Abstract
Oil and gas companies have claimed to be part of the transition to renewable energy. Our analysis of the energy assets of 250 of the largest oil and gas companies finds a marginal contribution to global renewable energy deployment and that renewable generation represents a tiny proportion of the total energy production of these companies. This study empirically legitimizes doubts about the commitment of the industry to transition to low-carbon energy production.
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Data availability
Data have been sourced from public online databases including Urgewald Global Oil and Gas Exit List 2024 (https://gogel.org/) and GEM wind February 2025 version (https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-wind-power-tracker/download-data/), solar February 2025 version (https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-solar-power-tracker/download-data/), hydropower April 2024 version (https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-hydropower-tracker/download-data/) and geothermal trackers September 2024 version (https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-geothermal-power-tracker/download-data/). Additional data on company ownership have been sourced from Refinitiv Eikon (https://eikon.refinitiv.com/), a subscription-based product. The minimum corporate ownership information to replicate the analysis is provided in Supplementary Table 4, but the product licence terms do not allow for a full release of the raw data. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The R code is available via GitHub at https://github.com/llavero-pasquina/Oil-and-gas-industry-s-marginal-share-of-global-renewable-energy.
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Acknowledgements
We thank K. O’Malia, S. Prasad and A. Mowat from Global Energy Monitor for very helpful comments and assistance with accessing and understanding the GEM trackers. M.L.P. discloses support for the research of this work from a M. Salas fellowship from the Spanish Ministry of Universities, from the Holberg Price 2023 awarded to J. Martínez-Alier, from the Maria de Maeztu grant (CEX2019-000940-M) awarded to ICTA-UAB by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, from the Ford Foundation (Grant 150866) and from Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación - Gobierno de España (Grant TED2021-132007B-I00). A.B. acknowledges funding from the FI-SDUR 2020 464 scholarship awarded by the Catalan AGAUR Agency.
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Contributions
M.L.P. conceptualized, designed and performed the analysis. M.L.P. produced the figures and tables. M.L.P. and A.B. contributed to data collection. A.B. assisted in the analysis. Both authors wrote the paper.
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Company operating renewable energy ranking coloured by type of company.
Aggregated data from Supplementary Table 5.
Extended Data Fig. 2 Map of utility-scale renewable energy projects owned by the world largest 250 oil and gas companies, their subsidiaries and acquisitions.
Panel a) shows the unique projects currently in operation (n = 1107), while panel b) shows unique projects in construction, pre-construction or announced (n = 899). Points are colour coded by technology and the size of the point is proportional to the ownership-adjusted installed capacity (total 78 GW in operation and 320 GW in the pipeline). The list of projects can be consulted in Supplementary Table 5. Basemap from OpenStreetMap.
Extended Data Fig. 3 Percentage of projects participated by the largest 250 oil and gas companies by technology and project size.
The percentage of projects with one or more oil and gas company owners (black) is given above its respective bar. The figures are calculated based on Global Energy Monitor (GEM) data, which tracks utility scale power plants only. The total number of projects documented in GEM for each category is given in brackets under each column, and next to the power capacity ranges of each category.
Extended Data Fig. 4 Share of global renewable energy capacity owned by the largest 250 oil and gas companies and their sister companies.
The percentage refers to the aggregate contribution by oil and gas companies, their acquisitions, and sister companies. Sister companies are defined as companies owned by the controlling parent of an oil and gas company. 94% of renewable capacity from sister companies can be attributed to Chinese state-owned power companies (Supplementary Table 1).
Extended Data Fig. 5 Company operating renewable energy ranking coloured by technology.
Full figures in Supplementary Table 2.
Extended Data Fig. 6 Schematic methodology.
Data input (green) and outputs (blue) are highlighted. Main figures are shown in a rectangle.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Methods.
Supplementary Tables
Supplementary Tables 1–6.
Source data
Source Data Fig. 1a and Extended Data Fig. 4
Aggregate capacity figures for each section of the piecharts.
Source Data Fig. 1b
Aggregate capacity figures for each section of the piecharts.
Source Data Fig. 2
Aggregate energy extraction figures for each company and energy source.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 1
Renewable energy capacity figures by company and technology.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2
Renewable energy projects with longitude, latitude, equity capacity, status and technology attributes.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 3
GEM project counts by technology, capacity range and oil and gas owners.
Source Data Extended Data Fig. 5
Renewable energy capacity figures by company and type of ownership.
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Llavero-Pasquina, M., Bontempi, A. Oil and gas industry’s marginal share of global renewable energy. Nat Sustain (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01647-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-025-01647-0
