Greenwashing

There’s far more investigative climate accountability reporting — digging into the companies and individuals who have actively worked to obstruct climate policy — today than there was even a decade ago.

A 2015 joint investigative reporting project uncovered proof that oil giant Exxon was aware of the long-term impact of greenhouse gases on the climate as far back as the 1970s. Image: Screenshot, Inside Climate News

In 2015, reporters at Inside Climate News, The Los Angeles Times, and Columbia Journalism School published the stories now collectively referred to as “Exxon Knew.” These stories detailed the research and the ensuing warnings about climate change that Exxon scientists shared with the company’s management beginning in the 1970s. It also explained the subsequent decisions by management to suppress or undermine that research.

Exxon accused the journalists of everything from omitting key facts from the story to orchestrating a campaign against it. A page on its website hosted a video that encouraged the public to get “the real story” behind Exxon Knew. However none of these claims were ever filed in court, and none of the publications Exxon sent letters to demanding retractions felt the need to comply. In 2023 the oil major quietly removed the page of its website where it aimed to rebut the Exxon Knew reporting, but it still asserts that “Our public statements about climate change are, and have been, truthful, fact-based, transparent, and consistent with the views of the broader, mainstream scientific community at the time. ExxonMobil has contributed to the development of climate science for decades and has made its work publicly available. And as the scientific community’s understanding of climate change developed, ExxonMobil responded accordingly,” said longtime company spokesperson Casey Norton.

Nonetheless, within two years the reporting had made its way into dozens of court cases alleging that Exxon and other oil companies’ approach around climate research had led state and municipal governments to delay acting on climate, resulting in astronomically high costs for damages and the adaptation measures required to deal with them. The oil majors have continued to maintain their innocence, and reporters and researchers have continued to find new documents and publish stories about similar disinformation campaigns. There have now been Shell Knew, Eni Knew, Total Knew, and GM Knew follow-up stories.

In response, Shell said, “Our position on climate change is well known; recognizing the climate challenge and the role energy has in enabling a decent quality of life. Shell continues to call for effective policy to support lower carbon business and consumer choices and opportunities such as government lead carbon pricing/trading schemes.” Eni maintained, “Eni always operates in compliance with all applicable regulations, both local and international, as well as with global industry best practices.” Total denied it had concealed climate risk and added that since 2015 it had focussed on renewable energy. At COP29 in 2024, Total President Patrick Pouyanne told the AFP that the company is continuously reducing the emissions associated with oil and gas. “Yes, we are part of the problem, but we’re in the mindset of continuous progress,” he insisted, even “if we’re never going fast enough” for some. “There is nothing we can say about events that happened one or two generations ago,” a GM spokesperson told E&E News. “They are irrelevant to the company’s positions and strategy today.”

Others have reported on the role played by public relations and advertising companies hired by fossil fuel companies in crafting the messaging that first obstructed and then delayed climate action. Still, others have investigated how major political donors, such as the Koch brothers and right-wing activists like Leonard Leo shaped policy and even the judicial system in ways that experts say made it harder for the US in particular to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Koch asserts that he is merely “fighting to preserve a free society,” while Leo describes himself as a defender of free speech, writing in his local paper: “Free speech is essential for a free society. As such, it is something that I have defended and will continue to defend, and I have always accepted that there will be objections and opposition to the work I do.”

Investigations by journalists over the past few decades have shed light on the forces that have tried to halt government action on a crisis that scientists have been warning about for more than 50 years. But it’s these kinds of investigations that will continue to hold political leaders accountable and inform the public about climate change and efforts to prevent the implementation of solutions.

In this chapter, we’ll examine some of the fossil fuel industry’s claims and strategies that obstructed climate action, and offer some tips for investigating them. We’ll also explain how to debunk false claims without amplifying them.

Mission Possible: Attacking Information Pollution

It’s important to keep in mind that the obstructed climate action for decades wasn’t just retired in the 2010s, when the oil companies decided it was no longer beneficial to pretend climate change wasn’t real. These strategies have also been used to narrow how the public and political leaders think about solutions to the problem, and to drive funding and attention toward solutions that continue to benefit the fossil fuel industry.

