9 ms·

It’s still remarkable to me none of the big oil companies are going hard into renewables. It’s like they are either accepting their decline or are in denial.

by nr2x 4y ago

drexlspivey 4y ago
What decline? Hydrocarbon demand is going up over time while the supply is going down due to underinvestment.
lstodd 4y ago
> none of the big oil companies are going hard into renewables Citation, please. Because afaik it's the other way around. They're not 'oil' companies, they're energy companies. As long as something other than 'oil' gets more interesting they'll do it.
- interpenetrate 4y ago
  They're company companies, meaning that their goal is to make profit, not do something that's "interesting." You can't take Apple seriously when its spokespeople explain the logic that drives its production. It's a load of horseshit. You can't take BP seriously when they says that it's an "energy company" and you can't take Apple seriously when they says that it's a "tech company." European oil majors invest in "renewables," American oil majors basically do not at all (unless you count carbon sequestration for the purpose of further oil extraction as "renewable"). Here's a source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daneberhart/2021/03/09/oil-giants-bet-big-on-expected-2-trillion-carbon-capture-market/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/daneberhart/2021/03/09/oil-gian... This difference in strategy stems from the difference in economic opportunity between the two imperialist spheres.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    If the oil companies were acting in the best interests of the shareholders, they would be all-in on renewables. But US oil companies act in the interest of corporate officers, who are all close to retirement.
    - hrgiger 4y ago
      For me its more like old 'dinosaur' cooperate mentality slows down r&d on alternatives, maybe its more of a fear taking a major step, while other startups with main focus on green energy taking the field and attention. Yet still countries like Norway recognized this years ago and started investing on green.
bzxcvbn 4y ago
Or they're still making ludicrous amount of money in the current scheme of things, and shareholders prefer hedging their bet and investing into clean energy through different companies to not put their eggs all in one basket.
missedthecue 4y ago
Owning renewables doesn't sound like a fantastic business to be in, except maybe for hydropower plants. Massive amounts of CapEx, a commodity product that you're locked by contract into limiting any possibility of upside...
- epistasis 4y ago
  Renewables developers are actually raking it in, if they are good at what they do. Due to the tax incentives, it requires very particular types of backing. Up until recently there were very lucrative power purchase agreements that would offtake your solar generation st great rates for decades. The problem is one of scale and expertise. These projects are smaller than the many billion dollar capital projects that fossil fuel companies usually embark upon. Those large fossil fuel projects also have super long payback periods, not too dissimilar from renewables. However we don't see a ton of fossil fuel expansion even with the current price spike, because there's a huge huge huge risk that any new projects started will never pay themselves back. ESG efforts have reduced appetite for capital expenditures, and other shareholders are demanding strict capital discipline. Which is for the best for all involved. We can't afford, environmentally, to star any new big fossil fuel extraction projects. The big question is who will be left holding the bag as we phase fossil fuels out.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Eventually, the extremely generous tax benefits for building a solar field will no longer exist and when you're spending hundreds of millions to make $0.03/kwh for 20 years... I'd rather go buy bonds at that point.
    - epistasis 4y ago
      I would argue that the market will price in the risk, and that there will be successful developers who generate alpha, and some number of failed solar projects developers.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
zamalek 4y ago
They will have countries that 'voluntarily' tether themselves to "beautiful clean coal" to keep them going.
yread 4y ago
Some are catching up: https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/wind/our-wind-projects.html https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/win... https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/solar.html https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/sol... https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-and-low-carbon-energy/wind.html https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-a... https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-and-low-carbon-energy/bp-solar.html https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-a... https://totalenergies.com/infographics/totalenergies-offshore-wind-power-portfolio-worldwide https://totalenergies.com/infographics/totalenergies-offshor... https://totalenergies.com/energy-expertise/exploration-production/renewable-energies/solar-energy https://totalenergies.com/energy-expertise/exploration-produ... These probably have 100GW in total
pydry 4y ago
No more remarkable than typewriter companies not going hard into computers. Or kodak not going hard into digital cameras.
philipkglass 4y ago
Some of them did go big on solar. BP Solar was a major solar manufacturer and subsidiary of British Petroleum (now just "BP"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_Solar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_Solar ARCO Solar was another significant solar player in the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCO#ARCO_Solar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCO#ARCO_Solar The first American solar company to target terrestrial applications, Solarex, was acquired by Amoco in 1983: https://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/24/sun-horizon-history-solar-pv-industry-look-ahead/ https://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/24/sun-horizon-history-sol... France's major oil company Total acquired a majority share of SunPower in 2011: https://store.globaldata.com/report/total-to-acquire-60-stake-in-sunpower/ https://store.globaldata.com/report/total-to-acquire-60-stak... There are a few reasons I can see why the oil companies never became "energy companies" with an equal emphasis on renewables: - The required competencies for success in manufacturing renewable energy equipment are very different from those required for discovering/extracting/refining oil. The production side of renewables is high volume manufacturing. The oil companies aren't going to do any better than existing big manufacturers like Siemens, Panasonic, or General Electric (to say nothing of more specialized manufacturers focusing only on renewable energy components). - The competition is fierce. Most of the world's top solar manufacturers from 15 years ago are now shut down, acquired, or have a tiny market share compared to the past. It would have taken a very lucky guess or the fortitude to endure years of losses for an oil company to keep an acquired solar company running consistently. - Renewable energy costs are falling every decade, and fierce competition (see previous point) means that prices have to fall also. This is very different from oil where global prices go up as often as they go down. Going all-in on renewable energy means betting on a future of high volumes and lower margins. That may look lucrative for a company starting from nothing, but for an oil company it's a very Kodak film-versus-digital kind of institutional shift.

