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The oil and gas sector has been experimenting with solar power as a generation source for oil operations for decades, such as this Chevron (then ChevronTexaco) California project in 2003. As costs of solar come down and pressure intensifies on oil companies to cut emissions, more renewable energy will de deployed, but it may remain limited — in scope and effectiveness.
David McNew | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Oil and gas companies are working hard on their messaging in the climate change era. If it’s “code red for humanity” as the UN’s IPCC said last Monday in its latest dire climate report, it’s some sort of “code red” for the fossil fuels industry too, in terms of figuring out how to stay relevant, believable — and for the market, investable — in an era of carbon emissions reduction mandates from governments, regulators and shareholders. 

Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub took a stab at it earlier this year, saying fossil fuels aren’t the problem — it’s emissions. It follows that if fossil fuel companies can find ways to eliminate emissions, on a large enough scale, maybe they can convince shareholders and stakeholders that they are moving into the future in more sustainable way.

But there are big differences in emissions types and emissions reduction strategies. What oil and gas companies do to reduce emissions in their operations and supply chain are, in the end, a smaller part of the carbon reduction game than reducing what is known as Scope 3 emissions — for example, from the tailpipe of your car. Those Scope 3 emissions, by expert estimates, are responsible for the vast majority of carbon emissions from the energy industry.

Lowering carbon emissions profile of oil and gas drilling

Companies including ExxonMobil have begun to disclose Scope 3 emissions, but in terms of their efforts to reduce emissions, remain focused on their own operations. What oil and gas companies do to lower operational emissions, the energy used to power drilling and all the way to the trucks going to and from drilling sites, does matter. Though how much it matters is inevitably smaller in the grander scheme of carbon emissions reduction efforts. 

“The electricity oil and gas companies use is a pretty small contributor to their carbon footprint,” said Chris Archer, head of Americas for Macquarie Capital’s Green Investment Group.

Occidental has been a leader in many of the new technology approaches to lowering the emissions profile of the oil and gas business. As Hollub told CNBC earlier this year, “The reality of a net-zero carbon barrel, it is possible, and we are doing things to make it possible. It’s not a goal on a sheet of paper.” 

Occidental is working on multiple projects related to carbon sequestration, not just for its operations, but other heavy emitters in the industrial sector. A growing but smaller part of that new technology thinking for oil and gas operations, which is expected to see more development in the future, is solar energy — solar panel arrays spreading out in places like the Permian Basin to help lower the emissions profile of oil and gas operations.

Occidental already has a 16 megawatt solar farm in the Permian — the first large-scale solar project to directly power oil and gas operations in Texas — and Hollub told CNBC earlier this year “we will be doing more of that. We believe it will take everything, and we will add more solar over time.” 

Oil and gas industry’s history with solar

Solar isn’t a new thing for oil and gas. Chevron had a project powering operations in the Kern oil field of California as far back as 2003, and BP even got into solar panel manufacturing for decades under Sir John Browne’s “Beyond Petroleum” mission (before solar manufacturing became mostly China’s game and most everyone else went bankrupt). 

“This isn’t a brand new journey,” said Amy Chronis, leader of Deloitte’s US Oil, Gas & Chemicals team in Houston. “But it’s still early days to see broad-based carbon reductions.”

Now several of the European and U.S. majors are making major investments in renewable again, including BP and Royal Dutch Shell, and all the big oil and gas companies have at least a few solar power projects, whether they developed them on their own or signed what are known as power purchase agreements with project developers, including ExxonMobil, which has added to its renewable energy portfolio in recent years.

It bought 500 megawatts of wind and solar in 2018 from Danish renewable energy company Orsted, the largest renewable deal ever signed by a U.S. major. Chevron signed its own 500 MW project last summer, with the energy generation to be split between the Permian, Argentina and Kazakhstan.  

A lot of the renewable energy history within solar has been more fits and starts — and lower down the priority list —than consistent application to the business. Though, the pressure is mounting.

Benjamin Shattuck, research director for Americas upstream oil and gas at energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie, said most of the companies he follows in the U.S. are still fairly early on in their journey to a carbon reduction model, but as environmental performance and ESG become more mainstream — he said ESG is top of agenda when he talks to oil CEOs lately —and more companies talk about net-zero targets and tie executive compensation to the goals, the situation is rapidly changing. 

