Oil Companies Loath to Follow Obama’s Green Lead

[ClarkUSA]

The Obama administration wants to reduce oil consumption, increase renewable energy supplies and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation.

But the world’s oil giants are... balking at investing in new technologies favored by the president... Royal Dutch Shell said last month that it would freeze its research and investments in wind, solar and hydrogen power, and focus its alternative energy efforts on biofuels. The company had already sold much of its solar business... BP, a company that has spent nine years claiming it was moving “beyond petroleum,” has been getting back to petroleum since 2007, paring back its renewable program. And American oil companies, which all along have been more skeptical of alternative energy than their European counterparts, are studiously ignoring the new messages coming from Washington... oil companies have frequently run advertisements expressing their interest in new forms of energy, but their actual investments have belied the marketing claims. The great bulk of their investments goes to traditional petroleum resources, including carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands and natural gas from shale, while alternative investments account for a tiny fraction of their spending. So far, that has changed little under the Obama administration.

“The scale of their alternative investments is so mind-numbingly small that it’s hard to find them,” said Nathanael Greene, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These companies don’t feel they have to be on the leading edge of this stuff.”... In the last 15 years, the top five oil companies have spent... only 10 percent of the roughly $50 billion funneled into the clean-energy sector by venture capital funds and corporate investors during that period, he said.

“Big Oil does not consider renewable energy to be a mainstream business,” Mr. Eckhart said. “It’s a side business for them.”... In its long-term forecast, Exxon says that by 2050, hydrocarbons — including oil, gas, and coal — will account for 80 percent of the world’s energy supplies, about the same as today... Despite Washington’s newfound green enthusiasm, industry executives argue that replacing any significant part of the fossil fuel business will take decades, at best.

Makes me want to buy an electric car. We are the change we've been waiting for.

[Cha]

1. I bet they're "balking"..that's all they know

how to do..that and drill, drill, drill till it's gone.

[Deja Q]

2. If "mainstream" is also why prepackaged garbage passes as "pop music", fuck the mainstream.

Valuing individuals has far more merit than manufactured tripe.

[FreakinDJ]

3. Obama's plan for Green Tech is too 1 dimentional

Please hear me out prior to igniting flame thrower

I worked in Energy Management Engineering for a good number of years. When Reagan pulled the plug on Pres. Carter’s initiatives it should have been the end of it – but it wasn’t, A good number of products on the market survived and flourished through out the 90s and on to today because the product produced profits pure and simple.

But it is limited to mid to large size commercial interest like WalMart for example, who’s heating and cooling cost represent a sizable amount of their total operating cost.

Where the Energy Conservation stopped was at Industrial consumers. Large capitol investment, high operating cost ventures.

[ClarkUSA]

4. Links, sources. quotes?

[FreakinDJ]

5. here is a sample

http://www.novar.com/Novar.html

[ClarkUSA]

8. Provide quotes, please. Do you have more than one source?

[FrenchieCat]

6. I thought that Van Jones just got on board.....

http://www.mnn.com/business/green-jobs/stories/the-prophet-of-the-green-collar-economy

and he's only been on the job for like 3 weeks!

Is there really a WH Green plan already....like totally finished and ready to go? :shrug:

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. In other news, turkeys not so keen on Thanksgiving.