In the same way that oil majors used PR and research to muddy the waters on climate science, in recent years, companies have increasingly invested in PR and research that helps tilt the conversation about climate solutions in favor of the industry’s preferred solutions: over-hyped technologies and policies that don’t actually reduce emissions. In so doing, they also promote the idea that the fossil fuel industry is a willing and active participant in transition, while simultaneously pushing the idea that fossil fuels don’t need to be replaced because they can just be “decarbonized.” Press releases about “low-carbon,” “net-zero,” and, yes, even “carbon-negative” oil have become increasingly common.

The fossil fuel industry promotes solutions such as carbon capture and storage, liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, and renewable natural gas, which critics argue are far more focused on preserving industry profits than significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The tactics they use include funding university research that skews public discourse and policymaking in the direction of their preferred solutions. They have hired management consultancies to conduct skewed analysis supporting those solutions and funded lobbyists, and advertising and public relations firms to promote them.

The media outlet Drilled began describing this as ‘information pollution’ in 2017 and now the UN Development Programme even has a quiz about the issue. Experts in the information and communications fields say that cleaning up our information ecosystem is a key first step toward significant action on climate change. For journalists, that means becoming familiar with the language and data of climate change disinformation and how to challenge it.

“The stuff we see as disinformation — the misleading ad campaigns, or the executives saying very misleading things on cable news — it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Melissa Aronczyk, professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University in the US. “To really understand and address climate disinformation, you have to see the whole picture, see how they shape all of these different types of information and data that become the building blocks of policy. You have to see what university research they’re funding, what parameters they’re putting on economic models, how they’re interacting with management consultants, what trade groups they’re participating in, what research and lobbying coalitions they’re part of, how they’re approaching thought leadership and influencers, how they’re shaping cultural norms, and how all of that is being done in service of pushing particular policies or keeping regulation at bay.”

Same Old Story, Different Country

A protestor in Johannesburg, South Africa demonstrating against the construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) in 2022. Image: Shutterstock

Delay tactics have increasingly replaced science denial as the fossil fuel industry’s preferred strategy for avoiding regulation. These tactics look a little different from country to country, but the mechanics — and sometimes even the people, organizations, or companies involved — are the same. In Uganda and Tanzania, for example, to address both the immediate environmental impacts of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) and its future contributions to planet-heating emissions, French energy giant TotalEnergies drafted a biodiversity plan that “aims to achieve net positive impact” on biodiversity around its drilling operations, even in the biodiversity hotspot of Uganda’s largest national park, Murchison Falls National Park.

Activists have accused the company of destroying forest cover, rivers, and wetlands, but TotalEnergies insists that it is developing its oil projects in line with International Finance Corporation standards.

Though new variations emerge all the time, there are five key narratives that the fossil fuel industry tends to use to wrap itself in environmental or social responsibility, even as it exacerbates issues in both areas.

• Original Narrative: Energy Security — The very first time competing oil companies came together was to ensure a steady fuel supply during World War I. That effort prompted the creation of the industry’s first trade groups, which went on to coordinate on global demand, production, pricing, policies, and sometimes even messaging. From this point on the industry has regularly tied its product to keeping people safe and prosperous.
• Economy vs. Environment — Pitting nature against the economy, and pushing the idea that humans are somehow separate from nature has been key to helping the industry both avoid regulations and paint environmentalists alternately as elitists or radicals. Meanwhile, the promise of jobs and economic development helps oil companies justify big new projects, but is rarely backed up by the data.
• We Make Your Life Work — One way the fossil fuel industry redirects responsibility for the climate impacts of its product from itself to individuals is to remind people just how much they rely on fossil fuels and their derivatives, and to create the illusion that the market is driven entirely by demand, that if consumers simply reduced their consumption the industry wouldn’t produce so many fossil fuels. When citizens did reduce their consumption of fossil fuels in residential and transportation sectors, though, the industry responded by seeking out ways to sell more petrochemicals and increasing the manufacturing and use of single-use plastics.
• We’re Part of the Solution — From the very first global efforts to regulate emissions to today, the industry has worked to keep regulations at bay by agreeing to take voluntary action. This is where greenwashing really comes in handy, too, either as a distraction mechanism — don’t worry about emissions, look at our tree-planting program — or as deception, as in the case of claiming that carbon capture or carbon credits effectively eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from a fossil fuel project.
• World’s Greatest Neighbor — Just in case people still aren’t thrilled about dirty air, dirty water, and climate change, the industry makes sure to fund museums, sports, schools, and universities — and even journalism itself, which serves the dual purpose of cleaning up its image and making communities feel dependent on the industry and thus less likely to criticize it.