“Oxy is one of the companies helping to lead the conversation, between the Goldsmith solar plant [the 16 MW plant Hollub referenced] and longer-term carbon capture and storage, they are thinking about it from a bold standpoint, which is good to see. Everything points to it picking up and accelerating,” Shattuck said.

The Permian is well-suited to renewables

Places like the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico are well-suited to renewable energy, with lots of land and a regulatory framework favorable to project development, whether oil and gas or renewables, but the economics have to make sense. And increasingly, they do.

An oil pump operates in the Permian Basin oil field near Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Joe Raedle | Hulton Archive | Getty Images

Archer says these companies can have a much bigger impact on carbon reduction through carbon capture efforts and flaring reduction than by going into renewables for the power. But the Permian Basin is one of the best places in the U.S. to cite solar, with loads of cheap flat land and really good irradiance. “Today, solar, for lots of oil and gas is the economic choice versus diesel generators,” Archer said.

That implies solar and wind projects being developed may have been less about a focus on carbon reduction, in his view, than being driven by the power generation being economically competitive. And Archer said given how economic solar has become in places like the Permian, if oil and gas companies were serious about it as a de-carbonization strategy, we might have seen more of it already under development. 

Never going to be oil’s carbon solution

No one is suggesting solar is oil’s solution. One or two solar plants, “won’t move the needle,” Shattuck said. But larger power purchase agreements and multiple projects across companies in the sector, isn’t insignificant either, in his view. “More operations need to be powered from renewables, whether they own the projects or are taking renewable generation from the grid,” Shattuck said.

It’s a complex process to attempt to make oil and gas drilling operations 100% renewable, from running the drilling rigs to generators and compressors and fracking trucks to get people to and from the field. The energy being used to prepare and drill new wells is greater than for existing wells, and these operations are not stationary either, moving around the Permian from West Texas to New Mexico with electric needs variable. In other words, if you build a solar plant in one area, you can’t just easily pick it up and move it to another where more wells are being focused on. That’s why Shattuck said we may see more oil and gas companies signing power purchase agreements with project developers.

“In some cases, that alleviates the capital risk,” he said. 

But all the diesel that is used today — especially the more remote a drilling site is —does represent a wide range of power replacement opportunities.

The oil field is emissions reduction ‘low-hanging fruit’

Because Scope 3 emissions are the vast majority of emissions and the furthest from the oil and gas companies direct control — and maybe active interest in controlling, with ExxonMobil saying that while it will track Scope 3 it is really up to society and consumers to make their own energy choices — renewable energy in the fields is in a sense, the low-hanging fruit. 

“Electrification of the oil field is important, and solar and wind can play a role, part of a larger puzzle that has to be solved. There isn’t a single solution today, that’s the theme,” Shattuck said. “It needs to be multi-technology for them.”

This won’t go over well with those ready to leave the fossil fuels economy behind, because the model is in effect augmenting what oil and gas companies are doing in the oil field rather than representing any full-scale pivot. It’s the emissions are the problem —not fossil fuels — of Hollub.

Building solar is not their solution. It’s good asset management with economic benefits on their existing assets. But it’s not a rubric through which they de-carbonize.
Chris Archer
Macquarie Capital’s Green Investment Group

But that low-hanging fruit gives the companies a means to test the market, see how investors and stakeholders react, and going down the road of renewables, because it’s not what they have typically done in the past, is part of the effort that will be put into winning back investors in the years ahead.

“They need to find out what’s hitting the mark and what isn’t, and if Goldsmith [the Oxy solar project] is resonating well with investors, then maybe they do more,” Shattuck said.

The first net-zero oil barrel

Archer worries it is still more about issuing a press release than executing on significant change, and he is skeptical that these projects can change the image of these companies.

“When was the last time you bought something from Oxy? It’s not like you’re swayed as a consumer,” he said. “Building a 20 MW solar farm and issuing a press release won’t earn you many points. You need a bigger strategy and goals.”

