On this week’s podcast, Tracy and I watch and analyze fossil fuel ads—and we do it with Nayantara Dutta, head of research at Clean Creatives and the lead author of their new report analyzing nearly 2,000 fossil fuel ads from 2020 to 2024. (ICYMI: We covered that report for Tuesday’s newsletter. Check it out!)
You can watch/listen at the top of this newsletter, on Youtube, or on any of your podcast players. But if you’re short on time, here are some of the most common ways fossil fuel ads try to manipulate and mislead us:
By using the phrase “lower carbon.” It sounds so nice doesn’t it! But “lower” carbon is not “low” carbon. It’s also not “no” carbon. And it’s definitely not “net zero.” It just means “lower than before.” How much lower than before? And are they really doing it? Who cares! Stop asking so many questions!
By using the phrase “carbon intensity.” Oil companies often talk about lowering their “carbon intensity.” But that doesn’t mean they’re lowering their overall carbon emissions. An oil company can lower the carbon intensity of a barrel of oil, while still increasing its overall carbon footprint because it’s drilling more oil than ever before. And for the most part, that’s precisely what’s happening. This is a fancy marketing term designed to mislead.
By playing up the benefits for local communities. Ads often feature "regular" people—workers, families, neighbors—to make oil companies seem like pillars of their communities. What these ads quietly leave out: the fishing communities, cancer alley residents, and others harmed by the very offshore drilling and refinery operations being celebrated. This form of lying is called “paltering,” the practice of “using statements that are technically true, but also leave out critical information in order to mislead people.”
By using guilt. One ad we watched reminded us that offshore oil workers are out there on the platform every single day, including holidays, keeping your lights on while you sit at home. The implicit message: how dare you criticize us? It's emotional manipulation dressed up as a human interest story, designed to make us feel personally indebted to the oil industry rather than asking hard questions about it.
By tying oil to “new” technology like AI. This is the newest trick in the playbook, and it’s an attempt to position old, dirty fossil fuel infrastructure as new, clean, cutting-edge innovation. But the pitch doesn't hold up. We don’t need fossil fuels to power AI. And renewables are already cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable than the fossil-fuel-derived alternatives the industry keeps proposing.
And more! We’ll also be releasing some fun bonus content tomorrow. Make sure you’re a paid subscriber to get it!
Text transcript
(Full PDF transcript)
Emily Atkin
Welcome back to Heated. Today we’re gonna watch some fossil fuel ads.
Now you might not think you’ve seen many fossil fuel ads, but trust me, you have. They are everywhere. They’re on TV, they’re on social media, at airports, during the Super Bowl, in museums, and sometimes even in classrooms. In 2024 alone, the fossil fuel industry spent nearly $7 billion on public relations, creative, and media, according to a report from Clean Creatives.
And the funny thing is these ads are almost never trying to sell us a product like gasoline. They’re trying to sell us a story, an idea, a feeling. So what exactly are the stories and ideas that the fossil fuel industry wants stuck in our heads? And are they true?
That’s what we’re gonna suss out today. And we’re gonna do it with Nayantara Dutta, head of research at Clean Creatives.
Nayantara is joining us from Mumbai, India. Hey, girl.
Nayantara Dutta
Hey, thanks for having me.
Emily Atkin
Tell us a little bit about Clean Creatives and the work that your organization does.
Nayantara Dutta
So Clean Creatives was founded in 2020 and we are a global campaign group which works specifically in the advertising and marketing industry to help creatives and agencies cut ties with fossil fuels. There’s a long history of disinformation through fossil fuel advertising, so we encourage creatives to be on the right side of history and pledge to drop oil.
Emily Atkin
You’re here today because you’re the lead author on a new report that analyzed almost 2,000 fossil fuel ads from 2020 to 2024. That’s a ton. We covered that report exclusively in the heated newsletter a couple days ago, but.
Tell us briefly, what was it like watching all of those ads?
Nayantara Dutta
My gosh. It’s both hilarious and painful when you actually know the science behind fossil fuels because ads are intentionally lying to us about what’s actually happening.
I think that we just see new sides of deception every time. It’s like watching a toxic relationship unfold.
Emily Atkin
Oh my gosh, all right, Well, we wanna get into the nitty gritty about what you found in the report, but we figured the best way to do that is to actually watch some of the ads that we’re talking about.
My producer, Tracy, pulled a bunch of them together and she’s going to run them as we go. So Tracy, whenever you’re ready.
