News & Analysis
October 22, 2025
Big Oil companies are contributing miniscule amounts of renewable energy to the global market, a new study found — contradicting industry claims that fossil fuel companies are partners in climate solutions. The research comes at a time when fossil fuel companies such as ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Chevron are facing a growing number of lawsuits that argue the companies are deceiving the public about their role in the climate crisis through false or misleading advertising and other means.
The study, published in Nature Sustainability, found that, despite years of advertising to the contrary, the largest 250 oil and gas companies own just 1.42% of global renewable energy capacity in operation, more than half of which can be attributed to renewable energy operations that the fossil fuel companies acquired. Of the Big Oil companies headquartered in North America and Europe — including ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and Chevron — renewable energy makes up less than half a percent of each company’s energy generation.
“Our results show that renewable energy remains a tiny part of the oil and gas industry portfolio,” study authors Marcel Llavero-Pasquina and Antonio Bontempi wrote. “Moreover, about half their contribution to renewable energy deployment is related to the acquisition of other renewable energy companies—which may be considered as a financial contribution without operational additionality.”
Big Oil companies have been publicly claiming to be major players in the transition to renewable energy for years. In 2024, for example, Shell highlighted its investments in renewable energy in an ad campaign, stating that the oil major is “helping to build the low-carbon energy system of tomorrow.” According to the study, renewable energy generation makes up 0.35% of Shell’s operation. In October 2025, Chevron published ads online claiming the company is “advancing a lower carbon future” — but the study found that renewable energy made up 0% of Chevron’s energy production as of February 2025.
The new research serves as further evidence of Big Oil’s ongoing deception about its role in the climate crisis. Last year, a congressional investigation concluded that Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP “make public pledges to support the Paris Agreement and to achieve net zero emissions while internally recognizing that they could not achieve those goals or referring to them as outside of their business plans.” The wide gap between fossil fuel companies’ words and actions when it comes to low-carbon and renewable energy has also been cited as evidence in the growing number of lawsuits filed by state and local governments. .
“[F]ossil Fuel Defendants portray themselves as climate-friendly energy companies that are deeply engaged in finding solutions to climate change,” the State of Hawaiʻi argued in its climate accountability lawsuit against oil majors earlier this year. “In reality, Defendants continue to primarily, and overwhelmingly, invest in, develop, promote, and profit from fossil fuel products and heavily market those products to consumers, with full knowledge that those products will continue to exacerbate climate change harms.”
