There may be problems ahead of time for companies that claim to help the planet while they continue to produce fossil fuels. On Monday, a coalition of environmental groups filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that Chevron is misleading the public by claiming that it is working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The complaint, filed jointly by Earthworks, Global Witness and Greenpeace USA, says Chevron has positioned itself before the general public on social media, television and other types of marketing as tasks to resolve the climate crisis and provide respectful solutions with the environment. . But the company’s actual business practices, according to the groups, tell another story.
Research has shown that Chevron is the owned by larger investors source of global carbon emissions since 1965. It is also the largest oil company in the US While the company’s marketing language may paint it as if it were a new, green leaf, the suit says Chevron doesn’t put as much effort into it. A lawsuit filed in DC’s district court last June alleges that only 0.2% of the company’s spending between 2010 and 2018 was on low-carbon energy sources.
And while social media and Chevron’s website are full of the phrase “increasingly clean energy” to describe its products, the company has no plans to make any commitments to seriously reduce its crude fuel production. As CEO Mike DeWirth he said last year, Chevron, on the other hand, will focus on “higher yields and lower carbon” in its production line, while continuing to maintain oil and gas. DeWirth too he told Reuters in January, he believes population growth means fossil fuels are here to stay.
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“There is a misleading use of slang and industry terms to confuse the public” in much of Chevron’s marketing, said Josh Eisenfeld, an advocate for Earthworks corporate responsibility. Eisenfeld pointed to Chevron’s claims which is reducing the “intensity of carbon emissions,” as it is reducing the amount of emissions needed to make fossil fuels, as a prime example.
“That’s misleading,” he said. “Reduce emissions intensity does not mean you reduce your overall emissions, especially for a company like Chevron that plans to expand its production. If they reduce the intensity of emissions per barrel of product they create, but increase the amount of product they are creating, there is still room for them to emit more carbon dioxide than they had in the past. ”
Chevron, meanwhile, He told Bloomberg that the FTC’s complaint is “frivolous” and said the company “participates[s] in honest conversations about the energy transition “.
The FTC is a government agency tasked with protecting consumers from false advertising and regulating business activities and practices. In the early 1990s, the agency published its first roadmap for marketers who want to advertise organic or “green” products and have updated these guidelines sporadically in later decades (the latest version of these guides were published in 2012). In the past, Green Guides, as they are known, were used to repress the companies they claimed biodegradable plastic, environmental certification seal suppliers, i organic products. In a high-profile case, the agency also commissioned Volkswagen claiming that his diesel cars were clean. But the green groups filing the complaint say it is the first time a Green Guides-based complaint has been filed against a fossil fuel company.
On a web page compiled by Earthworks, the organization lists examples of how some of Chevron’s recent marketing efforts specifically mislead consumers. The website points to a particular hypocrisy in Chevron’s focus on methane captured from factory agriculture, which the company calls “renewable natural gas”. Chevron’s statement in support of Black Lives Matter this summer they are also compared to the long history of the company’s operating factory.in many cases, pollutants—In the Black and Latinx neighborhood.
There are some indications that the federal government could start paying more attention to green washing in the energy sector more generally. In December, FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra he wrote in a note which “deters[ring] environmental claims about large and misleading ”in the energy sector could be an opportunity for the agency to take additional measures to protect consumers as more and more companies start to demand energy efficiency or reduce emissions. There is also a growing public interest in oil companies explaining their claims, such as social media users i even creative advertising agencies they are increasing the pressure on the industry. The time has come when the world needs to reduce emissions more than 7% annually in this decade, to achieve what is considered a relatively safe level of global warming is not compatible with continued oil extraction.
And there should be plenty of opportunities to examine the claims of oil and gas companies. Eisenfeld said he has noticed that other oil companies are making claims similar to Chevron’s about “reducing carbon intensity” to paint themselves fighting climate change. Companies like Chevron, Eisenfeld said, “are trying to capitalize on the growing body of consumers who care [the environment]. There is a market for this and energy companies are in this marketing ”.