BP is scaling back its climate goals and deepening its investment in oil and gas. The oil giant announced Tuesday its revising its previous goal to lower emissions by 35 percent by the end of the decade. The company’s new target is 20-30 percent. The announcement came in the company’s quarterly earnings report, which showed BP more than doubled its 2021 profits.
Faculty experts at the George Washington University are available to offer insight, analysis and commentary.
Public Health
Susan Anenberg, is the director of the GW Climate & Health Institute and an associate professor of environmental and occupational health. Anenberg’s research focuses on the health implications of air pollution and climate change. Her team has published studies finding links between health problems like asthma and exposure to emissions and polluted air.
Sabrina McCormick is the co-director of the GW Climate & Health Institute and an associate professor of environmental and occupational health. McCormick has studied how companies respond to lawsuits involving emissions and climate change. She was a scientific producer for the Emmy Award winning Documentary Series for Showtime on climate change, Years of Living Dangerously. In 2020, McCormick and her colleagues launched the Climate Media Lab, a project aimed at motivating action on climate change.
Business
Joel Gehman is the Thaddeus A. Lindner and Sergius Gambal Professor of Business Ethics and professor of strategic management and public policy. Gehman’s research investigates how businesses and other organizations can contribute to tackling grand challenges related to sustainable development through strategic practices, technological innovation, and institutional change. His research, in particular, also focuses on how sustainability challenges companies to shift their competencies in the face of shifting social acceptability.
“There is a long history of companies that sense disruptive shifts are coming but which fail to transition. Think Kodak,” Gehman says. “Part of this issue is what are called competency traps. When companies spend decades getting great -- and specialized -- at particular activities and business models, they can become self-reinforcing. The company is like its own selection environment (in the Darwinian sense) and despite ‘knowing’ better it continues exploiting the competencies it is most familiar with. It falls into the trap of flexing the same muscles that made it successful years or decades earlier. In this case, that ‘muscle’ or competencies relate to oil and gas E&P. So it is getting ‘better’ at this even as these competencies are less and less legitimate or relevant. i.e., the business model will become obsolete.”
Vontrese Pamphile is an assistant professor of strategic management and public policy. Her research focuses on the management of business-society tensions and how employees respond to their organization's prosocial initiatives. Her recent studies focus on the experience of Chief Diversity Officers, corporate philanthropy professionals, and whether employees perceive their organization's values as authentic. Pamphile can discuss how this change in climate policy may impact BP employees and how those employees will view the company they work for.
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