I’ve been mulling on this Guardian article worrying that BP’s prevarication over its own Net Zero targets is reflective on ESG (environmental, social governance) wobbles in the wider economy. My immediate response was “who cares about BP?” Of course the oil and gas giant will be uncomfortable with Net Zero targets as, if we are to tackle climate change, BP will almost certainly end up a mere shadow of its current form.

I’m old enough to remember when Kodak was a ubiquitous brand – it was everywhere in my youth. Famously, one its own engineers invented modern digital photography, but the company couldn’t work out how to exploit it, so passed on the opportunity. That missed opportunity turned around and consumed its progenitor and Kodak barely exists any more. When was the last time you bought camera film?

There is a direct parallel between Kodak and BP. Both dealt primarily in stuff (camera film/photographic paper and oil/gas respectively), in a world becoming increasingly electric/electronic. All the ‘green stuff’ fuels have serious drawbacks – biofuels are largely restrained by land use requirements, hydrogen by the inefficient chemistry of electrolysis, and ‘hydrocarbons plus carbon capture and storage’ by the inherent inefficiencies of end of pipe solutions – there may be niche uses, but I can’t see any of them beating electricity on a large scale. This is why BP keeps dipping its toe in the water of green fuels  before hastily removing it – there just isn’t an obvious like-for-like substitute for oil and gas at the scale they and their shareholders are used to.

The article also covered ESG in Shell and US fossil fuel companies, but again this is like expecting tobacco companies to embrace anti-smoking campaigns. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. In a future low carbon world, the brands may live on in petrol EV charging station forecourts, but the pumps will gradually disappear and with them the refineries and the oil platforms.

The only bit of the article that caused me ‘concern’ was the bit about Unilever watering down its pledges on virgin plastic use, apparently due to shareholder pressure. But the death of the fossil fuel industry is a brutal necessity in the battle against climate change.