By: Scott Lane, Founder & CEO of Speeki
Everyone working in sustainability wants an immediate end to oil and gas consumption – and so regulators and climate initiatives demand that fossil fuel giants immediately halt their production.
This is a naive knee-jerk reaction to a complex, intractable problem. Regulators and climate initiatives need to get more tactical.
My case in point: the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) demanded last month that oil and gas companies participating in their emission standard cease all new development of oil and gas fields.
What happened? Shell and others walked away. SBTi announced the emission standard had been “paused.” Six years of progress were lost; the sustainability crowd cursed the oil and gas companies.
I believe it was the SBTi’s fault. Instead of demanding an immediate cancellation of these companies’ core business models, they should have pushed for progress on renewable energy production.
But first, what is wrong with the current approach?
It’s top-down and binary. It aims to kill fossil fuel production immediately and by force, rather than seeding and nurturing a gradual and realistic transition to renewables. It’s not grounded in economic viability.
It crucially gives oil and gas giants an excuse to walk out the door. If they can say “this will destroy our business” or “this will hurt our customers”, then they’re gone, and progress will continue to stall or even backslide.
It’s also, frankly, lazy. You don’t increase the number of electric cars on the road by towing and scrapping civilians’ existing petrol vehicles. You work strategically to bring the cost of EVs down through technological innovation and increased supply, plus a campaign to improve public perception of the technology.
Oil and gas giants are of course more culpable for the climate crisis and more capable of drastic change than individual. But that doesn’t mean regulators and initiatives shouldn’t have a role beyond outlawing fossil fuel production.
So here’s my two cents. I want to see regulators and climate initiatives focus on increasing the amount of renewable energy produced by oil and gas companies – instead of looking only to reduce or scrap fossil fuel production.
This should be data-driven and measurable. Ambitious and pushy, while realistic and manageable. For example, oil and gas companies could be asked, or mandated, to produce X kWh of renewable energy for every Y tonne of CO₂ emitted.
This, I believe, is their clearest route to supporting a smooth and speedy transition away from fossil fuels. Why is this approach better?
First, it is a much easier pill for oil and gas giants to swallow. It would keep them at the table, where they currently aren’t, and allow for some meaningful progress to take place.
This argument’s detractors will say it won’t drive progress fast enough, or that we don’t need them at the table. But progress right now is stagnant, and these companies are in fact critical to the transition – they have the scale, capital, and expertise to transform the renewable sector. We need them whether we like it or not.
Second, it would drive investment into renewables. More investment means more innovation – better technology, more supply, lower costs.
The more oil and gas companies spend on renewables, the more they’ll see the business case for it. They won’t transform their business models overnight, but once the renewable seed is planted, it will grow. This is the first step in turning the oil and gas giants into renewable energy giants.
Third, the economy remains deeply dependent on fossil fuels, whether we like it or not. Industries such as aviation, agriculture, and shipping for example are far from ready to move entirely away from oil and gas.
If sudden restrictions are placed on oil and gas production, it creates supply shocks, price volatility, and instability. This can worsen the conditions of a clean energy transition, not improve them. It infuriates the public and fuels anti-sustainability rhetoric.
My alternative approach doesn’t seek to disrupt existing supply – but organically replace the need for it. Unless we align policy with a realistic timeline for transition, we set ourselves up to fail, alienate support, and damage trust.
The policy changes I suggest don’t let anyone off the hook – they just ensure the path is one companies can realistically walk. We don’t need a dramatic stamp out of oil and gas; we need a managed phaseout. One that gives us time to build sustainable solutions as we retire fossil fuels.
We cannot afford to lose the world’s biggest energy players to their denial, delay, and excuses. The energy transition will fail without their resources, their infrastructure, and their buy-in. So let’s stop demanding they kill their legacy business – and start demanding they build the energy systems of the future.
