Big Oil’s green-bashing stokes backlash as campaigners hit out at ‘talking points from the 1970s’
Saudi Aramco President & CEO Amin Nasser speaks during the CERAWeek oil summit in Houston, Texas, on March 18, 2024.
Mark Felix | Afp | Getty Images
Top oil executives have been sharply criticized for pushing back against the viability of the clean energy transition at a U.S. conference, with campaigners denouncing an industry claim that the shift away from fossil fuels is “visibly failing on most fronts.”
Speaking during a panel interview on Monday at the annual CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, Texas, Saudi Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said that a transition strategy reset was “urgently needed.”
The CEO of the world’s largest energy company proposed that policymakers abandon the “fantasy” of phasing out oil and gas and instead “adequately” invest in fossil fuels to reflect growing demand. Aramco and Saudi ministry officials have previously advocated for ongoing investment in hydrocarbons to avoid energy shortages until renewables can fully meet global energy demands.
Nasser’s comments drew applause from the audience at CERAWeek — an annual energy conference by S&P Global that’s known as the “industry’s Super Bowl.”
Other oil and gas executives at the event echoed Nasser’s views, but spoke less directly about the state of the energy transition.
Shell CEO Wael Sawan said government bureaucracy in Europe was slowing the necessary development of clean energy, according to Reuters. Separately, Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods on Monday said that demand for petroleum products is “still very, very healthy.”
“So, I think one of the things the policy to date and a lot of the narrative has been very focused on is the supply side of the equation and hasn’t addressed the demand side of the equation. And the impact that price has on demand,” Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”
“At the same time, the cost of converting and moving to a lower-carbon society, if that cost is too high for consumers to bear, they won’t pay. And we’ve seen that play itself out in Europe, with some of the farm protests and the yellow vest protests a year or so ago,” he added.
Campaigners have hit out at the oil industry’s claims this week.
“The fossil fuel industry continues to make distorted claims about our energy future,” Jeff Ordower, North America director at 350.org — a U.S.-based group focused on the global energy transition — said in a statement on Tuesday.
“They work night and day to torpedo a transition to renewable energy and then have the audacity to critique the slowness of the transition itself,” Ordower said. “CERAWeek should highlight a global vision toward a clean and equitable future, and instead, we get talking points from the 1970s.”
Aramco, Exxon Mobil and Shell were not immediately available to comment when contacted by CNBC on Wednesday.
IEA vs. OPEC
The International Energy Agency has previously said it expects global oil, gas and coal demand to peak by 2030 — a forecast that Aramco’s Nasser rejected at CERAWeek. The energy watchdog said in October last year that the transition to clean energy is not only happening, but is “unstoppable.”
“It’s not a question of ‘if’, it’s just a matter of ‘how soon’ – and the sooner the better for all of us,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.
The oil-producing Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which disagrees with the IEA on its outlook for oil demand growth, said earlier this month that it still expects relatively strong growth in global oil demand for both 2024 and 2025.
Participants are seen at the Innovation Agora of the CERAWeek in Houston, Texas, the United States, on March 18, 2024. CERAWeek, known as a superbowl forum in the global energy industry, kicked off Monday in Houston of the U.S. state of Texas, with topics covering the entire energy spectrum but themed on multidimensional energy transition in four fields: markets, climate, technology and geopolitics.
Xinhua News Agency | Xinhua News Agency | Getty Images
Policymakers have also renewed their focus on energy supply security in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.
It is in this context that oil and gas executives have repeatedly sought to fend off climate criticism, claiming that Big Oil is not to blame for the climate crisis and warning that it won’t be possible to keep everyone happy in the shift away from fossil fuels.
The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas is the chief driver of the climate crisis.
“It’s no surprise to see misleading claims like this coming at CERAWeek, because fossil fuel companies are the biggest cause of the climate crisis, and their continued political influence is the biggest obstacle to solving it,” David Tong, global industry campaign manager at advocacy group Oil Change International, told CNBC via email.
“Oil and gas companies are deliberately slowing and blocking a rapid fossil fuel phase-out with the types of dangerous distractions they are peddling this week in Houston,” Tong said.
‘There’s really no debate’
Some energy companies have scaled back their greenhouse gas reduction targets in recent months.
Activist investors have put pressure on fossil fuel companies to further align their emission reduction targets with the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, while some have urged firms to scale back on green pledges and instead lean into their core oil and gas businesses.
“What we are seeing now is a desperate attempt from the oil and gas industry to stay relevant and to double down on their old business model despite knowing the products they’ve sold us for decades are responsible for the climate crisis,” Josh Eisenfeld, corporate accountability campaign manager at Earthworks, an environmental non-profit based in Washington D.C., told CNBC via email.
