CNN —
Big oil majors have engaged in a “long-running greenwashing campaign” while reaping “record profits at the expense of American consumers,” the Democrat-led House Oversight Committee has found after a year-long investigation into climate disinformation about the fossil fuel industry.
The committee noted that the fossil fuel industry “postulates on climate issues while avoiding real commitments” to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lawmakers said it has tried to portray itself as part of the climate solution, even as internal industry documents show how companies have avoided making real commitments.
“Today’s documents show that the industry has no real plans to clean up its act and is moving forward with plans to pump more dirty fuels in the coming decades,” Carolyn Maloney, chair of the House Oversight Committee, told CNN in a statement.
For example, lawmakers reported that BP aims to “be a net-zero company by 2050 or sooner,” but the committee found internal BP documents that show the company’s recent plans are at odds with the company’s public comments.
In a July 2017 email between several senior company officials about whether to invest in reducing emissions from one of its gas projects off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, BP’s vice president of engineering stated that BP had “no commitment to minimize greenhouse gases”. [greenhouse gas] emissions” and that the company “should only minimize GHG emissions where it makes economic sense” as required by the Code or when it fits into a regional strategy.
The committee said the uncovered documents also showed that the fossil-fuel industry has presented natural gas as a so-called “bridge fuel” for the transition to cleaner energy sources, while simultaneously doubling down on its long-term reliance on fossil fuels without a clear plan of action to fully switch to clean energy.
A strategy slide presented to Chevron’s board of directors by CEO Mike Wirth and obtained by the committee says that while Chevron sees the withdrawal of traditional energy companies from oil and gas, “Chevron’s strategy” is to “continue to invest” in fossil fuels as the industry continues to consolidate to use.
In a 2016 email from a BP executive to John Mingé, then-Chairman and President of BP America, and others about climate and emissions, an employee noted that the company often had an obstructive strategy with regulators, noting, “We wait for the rules to come out, we don’t like what we see, and then we try to resist and block.”
“The fossil fuel industry has been embroiled in extensive ‘greenwashing’ lately – misleading claims in advertisements, particularly on social media, that claim or suggest that they are ‘aligned with Paris’ and committed to meaningful solutions,” Naomi Oreskes , a Harvard professor who has studied the fossil fuel industry’s rebuke of climate science, told CNN. “Numerous analyzes show that these claims are false.”
BP, Chevron, Exxon, Shell, the American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce have been at the center of the Democratic lawmaker’s investigation. The companies have denied engaging in a climate change disinformation campaign and the role industry has played for decades in fueling it. CNN has reached out to the companies and organizations to comment on the committee’s findings.
Todd Spitler, a spokesman for Exxon, said in a statement the committee had taken internal corporate communications out of context.
“The House Oversight Committee report attempted to misrepresent ExxonMobil’s position on climate science and its support for effective policy solutions by reframing well-intentioned internal policy debates as the company’s attempted disinformation campaign,” Spitler said. “If certain members of the committee are so sure they are right, why did they have to take so many things out of context to prove their point?”
Democratic lawmakers had hoped the committee’s hearings would be the fossil-fuel industry’s “Big Tobacco” moment — a nod to the famous 1994 hearings when tobacco CEOs insisted cigarettes weren’t addictive, sparking allegations of perjury and sparked a federal investigation.
The implications of House Oversight’s investigation into Big Oil will not be as immediate, but Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat and chair of Oversight’s environmental subcommittee, said the findings have added to the historical record of the industry and its role in global warming .
“These hearings and reports are historic because we were able to get the heads of Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP, API and the US Chamber of Commerce to testify under oath for the first time ever on efforts to raise public awareness on climate mislead and forced them to provide explosive internal documents,” Khanna said in a statement to CNN. “I have no doubt that this work will be analyzed in the years to come and will help deepen our understanding of the role of the entire industry in financing and facilitating climate disinformation.”
Democratic lawmakers said the oil and gas industry obstructed their investigations during the more than year-long trial. Many of their requests for internal documents were heavily redacted by the companies, with no reason given for the information being withheld.
In other cases, documents were heavily redacted because companies like Exxon said the information was “proprietary and confidential,” even though lawmakers determined that this is not a valid reason to withhold information in a subpoena from a committee.
“These companies know their climate promises are falling short, but are prioritizing Big Oil’s record profits over the human costs of climate change,” Maloney said. “It’s time the fossil fuel industry stopped lying to the American people and finally took serious steps to reduce emissions and address the global climate crisis that they helped create.”