London – Investigative campaigners from Global Witness have used billboards outside BP’s London offices and International Energy Week to highlight the oil and gas firm’s backtracking on its climate pledges to investors.
The ad van billboards – which have been parked outside BP’s headquarters, a central London BP petrol station, Parliament Sqaure, and the Queen Elizabeth II Centre – are intended to highlight the firm’s anticipated climate U-turn during a time of record-breaking heat and rising energy bills.
This week the firm’s CEO Murray Auchincloss is expected to announce further details of BP’s strategy to investors. Auchincloss has hinted that the firm’s ‘fundamental reset’ will mean less investment in renewables, and more spending on oil and gas.
Global Witness’ billboards take aim at the company’s dashing of its climate commitments, labelling it a ‘masterclass in greenwashing’. Lambasting CEO Murray Auchincloss for ‘leadership by flip-flop' and BP’s ‘fundamental reset’ as a ‘corporate way of saying “we’re breaking our climate pledges”’.
Global Witness campaigner Alexander Kirk said:
“A few years ago BP undertook a massive public relations campaign to tell the world it was going green, highlighting its renewable energy investments."
“Now, while the world is reeling from fossil-fuel driven extreme weather, BP is widely expected to double down on the oil and gas creating climate breakdown."
“So why the U-turn? BP appears to be focusing on short-term profits to shareholders while energy prices are high, with the rest of the world picking up the tab from its climate-wrecking products."
“This is a company that cannot be trusted to deliver the clean energy transition. Fossil fuel companies like BP must be forced to pay for the climate damages they cause.”
In 2020, the firm positioned itself as a sector leader when it came to climate commitments, with former CEO Bernard Looney committing to dramatically reducing oil and gas production, and achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
But in the past two years, BP has slashed its climate ambitions, following rising profits since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The firm’s strategy reset looks set to deliver a more fundamental blow to its previous green pledges. /ENDS
Notes to editors
The locations of the ad van billboards are:
- 11:00 – BP petrol station, Vauxhall Bridge, London SW1V 2RE
- 12:00 – BP headquarters, 1 St James's Square, London SW1Y 4PD
- 13:00 – 17:00 – Parliament Square and the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, where International Energy Week is taking place (Broad Sanctuary, London SW1P 3EE)
Your publication has full rights to the footage and photography compiled by Global Witness. Here: https://media.globalwitness.org/?c=4519&k=4990b0eecc
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