scholarly journals Make Fossil Fuels Great Again? The Paris Agreement, Trump, and the US Fossil Fuel Industry

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Lukas Hermwille ◽  
Lisa Sanderink
Keyword(s):  
Energy Policy ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Climate And Energy Policy

Theoretical advances suggest that international governance in general and the Paris Agreement in particular provide a strong signal guiding sociotechnical systems toward decarbonization. We assess this signal and its effects empirically, by examining the struggle of competing narratives as present in the communications of leading US fossil fuel industry associations and companies. The results are then discussed in the context of the national and international climate and energy policy debates in a study period from late 2014 until the announcement of withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in June 2017. We find that the Paris Agreement has institutionalized a narrative paradigm that is surprisingly resilient. While the election of Donald Trump and his climate and energy policy led to a narrative shift in the coal industry, the oil and gas industry remained conspicuously silent in its immediate response and maintained its narrative strategies despite its alignment with the Paris Agreement.

scholarly journals Drilling for the future: Gendered justifications of the Arctic fossil fuel industry

Polar Record ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sohvi Kangasluoma
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Public Marketing ◽  
Oil And Gas Fields ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Gas Fields ◽  
Opening Up

Abstract Despite the global alarm caused by accelerating climate change, hydrocarbon companies are exploring and opening up new oil and gas fields all over the world, including the Arctic. With increasing attention on the Arctic, companies address the growing global environmental pressure in their public marketing in various ways. This article examines the webpages of Norwegian Equinor and Russian Gazprom & Gazprom Neft. Building on feminist discussions, I analyse the different justification strategies these fossil fuel companies working in the Arctic utilise in order to support their ongoing operations. This article concludes that in order to justify their operations in the Arctic, the Norwegian and Russian companies emphasise values based on discourses that have historically and culturally been associated with masculine practices, such as the control of nature enabled by technology. These justifications are thus reinforcing the narrative of the Arctic as a territory to be conquered and mastered. Even though the companies operate in different sociopolitical contexts, the grounds of justification are rather similar. Their biggest differences occur in their visual presentations of gender, which I argue is part of the justification. Approaching the fossil fuel industry from a feminist perspective allows questioning the dominant conceptualisations, which the justifications of Arctic hydrocarbon companies are based on.

scholarly journals Climate change and fossil fuel: An examination of risks for the energy industry and producer states

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Krane
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Natural Gas ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Developed World

ABSTRACTThis article compiles and categorizes the various forms of climate risk facing the fossil fuel industry. The type and intensity of risk differs greatly among the three forms of fossil fuels, as well as between countries in the developing and developed world. The paper finds heightened risk for the coal industry and reduced risk for oil businesses, due to its lack of substitutes.Burning coal, oil, and natural gas is the source of two-thirds of the world’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Sales of these fuels also represent the economic underpinning of resource-rich countries and the world’s largest firms. As such, steps taken to abate emissions undermine commercial opportunities to monetize fossil fuel reserves. Risks to the industry correlate with progress on climate goals.This article analyzes recent literature on climate action strategy and finds that a new or intensified set of risks has arisen for the fossil fuel industry. These include government policies and legislation, financial restrictions among lenders and insurers, hostile legal and shareholder actions, changes in demand and geopolitics, as well as the onset of new competitive forces among states and technologies.The exposure of carbon-based businesses to these risks and the potential for loss is neither distributed uniformly across the sector, nor adheres to a uniform time scale. Shareholder-owned firms in the developed world will be incentivized to react sooner than large state-owned resource owners in developing countries. The fates of the three fossil fuels also appear likely to play out differently. Demand for oil appears insulated by its lack of viable substitutes, while coal businesses are already undergoing climate-related action, pushed by decreasing social acceptance and constraining financial regulation. At the other end of the spectrum, climate action has improved the medium-term viability of low-carbon natural gas. What appears clear is that, as effects of climate change grow more pronounced, the industry faces a future that is less accepting of current practices.

