Follow This founder criticizes BP’s climate backpedaling
CNBC | Follow This founder Mark van Baal discusses concerns over BP’s climate policy and its long-standing insincere attempts at transitioning away from fossil fuels.
With 24% of investors voting against BP’s chair last week, investors “sent a very strong signal that they are concerned about BP’s climate policy, about their governance and about the influence of a short term investor like Elliott,” says Van Baal. “BP made a panic u-turn on their and climate targets.”
The oil industry has enjoyed very high oil prices since the Ukraine war. And what they should have done is invest these huge profits into the business models of the future. They refuse to do so. […] Clean energy is the future. Technology is getting cheaper, getting oil out of the ground is getting more expensive. […] The oil industry is a long term industry. They should realise that in the next decade they have to transition, otherwise they will go bankrupt.”
“What’s gone wrong with BP is that they never really tried. They called themselves ‘Beyond Petroleum.’ They really wanted to look like a clean energy company, but they wanted to stay a fossil fuel company. […] Their investments in clean energy were always less than 10%. You can’t claim to be in a transition if 90% goes to your old business. So that’s the problem with BP. They always pretended to be in transition, but they never tried and now they’re punished for that, because the direction is not clear.”
