Oil companies are looking to renewables. The world's fourth-largest oil group, France's Total, will bring solar energy to its service stations. In 2011 the company acquired SunPower, one of the world's leading companies that designs, manufactures and supplies photovoltaic panels. Meanwhile, Shell has launched several start-ups to bring clean energy to places where it does not yet exist. Other energy giants are following the same path, looking to renewables alongside their traditional oil and gas operations — but the steps forward in this direction are still far too small.

Solar panels at filling stations

The oil group Total, the world's fourth largest with 2.1 million barrels of oil produced per day, has launched a $300 million programme to equip — within the next five years — 5,000 of its service stations around the world with solar panels supplied by SunPower. The installed solar capacity will be around 200 megawatts, equivalent to the amount of electricity used to power a city of 200,000 people. "The project is fully in line with Total's ambition to become the most responsible company among the giants of the oil sector and its commitment to the development of solar energy," said Philippe Sauquet, President of Gas, Renewables & Power. Thanks to this initiative, Total will be able to reduce its carbon emissions by 100,000 tonnes per year and cut its electricity bill by around $40 million per year.

Innovation to bring electricity where there is none

Shell has launched the Make the future project, which aims to foster collaboration among the various parties involved in the production of energy from renewable sources, with the goal of improving the quality of life for people everywhere in the world. As part of the initiative, Shell has sponsored six start-ups to bring renewable energy to communities that still have no access to electricity. Among these is "GravityLight", an innovation that generates electricity using a simple system of pulleys and weights: it needs no batteries or sunlight and costs nothing to run. It consists of a 12-kilogram bag, filled with rocks or sand, connected to a pulley system. Each time the weight descends towards the floor, it activates a generator that produces 20 minutes of light. A simple and clean method with which Shell and the GravityLight Foundation will bring a first, albeit still limited, availability of electricity to 3,000 families in Kenya, where almost 80 per cent of the population lives without access to electricity.

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Oil companies are investing too little in renewables

In general, beyond Total and Shell, oil companies are looking more and more frequently to renewable energy. In practice, today, if they want to survive, they face a crossroads: either continue trying to produce fossil fuels that will become increasingly difficult to burn, or pivot to new, low-carbon energies. The attention being paid to renewables must therefore be seen within this context, even if investing in clean energy will only become a reality when oil companies understand that abandoning fossil fuels is more economically advantageous. At present, the interest in renewables, while to be welcomed positively, does not yet represent a genuine change — suffice it to consider that Shell's "new energies" division, where research is conducted on biofuels, electric motors and wind power, has a budget that is just 1 per cent of the $30 billion the company spends on oil and gas.

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