But while the consumer at the gas pump may not think in those carbon-neutral barrel terms today, industrial buyers already do. “We have talked to companies producing natural gas and the off taker is a utility and that utility does care about the carbon footprint, about the gas burning in a power plant,” said Kate Hardin, executive director of the Deloitte Research Center for Energy & Industrials. “So maybe it is not as direct as a person, as the end user in retail, but companies buying the oil and gas may care.”

And that is exactly what happened in early 2021, when Oxy shipped its first-ever carbon-neutral barrel of oil to India, and issued a press release about it.

There are multiple business cases to make in the future that revolve around more of these deals, if on the margins, and that relate back to the value of more renewable energy generation in the fields. Oil and gas companies need to find new competitive advantages, and even if there is a case where the economics of a solar plant don’t work on their own, decreasing export risk could be another way to make the model productive. 

“It will be interesting to watch that competition. It’s proof of concept work, really early on,” Shattuck said.

That work comes at time when the sector is focused more on capital discipline and budget cuts then spending, making it more difficult for oil and gas companies to pull the trigger on experiments with technology. One of the biggest questions for the future of the oil and gas industry is tied up in the question of how much renewable energy development it pursues — what percentage of the overall spending is earmarked for carbon emissions reduction.  

“I don’t think it will be an insignificant amount. If they want to continue to have access to funding and capital they will have to continue with a variety of these technologies and strategies, and we will learn more about what’s most effective,” Shattuck said.

The oil and gas companies early work on solar implies they are learning and getting familiar with the technology, and it will stay in the mix, but other initiatives will be more material, in Archer’s view. “Building solar is not their solution. It’s good asset management with economic benefits on their existing assets. But it’s not a rubric through which they de-carbonize. But we will see more of it,” he said. 

For a long time, the oil and gas industry could do no right when it came to cutting spending and running operations on a more conservative basis. But in recent years, the industry has been forced by investors to do just that. Now capital discipline is a top priority to stay in favor with investors.

Carbon reduction efforts, including renewable energy projects like solar, are a different mode of thinking than deciding on exploration spending, but there’s a similarity: the companies are leapfrogging each other in terms of targets and as technology gets rolled out, it will play a role in the sector players that investors decide on as the likely winners.

“It would be surprising if the budget line item is low,” Shattuck said.

Especially with oil and gas executive compensation packages now much more frequently designed to only go up if carbon emissions go down.

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Rad Power gives RadRover 6 Plus e-bike an extra battery at $1,399, Exclusive renewed Anker SOLIX F3800 at $1,999, EcoFlow, more

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April 10, 2025

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Rad Power gives RadRover 6 Plus e-bike an extra battery at ,399, Exclusive renewed Anker SOLIX F3800 at ,999, EcoFlow, more

Headlining today’s Green Deals is Rad Power’s newly launched Earth Day Sale with up to $699 in savings on a solid lineup of e-bikes, including returning accessory bundles on its latest models. One notable – and popular – standout is the brand’s RadRover 6 Plus Step-Thru Fat Tire e-bike that comes along with an extra battery for double the travel time at $1,399. We’ve also secured an exclusive $680 off deal on the refurbished Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station that is down at $1,999. Lastly, we’ve got the latest flash offers from EcoFlow’s ongoing Easter Sale and Mega Sale for the rest of the day, which include a bundle for the DELTA 2 Portable Power Station with a waterproof bag for $449, as well as two DELTA Pro Ultra Extra Batteries down at $4,599. Plus, all the other hangover Green Deals are in the links at the bottom of the page, like yesterday’s new low price on the Heybike ALPHA e-bike, and more.

Head below for other New Green Deals we’ve found today and, of course, Electrek’s best EV buying and leasing deals. Also, check out the new Electrek Tesla Shop for the best deals on Tesla accessories.

Rad Power is launching an Earth Day Sale through April 23 with up to $699 in savings on a selection of e-bikes, including the ongoing RadRunner lows we’ve been seeing repeat over the last few events since February. The headliner for this sale though is the popular bundle of the RadRover 6 Plus Step-Thru Fat Tire e-bike with an extra battery for $1,399 shipped. The e-bike on its own would normally cost you $1,599 without the $200 price cut here, only beaten out by the $1,299 rate from September and the $1,199 low we saw at the top of 2025, though these did not offer the extra battery valued at $499. Despite being the third-lowest price we have tracked overall, this is the largest amount of savings we have seen on this model bundled with the battery. Be sure to add both to your cart for the automatic discount to be applied.

