A recent article from MSN titled “Oil majors cut energy transition spending in 2025 for first time in eight years,” discusses a recent report which found the largest oil and gas companies are decreasing spending on net zero projects due to lack of political support and a disinterested customer base. This is great news, and hopefully is just a precursor of the energy realism boom to come.
The post says that the “world’s largest oil and gas companies ratcheted back investment in the energy transition in 2025, marking the first annual decline in eight years, according to BloombergNEF (BNEF).” Oil major spending on “low carbon technologies” dropped “by more than a third over the past year, to $25.7 billion from more than $38 billion in 2024, according to a report published Wednesday.”
The report was written by two BNEF analysists: Claudio Lubis and David Doherty. They are quoted as saying that “policy volatility” under the Trump administration, especially with regards to permitting for offshore wind “has materially increased execution risk for capital-intensive offshore wind projects,” and investment in renewables is expected to continue to slack off.
This is ironic, since it was hostile politics and permitting delays under both the Obama and Biden administrations that destroyed the Keystone XL pipeline project, among other important oil and gas pipelines. Industrial wind and solar power being creatures of and by big government mandates, subsidies, and grants of competitive advantage, show how ineffective they are. When government support wanes, private investment does also.
The article also says that Exxon Mobil plans to “pace” spending on low-carbon projects because there were not enough customers willing to buy products such as hydrogen and biofuels, and that climate policies designed to support decarbonization “frankly aren’t working.”
It is not the first time Exxon Mobil has thrown cold water on alarmists’ decarbonization dreams. Three years ago, a company spokesman said that net-zero efforts would result in “degradation in global standard of living” and that people would not put up with or accept it. Similarly, last year the company said oil and gas would be needed for decades to come, citing growing global demand despite international efforts to phase-out fossil fuel use to fight climate change.
Exxon is right, with the truth of their comments being reflected in the growth of all fossil fuels as a primary energy source (see figure below).
Widespread rejection of “green” projects like biofuels and offshore wind just go to show that top-down government enforcement of these sorts of projects only works as long as government keeps the support in place. Once that government support dries up, the projects fall apart, showing just how unpopular and/or uneconomic they were all along. If these products were in demand and really the future of energy, government would not need to foist them on us. As Exxon said, and as Climate Realism has likewise pointed out, green products are less efficient and reliable, and increase electricity costs, and energy costs in general. Higher costs and technologies that are less effective are simply not acceptable to the general public, once they learn the truth.
It is a good thing that these massive multinational companies are reducing their investment in green boondoggles, even if that divestment is only by a third or so. More money being put towards stable and dependable energy will benefit consumers over the long-term. It’s a shame the funding isn’t drying up entirely. Every dollar spent on net-zero programs and technologies carries high opportunity costs.
Great News: Nokia is backing down on “smart” phones
The Nokia company has demonstrated strategic agility since its inception. It transformed itself from a 19th-century Finnish pulp mill into a 20th-century rubber/cable conglomerate, then to a dominant 1990s mobile phone manufacturer, before finally pivoting to a global 5G network infrastructure and technology licensing leader after selling its mobile business to Microsoft some years ago.
It’s made its mistakes like all businesses do. One might get the impression that it’s been left for dead, much like Apple was.
Its current strategy is to focus on network and mobile infrastructure for AI and communications. Using MUR as a contrary indicator, as the current market downturn matures there probably will be a good entry point for NOK, and it has the potential to be a good investment.
And once again, instead of actually dealing with the facts presented, you desperately try to change the subject.
Who ??? I thought every used iPhones and Samsung. !
Motorola, babee, Motorola!
Great news indeed! The smart money has seen through your alarmist BS.
Do you Nokia the company that reported full year 2024 net sales of EUR 19.2 billion, while Q4 2024 net sales reached EUR 5.98 billion, representing a 9% year-over-year growth in constant currency.
The company that delivered full year comparable operating profit of EUR 2.6 billion and free cash flow of EUR 2.0 billion, ending the year with a net cash balance of EUR 4.9 billion.