Tracy Wholf
Sure. So we’re going to start with a 2021 ad from, this is from Chevron called “Progress.”
[AD DIALOGUE]
Keep taking steps forward.
The future of energy is lower carbon and to get there, the world needs to reduce global emissions. At Chevron, we’re taking action, tying our executives’ pay to lowering the carbon emissions intensity of our operations. It’s tempting to see how far we’ve come, but it’s only human to know how far we have to go.
Emily Atkin
This sounds like a company that is so committed to the planet. If I knew nothing about fossil fuel companies and just about climate change at all, would be like, ‘Chevron’s in this with me.’ Do you see that lady running up the stairs? She’s just like me. She cares about her health and so does Chevron. Chevron cares about my health.
This is like very powerful messaging, I feel like.
So what are we looking at here? Like, what is Chevron trying to do with this?
Nayantara Dutta
This is from a campaign Chevron published from 2020 to 2022 called It’s Only Human. And Chevron has called itself for years since 2007, the Human Energy Company.
And it’s actually hilarious because Chevron is most famous for its human rights abuses. It has poisoned local refugee populations living close to one of its refineries. It has polluted the Amazon.
And due to the backlash towards their human rights violations, Chevron worked with an ad agency called McGarry Bowen, which is now Dentsu, since 2007 to develop this campaign which positioned them as the human energy company.
Tracy Wholf
Sorry, I just have to ask. This is obviously an ad that feels very targeted for a US audience. Do you see this messaging globally? I mean, is this being translated in languages all across the world for Chevron?
Nayantara Dutta
It is. And one thing we’ve noticed in our global research is if you look at the global south, the tone and the narrative behind advertising campaigns changes when it’s being localized. So the imagery of the cute baby and focus on poverty, focus on bringing electricity to rural communities is emphasized in the global south. We call it purpose washing. It’s one step beyond green washing because they’re aligning themselves with these CSR efforts when actually the very communities they’re helping are the ones that are also suffering as a result of their pollution.
Emily Atkin
Can we talk about some of the specific claims that they made in this ad? I wrote down a few phrases that seems like they were worth picking apart a little bit.
One of them is "Wwe believe the future of energy is lower carbon.” That’s not low carbon. That’s not no carbon. That’s not net zero. That’s, we believe the future of energy is lower carbon. Lower carbon doesn’t actually mean shit, does it?
They [also] said, okay, we’re taking action tying our executives’ pay to lowering the “carbon intensity” of our operations. But lowering your carbon intensity does not mean that you’re lowering your carbon emissions. In fact, you can lower the carbon intensity of your business’s operation while still increasing your overall carbon footprint.
It has nothing to do with how much carbon you’re actually reducing, right? It’s a metric of measuring the emissions per barrel of oil extracted. So I emit 100 metric tons of carbon per barrel of oil extracted and I lower the emissions intensity and now I emit 99 metric tons of carbon per barrel of oil extracted. But if I start extracting more oil, I have higher carbon emissions overall.
So this is a really slick marketing term that they use with the nice music, with the nice baby and the farmer and the guy running up the stairs to be like, good.
Tracy Wholf
Well, to your point, Emily, it’s them being factually accurate, right? They’re not lying to us by using this type of language, right?
Emily Atkin
Right, they’re not technically lying, but they are actively misleading you. It’s a type of telling the truth that would hold up in court, but would not hold up in a human to human relationship, which is ironic given that they’re calling themselves the Human Energy Company.
Is there anything else you want to say about this ad? Like how does this ad tie into the research that you did?
Nayantara Dutta
So this is a Chevron ad, but the same strategy was used at the same point in history by many other oil and gas majors to make them seem green, make them seem committed to change when in fact they were not doing anything from a business perspective to actually change their investment.
Tracy Wholf
And I’m curious, why was this, now, a strategy of the companies? Was it because Biden had come into office? Was it pressure from the EU? Why do you think this was a cohesive messaging strategy across the industry?
Nayantara Dutta
At that time in 2020 and 2021, when we were in the midst of COVID, a lot of companies were pressured into making net zero pledges and having something to say about sustainability. So for a company like Chevron, who has always been very invested in fossil fuels, instead of making a net zero pledge or actually making a tangible commitment to change, they used strategic language to mislead people into thinking things were changing without ever saying what that would look like.
