Discussion and enlightenments on the causes of differences in low carbon transformation of European and American international oil companies under the goal of carbon neutrality

Since the Paris Agreement, the carbon neutrality commitment of the world’s major economies has accelerated the pace of global response to climate change.As a provider of traditional carbon energy, the low-carbon transformation and development of oil companies has attracted much attention.Taking the most representative European and American international large oil companies in the global fossil energy industry as the main research object, this paper systematically analyzes the reasons for the differences in the transformation paths of international oil companies by combing their low-carbon transformation background and practice.The results show that European and American oil companies comply with the requirements of the times and put forward their own carbon neutralization or carbon emission reduction targets to help enterprises with low-carbon transformation.There are significant differences between European and American oil companies in the specific choice of transformation willingness and transformation path.European countries choose to invest heavily in new energy and take the road beyond oil development, while American oil companies choose to invest in high-carbon energy and low-carbon utilization technology and take the road of reducing carbon emissions from oil development and utilization.The differences in the strength of the national climate response policies of European and American oil companies, the company’s understanding of the speed and scale of low-carbon transformation of the energy system, the characteristics of the oil and gas market in the region where the company is located, the willingness of investors to protect the environment and the company’s attention and trade-offs on long-term and short-term earnings are the four main factors for the differences in the transformation paths of European and American oil companies.The research results analyze and summarize the low-carbon transformation of European and American oil companies, in order to provide ideas for the development of low-carbon transformation of Chinese oil companies.