A Green Oil Company?
February 3rd, 2006
BP renamed itself from “British Petroleum” to its current two letter initialism in 2002, and began advertising with the tagline “Beyond Petroleum”. Odd, no? Apparently, this reflects BP’s increasing role as a leader in renewable energy; in 2004, the company had a 20% market share in the photovoltaic panels worldwide, with the capacity to produce 90 MW/year of panels (via Wikipedia.) I was also surprised to learn that BP does not make political contributions:
In February 2002 BP’s chief executive, Lord Browne of Madingley, renounced the practice of corporate campaign contributions, noting: “That’s why we’ve decided, as a global policy, that from now on we will make no political contributions from corporate funds anywhere in the world.”At the same time, BP was heavily involved in the construction of the controversial Baku-Tbilisi pipeline.
Is BP a “green company”? Well, no, but I am encouraged at their forward-looking stance on alternative energy, and hope they push further to develop such technologies. Oil companies are among the most wealthy and powerful entities today: ExxonMobile just reported a profit of $36.13 billion, which is the highest for any company, ever.
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February 3rd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
This raises the age old question of: “What is it to be a ‘green company’?”
Is any company ever really “green enough” to obtain this lauded status? Do we maybe need to create vocabulary for the shades of greeen we are witnessing companies part-take in so that we neither praise nor discourage to a progress-inhibiting effect?
February 3rd, 2006 at 5:30 pm
What about a larger question… is a company increasing or decreasing human prosparity?
In my mind creating a vocabulary is crucial, but the issue is less about green, bright green, dark green etc…, and more about short term versus long term prosperity. How do we effectively value the services delivered to us by our natural resources? How can we avoid discounting future benefits too much? What companies are actually thinking beyond this next quarter’s profits?