternative energy sources and the development of those. But to hang the future of the country’s energy on those alternatives alone belies reality of their size and scale.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Oil Giants Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead (by Jad Mouawad, New York Times)
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