It’s still remarkable to me none of the big oil companies are going hard into renewables. It’s like they are either accepting their decline or are in denial.

by nr2x 4y ago

It’s still remarkable to me none of the big oil companies are going hard into renewables. It’s like they are either accepting their decline or are in denial.

drexlspivey 4y ago

What decline? Hydrocarbon demand is going up over time while the supply is going down due to underinvestment.

lstodd 4y ago

> none of the big oil companies are going hard into renewables Citation, please. Because afaik it's the other way around. They're not 'oil' companies, they're energy companies. As long as something other than 'oil' gets more interesting they'll do it.

interpenetrate 4y ago
They're company companies, meaning that their goal is to make profit, not do something that's "interesting." You can't take Apple seriously when its spokespeople explain the logic that drives its production. It's a load of horseshit. You can't take BP seriously when they says that it's an "energy company" and you can't take Apple seriously when they says that it's a "tech company." European oil majors invest in "renewables," American oil majors basically do not at all (unless you count carbon sequestration for the purpose of further oil extraction as "renewable"). Here's a source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daneberhart/2021/03/09/oil-giants-bet-big-on-expected-2-trillion-carbon-capture-market/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/daneberhart/2021/03/09/oil-gian... This difference in strategy stems from the difference in economic opportunity between the two imperialist spheres.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  If the oil companies were acting in the best interests of the shareholders, they would be all-in on renewables. But US oil companies act in the interest of corporate officers, who are all close to retirement.
  - hrgiger 4y ago
    For me its more like old 'dinosaur' cooperate mentality slows down r&d on alternatives, maybe its more of a fear taking a major step, while other startups with main focus on green energy taking the field and attention. Yet still countries like Norway recognized this years ago and started investing on green.

bzxcvbn 4y ago

Or they're still making ludicrous amount of money in the current scheme of things, and shareholders prefer hedging their bet and investing into clean energy through different companies to not put their eggs all in one basket.

missedthecue 4y ago

Owning renewables doesn't sound like a fantastic business to be in, except maybe for hydropower plants. Massive amounts of CapEx, a commodity product that you're locked by contract into limiting any possibility of upside...

epistasis 4y ago
Renewables developers are actually raking it in, if they are good at what they do. Due to the tax incentives, it requires very particular types of backing. Up until recently there were very lucrative power purchase agreements that would offtake your solar generation st great rates for decades. The problem is one of scale and expertise. These projects are smaller than the many billion dollar capital projects that fossil fuel companies usually embark upon. Those large fossil fuel projects also have super long payback periods, not too dissimilar from renewables. However we don't see a ton of fossil fuel expansion even with the current price spike, because there's a huge huge huge risk that any new projects started will never pay themselves back. ESG efforts have reduced appetite for capital expenditures, and other shareholders are demanding strict capital discipline. Which is for the best for all involved. We can't afford, environmentally, to star any new big fossil fuel extraction projects. The big question is who will be left holding the bag as we phase fossil fuels out.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  Eventually, the extremely generous tax benefits for building a solar field will no longer exist and when you're spending hundreds of millions to make $0.03/kwh for 20 years... I'd rather go buy bonds at that point.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    I would argue that the market will price in the risk, and that there will be successful developers who generate alpha, and some number of failed solar projects developers.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago

zamalek 4y ago

They will have countries that 'voluntarily' tether themselves to "beautiful clean coal" to keep them going.

yread 4y ago

Some are catching up: https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/wind/our-wind-projects.html https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/win... https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/solar.html https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/new-energies/sol... https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-and-low-carbon-energy/wind.html https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-a... https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-and-low-carbon-energy/bp-solar.html https://www.bp.com/en_us/united-states/home/what-we-do/gas-a... https://totalenergies.com/infographics/totalenergies-offshore-wind-power-portfolio-worldwide https://totalenergies.com/infographics/totalenergies-offshor... https://totalenergies.com/energy-expertise/exploration-production/renewable-energies/solar-energy https://totalenergies.com/energy-expertise/exploration-produ... These probably have 100GW in total

pydry 4y ago

No more remarkable than typewriter companies not going hard into computers. Or kodak not going hard into digital cameras.

philipkglass 4y ago

Some of them did go big on solar. BP Solar was a major solar manufacturer and subsidiary of British Petroleum (now just "BP"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_Solar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP_Solar ARCO Solar was another significant solar player in the 1980s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCO#ARCO_Solar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARCO#ARCO_Solar The first American solar company to target terrestrial applications, Solarex, was acquired by Amoco in 1983: https://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/24/sun-horizon-history-solar-pv-industry-look-ahead/ https://cleantechnica.com/2014/10/24/sun-horizon-history-sol... France's major oil company Total acquired a majority share of SunPower in 2011: https://store.globaldata.com/report/total-to-acquire-60-stake-in-sunpower/ https://store.globaldata.com/report/total-to-acquire-60-stak... There are a few reasons I can see why the oil companies never became "energy companies" with an equal emphasis on renewables: - The required competencies for success in manufacturing renewable energy equipment are very different from those required for discovering/extracting/refining oil. The production side of renewables is high volume manufacturing. The oil companies aren't going to do any better than existing big manufacturers like Siemens, Panasonic, or General Electric (to say nothing of more specialized manufacturers focusing only on renewable energy components). - The competition is fierce. Most of the world's top solar manufacturers from 15 years ago are now shut down, acquired, or have a tiny market share compared to the past. It would have taken a very lucky guess or the fortitude to endure years of losses for an oil company to keep an acquired solar company running consistently. - Renewable energy costs are falling every decade, and fierce competition (see previous point) means that prices have to fall also. This is very different from oil where global prices go up as often as they go down. Going all-in on renewable energy means betting on a future of high volumes and lower margins. That may look lucrative for a company starting from nothing, but for an oil company it's a very Kodak film-versus-digital kind of institutional shift.