Fabian Pattberg



Tag Archives - BP

BP – a disaster for the Sustainability / CSR sector in general?

Everything in the CSR / Sustainability world at the moment seems to evolve around BP and its action/inactions to fix the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I am not doing any BP bashing here today. I am only using the current BP oil spill disaster in todays post as an example that CSR needs to evolve beyond its environmental aspects and the attention for detail by its practitioners.

This is my main argument in this post: Best practice such as the latest trend of integrated report, use of social media, etc. are steps in the right direction in my opinion but we need to increase the speed of the adoption of a more responsible business practice across the board within business in your local area and region.

The BP example has shown that big business will not act responsibly if it can get away with it. We therefore need to start at the local level to convince businesses to demand a more responsible business practice from all their businesses they are involved with. Customers and suppliers. Sustainability / CSR starts at the micro level and with clear guidance and support from a governmental level as I argued in my previous post.

This might sound very general and broad but it seems to me that we as Sustainability / CSR professionals are being caught up in the nitty gritty details of working with CSR / Sustainability far to easily and are somehow loosing the view of the big picture and the main purpose of this practice: To champion Sustainability / CSR and to help organizations in the transition to adopt a more responsible business practice.

This is the short video I recently did in partnership with 3blmedia on exactly this topic. Please let me know what you think about my argumentation and whether you agree or disagree.

The renewable energy investment business model: Out of fashion at BP?

Remember the time when BP wanted to be known as ‘Beyond Petroleum’ and it being proud of their renewable energy investment? After reading this latest press article about the first quarter results of BP there is no doubt at all anymore. BP is not intending to loose its old ways of heavily investing in oil fields across the globe. Quite the opposite really. Renewable energy investment seems to be out of fashion at BP.
Harsh words? Here are two key facts from the article:
  • New investments in oil fields in Azerbaijan, Gulf of Mexico, Brazil and Norway nearly worth $9 BILLION.
  • $900 million for a 75 percent stake in the oil sands assets of unlisted Canadian company Value Creation.
So what does that tell us? What conclusions can be drawn from these first-quarter results?

bp logo The renewable energy investment business model: Out of fashion at BP?

  • It seems that BP is not really interesting in renewable energy anymore. BP Alternative Energy is something really progressive and useful but it seems that the importance of this business is not very high within BP. In light of these new investment figures for oil fields and comparing them to the $20 million BP US investment into solar for example  this becomes absolutely clear.
  • Sustainability at BP is on the back-burner until the really important business (the oil business) is back on track. This is not good news for the Sustainability professional at BP.
  • We need to ask the sustainability people and people working in similar fields at BP tougher questions what has has happened to their self proclaimed “Diverse Energy Mix”  They need to communicate much better what the intention of BP is. Otherwise everyone (like I have been) is being left clueless about the path BP is going along at the moment with alternative energy.
Conclusion
BP is just one of many energy companies heavily investing in oil sources do not get me wrong. But what I am missing here is a commitment from BP to change their business practice and to move towards a sustainable energy future. Currently I see quite the opposite. A move away from sustainable energy towards the old oil business model……..Not a good development in my opinion.

A straight forward question for everyone at BP
Your business can not stay the same for the next X number of years with the finite energy resources we have in our world today and the not so distant future. Where is the future perspective for your business? I can definitely not see it!