In this chapter, we’ll look at how to vet new claims; how to investigate false narratives and the people, organizations, or companies spreading them; and how to debunk false claims without amplifying them.

One word of caution: mis- and disinformation is a very dynamic area, with constant shifts of focus and delivery. So the fundamental investigative guidance is always to stay alert, fact-check, identify the sources, and follow the money.

Case Studies in Greenwashing

False Solutions

The fastest-growing, and most effective form of greenwashing today comes in the form of promoting false solutions: technologies or policies that enable the fossil fuel industry to claim that it is reducing greenhouse gas emissions even while they allow for increased oil and gas production, or the animal agriculture industry to claim that meat is carbon neutral now because cows are eating seaweed.

These claims can be difficult to report on because there is often some amount of truth at their core, but that truth is being wildly overstated, or companies are strategically leaving out any of the downsides to these projects. Carbon capture and storage, for example, might be necessary for high-emissions sectors that are tough to decarbonize, like steel, concrete, or fertilizers, according to David Ho, an oceanography professor at the University of Hawaii and senior research scientist at Columbia University. “It doesn’t make sense to use CCS to prolong our use of fossil fuels, especially to produce electricity,” Ho said.

When fossil fuel companies advertise the potential climate benefits of CCS, they talk about “hard to abate” industries too, but the tech is only actually being deployed at power plants or biofuel facilities. Oil companies have also pushed the idea that capturing carbon and then using it for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) — a process whereby compressed carbon is injected underground to get more oil out — results in “negative-carbon” barrels of oil, but Ho scoffs at this, as does the International Energy Agency, an NGO that counts 75% of the world’s energy-producing countries as members and provides analysis and policy recommendations for the global energy industry. “The argument in favor of enhanced oil recovery is often that if they weren’t using this captured CO₂ they’d be using some other CO₂,” Ho said. “But I don’t think you can call anything where you’re getting more oil out of the ground to burn a climate solution.”

The IEA is a bit softer, noting that EOR can only produce a “carbon-negative” product if the CO2 being used was captured from anthropogenic sources — like a coal-fired power plant, for example — versus naturally occurring, like the CO2 that’s often co-located with methane gas and needs to be stripped out to produce natural gas. But oil companies regularly blur the lines between these two.

Oil companies often present the climate benefits of carbon capture and storage (CCS) but its potential as a “solution” to fossil fuel use is limited. Image: Shutterstock

Perhaps the most important stat here is the number the IEA has put to the role CCS needs to play for it to meaningfully mitigate climate change — in its net-zero by 2050 blueprint, the IEA says CCS needs to be capable of capturing around 1 gigatonne of CO₂ per year. Its most recent update on CCS found, though, that even if every planned carbon capture project is built and functions at top efficiency — a very big “if” given the long list of failed CCS projects to date — the total amount of CO₂ that could be captured in 2030 is around 435 million tonnes (Mt) per year. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), CCS will account for an average of 2.4% of CO2 mitigation by 2030, even if implemented at its full planned potential.

Areas for Further Investigation: 

• Lobbying data: Examine who’s spending what to lobby for CCS-friendly policies.
• University research funding: Universities have been hugely influential in creating a foundation for many of the industry’s CCS claims. Examine which universities are getting funding for CCS research and what research they are conducting. Is that research being integrated into policy? Are the researchers taking jobs with the government or the industry afterward?
• Whistleblowers: Oil company staff who worked on CCS can shed light on how much their former employers did or didn’t know about the technology’s flaws as they promoted it.
• Archives: Primary documents in corporate archives could reveal early studies on the feasibility of CCS or its long-time use as primarily an oil production technique.

Hiding Behind ‘Emissions Intensity’

When fossil fuel and other high-emissions companies use phrases like “energy intensity,” “emissions intensity,” “carbon intensity” and “low carbon,” what they’re talking about is reducing emissions in their own operations. In other words, they are referring to producing a barrel of oil more efficiently, with fewer emissions escaping along the way.