Emily Atkin
I remember too, like, because I’ve been covering fossil fuel ads for a while, the 2020 to 2022 era was all about greenwashing. It was all about these buzzwords, lower carbon, carbon emissions, intensity, like these slick ways to make you think that these oil companies are friends to the planet when they’re actually not.
Nayantara Dutta
Yeah, if you think back to it, that’s in 2020, everyone was posting black squares on social media. Everyone wanted to indicate a commitment to a cause, but there wasn’t necessarily critical questioning about whether there was follow through.
Emily Atkin
Totally. All right, should we watch the next one?
Tracy Wholf
Yeah, so I was going say, this is a perfect segue. So we’re going to jump ahead to this next one. I think it’s from 2023. So this next ad we’re going to watch is actually Shell advertising. It’s a little bit longer. But this is going to, they posted this ad in November 2023. So again, putting us in the timeline. This is going to be the post-Russia invasion of Ukraine. And we saw that massive energy crisis as a result of that. So this is where we’re headed next. Give me one second.
[AD DIALOGUE]
Go, go, Bo-Bo. Engineering runs in my family. My father was an engineer. My brother’s an engineer. My three kids are engineers. Really something that we’re pretty proud of.
I’ve been with Shell 35 years, all in the offshore oil and gas business here in the Gulf Coast of the United States.
Off-shore in the Gulf of Mexico may seem like a distant place, but it’s actually a very big community of people from Texas to Alabama. And they’re out there 365 days a year working hard to bring stable energy to you.
Relative to projects we’ve done before, we’ve shrunk down by about 70 % inside. Less steel, less cable, less space, less power.
All of that reduces our impact on the environment, both the footprint here in the ocean and the emissions that it makes.
If you think about these people that are working essentially 50 % of their life away from home. No sir. Christmas, New Year’s, Thanksgiving, they are out there. But we’re home enjoying lights and heat and all the things that oil and gas bring to our community.
I’ve had the opportunity to apply everything I’ve the past 35 years and power people’s lives.
Emily Atkin
Wow, that was long.
Nayantara Dutta
That was a long one.
Tracy Wholf
Yeah, that’s definitely not an ad. I mean, that is a proper package.
Nayantara Dutta
Is that a case study?
Emily Atkin
That’s like a mini documentary, right? Okay, I feel like there was so much in there. First of all, it was 30% dogs, which I recognize they’re trying to manipulate me with how many dogs because I love dogs.
Tracy Wholf
Right at the top, too, right? Bobo came out right at the start.
Emily Atkin
Well, so the beginning to me is like, this is a good guy. He’s got two dogs and they look happy. How could this guy be bad?
Tracy Wholf
But you’re right Emily, it was all about family, dogs, he helped build the community playground, he gives back to his community. This is your neighbor, this is somebody that you want to live next to, right? That’s definitely the messaging.
Emily Atkin
Right, and it’s also got the efficiency thing, the environmental thing, we have the lowest greenhouse gas intensity in the world, another that one. There’s also this level of like, we’re supporting people, right, like the people that work here. And also a level of guilt, like these people are out here working while you get to sit home and have, cook your food and drive your car while they’re out here. So it was a lot.
Tracy Wholf
Or the sacrifice, the sacrifice that they’re making for us, right?
Emily Atkin
Nayantara, what did you see?
Nayantara Dutta
Yeah, a big narrative theme in campaigns around this time were how oil and gas companies are creating jobs and in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when the focus was on energy security, oil and gas majors leaned very heavily into the benefits they were providing, both in terms of ensuring national energy security, but also giving back to local communities.
This is messaging that’s been around for decades, but they really went, they emphasized it to show domestic efforts and to make people feel more secure, because in partnership with that, they were also fear mongering around energy security and telling people that supply might be limited, but we are meeting demand, we are out there every day.
I also thought it was interesting that they were emphasizing their work in the Gulf of Mexico, which is where Deepwater Horizon occurred.
Tracy Wholf
Mm-hmm. That was the first thing I thought of actually.
Emily Atkin
Yeah, when they zoomed in on that platform, was like, that platform looks familiar to me. I feel like I’ve seen that one blown up.
Does this ad fit into the broader trend of the time? Are we now moving a little bit away from environmental claims?
Nayantara Dutta
Yeah, I would say this ad reflects a bit more of the old guard rather than the new guard, but it actually shares both types of messaging because what we used to see is this family friendly, like nice guy, at this oil company who can personally attest that they’re doing good.