Or another Nokia conjured up from your own belief system?
And yet more peak lie spewing from our peak lie spewer. Yet again.
“Green” Wind turbines and solar panels ONLY generate electricity but CANNOT make any products or transportation fuels for life as we know it.
The world is not dependent on raw natural fossil fuels BUT has become dependent on the products and transportation fuels MADE FROM oil, the same products and transportation fuels that Wind and Solar CANNOT make!
Planes, ships, trucks, and cars do not run on raw crude oil, they run on transportation fuels manufactured FROM crude oil by multi-billion-dollar refineries.
Yes, and given freedom of choice, consumers are pretty good at figuring out which products best meet their interests and needs.
Too often, government intervention distorts the marketplace by choosing winners and losers. The reality is that fossil fuels supply us with both mass and energy as you point out.
It was always just virtue signaling anyway. What company in their right mind would actively try to put themselves out of a successful business?
That’s why they spend a lot to make sure renewables won’t happen.
In 2025, Britain wasted £1,467,023,332 switching off wind turbines and paying gas plants to switch on.
Today, wasted wind has already cost Britain: £7,721,989
https://wastedwind.energy/
Are nasty uncomfortable facts wasted on you?
Today has now reached £8,236,853
And that’s only an hour and a quarter later.
Strad,
It’s now up to £12,426,533 (for one day !!! )
£2,759,409 switching off wind turbines
£9,667,123 buying energy elsewhere
Go Miliband, please just GO.
MyUsernameReloaded “That’s why they spend a lot to make sure renewables won’t happen.”
States like California and New York — and nations like Australia and the UK — can spend just as much of their own money as they care to in order to make sure the wind & solar renewables happen.
If the governments of those states and those nations choose to use taxpayer money to fund the wind & solar renewables, let them do so. Just leave the rest of us alone.
Exxon Mobil has invested billions into renewables research over the years. I’m very familiar with its work on green algal fuels. Eventually, its engineers and accountants determine whether a technology has potential or is a bust and they act accordingly.
First it’s there money and they can spend it on whatever they like so long as it’s legal. The difference between them and greentards is greentards want to use public money to push their message and agenda.
What is it like to be so divorced from reality? To know so little about the world but to be oh so smugly sure about everything?
It’s the Dunning-Kruger Effect. The less you know the more convinced you are that you know everything.
Keith Stalin summed up.
More like the total naivety of someone who lives in their grandma’s basement, and have never experienced anything real in their whole pitiful life.
If investing in “renewables” would make a sustainable profit for fossil fuel companies, they would make the investment without need for subsidies. The fact that they aren’t indicates that there are no profits without subsidies.
which is why BP dropped off the “green” bullshit.
Can you find a scintilla of evidence to support your belief that oil companies are actively trying to prevent renewable energy from succeeding.
The fact remains that renewables are failing because renewables just don’t work.
MarkW:
Its the opposite if you believe Michael Shellenberger’s book “Apocalypse Never”.
In it he describes FF companies actively supporting wind & solar power since they knew only a natural gas plant could do load following for these intermittant sources.
Not nuclear, not coal. [But hydro could].
In Australia and NSW particularly, there has been a huge drop in investment on wind and solar.
There is no money to be made, because they mostly only supply electricity erratically and most often when the grid price is close to zero or even negative.
And yet every week you’re here telling us how so-called renewables are taking over the world
There is nothing renewable about wind turbine blades. Depending on the location these last as short as 10 years. Then they are destined to landfill, renewable my foot!
Now you see the divide between the eco[nomic] opportunists and the truly devout believers in the faith. The window is fast closing on the idea of net zero, the wallet is empty. It’s all government borrowing and the government has maxed out the credit card. Therefore the taxpayer will have to be squeezed yet again.