While any reduction in emissions will help to mitigate climate change, it’s important to understand that operational emissions, or Scope 2 emissions, account for 10 to 15%of fossil fuel companies’ emissions at most. Meanwhile, they’re not talking about getting rid of them entirely, just reducing them.

It’s also important when covering emissions claims to look at lifecycle emissions and what the actual net emissions reductions are as opposed to a company’s claims around reduced “carbon intensity” or “emissions intensity.”

One pathway to reduction for fossil fuel companies is carbon capture, or capturing emissions in their operations. However, the vast majority (about 70%) of CO₂ captured by fossil fuel companies today is used for Enhanced Oil Recovery. This means if a company uses a unit of emissions to generate more emissions, that counts as a reduction in emissions intensity.

Another element to this has been reliance on carbon offsets or carbon credits to claim a reduction in emissions. However, numerous investigations have shown many of the projects selling carbon credits are fraudulent. There are still plenty of carbon offset stories waiting to be investigated. Reporters should check out GIJN’s Reporter’s Guide to Investigating Carbon Offsets for more information.

Areas for Further Investigation: 

• Quantify it: How many companies are now relying on emissions intensity metrics rather than overall emissions reductions to measure their climate progress? When did that start? How has this trend evolved?
• Now that multiple carbon offset projects have been shown to be less than reliable, which companies are still claiming emissions reductions via bad-faith actors? How do these revelations impact their emissions reduction claims in annual reports or Corporate Social Responsibility reports?
• Who is pushing the idea of “emissions intensity”? Where did this wording come from? Are there PR or ad agencies that have helped to push it? Archival documents and whistleblowers could be handy here!
  

Development Vs. Climate Crisis 

This was a very common thread in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. The story goes something like: These countries are not responsible for historical emissions and they need access to cheap energy so why should they hold back on developing their fossil fuel resources just because the Global North has created a climate crisis?

There are truths here: How can Global North activists or politicians ask people with less comfort and convenience in their lives to make sacrifices they haven’t? To cut off fossil fuels before the Global North does? It also ignores the fact that Global South countries are bearing the brunt of climate change already, and it’s also a clever way for global oil companies, which are the biggest financial winners in all of this, hands down, to pit people against each other, push the idea that they’re just fulfilling a demand, and reverse themselves entirely on the issue of fossil fuel development in the Global South without anyone batting an eye.

Internal documents from oil companies and PR firms tell a different story. When global leaders first began meeting to discuss an international effort on climate change, fossil fuel companies and right-wing pundits complained that any deal that didn’t require everyone to transition at the same pace was unfair. Groups like the Global Climate Coalition, which brought together all the industries that objected to emissions regulations, would hold up maps and point to all the countries that weren’t required by the Kyoto Protocol to commit to emissions reductions and say: “It’s not global and it won’t work.”

Now, nearly 30 years later, the same companies and organizations are arguing the opposite, insisting that the world must give Global South countries time to develop their own fossil fuel industries and pursue the same carbon-intensive development path the Global North did.

It’s not actually up to Global North companies or governments how the Global South handles its resources, but that’s never stopped either from trying to dictate the terms. As that pattern continues, it’s important for reporters to separate promises from reality, fact from fiction.

To do that, they need to dig into the data, talk to economists with diverse backgrounds, speak with people on the ground near these projects, dig into the PR firms working on this messaging and generally follow the money to suss out who is actually benefiting and who is not, and why. This tactic shows up in climate negotiations too, when negotiators from oil- and gas-rich countries push for explicit bans on coal, while also demanding carve-outs for gas and an over-emphasis on the potential of carbon capture. Again, reporters must always ask: Who stands to benefit from this argument? And then follow the money trail where it leads.

The long-held belief that increased energy use results in increased life expectancy, for example, has been challenged by more than a decade’s worth of peer-reviewed research. For example, as early as 1974, researchers writing in the journal Science concluded that American quality of life would be just as high if US citizens used a fraction of the energy they were using. In 2010, researchers showed that the amount of energy required to reach high life expectancy has a ceiling. More recently, in 2020, researchers found that while increased energy use is correlated to increased GDP, it accounts for at most 25% of improvements in life expectancy. “We can conclusively put in a coffin, bang the lid shut with big old nails saying fossil fuel use does not contribute significantly to improvements in life expectancy,” said Julia K. Steinberger, lead author of the GDP study and ecological economics researcher and professor at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. “This idea the fossil fuel industry loves to present that it is the grubby titan who’s sort of holding up the industrial basis for the rest of us? That is disproven by this study. We do not rely on fossil fuels for improvements in our living standards.”

