While the 1962 Humble Oil advertisement declaring that “Each Day Humble Supplies Enough Energy to Melt 7 Million Tons of Glacier!” became a meme in the green blogosphere, I find this one more interesting.
It appears that Exxon ran a competition for solar house designers, then took out ads showcasing their work in major newspapers (at least half a dozen I’ve found).
I have to admit that this surprised me after all this time studying green tech and that time period. As far as I know, no one has ever written about the design competition or this part of Exxon’s PR platform. It shows how popular the idea of solar energy was during the mid-70s. Another example: a book on solar homes, Design for a Limited Planet sold 100,000 copies. Of course, with many people projecting that energy prices would never come back down again, it was easy to justify getting on the solar bandwagon.
The oil companies’ pro-solar position at the time was quite sensible. They knew solar electricity was way too expensive to threaten their businesses, and solar homes’ decreased use of utility-produced electricity was much more likely to take a bite out of natural gas and coal companies’ businesses. It’d be be a bit like Microsoft promoting open access scientific research or something: It’s an easy PR win and if the good that you’re promoting does well, your business doesn’t really suffer anyway.
The oil companies also happened to own several solar companies, which some have tried to magnify into some kind of conspiracy despite little evidence that they hindered solar power’s development. Really, they just found solar power to be an effective way of supplying electricity to their oil rigs.
And if you like this ad, check out the XXL version.
[...] Inventing Green « 1977 Ad: â??Exxon believes solar energy's future … [...]
> In 2007, Exxon-Mobil spent $100 million on advertising and “green-washing” campaigns in an attempt to exaggerate their commitment to renewable energy, producing ads that focused on global warming, efficiency, and alternative energy. That’s despite the fact that ExxonMobil spent more on CEO Rex Tillerson’s salary than on renewable energy in 2007. While Tillerson took in $21.7 million, Exxon invested only $10 million or so in renewable energy – just a tenth of the amount they spent talking about investing in clean energy.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2009/07/02/exxonmobil-continues-funding-denier/
How much is the corporate touting of renewable energy beyond their monetary commitments really hurting anyone? It’s the Doubt Industry that is far more problematic.
Point taken, though.
TYPO ALERTS:
> It shows how popular the idea of solar during the mid-70s.
It shows how popular the idea of solar POWER WAS during the mid-70s.
> The oil companies pro-solar position at the time was quite sensible.
The oil companies’ pro-solar position at the time was quite sensible.
> They knew solar electricity was way too expensive to threaten their businesses, and solar homes’ decreased use of utility-produced electricity was much more likely to take a bite out of natural gas and coal companies’ business.
…likely to take a bite out of natural gas and coal companies’ businesses.
Thanks, salamander. Late night blogging! Hazardous to your grammar.
[...] Inventing Green « 1977 Ad: â??Exxon believes solar energy's future … [...]
They’re back at it now, too. Petroleum and gas firms know that adding wind to the grid is a nice way to increase demand for more natural gas plants to serve as backup generation.
Their market up to now was basically limited to peaking and intermediate plants. Adding a little wind lets them get into the baseload piece of the pie that’s dominated by coal and nuclear. Being pro-renewables lets them divert attention away from technologies that would actually reduce demand for GHG-emitting fuels.
As lame as it sounds, I found this searching for attic vent info. M
great find, and interesting to compare to today’s newspaper ads from installers. in some ways, i see this ad being more interesting & informative w/all the case studies.
[...] 1977 ad: ‘Exxon believes solar’s energy is [...]
[...] At HeatingOil.com we've reported on oil majors making a move to invest in renewable energy, but apparently this is an older trend than we realized. Alexis Madrigal's blog, Inventing Green, shows an Exxon advertisement (partially pictured above) from 1977 that features the 10 winners of a design contest for solar-powered housing. [...]
Exxon Mobil has big ambitions for their company, and while the economy is pretty rough right now, they are constantly working to better improve its’ customers standards of living and trying to find the newest and best technology that is cleaner and safer for our environment.