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BP = "Back to Petroleum?"
BP appears to be back pedaling on its vaunted commitment to alternative energy, renewing old skepticism about what the company formerly known as British Petroleum really stands for.
BP recently shuttered its alternative energy headquarters in London and plans to slash its $1.4 billion alternative energy budget by as much as 64 percent this year, the Guardian reports. Its clean energy boss, Vivienne Cox, is officially stepping down to spend more time with her family, though some industry insiders tell the paper that she's frustrated over the business being downgraded in importance.
Though BP has long led the oil industry in acknowleging climate change and investing in renewables, alternative energy investments make up only 5 percent of its portfolio. "Even its support of Kyoto is pilloried as disingenuous," Paul Roberts wrote in this magazine in 2006. "BP happens to be overstocked in reserves of natural gas, a fuel that emits less CO2 than coal or oil, and whose price would rise steeply if society was forced to cut carbon emissions."
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It's Not Easy Being Green: BP's Pipe Dream
When it comes to oil, environmental virtue is a commodity in sharp decline.
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Beyond Propaganda: New Republic Rolls Out BP-Sponsored Enviro Blog
So, The New Republic has added a new blog to its roster: the Environment & Energy blog, which is sponsored, nay "powered," by BP. (Quips blogger Andrew Daniller: "I assumed their whole magazine was sponsored by military contractors.") Maybe this is where the blogosphere is headed, magazines selling off their real estate like major league ballparks, to the highest bidder. And we're all for...
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Is Steven Chu BFF With BP?
How Obama's DOE head got $500 million BP bucks to bankroll Berkeley research—and what it means for our energy future.
In 2006, BP pleged to triple its production of solar panels over the next three years. Yet this April, the company closed down solar power manufacturing plants in Spain and the US, with the loss of 620 jobs. Tony Hayward, BP's new chief executive, has publicly questioned whether solar would ever become cost competive with fossil fuels, even as companies like BrightSource Energy are winning big contracts and rapidly closing the cost gap. Instead, BP has shifted its focus towards exploiting Canada's controversial tar sands, and to biofuels research. Last year it began funding Berkeley's Energy Biosciences Institute in a deal brokered by professor Steven Chu, now Obama's Energy Secretary. The Waxman-Markey climate bill provides major subsidies for the fuels.
To BP's credit, its committment to greenwashing appears to be slipping too. It no longer uses the "Beyond Petroleum" tag and nor brags atop the New Republic's environment blog that the site is "Powered by BP." Perhaps the company should be called Basically Prosaic.
Re: BP's domination of UC National Labs and Sec of Energy Chu
In 2007, BP bought out the last of Berkeley’s scientific integrity from Steven Chu who was then the director of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (currently Sec of Energy) for a pittance of $500 million so they can continue to screw up clean energy research that they have been doing for 50 years anyway.
One is once again reminded of President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation in 1961 when he warned: “The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.”
Not even Ike’s fellow republicans paid any attention to the man who won WWII in Europe, so now even BP dominates Berkeley scholars with the “power of money”, scholars who had already been dominated by Federal project allocations with a track record of well over 50 years of failure to give a damn about humanity, much less the environment.
An oil company is an oil
An oil company is an oil company; no matter what they say they are doing to "save the planet".
Wasn't BP one of the
Wasn't BP one of the companies criticized the most for falsely "greenwashing"? Also, if you take a look at the US stock market, BP is struggling hard, losing points when other oil companies are recovering.
It's likely that the equation looked like this to the execs.
Invest in renewable energies = turn a profit in a decade on them
Turn a profit in the future + losing money now = go bankrupt soon = never make the renewables anyway
Sell oil = make money now
Not hard to see.
Like the man before me said. An oil company is an oil company.
Beyond Petroleum was not the company name...
Just as an aside, BP has never been called Beyond Petroleum. That was merely a tag-line/slogan. The company was actually called British Petroleum, prior to it's name change to just 'BP'.
Not that it matters, of course. The point you make still stands. :)
Boo! Losers!
tagged as:- solution
- result
I call shenanigans!
i am currently studying
i am currently studying petroleum engineering and i earnestly am hoping that someday we can all "live green", and thus that would mean that my expertise on petroleum would probably be trashed.. but the great irony of it is, i can't really believe that someday all oil companies would turn their marketing towards saving the planet instead of maximizing their profits.. i guess i'm a hypocrite that way..
There is no easy substitute to petrol today
Unfortunately, the sad truth is our civilisation rely (since the 19th century) on fossile fuel! Wind turbines and PV cells will not provide enough energy, even if we add the controversial nuclear centrals. See the site of David Mc Kay to get all the figures or go to humanworldpost.com. Are we at the end of our civilisation? shalll we experience the same "decline and fall of the roman empire"?
Our real hope will be to get a major disruptive scientific discovery. Let us hope for its forthcoming, the sooner the better!
Several Energy Suppliers
Several Energy Suppliers offer consumers a part in the greening of society by deriving their energies (at least in part) from renewable or alternative sources and in some cases they will support environmentally friendly projects estetik. The terms renewable and alternative do not necessarily mean the same thing but the distinction is blurred burun estetiği. There are two main objectives in this context, the most obvious of which is to reduce the net emission of greenhouse gases, especially carbon göğüs büyütme. The other is that the resources should remain constant and not run out in any foreseeable future göğüs estetiği.
'Renewable' energy implies that it is derived from a source which is automatically replenished or one that is effectively infinite so that it is not depleted as it is used göğüs küçültme. The term 'Alternative' refers to energy sources which could replace coal, traditional gas and oil or their close derivatives, all of which increase the atmospheric carbon when burned as fuel vajina estetiği.
Coal, Traditional Gas and Oil are not renewable because, although the fields may last for generations their time span is quite finite and we are aware that they will run out eventually lazer epilasyon.
Care has to be taken when using the term alternative energy karın germe. For example electricity as a power source for cars would normally be thought of as alternative, but if you have to charge the batteries from the mains and the power station that supplies your electricity is coal fired then that is not a renewable source (neither is it strictly alternative) estetik ameliyatlar. Similarly Ethanol as an alternative fuel to petrol (gasoline) could be derived from petroleum or from energy crops; if the former it is not renewable but from crops it is karın estetiği. If you burn logs, do you also plant trees (or use timber from the waste stream)? If so, that's not bad, but otherwise you contribute to global warming saç ekimi. There are many other examples.