"So I don't understand how they can be trusted with wind energy." “They've lost all credibility in my eyes," she says. Heglar questions why the public should believe their promises this time. BP famously rebranded as “Beyond Petroleum” in the early 2000s and launched a solar business, only to scrap it a few years later to focus more on its fossil fuels. “They try to present themselves as the solvers of climate change and not as the creators of climate change.” Mary Annaïse Heglarīut oil companies have dabbled in renewables before. The Norwegian oil giant Equinor has pledged to increase its spending on renewables from 4% of its budget last year to 50% in 2030. Shell and BP, for instance, say they will slowly reduce their oil production, ratchet up investments in renewable energy and offset or trap any remaining emissions. Several big European oil companies have pledged to overhaul their businesses by midcentury. “They try to present themselves as the solvers of climate change and not as the creators of climate change,” she says. They worry that offshore wind could be a token investment, something to burnish the companies’ reputations while they pour vast resources into oil and gas projects.įossil fuel companies have “known for literal decades that the industry they were running was going to ruin the world,” says Mary Annaïse Heglar, a prominent climate writer and co-host of the "Hot Take" podcast and newsletter.
Some experts say oil companies’ deep pockets and decades of working offshore make them uniquely suited to build turbines at sea. There’s an active debate about the role fossil fuel companies should play in the renewable energy transition. market in fact, they’re not even the most significant ones.īut they’re gunning to be. Oil companies are far from the only players in the burgeoning U.S. And if so, are companies like Shell best suited to lead an energy revolution? The question is whether Big Oil - with its history of climate denial and failed forays into renewable power - is truly committed to following through this time. Shell is among a handful of large oil companies racing to enter the offshore wind market, banking that their experience with ocean drilling can turn them into clean energy giants. Her move mirrors a wider energy transition. Jensen is the rare energy worker who has stepped from a carbon-intensive industry into one with almost no emissions at all.
“Once we get a few of these big projects installed and powering people's homes, I think it'll be unstoppable,” she says. Power Shift was produced through a partnership between WBUR and E&E News, whose five daily publications cover energy and the environment. She now lives in Boston and works for Mayflower Wind, a joint venture of Shell and two European utilities. When Shell posted a job for planning an offshore wind farm off Massachusetts, she leapt at the opportunity. Times are changing, though, and Jensen wants to be part of the future.
On a satellite image in the Mayflower Wind offices in Boston, Danielle Jensen points to an area where the power lines from the wind farm will come ashore at Brayton Point in Somerset. But she felt good about providing energy to the world - modern society was built on fossil fuels, after all. Workdays were long, and walking around in a flame-retardant suit all summer in the Gulf of Mexico was brutal. She operated the platform’s pumps and compressors, clocking two-week shifts with a mostly male crew. Her job was to keep the crude flowing for Royal Dutch Shell. Danielle Jensen spent two years working on Mars - not the planet, the offshore oil rig.
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