I’ve been hopping aboard my parent’s RadRover 6 Plus e-bike during visits and it’s not hard to see why it’s so popular among riders with its durability and lineup of features, which can be elevated further with additional add-on gear, which my parents went all-out on. Without all those extra bells and whistles, it starts with a 750W brushless geared hub motor that is powered by the semi-integrated 672Wh battery to reach top speeds of 20 MPH while carrying you up to 45+ miles when its five levels of PAS are activated – which is doubled to 90+ miles with the extra battery. If you’re going a shorter distance and not in the mood to do any pedaling, there is the option to ride on pure electric power with the throttle, though keep in mind this cuts down its mileage.

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It’s a solid option for folks who enjoy on-street and off-road treks alike, as the fat Kenda Juggernaut puncture-resistant tires stand up well to swampy terrain during my visits while the electrical system is protected thanks to the water-resistant connectors. You’ll also get it arriving stocked with a Shimano 7-speed derailleur, hydraulic brakes, fenders above both tires, an LED headlight and taillight with brake lighting (and auto-on functions for both), and a LCD display.

Rad Power’s other Earth Day e-bike discounts:

Rad Power’s ongoing low prices (while supplies last):

Rad Power accessory bundles on newest e-bikes:

  • RadExpand 5 Plus Folding e-bike: $1,899
    • 20 MPH for up to 60+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
  • Radster Road Commuter e-bike: $2,199
    • 28 MPH for up to 65+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
  • Radster Trail Off-Road e-bike: $2,199
    • 28 MPH for up to 65+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
  • RadWagon 5 Cargo e-bike: $2,399
    • 28 MPH for up to 60+ miles
    • comes with any accessory under $200
    • discounts applied when added to cart
Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station

Score an exclusive $680 in savings on a refurbished and expandable Anker SOLIX F3800 power station at $1,999

We’ve secured an exclusive deal for our readers at Wellbots on a refurbished Anker SOLIX F3800 Portable Power Station for $1,999 shipped, after using the code 9TO5RB300 at checkout. This renewed unit is getting brought down from its $2,679 price tag to $2,299 with the initial discount, which drops even lower thanks to our exclusive $300 in additional savings. It’s a solid option for those who want to save a bit more, as a new model normally goes for $3,999 at full price and is currently discounted to $2,599 right now, giving you $600 more in savings ($680 in all) while providing you with the brand’s expandable setup that you can invest more into down the road.

Coming with a two-year warranty, this refurbished Anker SOLIX F3800 station is a well-rounded option to cover camping, tailgating, home backup emergencies, and more. It starts at a 3,840Wh LiFePO4 capacity that can be further scaled up to 26.9kWh with its appropriate expansion batteries. It boasts 15+ port options to cover a variety of needs – including RV and EV power too thanks to the included L14-30R and NEMA 14-50 ports – with a steady output of 6,000W that can surge up to 9,000W.

You can recharge its own battery through an AC wall outlet, or connect up to its maximum 2,400W of solar input, which can refill the battery to 80% in 1.5 hours with ideal conditions. This refurbished model comes rated for 3,000 life cycles when charging up to 80% of its battery, giving you over 8 years of a lifespan were you to do so every single day. With the addition of EcoFlow’s home backup kit this station can cover sectional support for your home’s circuit breaker, or you could expand that to whole-home coverage with connections to roof panels when utilizing the home power panel instead.

– Units are Grade A Refurbished by Anker (Like new condition)
– 2 year warranty applies
– 30 day return policy

EcoFlow DELTA 2 Portable Power Station

EcoFlow flash sale offers DELTA 2 1,024Wh LiFePO4 power station with waterproof bag at $449, more

Running through the rest of the day as part of its ongoing Easter Sale and Mega Sale, EcoFlow has launched the third round of flash sale deals, with the first being the DELTA 2 Portable Power Station bundled with a waterproof bag for $449 shipped. Normally going for $999 outside of these sales, we have seen this power station on its own as low as $399 once before today, but you’re now getting it at $449 with the waterproof bag included to deliver one of the best values we have ever tracked. You’ll also find it matching in price over at Amazon, as well.