For their part, the believers are squeezing any notion of scientific debate or free speech out of existence. One of Keith Stalin’s legal brethren, Jolyon Maugham and his Good Law Project, has persuaded Ofcommunism to investigate climate change sceptics and their utterances on (a handful) of channels. I can tell you well in advance how this will go. We all know.
One has to remember that the media in the UK ploughs an entirely on narrative furrow. That is why Talk and GB News etc simply have to be taught a lesson at the very least – although closing them down altogether would be the preferred option.
No word on the media about opening up any home grown resources whatsoever – Labour government harrumph, harrumph – nothing doing. Mad Ed has decreed it so. But they are worried, nonetheless. It’s those pesky Plebs…
Fears net zero is ‘next Brexit’ as oil crisis fuels political climate divide
Net zero can also seem remote to people, which does not help, added James Meadway, director of the Verdant thinktank. “Like the EU, net zero is an idea that can seem big, vague, distant, technocratic and not easy to describe. – The Grauniad
What a load of patronising bollox. That’s where we are.
Need more migrant hotels.
We probably will and spring has sprung with better weather…
4,441 (thus far, 2026)
https://www.migranttracker.uk/
“… Exxon Mobil plans to “pace” spending on low-carbon projects because there were not enough customers willing to buy products such as hydrogen and biofuels, and that climate policies designed to support decarbonization “frankly aren’t working.”
Based on that, I can’t see why they’ll spend another peso on green projects. Makes no sense. They still seem timid. Maybe fearing that America will reject Trump’s anti-green leadership? What the rest of the world “thinks” is essentially irrelevant.
No, they fear investor backlash. They can’t just dump it all at once and declare it over; the markets will have a field day and all the executives’ stock options will tank before they can realise any value from them.
The reason oil companies are cutting expenses is simple. Net-zero has a Net-zero chance of being achieved, and if it could be, it would make Net-Zero difference in the earths climate.
Yes, we have to transition because there is a finite fossil fuel supply, but that transition needs to be led by energy experts: not climate fanatics.
We have only scratched Earth’s resources. Whether fossil fuels or Man ends first won’t be decided for many lifetimes. For example, it is considered probable that there are centuries worth of coal under the Antarctic continent, since it was once part of Gondwana. We believe deposits of oil and gad twice the size found in Saudi Arabia are just offshore but no idea what lies beneath the mainland. We also have no idea what lies under most of the oceans. I have no problem imagining that a century from now these resources will be economically recoverable using properly designed robotics.
It is foolish to worry about running out of resources for many centuries. If we do, it’s because we have stopped developing the technologies needed to economically extract them.
I agree with you. It will take centuries, and new technologies will develop based upon need. Government subsidies and clinate idealogues have had the effect of shutting out legitimate technologies. An unimpeded free market will solve the problem without imposing energy poverty.
An unintended consequence of the market based clean air act, to counter acid rain, was that industry made such rapid progress that highly efficient combined cycle combustion turbines not only almost eliminated Nox and Sox emissions, they provided a dispatchable technology that could naturally replace coal as older facilities became uneconomic. CCCT, over about a 15 year period reduced CO2 emissions in the US electricity sector over 20%: about a billion tons/year. And what did Big Wind and the climate lobby do? Started a beyond natural gas compaign using a phony CO2 endangerment finding that stifled new build. And here we are!
So, in your opinion it is foolish to worry about running out of resources? Did you ever wonder why critical metals are called “critical”? Here is a suggested read for you https://www.sciltp.com/journals/hp/articles/2603003359
The UK Green Party update
The UK Green Party has abandoned its erstwhile Gaian inspired mission to save the planet in favour of promoting an alien religion, ideology, values and norms. It is history repeating itself.
Just as the Volkisch movement of the late 19th century was absorbed into National Socialist thinking – experiments on animals? No. Experiments on humans? Yes – the Greens have gone from environmentalism to a much stronger faith.
Green activists called Jews ‘abominations’ in leaked WhatsApp chat
Campaign Against Antisemitism says views shared in group forum are ‘straight out of Nazi Germany’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/03/27/greens-for-palestine-antisemitic-whatsapp-messages/
That faith and fascism go back a long way…
What the Mufti Said to AH
Interesting times.
