But why does anyone want the oil companies to build renewables?

We do rather think that people need to grasp the basics of this free market idea. Which is that people may - that’s the free part, d’ye see? - enter the market with whatever their idea is. From pet rocks to geothermal power systems, have at it, see if it works. The corollary of this is that old companies get to continue to do whatever it is - free, recall? - and the competition is between the different ideas. Which do we, the consumer, end up buying from and thus the idea that whoever we, the consumer, desires most wins.

Oil firms seem more interested in shareholders than net zero

Analysis: Is the energy industry willing to invest in renewables rather than dividends and buybacks?

So why this insistence that oil companies must build windmills? There’re technical reasons why not of course. Being able to stick a straw in a reservoir is a different skill set from managing a grid load and there’s no reason to think both will exist inside the same organisation. We might even assume that given the differences in skill sets we’d do better having different organisations undertaking the tasks.

As far as we can tell it’s that some substantial number of people think there’s something special about “a company”. Which is, in fact, just a legal wrapper around a certain set of economic assets. If we require different assets then a new company, why not? If we desire to repurpose assets, then a new company, why not? If we want to do something different then a new…..and so on.

Another way to put this is that the oil companies are optimised to perform one task. We desire to do a different one - there’s no reason at all to think that the oil companies are optimised to do that new task. No more than we’d expect BMW’s car factories to be good at running an airline - which are, note, both forms of transport.

If it’s true that we no longer require or desire - no, “if” - oil companies then let them go into run off and eventually cease to exist. The new energy methods could and should be produced by the new organisations optimised to do exactly that. Oh, and the profits from the old and declining industrial method be paid out to shareholders so that they can redeploy into those new.

We do think this insistence that the old organisations must do the new thing is based upon not understanding the free part of free markets. If new thing must be done then let’s have new market entrants doing them. The old can go bust in their time.