That was the old guard, but the new guard that is slowly creeping in that they’ve seeded here is how they are helping communities and giving back by investing in oil and gas. So that is something that oil and gas companies started to incorporate in their language in 2022 and 2023 to really emphasize that oil and gas is a solution and is the way forward when previously they were pretending still to invest in renewables.
Emily Atkin
And it’s a form of paltering, right? This is a form of lying that I’ve covered in the newsletter that oil companies love to do. It’s where they’re technically telling you the truth in a really specific sense, but that truth intentionally obscures the larger picture.
So yes, there is a truth to the fact that oil does power our homes. It does power our lives, right? And it does bring jobs and bring financial security, right? But that’s not the whole picture of offshore oil development in the Gulf.
There are a ton of communities that are harmed by offshore oil development in the Gulf. Fishing communities. Cancer Alley is harmed by the refineries in the Gulf, right? We are being given a very specific picture here of benefits, where the actual picture is far more complicated.
Nayantara Dutta
Yeah, and this actually feeds into a narrative that emerges at the time, which is about how fossil fuels are an economic necessity. And so in order to justify continued dependence on oil and gas, a tactic that these companies used in 2023 and 2024 was showing us that for energy security, for our economy, for people’s jobs, we can’t step away from oil and gas.
Tracy Wholf
Okay, well, the next ad I really want to share, I thought it would be interesting to see one of the most recent ads that Chevron has put out. And so I had spent a little time looking through their YouTube page.
And I saw this little ditty, which they just published in October of 2025. And I think it’s a really good juxtaposition between what we first watched back from 2021 to what they have just put out just a few months ago. So this is a surprise for both of you. Enjoy.
[AD DIALOGUE]
America moves on big ideas. Every leap forward in our history has needed breakthrough energy.
Now, AI is here. The next big leap.
And Chevron is working to power it. We’re aiming to develop multi-gigawatt power plants near data centers. Designed with future pathways to lower carbon intensity. AI gets the power it needs. Communities get the jobs. And the grid stays strong.
Because we need power and I today.
We build America’s next superpower.
Emily Atkin
Did that lady have a robot hand?
Tracy Wholf
Yeah, I didn’t notice that the first time I watched it. I was a little weirded out by that.
Emily Atkin
Okay, can I just say, I thought that that was actually scary. You’re building on-site oil and gas plants to put next to the huge data centers to power the AI while everyone that lives around that data center and your power plant that I guess you’re building next door. So that they can make like a generative images of like a cat drinking a cup of coffee.
Tracy Wholf
Nayantara, what did you think? Because this wasn’t an ad that you probably would have reviewed. It was very recent. I’m curious what your take was on it.
Nayantara Dutta
Yeah, this is the first time I’m seeing AI directly brought into the narrative messaging of a fossil fuel ad. So that was a new experience for me as well.
I always pay a lot of attention to the specific words they use. And there was a word like we aspire. So I just clocked that instantly because a lot of it is false promises. Just the intent to do better rather than actually doing better.
I also wrote down “lower carbon intensity.” So one that Emily had spotted that they’re still using. And also “we’re building America’s next superpower.”
So I think what I’m seeing is a continuation of the trends we have discussed. Instead of fixing what has been broken by this industry, they’re just focused on building more. So there is a continued expansion. There’s no limit to it.
And what’s actually happening behind the scenes is that investors are getting concerned about the financial and climate risks of increasing fossil fuel production when there may not be the demand for it. And so there seems to be this ignorance towards what people actually need and they’re just building more stuff regardless of who wants it.
Emily Atkin
There’s also a, really big desire from the fossil fuel company to be able to reframe itself as new, exciting technology for the future—when actually, oil and gas is old, dirty, expensive technology that leads us into wars.
They’re using the energy needed from AI to tie themselves to AI, to make them look like these things are one and the same. But they’re not. There are a ton of tech companies that have publicly committed to only powering data centers with renewables, although a lot of them are walking those promises back as well, but you know what I’m saying.
They just wanna be like, we’re part of the technical energy future, rebranding this old ass technology.
Nayantara Dutta
It also ties into a narrative that we found in our analysis from 2023 and 2024. Chevron specifically said, we are making fossil fuels cleaner. And again, this is very much along the theme of what we were talking about before with producing the carbon intensity.