Has anyone noticed that the people who are most opposed to fossil fuels are the same people who are most alarmed by the disruption to the supply of fossil fuels?
For the most part, they’re the same people that are fine with allowing men to shower with your daughters and granddaughters. Their ideology makes them functionally insane.
“It’s a shame the funding isn’t drying up entirely. Every dollar spent on net-zero programs and technologies carries high opportunity costs.”
This is a very appropriate and insightful conclusion. Well said.
Also, every dollar (of billions!) ever spent on investigation of the influence of incremental CO2 using time-step-iterated computer simulations carried the high opportunity cost of diversion from primary atmospheric research.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/03/22/open-thread-182/#comment-4176784
Thank you for listening.
Every add currency here spent on net-zero programmes and technologies is a total and wasted opportunity cost.
Even throwing money down the drain or burning it is better value.
“Even throwing money down the drain or burning it is better value.”
Sounds drastic, but I can’t say you’re wrong.
At least you can see where it is going, David.
At least burning it would provide extra CO2 for the plants to feed on.
FLOG Anthony, that pop up that starts “The climate data they don’t want you to find — free, to your inbox.” ….Is intrusive, annoying, and pops up multiple times within one article read…
Anthony
just now updated my “ad-free” subscription, hope that gets rid of that annoying pop-up….plus made a $100 donation by PayPal for your good works…pls extend me whatever readership privileges that might cover….
Fossil energy prices have soared since Trump took office and the anti-green energy conspiracy nuts have forced their nonsense on the rest of us
Er, the “nonsense” has always emanated from the “green energy” religion.
No basis in proper scientific observations for their fervor for outmoded, outdated, bygone energy sources such as windmills and 8th-century Greek sunlight concentrators.
Just dumb, stupid ideology in the belief of “saving the planet”.
Hopefully, continuing evolution of the human species based on reasoning ability and rationality will eventually produce a class of homo sapiens that leaves the religious ideologues in the distant past where they came from.
Greenwishing is finally going the way of so many other promising ideas that failed or couldn’t scale. Energy humanism is future.
Oh noes! So the bloom is off the rose? Things not so great in Greenie-Weenie World?What a shame no one could have warned them about this ahead of time.
Oh, wait….
$NetZero$ was always about the Benjamins and the valve setting on draining the public funds reservoirs.
It seems to me that the big banks and investment firms started backing away from these green initiatives first when they saw they weren’t producing the returns they promised. This may have been after private investors stated pulling their money out of investment funds that were designed to save the planet. Except saving the planet and losing money at the same time didn’t sit well enough to justify prolonging a losing streak, so people recognized it was time to pull out of a scam well in advance of the firms themselves and now the energy producers are finally taking the same cues.
Very nice Linnea.
This is good news. Great news would be these companies loudly and publicly firing the idiots who dragged them into this greentarded stupidity to begin with.
Well, good point in theory, but do you think that BlackRock would fire Larry Fink?
Since he is Blackrock, no. And whilst responding, the only “renewable energy” sources are gas, oil, coal, hydro and nuclear. Wind and solar can’t produce enough energy to pay to maintain and operate, hence the massive tax fraud perpetrated on the citizens of every country they are being foisted on. The incredible amount of toxic byproducts and the waste clean up are being paid for by the tax payers, at least where it is being cleaned up.
Don’t even get me started on the massive amounts of rare earths and other exotics they are sucking up.
The term >renewable energy< is misleading the public! In fact, the manufacture of green energy devices such as solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles requires large amounts of critical metals, some of which only occur as rare trace byproducts in the mining of base metal deposits (e.g., Se, In, Cd, Te). Once a mineral deposit has been exploited, new ones need to be explored and developed. There is nothing renewable about them! A recommended source is https://www.sciltp.com/journals/hp/articles/2603003359