Perfect for those upcoming outdoor adventures, the EcoFlow DELTA 2 is an expandable unit that starts with a 1,024Wh LiFePO4 capacity and can go as high as 3,074Wh with the addition of expansion batteries. Its 15 port options cover your devices and appliances with a steady output up to 1,800W, which can surge up to 2,200W with the built-in X-Boost tech that also reduces its recharging times. Within 50 minutes of plugging it into a wall outlet you can have it back to an 80% battery while a full battery takes a little longer at 80 minutes. There’s also the option to connect up to its maximum 500W solar input to take advantage of the sun’s rays to refill its battery in as little as three hours. It also comes rated for 3,000 life cycles up to 80% of its capacity, meaning you could recharge it every day to that amount for over eight years.

The second offer during this flash sale is perfect for those with an existing DELTA Pro Ultra power station and are looking to expand, as you can grab two DELTA Pro Ultra Extra Batteries for $4,599 shipped. Considering that they are currently discounted to $2,499 each right now (down from $3,299 each), you’ll be saving an additional $399 here with the sales pricing and $1,999 off their regular pricing. By adding them to your existing setup, you’ll tack on an additional 12.2kWh capacity for even longer backup power support.

Be sure to check out the full (and differing) lineup of deals from EcoFlow’s ongoing Easter Sale and Mega Sale that are taking up to 65% off power stations through April 14.

Best New Year EV deals!

Best new Green Deals landing this week

The savings this week are also continuing to a collection of other markdowns. To the same tune as the offers above, these all help you take a more energy-conscious approach to your routine. Winter means you can lock in even better off-season price cuts on electric tools for the lawn while saving on EVs and tons of other gear.

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Environment

Pennsylvania dairy farm powers its new electric tractor with biogas

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1 hour ago

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April 10, 2025

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Pennsylvania dairy farm powers its new electric tractor with biogas

Farm Generates Biogas to Power Volvo Electric Compact Loader

An 800-head dairy farm in central Pennsylvania is the first in the United States to create a truly circular energy cycle by using recovered biogas to generate the electricity needed to charge the electric wheel loader that pushes feed to its cattle.

Molly Pitcher Dairy in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, uses a Volvo L120 electric wheel loader to feed its 800 head of dairy cattle each daily — and they’re showing other corporate farms that it’s possible to be more productive and more sustainable.

They’re accomplishing this first by deploying quiet, zero-emissions equipment assets that are better for both the health and safety of the farm’s employees and cattle, and second by powering those assets with electricity generated by methane-rich biogas that would otherwise be burned off or vented into the atmosphere.

The dairy uses a 1.5-million-gallon “anerobic digester” to recycles solid and liquid waste generated by the farm’s hundreds of cows (read: poop), producing energy-rich biogas that is used to generate electricity. Molly Pitcher Dairy actually generates enough electricity to power the farm, charge its wheel loader, and have enough left over to sell electrons back to their local grid.

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As for the Volvo L120 Electric wheel loader itself, the machine offers a 6-ton lifting capacity and quiet, precise, vibration-free operation, making it a valuable asset on job sites from construction sites to ports and logistic centers, and on through to waste management and recycling.

Volvo’s L120 Electric delivers between 5-9 hours of continuous on a single charge, depending on the workload. While that’s enough for a typical shift, when the Volvo does need to power up, it can charge from 10-100% in one hour 40 minutes with a 180 kW DC fast charger, or overnight with the same standard L2 (220/240V) outlet that any proper farm already has a welder plugged into.

“This dairy runs 24/7, so the more electric that I can use, the better it is for us economically and for the environment. That is why I was interested in this new electric loader from Volvo,” says the farm’s owner, Keith Jones — but the most important customer feedback at Molly Pitcher Dairy came from the herd. Says Jones, “It took the cows a few passes with the loader to realize it was feeding time because they didn’t hear it driving down the barn aisles. It’s very quiet, and for the cows, that is very nice.”

