A quarter century into the new millennium, the global energy industry finds itself at a reputational crossroads.
A handful of integrated oil companies (IOCs) have market capitalisations larger than half of the countries in the world, yet their licence to operate is challenged by local stakeholders and global activists alike who believe they do more harm than good.
On the other hand, influencers such as NGOs and think tanks find themselves on the defensive in some markets because of their full-throated embrace of the energy transition.
The 2015 Paris Accord defined the energy transition as a movement away from fossil fuels and their resulting emissions toward a new energy order where renewables and new sources of energy would be net zero by 2050. This was deemed necessary in order to keep the earth’s temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists agree would lead to a climate catastrophe. New civil society voices such as Greta Thunberg and the Extinction Rebellion emerged alongside establishment ones such as Pope Francis and Prince (now King) Charles of the UK, and the World Economic Forum annual meeting in January and UN Climate Week in September became showcases for the stakeholder capitalism movement. Dissident shareholder groups were successful in remaking ExxonMobil’s board and in tying up Shell in net zero lawsuits in its native Holland that forced the supermajor to move its headquarters to London in protest. Davos and New York headlines targeting IOCs and OPEC+ producers for their outsized profits from focusing on shareholder returns gained from fossil fuels became the “new normal.”
Until they weren’t.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, a new era of energy security emerged, as populist politicians across the G20 alongside oil-producing monarchies sidelined many renewables projects and dampened Green New Deal legislation for traditional “drill baby drill” oil and gas investments.
In parallel, the increased role of renewables in the electricity grid became politicised in the aftermath of widespread blackouts in Texas (winter 2021) and Iberia (spring 2025), as intermittency and baseload power concerns allowed coal and gas-fired power plant traditionalists to go on the offensive.
Navigating the energy transition for companies in 2025 means dealing with a set of trade-offs across their stakeholder ecosystem:
As the 2020s reach their midpoint, the winners of the reputation economy (where what you stand for matters more than what you make) are embedding long-term reputation thinking and governance into energy company strategy to ensure they have sufficient support in their various operating environments to meet the rising energy challenges of the world of the 2030s and beyond.