Fossil fuel industry’s “climate false solutions” reinforce its power and aggravate environmental injustice 

(Press-News.org) Many so-called low-carbon projects promoted by major oil and gas companies — including hydrogen, biofuels, carbon capture and storage, and carbon offsetting — operate as false solutions that not only fail to effectively reduce emissions, but also prolong the lifespan of fossil fuel infrastructures, entrench environmental injustices, and reinforce the political and economic power of the very industry responsible for the climate crisis. This is demonstrated by a study conducted by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), in collaboration with the University of Sussex, based on 48 cases of environmental conflicts around the world. 

Published in Energy Research & Social Science, the study denounces how fossil fuel incumbents increasingly portray themselves as “part of the solution” to the climate emergency, with the primary aim of neutralizing social, legal and political pressures calling for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels. According to the authors, this incumbent strategy allows companies to keep expanding and connecting their pipelines, refineries and thermal power plants with new hydrogen, biofuel or carbon-capture infrastructures, thereby justifying the continued operation of fossil fuel infrastructures for decades. An example is the H2Med gas pipeline planned between Barcelona and Marseille. It is justified by the need to transport hydrogen, but it could also be used to transport fossil gas. 

Marcel Llavero Pasquina, researcher at ICTA-UAB, explains that these technologies cannot mitigate climate change unless they replace — and bring an end to — the extraction of oil, gas and coal. “The real climate contribution of these companies should be measured by the fossil fuels they leave unexploited, not by the projects they present as green,” he notes. 

The article concludes that the technologies promoted by fossil fuel companies have not demonstrated the capacity to capture or reduce carbon dioxide at the necessary scale and that, far from improving living conditions, they reproduce environmental injustice: expanding air pollution, land dispossession and the destruction of traditional livelihoods, especially in countries of the Global South. Added to this is the fact that these projects receive generous public subsidies, increasing private profits for initiatives “whose climate effectiveness is limited or doubtful”. 

The research also reveals that many of these false solutions strengthen alliances between fossil fuel incumbents and highly polluting sectors such as aviation, agribusiness and mining, creating new forms of economic dependency that further consolidate the socio-economic power of the fossil fuel industry. 

These incumbent strategies enable oil and gas companies to present themselves as indispensable actors in the energy transition and the decarbonization of society, thereby maintaining their influence over governments, international institutions, financial markets and climate-governance fora. “This narrative that fossil fuel companies are ‘part of the solution’ is essential for preserving their legitimacy and avoiding deep transformations that challenge their power and extractive model,” says Llavero-Pasquina. 

Research Associate Freddie Daley said: “Our study shows that false solutions are not the result of technological accidents or experimental missteps - they are deliberate strategies from the fossil fuel industry to delay the end of the fossil fuel era. They give the appearance of progress while keeping the underlying system intact at a considerable cost to our environment and climate. 

"If governments are serious about meeting their international and national climate commitments, they must stop treating delay as innovation and stop rewarding companies for repackaging old extractive practices as climate action.", he says. 

There is a growing resistance from local communities, Indigenous peoples and environmental justice movements worldwide, who denounce these initiatives as false solutions that fail to address the structural drivers of the climate and environmental crisis, such as socio-economic inequalities, neocolonialism and the expansion of industrial and consumption-based economies. 

The study warns that the integration of these false solutions into public policies and energy markets may block real transformations within the global energy system, and consolidate the power and interests of fossil fuel incumbents at a critical moment for decarbonization. The authors highlight the urgent need to rethink the regulation and role of these technologies to prevent the energy transition from being captured by those seeking to perpetuate the fossil fuel model. 

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