Big Oil’s Deceptive Climate Ads

The report analyzes over 300 advertisements from four oil majors, arguing that they used 'paltering'—mixing truth with omissions—to mislead the public about emissions reductions, renewable energy investments, and the viability of technologies like carbon capture and algae biofuels.

• BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell have used advertising to overstate the impact of their emissions reduction initiatives, often focusing on operational emissions while ignoring the vast majority of emissions resulting from the use of their products.
• Despite advertising a transition to low-carbon business models, the four companies have failed to meaningfully reduce overall emissions; BP and Shell abandoned goals to reduce emissions and carbon intensity in 2024.
• The oil majors' investments in renewable energy are a miniscule fraction of their total capital expenditures. Between 2010 and 2018, BP spent 2.3%, Shell 1.3%, Chevron 0.23%, and ExxonMobil 0.22% of total capital expenditure on renewables.
• Advertising campaigns have shifted responsibility for climate change to individual consumers by promoting small lifestyle changes, which obscures the industry's role in propping up fossil fuel demand and obstructing energy efficiency.
• The companies promote natural gas as a 'clean' or 'climate-friendly' fuel and an essential partner to renewables, despite methane being 84 to 87 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year timeframe.
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is portrayed as a large-scale solution, but as of 2024, only 50 facilities operated globally, capturing just 0.13% of global annual energy-related CO2 emissions.
• The majority of captured CO2 in CCS facilities is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) to extract more oil rather than being permanently stored.
• Hydrogen is advertised as a clean alternative, but 99% of global hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels, and hydrogen-powered vehicles remain far from wide-scale deployment.
• ExxonMobil spent a decade promoting algae biofuels as a near-term solution, yet it never sold a single barrel of the fuel and ended the research program in late 2022.
• ExxonMobil's algae research was a small part of its portfolio, accounting for less than 3% of its total research and development budget from 2009 to 2021.

APA

Marcil, C. (2025). Big Oil’s Deceptive Climate Ads. Center for Climate Integrity. https://climateintegrity.org/uploads/media/Big-Oil-Climate-Ads-2025.pdf

Chicago

Marcil, Charlotte. Big Oil’s Deceptive Climate Ads. Center for Climate Integrity, 2025. https://climateintegrity.org/uploads/media/Big-Oil-Climate-Ads-2025.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Marcil |first1=Charlotte |title=Big Oil’s Deceptive Climate Ads |publisher=Center for Climate Integrity |date=December 2025 |url=https://climateintegrity.org/uploads/media/Big-Oil-Climate-Ads-2025.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{marcil2025big, author = {Marcil, Charlotte}, title = {{Big Oil’s Deceptive Climate Ads}}, institution = {Center for Climate Integrity}, year = {2025}, month = dec, url = {https://climateintegrity.org/uploads/media/Big-Oil-Climate-Ads-2025.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }