Clean Creatives has decoded the narrative shifts in fossil fuel campaigns between 2020 and 2024, detailing how narrative strategy in oil and gas companies' advertising and PR campaigns has shifted. Their evidence documents how, between 2020 and 2024, oil and gas campaigns shifted from setting climate targets and saying “we’re part of the solution” to emphasizing fossil fuel dependence and convincing people “you can’t live without us.” In parallel, we saw shareholders follow suit and move from supporting climate action to prioritizing fossil fuel profitability. Oil majors have always been preoccupied with social license, but now, the fossil fuel industry is radicalizing. Companies like BP and Shell, which have a history of greenwashing and made net zero pledges in 2020. Now they are going all in on fossil fuels. They’re advertising false solutions like CCS, natural gas and biofuels, which increase fossil fuel dependence. Greenwashing is no longer the core strategy of the fossil fuel industry — it’s about power and political influence.   

• Oil and gas companies are following a common playbook. Their marketing has shifted from clean energy to lying and manipulating the public into believing we need fossil fuels for a safe future, even though clean energy is cheaper, faster, and more reliable.  
• They are selling fossil fuels as false renewable solutions. Instead of actually investing in renewables, oil and gas companies are promoting natural gas and CCS as sustainable technologies, even though they are derived from fossil fuels, will not work at scale, and will delay decarbonization.
• False solutions are making it harder for us to agree on a path forward. By promoting CCS and biofuels as legitimate technologies, oil majors are concealing the fact that renewable energy is the best available solution. As a result, greenwashing becomes both intentional, by the companies spreading these narratives, and accidental, by the people who believe them.  
• Marketing campaigns are delaying a clean energy transition by presenting oil and gas as the only solution for energy security and economic stability. In fact, oil and gas demand has only increased because oil majors and governments are causing a “slower adoption of renewable technologies”, which has made it “inevitable” that we will overshoot the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C global warming target.
• Nobody can make a sustainable transition due to the wider systemic pressures. These companies have to follow whoever is winning. The urgency of the transition has gone, and it’s all about shareholder value and short-term returns. There is an absence of leadership to step in and recognize this problem.
• Oil majors are on a path of mutual destruction. Any illusion that agencies could nudge fossil fuel clients toward transition is gone. Oil and gas companies aren't interested in transitioning; they're prioritizing short-term returns and doubling down on fossil fuels.