Here’s Why Big Oil Companies Invest in Wind and Solar

British oil giant bp announced Monday that it is selling the business unit that manages its suite of US onshore wind power operations as part of its ongoing efforts to simplify its overall business and become more competitive with peer companies like ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, and Chevron. In its release, the company said it will continue to invest in both solar and wind ventures through Lightsource bp, a joint venture in which it currently holds a 50% interest but plans to become 100% owner later this year.

When I published an analysis of this announcement by bp at the Substack I maintain, one reader asked, “why in God’s name an oil company is spending billions of shareholder dollars on expensive, inefficient, and intermittent energy sources? Who runs these companies?” It’s a good question, one that I and others who write about energy in the current rather bizarre societal atmosphere are asked quite often. It’s also a question often asked of the executives themselves, in many instances by shareholders and investors who are disappointed at the poor returns such intermittent energy projects tend to generate in comparison to the companies’ core oil and gas business investments.

For the executives it’s a hard one to answer directly, mainly because somebody is going to be angry regardless of how they respond. So, they’ll typically rely on their investor relations, legal, and communications teams to provide them with a non-answer answer that tries to please everyone without really saying anything of substance. This is what is known as “bridging” the question.

It’s much easier for me, mainly because I don’t have shareholders or big investors to please (though such investors would certainly be welcomed), and the 2^nd amendment still exists despite the best efforts of the Biden/Harris administration and the censors at LinkedIn, where I was suspended this week for reasons still unexplained to me.