Molly Pitcher Dairy is one of seven cattle farms across three states owned by the Jones brothers as part of a family business that also includes cattle harvesting and commercial trucking operations.

Electrek’s Take

We’ve written about the greenwashing of poop collecting before, but while experts on one end argue that the LCFS in particular awards credits to farmers at a much higher magnitude than the cost to operate and maintain a methane digester and experts on the other side argue that biomethane still creates burned emission the same way fossil fuels do, the fact remains that the carbon cost of burning biogas is net less than the conventional cost of burning fuel fossil fuels, if only because of the reduced carbon costs typically associated with their refining and transportation (the fact that the biowaste is generated regardless and otherwise wasted should also be considered, but needn’t be in order to realize an immediate “common sense” benefit here).

Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly better ways to power an EV — including wind and solar — but are there much better uses for hundreds of tons of cow poop? You guys are smart. Head down the comments and tell me what they are.

SOURCE | IMAGES: Volvo CE.

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Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.

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Cracks are forming in Elon Musk’s armor of lies

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2 hours ago

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April 10, 2025

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Cracks are forming in Elon Musk's armor of lies

Tesla OpenAi XAI Elon Musk crack in armor of lies

As Elon Musk moves to dismiss a lawsuit from Tesla shareholders claiming he failed his fiduciary duties, OpenAI is now suing Musk and exposing lies, which could help Tesla shareholders.

It looks like cracks are forming in Elon Musk’s armor of lies.

Last year, Tesla investors sued Musk for breach of fiduciary duty and resource tunneling over the founding of xAI, a private AI company under his control.

Musk had previously stated that Tesla would be a major player in AI and that AI products would be critical to Tesla’s future, but in early 2024, the CEO threatened not to build AI products at Tesla if he didn’t get more control over the company by getting more shares.

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He also redirected NVIDIA AI hardware acquired by Tesla to xAI and hired Tesla employees to work at xAI.

In short, Tesla shareholders argue that Musk is in breach of his fiduciary duties to shareholders by creating a private company that competes directly with Tesla. The lawsuit also cites similar issues with Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.

This week, Musk and Tesla board members, who are also defendants in the lawsuit for not stopping Musk, have filed to try to dismiss the lawsuit (via Bloomberg):

The shareholder suit by a group of pension funds and other investors “is long on hyperbole but woefully short on well-pled facts,” the board members said in a court filing Monday. “Yet they cannot escape the undeniable reality: Tesla has thrived under this board and CEO, delivering astronomical returns to stockholders while advancing its mission to create sustainable abundance for all.”

It will likely take a while before the lawsuit moves through the court, but in the meantime, Tesla shareholders have found a strong ally: OpenAI.

Musk has long been tormenting OpenAI with lawsuits. Tesla’s CEO co-founded OpenAI as a non-profit in 2015 to develop an artificial general intelligence that positively contributes to humanity.

In early 2018, Musk resigned from OpenAI, citing “conflicts of interest with Tesla.”

At that time, Tesla’s CEO started pushing the automaker increasingly toward self-driving, which he often described as “real-world AI,” and the automaker began to compete for AI talent with OpenAI.

While he was seemingly on good terms with OpenAI after his departure, a few years later, he started publicly criticizing the organization for moving to a limited for-profit model, which they argued was necessary due to the billions of dollars required to build the compute training hardware to have an impact in the AI sector.

Musk even sued the company over the move and repeatedly publicly mocked them.

It hasn’t been clear how serious the legal actions have been since Musk even claimed that he would drop the lawsuit if OpenAI changed its name:

OpenAI has been defending itself with the release of some emails that show Musk actually agreed for years that the organization needed to move to a for-profit model.

Now, OpenAI has countersued Musk and released more details that show Musk has been misleading the public for years.

It also explains his latest moves at Tesla and xAI.

Musk’s AI effort went from OpenAI to Tesla to xAI

All the documents released by OpenAI as part of the countersuit paint a much clearer picture of Musk’s involvement with AI and how it evolved over the years.

I’ll start with a clear timeline to make it easier to understand.

