Every year, the fossil fuel industry pumps more money into Congress, local governments, and advertising.  They’re upping the ante to get what they want.

But this year, they hit a roadblock.  This year, the many stood in the way of the money and said no.  From the Keystone XL pipeline to the communities that have said no to fracking in their backyards, people made a real difference.

By working to inform and empower this movement with information that exposed Big Oil’s lies and the influence of their money, Oil Change International made a real difference too.

 

Oil Change was and is a leader in the campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline.  We delayed the pipeline – next year we hope to stop it for good.

Oil Change produced key research on the fossil fuel industry and took our arguments to Big Oil and their investors to combat increasingly risky investments.

  • In October, Executive Director Steve Kretzmann had an interesting discussion with an ExxonMobil Vice President at the annual SRI in the Rockies conference, which brought together more than 600 socially responsible investors.
  • Our report, Reserves Replacement Ratio in a Marginal Oil World: Adequate Indicator or Subprime Statistic, helped discourage investments in the fossil fuel industry by pointing to structural reasons why international oil companies are compelled to make increasingly risky investments as conventional oil fields decline.
  • As one investor told us: Your research was very influential in our decision to sell 100% of our fossil fuel exposure last year; this significant decision amounted to well over $100 million of redemptions, capital being pulled out of that sector. All gone!”

Oil Change led the Dirty Energy Money campaign to end government handouts to the fossil fuel industry and to stigmatize campaign contributions from Big Oil, Gas and Coal.

  • Coordinating with the over 30 prominent national groups that have joined our campaign, we helped mobilize over 450,000 Americans to write to their elected representatives this spring to demand that they oppose these wasteful subsidies to the fossil fuel industry.
  • We drew attention to the link between political decisions on fossil fuel subsidies and campaign contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries, through a key votes feature on DirtyEnergyMoney.com, our interactive website that tracks campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry to elected representatives, and through critical analysis, op-eds in The Hill, Congressional Quarterly and Huffington Post, and national television coverage.

 

Oil Change fought the fossil fuel agenda internationally by exposing dirty energy investments by development banks and governments and fighting for clean energy access for the world’s poorest.

  • We developed and released Shift the Subsidies, a comprehensive and interactive database of energy investments by international development banks, which shows $40 billion has been invested in fossil fuels by the major development banks since 2008.
  • We pressured the World Bank to change their energy investments, demonstrating in our report, Access to Energy for the Poor: The Clean Energy Option, that fossil fuels are no longer the most cost effective means of getting energy to the world’s poorest.