Fossil Fuel Companies

For over three decades we have known that human action is causing the planet to dangerously heat up and 25 of the world’s biggest fossil fuel producers have been responsible for the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions.

No major international oil company now denies the connection between carbon emissions and dangerous warming. Yet big companies like Exxon have contributed millions of dollars to think tanks and politicians that have done their best to spread doubt and misinformation – first on the existence of climate change, then the extent of the problem and now its cause – deceiving the public, misleading shareholders, and robbing humanity of a generation’s worth of time to reverse climate change.

Of the top 25 economies in the world five are fossil fuel companies making them wealthier than 175 other nations. This extreme wealth gives them unparalleled power. For too long, these big polluting fossil fuel companies have had too much power over our elected representatives. There is a serious risk that the energy transition happens – but in the control of the same unaccountable and powerful companies and wealthy elites – squandering this opportunity to build a more equitable and just world.

Subsidies and Tax Breaks

Massive amounts of public money is spent by governments every year in the form of subsidies and tax breaks to support mega-rich fossil fuel companies while government finance for the emerging renewable energy industry lags way behind. In 2014 for example USD 490 billion of public money was used to finance dangerous energy, with a fraction of that amount, USD 135 billion, going to renewables with the world’s wealthiest countries, particularly in Europe, responsible for falling investment in renewables in 2015.

Utility Companies

The private companies that currently control our energy supply have a vested interest in maintaining their control. Often they hold monopolies, meaning that as customers we cannot get our energy supply from anywhere else. If communities switch to generating their own energy, and cities switch to publically owning their energy, existing utility giants lose their customers and their profits. Each country is different, but many utility companies are actively lobbying at the local and national level against the steps needed to help a switch to renewable energy.

Political Will

Most of our national leaders are not moving fast enough to manage the transition to clean energy. They are not changing the laws, policies and infrastructure fast enough, making investment in renewable energy difficult, and some are even backsliding on laws that could help the shift to renewable energy. And where some nations are phasing out of dirty technology, they are dumping it on other, often less wealthy nations.