Areas for Further Investigation

• Compare jobs data before and after a new oil and gas project: Compile data on how many permanent jobs have been created versus temporary jobs; tally how many foreigners have been employed and compare that with any “local content” commitments.
• Contracts: The contracts between oil companies and governments reveal a lot about what oil companies are really getting up to.
• Shareholder and analyst call: Here again, oil executives share their actual plans as opposed to what they might want the public to think. When speaking to analysts in 2017 about Exxon’s expansion in Guyana, for example, CEO Darren Woods talked about how the government’s “flexibility” on permitting was allowing the company to fast-track things and how it might have viewed Guyana as a “20-year project” in the past but now saw it as more of a 10-year project because of the global politics around climate change.
• Energy analysts and stock reports: Watching the financials on these projects is a good way to track how things are going.
• Whistleblowers: Current and former employees can’t always talk on record but they can point you to important information, confirm suspicions, and provide leads on who to investigate.

Archival documents — Oil companies don’t just decide to start a drilling project overnight. In most cases, they have been sitting on their assets in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean for a decade or more. Information in their corporate archives might shed light on their plans. 

Additional Coverage Ideas

• The knowledge economy: The role of researchers, management consultancies, think tanks, and PR firms in creating and spreading climate illusions
• Research to policy: Follow one example of industry-backed research from initial funding to policy proposal.
• Examine the source: Much has been made of the researchers-for-hire who helped spread climate denial, but we’ve only scratched the surface of the flawed economic studies that were commissioned to convince policymakers that acting on climate change would be too expensive. Who are these economists, what assumptions did they use to build their models, and who commissioned these models or funded their economic research?

Investigative Techniques

• Public records requests
• Whistleblowers
• Expert interviews
• Social media investigating skills
• Archival research

Discussion: How to Report on Disinformation Without Amplifying It

Reporters who cover mis- and disinformation often wonder if they should debunk a new falsehood or ignore it because engaging with it gives it credibility and can amplify it. If a particular talking point is really taking hold, it’s generally helpful to provide readers and viewers with the data and information they need to debunk it themselves (some reporters opt to do this on social media earlier on, too, as a quick way to get in front of a story).

Image: Shutterstock

A technique pioneered by linguist George Lakoff, inventor of the “truth sandwich” — is a good way to handle this. Start off with the truth, explain the lie, then end with the truth. Still, studies have shown that while the “truth sandwich” isn’t necessarily better at correcting falsehoods than any other type of fact correction, the structure does tend to give readers faith in the journalist and in the fact-checking process, too.

Primary documents are also a helpful way to combat misinformation and skepticism, too. If you can show that a company or a person planned to lie to the public for profit, it’s pretty hard for them to refute the evidence, especially if you can direct people toward the primary document(s) or primary source audio or videos themselves.

Another technique recommended by disinformation researchers is “pre-bunking.” If a reporter knows, for example, that there is going to be an increase in disinformation around renewable energy (there is! It’s already begun!) it can be helpful to alert the public that they will start seeing campaigns to discredit these proposals and give them the information they need to understand exactly what is going on. For more tips on covering disinformation without amplifying it, check out the journalist field guide from Climate Action Against Disinformation, a global coalition of climate and anti-disinformation organizations. Their newsletter is also a good way to stay up to date on new trends in greenwashing and climate disinformation.

Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative journalist. She won a 2015 Rachel Carson award for her role in creating a women-only climate journalism group and founded the podcast company Critical Frequency in 2017. Her work, praised by outlets like The New Yorker and The Atlantic, has earned numerous awards, including an ONA for audio storytelling, Covering Climate Now honors, and two Peabody nominations. A 20-year veteran, Westervelt’s reporting on climate has been widely recognized, and her upcoming book, “Brought to You By: Inside Big Oil’s Total Information War,” will be published by Bloomsbury.