Exxon-Mobil Plant

In the three years since world leaders signed the Paris Agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the world’s five largest oil and gas companies have spent more than $1 billion on misleading branding and lobbying related to climate change, according to a new report.

While the oil majors — ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP and Total — have publicly supported carbon pricing and other efforts to mitigate climate change, they have also lobbied against effective policy, the report from London-based think tank InfluenceMap says.

“The overriding intention and net result of these efforts has been to slow down binding and increasingly crucial policy” while the companies also overplay their own green initiatives, it said in a report released late on Thursday.

In the month before last November’s U.S. midterm elections, for example, the five companies and related trade associations spent $2 million on targeted social media campaigns in five states where energy policy was in play.

Three-quarters of that spending went to Washington state, where a ballot initiative […]