Oil and gas companies such as Shell, BP, Total and Exxon use advertising to promote themselves as ‘environmentally conscious’ businesses. Looking at their adverts you could be forgiven for thinking they are mostly renewable energy companies. But the reality is that their businesses remain almost entirely focused on the continuing exploration of oil and gas reserves. As recently as 2018, major oil companies spent $50 billion on fossil fuel projects in direct contradiction of the Paris climate goals according to research group Carbon Tracker. Companies such as Exxon, BP, Chevron, Shell and ConocoPhillips have often used advertising as as part of their lobbying to block climate legislation in the United States. From 1986 to 2015, the five biggest fossil fuel companies in the US spent a total of $3.6 billion on adverts.
Research in the Journal of European Consumer and Market Law also warns about the pernicious effects of fossil fuel companies’ “greenwash advertising” that strongly misguides the public, and makes it harder to hold these companies accountable for their damaging activities. BP, for example, has been criticised for using adverts disproportionately to promote their renewable energy projects, which only make up 4% of their total investments, while 96% remains in oil and gas. In 2020, the UK body that regulates advertising, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), ruled that Shell made misleading environmental claims in its advert about carbon offsetting.
The environmental law firm Client Earth carried an investigation into nine major fossil fuel companies’ marketing campaigns exposing how their “green” advertising messages do not fit with the reality of their business models based on increased fossil fuels extraction. Analysis by Desmog into six major European fossil fuel and energy companies found that two thirds of their social media posts were greenwashing.