Oil firms use Google search ads to greenwash, study says

LOS ANGELES - Google is selling oil firms valuable digital real estate that they use to downplay their role in climate change, despite the search engine giant pledging it would stop taking money for ads that counter the scientific consensus on global warming, a new report shows.

Researchers with the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a United States nonprofit group that studies disinformation online, examined more than 32,000 search ads on Google’s US site, paid for by major fossil fuel companies, targeting 61,000 different climate-related queries over the past two years.

It found that the firms were purchasing ads on Google’s front page to display to users searching terms such as “net zero” and “eco-friendly”, filling the space with ads that twisted the facts on climate change or disassembled the companies’ track records on planet-heating emissions and pollution.

Mr Imran Ahmed, founder of the CCDH, said Google had become complicit in the “climate denial industry”.

“Google is used by billions of people as the primary lens to find information – if you can buy the right to be at the top of the search result, you can distort the lens people use to see the world,” he said.

In response, Google spokesman Michael Aciman pointed to the company’s stance against climate disinformation.

“Last year, we launched a new, industry-leading policy that explicitly prohibits ads promoting false claims about the existence and causes of climate change,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“When we find content that crosses the line from policy debate or a discussion of green initiatives to promoting outright climate change denial, we remove those ads.”

Google has not made public how many such ads it has removed.

The study mainly focused on the world’s largest oil and gas firms - BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and Aramco - all of which have recently posted huge quarterly profits, benefiting from surging fossil fuel prices that have boosted inflation globally.

The CCDH report found Google had accepted nearly US$24 million (S$34 million) in search ad buys from those companies over the last two years.

Ads deemed to be “greenwashing” by the report’s authors were likely viewed more than 58 million times, it said.

Those searching for information about the potent greenhouse gas methane, for example, would find an advertisement from BP touting a company commitment to “zero routine flaring” of the gas, a reference to the widespread practice of burning off the unwanted natural gas that escapes during crude extraction.

Flaring releases a cocktail of carbon dioxide, methane and soot which pollutes the air and contributes to global warming.

Shell spent US$181,000 on ads targeting searches for “net zero company”, but a recent US congressional inquiry unearthed internal Shell documents from 2020 calling on the company’s employees to push the line that net-zero emissions is “a collective ambition for the world”, not a “Shell goal or target”.

Shell publicly announced a net-zero goal that same year, though some climate groups criticise its continued oil exploration.

And Saudi oil company Aramco – one of the biggest carbon emitters in the world - has taken out Google ads calling itself “one of the lowest carbon emitters in our industry”.

“It should not be the case that someone searching for information using terms like ‘net zero company’...is instead greeted with greenwashing ads from Big Oil,” the report said.

Mr Aciman at Google said none of the ads flagged by the researchers breached the company’s policy, which applies to a specific set of statements commonly made by climate change deniers.

That includes content that states climate change is a hoax, the Earth’s climate is not warming, or that there is no clear scientific consensus on climate change, as well as claims that there is no evidence that carbon emissions or human activity contribute to climate change or global warming, he said.

“We look carefully at the context in which claims are made, differentiating between content that states a false claim as fact, versus content that reports on or discusses that claim,” he said.

Responding to the research, a Shell spokesman said the company aims to become a net-zero emissions business by 2050.

“We’re already investing billions of dollars in lower-carbon energy. To help alter the mix of energy Shell sells, we need to grow these new businesses rapidly,” the spokesman said.

“That means letting our customers know through advertising or social media what lower-carbon solutions we offer now or are developing, so they can switch when the time is right for them.”

The other oil companies named in the report did not provide comment.

Google dominates online searches, with more than 80 per cent of market share globally, according to independent data platform Statista. REUTERS