You can read a response article by EI CEO Nick Wayth CEng FEI here.

I’m an organiser with Fossil Free London, and we’ve been asked why we chose disruptive methods over ‘a reasoned conversation’. Here’s why.

The ticket price is one barrier to equitable participation in these discussions for those on ordinary incomes during a cost-of-living crisis. But there’s a deeper reason we disrupt, rather than engage with the fossil fuel industry.

We know society uses lots of oil and gas, and we know it’s a massive project to change that; we’re not delusional. The reason why, and the reason our economy is hooked up to the petrol pump, is because of the fossil fuel industry’s deceit and reckless endangerment of the public.

As our protests echoed through the Intercontinental Hotel Park Lane, Bernard Looney, BP CEO, began the week by demanding more oil and gas in the name of climate action. This is a death sentence.

Industry knowledge
But it has form. Top oil executives have long been aware of the dangerous climate impacts of their core business model. In fact, ExxonMobil’s own scientists predicted the trajectory of global temperature rise with stunning accuracy in the 1970s. Instead of raising the alarm, major parts of the industry actively funded climate denial and misinformation campaigns. Companies like BP America and Equinor, represented prominently on the International Energy Week stage, remain members of lobbying groups like the American Petroleum Institute, dedicated to preventing meaningful climate legislation.

Despite the industry’s best efforts though, we now know that climate change is an existential threat to human civilisation. In the face of unprecedented climate disasters such as the worst drought in 500 years in Europe and 33 million people displaced in Pakistan, outright denial is a less viable strategy for them.

The industry has instead turned to delays, fantasy solutions and greenwashing, championing technological ‘solutions’ untested at scale like carbon capture and storage, and spending millions on advertising campaigns to highlight the ‘green investments’ that constituted only around 5% of their capital expenditure in 2022, according to the International Energy Agency. They change their names and branding to remove explicit references to fossil fuels. All the while, not one single major oil and gas company’s business plan is aligned to the Paris Agreement, as they invest billions in expansion plans which will lock in fossil fuel dependence well beyond 2050.

In recent years, the world’s top climate scientists and energy experts have reached a stark conclusion: there can be no new oil, gas or coal projects if we are to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees and prevent exponential, irreversible and catastrophic climate impacts. Despite this stark warning, the world’s top dozen fossil fuel companies are planning to spend $103mn/d on new oil and gas projects between now and 2030, according to Oil Change International. It’s easy to talk the talk on climate action, but these numbers do not lie. And nor does the science.

In recent years, the world's top climate scientists and energy experts have reached a stark conclusion: there can be no new oil, gas or coal projects if we are to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees and prevent exponential, irreversible and catastrophic climate impacts.

An available solution
Thankfully, the world can meet its energy needs without any new fossil fuel projects. Thanks to findings from the International Institute for Sustainable Development, we know that just diverting financing for fossil fuel expansion towards zero carbon alternatives could fully finance the transition to net zero. Yet this reality is ignored by many powerful actors in the oil and gas sector, as every climate warning has been.

It is in this context that we choose to disrupt conferences like International Energy Week.

There is no perfect form of words as yet unsaid, no reasoned argument not yet made, no polite conversation not yet had that will produce some imagined moral epiphany. To believe that would not only be arrogant, it would be an insult to the scientists who, for decades, have had their warnings ignored. To the communities who have had their livelihoods torn out from under them, and their people brutalised by oil companies’ refusing to prioritise their lives above profits.

So why write this article? Why should we engage with an industry that has shown itself, again and again, to be the ultimate bad-faith actor on climate? Is there any point? History suggests probably not.

That’s why we will continue to disrupt the fossil fuel industry. We will meet its refusal to accept immovable scientific realities with an equally immovable refusal to allow it to operate in our city. We’ll see you next year.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author only and are not necessarily given or endorsed by or on behalf of the Energy Institute.