Who will man the rigs when we go?” transnational demographic fever dreams between Qatar and Texas

2022 ◽  
pp. 239965442110632
Author(s):  
Danya Al-Saleh
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Students ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Population Based ◽  
Land Grant University ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
The University ◽  
The Military

The educational project of producing engineers in Qatar is uniquely embedded in global capitalism, particularly as a field closely tied to the development of the oil and gas industry, the military and logistics spaces across the Gulf. Over the past two decades, U.S. universities based in the region have become significant spaces where new generations of managerial engineering labor are educated. Drawing on 18 months of institutional ethnographic research, I examine Texas A&M University at Qatar’s (TAMUQ) role in managing the gender demographics of Qatari engineering labor and the experiences of students navigating these institutional mechanisms. The increasing number of women studying at Texas A&M’s engineering branch campus are publicly celebrated by the university as the embodiment of progress in Qatar. At the same time, TAMUQ has worked to mitigate the feminization of engineering through outreach activities that present engineering as a masculine patriotic endeavor. To unpack these contradictory tendencies, I build on the feminist concept of “demographic fever dreams.” Through an examination of contradictory population-based anxieties about Qatari engineering students, I argue that a U.S. land-grant university is a participant and driver of fantasies and fears regarding the future of racialized and gendered labor hierarchies and fossil-fueled capitalism in the Gulf. In doing so, this article offers a grounded feminist intervention to examine the connections between transnational education, U.S. hegemony, and the fossil fuel industry.

scholarly journals Oil, Coal Industry Leaders Fault Obama Policies at Energy Forum

Eos ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy Showstack
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Coal Industry ◽  
Energy Industry ◽  
Tax Credit ◽  
Federal Policies ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry

In a review of the energy industry, fossil fuel industry leaders said they are fighting federal policies. The solar industry recently benefited from a 5-year tax credit.

Choosing among Implausible Leaders

2021 ◽  
pp. 24-54
Author(s):  
Peter Drahos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
The United States ◽  
Driving Mechanism ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
System P ◽  
Energy Union ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry

China is an implausible leader for the globalization of a bio-digital energy paradigm, but the United States and European Union are even less plausible candidates. The chapter shows how the fracking revolution has turned the United States into an energy-secure fossil fuel superpower. No US president can close down the fossil fuel industry. The New Green Deal is unlikely to have much impact on US politics and is only of modest interest to Wall Street. The European Union’s Energy Union initiative is important. But the European Union’s leadership of the bio-digital energy paradigm is hampered by the different energy and industrial interests of its members. Despite China’s corruption problems, it is the least implausible leader of an energy revolution. China’s improved standard-setting capacities are outlined. The chapter concludes by discussing China’s pressure-driving mechanism, a distinctive tool of governance that allows China to overcome problems of fragmentation in its system.

Did TV ads funded by fossil fuel industry defeat the Washington carbon tax?

2019 ◽  
Vol 158 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 301-307
Author(s):  
Steven M. Karceski ◽  
Nives Dolšak ◽  
Aseem Prakash ◽  
Travis N. Ridout
Keyword(s):  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
Fuel Industry

The scalability challenge: pathways to future decarbonisation and the impact on the oil and gas industry

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 548
Author(s):  
Gavin Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Business Models ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Energy Transition ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Alternative Technologies ◽  
Multiple Challenges ◽  
The Impact

How will the global energy system move sharply towards a pathway compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement by 2030? Despite great efforts on cost reductions in renewables, alternative technologies, advanced transportation and supportive government policies, progress to date is not enough. The challenge is now one of scalability. Although some technologies required for a 2°C future are economic and proven, many others are not. Optimists look at the cost of solar and wind and say we have all we need to achieve our targets. The reality is that significant additional investment is needed to get them to material scale, globally. And too often huge challenges are downplayed in sectors beyond power and transport, including industry, aviation, shipping, heating and agriculture. Given the criticality of climate change, these multiple challenges must now be addressed. Consequently, any accelerated pace of decarbonisation represents an existential challenge to the oil and gas industry, including in Australia. If companies are to remain investible through the long term, all will need to transition to business models that are aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. This paper considers what the path to decarbonisation could look like and how oil and gas companies must respond in order to prosper through the energy transition.

scholarly journals Climate and wartalk: Metaphors, imagination, transformation

Elem Sci Anth ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rupinder Mangat ◽  
Simon Dalby
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
National Security ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Human Security ◽  
Sustainable Society ◽  
Fossil Fuel Industry ◽  
War Metaphor ◽  
Fuel Industry ◽  
Change Problem

Fossil fuel divestment activists re-imagine how the war metaphor can be used in climate change action to transform thinking around what will lead to a sustainable society. Through the naming of a clear enemy and an end goal, the overused war metaphor is renewed. By casting the fossil fuel industry in the role of enemy, fossil fuel divestment activists move to a re-imagining of the climate change problem as one that is located in the here and now with known villains who must be challenged and defeated. In this scenario, climate activists move away from the climate and national security framing to a climate and human security way of thinking.

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