“They’ve failed to evolve their business into one that is compatible with what science tells us must be done to avoid a climate catastrophe. There’s really no debate — science has made it abundantly clear what needs to be done and paramount to that is a transition away from fossil fuels,” Eisenfeld said. “To think otherwise is delusional,” he added.
US coal giant Peabody and Germany’s RWE are teaming up to develop 5.5 gigawatts (GW) of solar and energy storage projects on former mining land in the Midwest.
It’s an unlikely but strategic partnership: RWE is one of the world’s leading renewable energy developers, while Peabody was once the largest private-sector coal company in the world.
RWE is buying into R3 Renewables, a joint venture that Peabody launched alongside Summit Partners Credit Advisors and Riverstone Credit Partners. With this move, RWE is acquiring Summit and Riverstone’s stakes and taking a majority position, while Peabody will hold on to a 25% equity interest. The projects are spread across Indiana and Illinois, focusing on large-scale solar and energy storage on land that Peabody previously mined for coal.
The plan is to develop 10 projects totaling 5.5 GW. RWE will take over seven of these projects, while the remaining three will continue under a joint venture with Peabody. If all goes to plan, these projects could generate enough electricity to power more than 850,000 homes.
For Peabody, which has faced growing pressure to pivot as the world transitions away from fossil fuels, the partnership is part of a broader effort to create value from its reclaimed mining sites. Jim Grech, Peabody’s CEO, says the partnership with RWE marks “significant added momentum” for their renewable energy initiatives.
RWE sees this as a big opportunity to expand in the US Midwest. Andrew Flanagan, CEO of RWE Clean Energy, called the partnership “an exciting opportunity to invest in rural regions of Indiana and Illinois,” promising economic development through construction jobs, investment, and community benefits. The plan aims to support the energy transition while ensuring that communities historically tied to coal still see benefits – this time from clean energy.
Read more: Ørsted’s largest solar farm in the world is now online in Texas
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For years, bitcoin won by being boring.
Investors weren’t able to do all that much with it besides buy and hold it. But that was precisely why the world’s largest cryptocurrency was valuable.
It was a commodity, like gold — or corn. It didn’t get too fancy on its offerings. In fact, bitcoin’s core team of developers has intentionally moved as slowly as possible on everything that touches the base blockchain specifically to avoid breaking things. That’s why many of crypto’s more cavalier coders headed to other blockchains to tinker and do things like build decentralized applications.
The approach worked. Traders poured their money into bitcoin not just because it was the OG coin but also because the network was robust and reliable, and they knew what they were getting. As solana reported hack after hack, bitcoin didn’t really change. The asset was volatile, but aside from a major system upgrade that took four years to design and green-light, bitcoin kept its status as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency by market cap by sticking to the status quo.
But times are changing for the original coin.
Developers are increasingly building on bitcoin’s base blockchain in unexpected ways. Wall Street is also decking the coin out with all its familiar trappings such as exchange-traded fund wrappers and allowing traders to hedge positions and make leveraged bets.
In January, spot bitcoin ETFs began trading, which opened the door to more mainstream investors. Last week, options on those spot crypto products finally started to go live on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange. CBOE Global Markets is also set to list its first cash-settled bitcoin ETF options Dec. 2.
Creating this new margin framework around bitcoin means that both retail traders and institutions alike will be able to get more exposure to the asset class relative to how much cash they’re investing.
New ways to bet on bitcoin
Collectively, the U.S.-issued spot bitcoin funds hold north of $100 billion in assets under management. Last week, they notched their largest weekly inflows on record, totaling more than $3.1 billion. And according to CoinShares, year-to-date net flows are up to $37 billion versus U.S. Gold ETFs, which drew around $309 million in their first year.
Nearly half of those flows into the spot bitcoin products took place after U.S. interest rates were cut for the first time in four years in September.
Vetle Lunde, head of research at K33 Research, told CNBC there has been record high open interest for futures on the CME derivatives exchange, the way most U.S. institutions currently buy bitcoin futures contracts. But a lot of traders have been waiting for options on spot bitcoin ETFs on major exchanges such as the NYSE and Nasdaq, since it enhances liquidity and offers hedging tools.
Lunde says that demand for leveraged long exposure to bitcoin and ether is climbing, with VolatilityShares’ BTC exposure hitting new all-time highs.
Galaxy Digital’s trading team told CNBC the firm has observed significant volume in BlackRock’s IBIT ETF options, the first to launch on the Nasdaq last week. BlackRock is the largest digital asset manager in the world after it eclipsed Grayscale in August. BlackRock’s bitcoin trust IBIT holds $48.4 billion in bitcoin compared with the $34 billion in its gold trust.