Chevron has been framing climate justice as a tech and innovation challenge. So instead of actually addressing the real impacts of fossil fuels, they’re talking about their new technologies as a technological advancement, or if we just get the right technology, we can still keep using fossil fuels but make them cleaner.
Tracy Wholf
That was the last ad, but before we totally depart from it, I want to bring up something here that obviously this ad directly speaks to all of the policy initiatives that Donald Trump has put in place, wanting more data centers, wanting more energy to power those data centers.
We know that that’s not going to come cheaply. It’s not going to come easily. And of course, what we’re seeing now is we’re starting to see communities push back against these data centers. People don’t want these in their homes.
And what I find interesting here is back in 2021, a lot of reporting that we were doing was about the pushback against renewable energy in a lot of these places. And this case of, ‘not in my backyard,’ I don’t want industrial solar, I don’t want wind.
And I’m just curious, how is this all going to go over for those communities? As this ad just showed us, the intention is we’re going to put these things everywhere and in your backyard. And so I just think it’ll be very curious to see how this will go over, broadly, across both aisles of the political spectrum. Because the reality is, we do need more energy and would you want that big shiny thing that we just saw in that ad powering it or would you want solar panels or a wind turbine? I don’t know, it’s just something that I thought about.
Emily Atkin
Yeah, so let’s do like a little summary then. Nayantara, how does those progression of ads tie into your research?
Nayantara Dutta
Yeah, so, we fielded our research from 2020 to 2024, and we have annual themes based on what we saw across four oil majors.
The first one in 2020 was climate leadership. So really saying we’re a part of the change.
Then after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, what we saw was energy security in 2022.
After that, it became the “both and” equation. Saying, ‘We’re investing in fossil fuels and we’re also exploring alternatives like CCS and green hydrogen.’
And then the last theme was fossil fuel dependence. So now there is no pretending anymore. It’s really blatant. The manipulation is more obvious than it ever has been before, where they’re saying you can’t live without us. You need us. We’re building new technology that’s powering the future and we’re here to stay.
But what’s funny is that couldn’t be farther from the truth. The growth in renewables we’re seeing is crazy. Renewable energy is cheaper, more efficient, and more reliable than any of the fossil fuel derived alternatives like CCS that they’re proposing.
And so what is most striking to me is that they’re so confident in lying, but people who have done their research know the truth. They really believe in their own dominance, but I don’t believe in their continued dominance.
Emily Atkin
Well, I hope that this segment and your report helps people sort of ground themselves for the next time they hear a fossil fuel ad, because like I said at the top, they are totally everywhere.
I just heard one on the New York Times, the Daily Podcast, interviewing a famous climate activist about the need to get away from fossil fuels. And then right in the smack in the dab of it, there’s an ad from I think it was API, saying exactly the type of messaging we just talked about today about how we are powering progress, about how we are powering energy security during unstable times.
Nayantara Dutta
So much of the news we consume is actually branded content from fossil fuel companies. In our research, we also publish the brand studios within large publishers who are working for oil and gas. New York Times, T Brand Studio, Washington Post, The Economist, all of the major places where you get your news are also not exempt from this fossil fuel influence. Apart from Heated.
Emily Atkin
And now, I was gonna say, and now is where we put an ad for us where we say that we don’t take any fossil fuel ads, right? Oh my God. Actually, this whole thing has been an ad for us! Gotcha!
Tracy Wholf
Good. Do you mind if I ask one question before we totally wrap? Because a couple years ago, the secretary general, I want to bring this up.
A couple years ago, the secretary general of the UN came out and said that countries should be banning fossil fuel advertising. Nayantara, can you tell us where are we at on that?
Nayantara Dutta
Yes, good point. There is a great resource, which is a website called World Without Fossil Ads, which tells you more about the specific legislation that’s passing or is currently under process. We are seeing vast improvements over the past couple of years.
Climate activists are doing excellent work. I would say the Netherlands is a key example of this. There are specific cities around the world that have banned fossil fuel advertising, museums, different, different other types of companies. And so we are seeing real grassroots pressure building, which is really encouraging.
A lot of the companies that we discussed have had their campaigns taken down for greenwashing. And so people’s voices go a long way in making sure this climate obstruction is not made to air any longer.
Emily Atkin
Nayantara Dutta is the head of research at Clean Creatives and the lead author of this new report analyzing fossil fuel advertising. Nayantara, thank you so much for joining us
Nayantara Dutta
Thank you.