  • 2010s: Musk has long been fascinated with AI and emerged as one of the most prominent tech voices warning about its dangers.
  • 2015: Musk co-founds OpenAI as a non-profit to try to create a safe AGI.
  • 2017: Musk privately communicates to many people in OpenAI and the AI community that the company needs to switch to a for-profit model and raise billions to be successful due to the cost of AI hardware.
  • 2018: Musk attempted to get control of OpenAI and merge it with Tesla, but this was rejected by OpenAI’s board, which ultimately took investments from Microsoft to start its for-profit arm, as it gave the organization more independence.
  • 2018: Musk leaves OpenAI, citing a conflict of interest with Tesla.
  • 2018-2022: Musk positions Tesla as “the world’s leader in AI”, hires a ton of AI talent, and claims Tesla will “play an important role in AGI”.
  • 2022: Musk sells tens of billions of dollars worth of Tesla stocks, partly to buy an overpriced Twitter.
  • 2023: Shortly after the viral launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Musk creates a new private company, xAI, to develop AI products and compete with OpenAI.
  • 2024: A judge rescinds Musk’s $55 billion Tesla CEO compensation package, which would have increased his stake in Tesla back to where it was before he bought Twitter.
  • 2024: Musk threatens Tesla shareholders that he will not build AI products at Tesla unless he gets more control (aka more shares).
  • 2024: Musk hires Tesla employees for xAI and redirects shipments of AI training compute from Tesla to xAI.
  • 2024: Musk sues OpenAI to try to block its transition into a capped for-profit business.

OpenAI has all the receipts to prove this. I recommend reading all the emails because they give great insights into Musk’s persona and how he presents himself publicly versus what he says privately.

Here are some of the highlights to prove the timeline above:

Early on in the founding of OpenAI in 2015, it was proposed to be a non-profit linked to Y Combinator, Sam Altman’s company at the time, and Musk was already suggesting to make it a regular C corp:

OpenAI shared many internal emails and text messages between the teams, Musk, and Musk’s executive assistant/future baby mama, Shivon Zilis, discussing the need for much more capital, which will require a move to for-profit.

In 2017, as OpenAI was first configuring a potential for-profit arm, Musk tried to take control by asking for preferred shares and a supermajority:

Musk even filed for a new benefit corporation, a for-profit legal structure that aims to generate profits while positively impacting society and/or the environment.

Musk’s full-time money manager, Jared Birchall, is listed as the sole director of the new corporation.

OpenAI rejected Musk’s proposal as it would have given him complete control, but they insisted they still wanted to work with him.

In early 2018, Musk switched up his proposal to try to get OpenAI attached to Tesla:

This proposal also failed, as OpenAI felt this was also an attempt from Musk to gain complete control.

Musk then left OpenAI and focused his AI efforts on Tesla until he significantly reduced his stake in the company to buy Twitter on a whim.

Then, he founded xAI to become his main AI effort as a private company under his control while telling Tesla shareholders that the company was an “AI and robotics play.”

xAI recently absorbed X (Twitter), resulting in a $125 billion company based on Musk’s made-up valuation.

Electrek’s Take

This is extremely revealing. It clearly shows that Musk’s main goal is to have complete control over AI.

He tried to get control of OpenAI, but couldn’t make it work. He then tried to make it work with Tesla, but he screwed up by giving up some control (I’d argue he still has a firm hold on the public company) through the acquisition of Twitter.

He panicked after OpenAI launched ChatGPT and started xAI as a private company entirely under his control, devaluing Tesla in the process – hence the current shareholders’ lawsuit.

For years, Musk attacked OpenAI and lied to the public about disagreeing with the for-profit transition, when he was actually pushing for it since the very beginning. The only difference is that OpenAI was now a competitor to Tesla, and then xAI.

I want to be clear here. OpenAI is not completely clean, either. It obviously owes Musk something for the company’s original funding, but the emails also reveal that the organization tried to give him shares and pay him back, but Musk refused.

His refusal is likely linked to his believing that he could do more damage by suing OpenAI.

It looks like Musk believes that he is some sort of super genius who deserves to be the one in control of a potential future AGI, and he was willing to lie and cheat his way into making it happen.

Even if his intentions are good, that’s a scary thought.

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