Options on IBIT had a blockbuster debut, with 353,716 contracts traded on its first day, according to Galaxy Digital. The firm noted that the previous most active debut of options trading was when Facebook options went live in 2012 and 360,000 contracts changed hands.
Galaxy sees notable trading activity extending out to January 2027, roughly halfway into Donald Trump’s administration. On the campaign trail, the president-elect had an about-face on bitcoin and went from criticizing digital assets to making big promises to the crypto industry. Bitcoin is up roughly 40% since Election Day, Nov. 5.
“This level of concentrated, long-dated activity reflects investor confidence in the ETF’s long-term growth potential, signaling bullish sentiment for the years ahead,” Galaxy’s trading team told CNBC.
Until now, offshore crypto native platforms such as Binance and Deribit have been the main marketplace for bitcoin derivatives trading. Galaxy told CNBC there is a noticeable volatility premium between Deribit, CME and IBIT, which could present arbitrage opportunities among the varying platforms offering derivatives trading.
On Friday, more than $9 billion in bitcoin options contracts expire on Deribit, which could lead to greater price volatility as the expiration date approaches.
“There’s a ton of leverage in the system right now,” Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, a longtime crypto investor, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday.
“You look at the funding rates to do crypto in our market, right? The perpetual market, as high as they’ve been, the basis is high,” Novogratz said. “The crypto community is levered to the gills, and so there will be a correction.”
Bitcoin was within striking distance of $100,000 on Friday but retrenched over the weekend. The cryptocurrency is currently trading at around $95,000.
Environment
Hyundai doesn’t care if Trump kills the EV tax credit, it plans to keep growing either way
Although President-Elect Donald Trump is promising to end the $7,500 EV tax credit, Hyundai is confident it will continue growing in the US. The company just opened a massive new $7.6 billion manufacturing plant in Georgia as it looks to grab a bigger share of the US market.
A Reuters report earlier this month claiming Trump’s transition team is planning to end the $7,500 federal EV tax credit is causing US automakers to brace for the potential major impacts.
Although US market leader Tesla reportedly supports the move, Hyundai Motor, including Kia, is preparing for any outcome.
“Hyundai did not build our [US] investment plan based on incentives; the plan was even made before Trump’s [first] term,” Hyundai’s newly elected CEO, Jose Munoz, said at the LA Auto Show last week.
In an interview with Korean media at the event (via Korea JongAng Daily), Munoz said, “If the Inflation Reduction Act goes out, it goes out for everybody, and we can even do better.” Although Hyundai’s EVs currently don’t qualify for the full $7,500 credit, like some US rivals, the company is still gaining market share.
“Competitors like Tesla step by step are losing market share and we continue to increase our share,” Hyundai’s current global chief operating officer explained.
Hyundai to remain flexible if Trump ends the EV tax credit
Hyundai opened its massive new $7.6 billion manufacturing plant in Georgia last month. The first vehicle that rolled off the assembly line was the new US-made 2025 Hyundai IONIQ 5. Hyundai upgraded its top-selling EV with more range, features, and a sleek new design. It also comes with an NACS port to charge at Tesla Superchargers.
Last week, the company also unveiled its first three-row electric SUV, the IONIQ 9, which will also be built at the facility.
However, until the battery unit opens next year, Hyundai’s US-built EVs qualify for a partial $3,750 credit. Until then, Hyundai is passing on the full $7,500 for leases.
Hyundai fast-tracked production to level the playing field in the US, its most important market. With Trump reportedly planning to end subsidies, Hyundai’s new CEO said the company will remain flexible.
“We will not only produce EVs but also hybrids and extended-range EVs at our plants, and therefore, the key for us is flexibility and then being able to adjust to what the customers want,” Munoz told reporters.
As the US is expected to pull back, China’s EV market continues surging. China became the first country to build over 10 million new energy vehicles (EVs and PHEVs) in a single year.
EV leaders, like BYD, are looking overseas to drive growth as a wave of low-cost rivals is hitting China. As sales continue surging, BYD is quickly catching up to Ford in global deliveries.
Munoz said, “China is a big threat,” but he believes Hyundai can compete with “technological prowess” and “quality.”
“A lot of consumers, when they buy Chinese products, they realize maybe the quality is not as good as others,” Hyundai leaders explained. That’s where Hyundai wants to “elevate our game in terms of providing not only the best quality but also the best services to our customers.”
Hyundai Motor, including Kia and Genesis, is outpacing Ford and GM as the second-largest seller of EVs in the US through September. With US production kicking off, Hyundai aims to solidify its spot in the US auto market.
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