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Oil and gas (O&G) companies, as key players in the contemporary global energy landscape, have evolved within the context of a dynamic interaction between states and markets. However, their role is being transformed radically by two successive “global shifts”: economic globalization—driving energy demand growth patterns—and climate change—driving energy system transformation and decarbonization, both of which require them to reconsider their business strategies. Using an interdisciplinary lens that draws on human geography, strategy and international business, and international political economy, we propose an integrated conceptual framework for two periods—the 1990s–early 2010s and the post-Paris Agreement era—to explore the nature of strategic responses by O&G companies to these global economic and environmental shifts. We illustrate the linkage of O&G companies' two strategies of (re-)globalization and decarbonization by the aspects of production, finance, and knowledge as internal structures. Energy security is one of the priorities in the macro external environment. It is becoming increasingly difficult for O&G companies to deal with current dilemmas: climate goals require a significant reduction in fossil fuel production and consumption, and pressures from governments, nongovernmental organizations, and investors threaten the long-term survival of O&G companies, while fossil fuel demand will remain high in the short to medium term. At the same time, the post-pandemic recovery and Russia's war in Ukraine are resulting in a re-assessment of the benefits of unfettered globalization. Therefore, global O&G companies face dual challenges in the new era of (re-)globalization and decarbonization and need to make changes to ensure their future viability.

The international fossil fuel divestment campaign is increasingly successfully promoting a new “anti-fossil fuel norm” (AFFN), according to which investors ought to withdraw investments from fossil fuel (or carbon-intensive) assets and reinvest in more sustainable, climate-friendly alternatives. At the outset of this campaign, in the early 2010s, its self-proclaimed objective was to take away the fossil fuel industry’s “social licence to operate” (SLO). This chapter offers a neo-Gramscian view as to how a radical divestment campaign has sought to delegitimize the role of fossil fuels and the industry. The neo-Gramscian interpretation of SLO provides a rich understanding of the discursive, relational, and material aspects of power in energy transitions. It shows how societal consent to elite practices – and not just the latter’s coercive power – is crucial in successfully maintaining or transitioning away from a fossil fuel-based society. The chapter traces the origins and analyzes the current state of the divestment campaign and the norm it promotes. It concludes that the campaign’s original “counterhegemonic” challenge has been accommodated to fit conventional narratives and has lost its most radical demands and elements and thus its most transformational potential

Long before the perfectly timed one-two punch of an oil supply glut and spectacular demand destruction in 2020, the global oil industry was already facing structural challenges. In the context of the accelerating energy system transformation (EST), they include decarbonisation efforts to depress fossil fuel demand and an increasingly competitive renewable and low-carbon technologies. In combination with a post-pandemic ‘green recovery', these structural challenges will likely have a dramatic effect on the industry, particularly on international oil companies (IOCs). Compared to their nationally owned competitors, the transition risks for IOCs are much higher and therefore urgently require a strategic repositioning. In this chapter, we examine the transitions risks facing the IOCs in an age of decarbonisation and climate change, analyse their respective coping strategies and explain the difference in strategic approach among them. While some IOCs are doubling down on production, others are seeking to reinvent themselves as ‘integrated energy companies,' spanning a broad field of energy-related activities, including renewables. Clearly, much has changed since BP rebranded itself as ‘Beyond Petroleum' at the turn of the century. So, understanding whether the IOCs are finally seriously engaging with climate change and EST is crucial to comprehending the future of the industry.

The UK-EU Trade & Cooperation agreement was finally agreed in December 2020 and we are now also a year on from the end of the transition period. This is an opportune time to re-visit Brexit and its implications, in particular for the UK’s ability to put itself on a clear pathway to meeting legally binding emissions reduction targets at a vital time for sustainable energy policymaking.This paper outlines what we see as being the main implications of Brexit for UK energy and climate policy and politics, which we separate out into three main sections: markets and interconnectors; UK in a global context; and policy capacity and Brexit opportunity costs. It is based on analysis of key government and think tank documents, a survey of 85 UK and EU based stakeholders, and is further supported by supplementary semi-structured interviews.

UK and European energy and climate change policy and politics have changedsignificantly over the past few years. In this paper we present three scenariosfor how UK energy and climate change policy and politics, and its relationshipwith the European Union, might evolve between now and 2035. We do so whilstconsidering rapidly changing energy contexts at a time when urgent climateaction is required.

