For decades, big oil companies have deceived the public about climate change. Now, as a recent CCI report shows, Big Oil is deceiving the public about solutions.
“Big Oil’s Deceptive Climate Ads: How Four Big Oil Companies Sold False Promises from 2000 to 2025” It is the first-ever analysis of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell’s climate-related announcements over the past 25 years. The report, which examines more than 300 unique climate-related ads, reveals how the Big Four oil companies ran deceptive ad campaigns seeking to position their businesses as leaders in climate solutions, while in reality continuing to fuel climate catastrophe.
The report identifies seven categories of deception in corporate advertising:
- Overestimation of measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
- Excessive commitments to renewable energy
- Shift responsibility to individual consumers
- Selling the false solution of natural gas
- Pushing the bogus solution to carbon capture and storage
- Planting false narratives about hydrogen
- Promoting the false solution for algae biofuels
“These deceptive ads not only misrepresent the climate impacts of companies’ products, initiatives, and actions, but also feed a larger false narrative that oil and gas companies are part of the solution to climate change,” the report concludes.
For example, the report highlights Exxon’s advertising campaign around the company’s algae biofuel program, which Exxon claimed would “revolutionize biofuels for more energy and lower emissions in the future.” In a 2017 ad titled “Energy Farms,” Exxon says it is researching algae biofuels for the future, while showing scenes of Exxon employees moving through expansive algae ponds and standing in front of algae beds, “suggesting that the company has already progressed from researching algae in the laboratory to cultivating algae on a large scale.” This misrepresentation appears to be intentional, according to internal company documents that dictate “everything we see.” [in the advertisement] It seems closer to agriculture than science.
Despite the implications of these announcements, Exxon realized that algal biofuels would not be commercially viable any time soon. In 2018, an internal Exxon presentation acknowledged that algae biofuels were “still decades away from the scale we need” — only to continue advertising the program to the public. In 2022, Exxon ended its algae research program, without selling a single barrel of algae biofuel.
The new analysis comes at a time when the four major oil companies face dozens of challenges Lawsuits From state and local governments accusing companies of waging an ongoing campaign of climate deception. CCI hopes that this new evidence will support these efforts.
“Big Oil’s climate deception has evolved from lying about the problem to lying about the solutions,” said Richard Wells, president of the Center for Climate Integrity. “For two and a half decades, these companies have sold the public a false and misleading image of their industry as working to address the climate crisis, all while doubling dependence on fossil fuels and making the problem worse. Any company that bombards consumers with such shamelessly deceptive advertising must be held accountable.”
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