Green Transition of Oil and Gas Companies: comparing Corporations’ Long-Term Strategies, Narratives and Actions in the frame of EU Climate Policies [before doctoral defense]

Kivonat, rövid leírás

The global climate crisis represents one of the defining challenges of contemporary international governance, economic development, and corporate strategy. Despite the progressive strengthening of international climate commitments and the emergence of an increasingly comprehensive regulatory architecture, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have remained at historically high levels. The persistence of carbon-intensive economic activity demonstrates that climate commitments at the international and governmental levels cannot, by themselves, guarantee the structural transformation required for long-term decarbonisation. Achieving the objectives established under the Paris Agreement requires not only strengthened public policy and international cooperation, but also substantial changes in the strategies, investment decisions, asset portfolios, and business models of major corporate actors. The role of corporations is particularly important because investment decisions determine the allocation of economic resources over long periods and therefore influence the technological and infrastructural configuration of future energy systems. Capital invested in traditional fossil-fuel infrastructure can reinforce carbon-intensive development pathways, whereas capital redirected towards renewable energy, low-carbon technologies, and alternative energy systems can facilitate structural transformation. Within this context, the oil and gas industry occupies a particularly important position in global energy supply and operate highly capital-intensive and technologically complex businesses extending across upstream, midstream, and downstream activities. Their extensive infrastructure, long asset lifetimes, vertically integrated structures, and continuing dependence on hydrocarbon revenues create significant challenges for decarbonisation. The transformation of the oil and gas industry is consequently critical to the achievement of long-term climate objectives. The adoption and ratification of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and 2016 represented a critical milestone in international climate governance. The Agreement placed decarbonisation at the centre of the international policy agenda and established a governance architecture based on nationally determined contributions (NDCs) (Akrofi et al., 2022; Falkner, 2016). This bottom-up architecture is particularly relevant to corporate climate action because national governments remain responsible for defining and implementing climate commitments, while private-sector actors operate within the regulatory, economic, and institutional environments created by these national and supranational policies. The challenge, however, is not simply to determine whether companies have adopted climate strategies. A company may formulate ambitious emissions targets and communicate sustainable commitment linked to the energy transition while continuing to allocate majority of its capital to conventional hydrocarbon activities. Conversely, a company may undergo substantial portfolio transformation without communicating an equally ambitious transition narrative. The distinction between what companies say, what they invest in, what they divest, and what happens to their emissions therefore becomes central to understanding the credibility of corporate climate action. This dissertation conceptualises the problem as a potential narrative–action gap. Corporate narratives are important because they reveal how firms understand, frame, justify, and communicate their strategic responses to climate change. Nevertheless, narratives alone cannot demonstrate substantive transformation. Capital allocation, asset restructuring, divestment decisions, and emissions trajectories provide observable evidence against which corporate narratives can be assessed. Oil and gas companies must respond simultaneously to climate-policy requirements, investor expectations, profitability considerations, energy-security concerns, technological developments, national industrial strategies, and organisational capabilities. These competing pressures may lead companies to formulate transition strategies that are ambitious in discourse but incremental in implementation.