Analysing the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the climate-energy nexus, raises three important questions. First, what does this global health and economic crisis mean for the future of fossil fuels, particularly oil? Because of the drop in economic activity, greenhouse gas emissions have plummeted, but how can we ensure a structural decline that is aligned with the Paris Agreement? Third, how can we embed the ideas of a “just transition” within the broader post-pandemic “green recovery”? This policy brief offers a glimpse of the direction away from fossil fuels that our global energy system must take to govern the post-pandemic world

In this dissertation, I examine the emergence and diffusion of international norms. In particular, it studies the drivers and constraints that determine the selection and diffusion of anti-fossil fuel norms (AFFNs). Such international norms formulate behavioural standards for those actors concerned with the effect of fossil fuels on climate change and they prescribe the phase-out and ultimate prohibition of practices and processes across the entire fossil fuel supply chain of financing, extraction, processing and consumption. In recent years, an increasing number of AFFNs have been articulated and are actively being diffused. I situate the rise of these AFFNs in a context where long-time dominant, interest-based and economic approaches to climate action are subject to growing scrutiny. Instead, critics propose new approaches, based on ethics, norms and moral obligation to act on climate change. I construct an analytical “life cycle” framework to answer the following research question, “What are the drivers and constraints that determine the selection and diffusion of international AFFNs?” I apply the framework in four disciplined-configurative case studies of the following AFFNs: fossil fuel subsidy reform, global coal mining moratorium, phase-out of coal-fired power generation, and fossil fuel divestment. Each of four articles in this dissertation examines a separate AFFN, with a specific research puzzle, and focusses on different aspects and instances of the process of norm development. I find that the structural factors that determine the success of norms are extrinsic events and the “fit” with the extant normative environment. Agency-based determinants include: the (legitimacy) of involved actors (in particular norm entrepreneurs), framing strategies (i.e. discursive power), and material power. This dissertation further adds six key insights to the study of norm emergence and diffusion. First, extrinsic events, in the form of political or economic crises and focussing events, continuously create windows of opportunities or normative constraints throughout the entire AFFN life cycle for relevant actors. Second, a liberal social order, associated with liberal environmentalism constrains the international institutionalisation of counter-hegemonic AFFNs. Domestic and local norms also affect the implementation of AFFNs. Third, AFFNs are likely to be more successful when framing strategies (also) emphasise non-climate issues. That is, in some cases, explicitly framing an AFFN in non-climate terms increases its likelihood of success. Fourth, the power to speak to (perceived) material interests emphasises the continuous impact and relevance of interest-based logics for norm development, even if AFFNs form the basis of a normative approach to climate action. Fifth, agency can be attributed to multiple types of actors, other than norm entrepreneurs, in the AFFN life cycle. This agency plays out in the form of internal and external contestation and occurs discursively as well as behaviourally. Sixth, norm diffusion processes—i.e. institutionalisation and implementation—do not always occur sequentially. Instead they can happen the other way around, simultaneously or independently from one another. Empirically, this study highlights a variety of AFFNs that, by their very nature and objectives, will likely be important factors in the required energy transformation away from a fossil fuel-heavy economy, toward a zero-carbon society. Theoretically, although much scholarly work has been done on the emergence of diffusion of norms, there is little agreement on how this actually occurs and what the driving or constraining determinants are. Moreover, the dissertation contributes to a growing debate in academia on how a normative approach can further the required action on fossil fuels and climate change.

This chapter seeks to explain the top-down emergence and incomplete diffusion of fossil fuel subsidy reform as an international norm. Our focus lies on the international level. We first trace the long history of multilateral efforts to address fossil fuel subsidies, before interpreting the role of norm entrepreneurs, political opportunity structures and discursive contestation. A key conclusion that emerges from this is that the norm of fossil fuel subsidy reform remains essentially contested. In contrast to the established international consensus over how to define agriculture and fisheries subsidies, no common definition of energy subsidies has emerged, which hinders implementation of the norm. The norm of fossil fuel subsidy reform thus follows a broader pattern, recently identified by constructivist norm scholars, whereby very general norms have weak normative power because they permit a very wide range of interpretations.