PRIVATE ENERGY INDUSTRY & CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION

This research presents an insight of the problematic relation between the leading oil private industry and climate change mitigation. An analysis of these private firms’ energy forecasts is carried in reference with the internationally agreed knowledge-based criteria for preventing the consequences of climate change, and with alternative scenarios elaborated by one international agency and a major NGO. At its core this paper argues that energy and climate change scenarios from the leading private energy firms are more than technical forecasting exercises. They also have a political dimension that aims at influencing the public debate to support in the foreseeable future an energy system dependent on fossil fuels, in spite of potential negative environmental consequences. This argument will be approached through a political economy perspective on global environmental governance. And a neo-Gramscian analytical framework will be applied, privileging the discursive level dimension in the analysis of the climate change mitigation position of the leading private firms in the energy sector.