meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Drilled

How Management Consultancies Data-Wash False Solutions and the Great Gas Lock-In

Drilled

Critical Frequency

True Crime, Earth Sciences, Social Sciences, Science

4.82.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Fossil fuel companies can't push ideas like "low carbon gas" or overstate the emissions-reduction potential of technologies like carbon capture without the help of a whole system of folks who help them sell the idea. The role management consultancies play in that process has been largely under-covered, but today we dig into just how helpful they've been through the story of one consultancy in particular. Reporter Maddie Stone walks us through how multinational consultancy ICF, which is well known for its government climate work, also works to produce reports the fossil fuel industry uses to promote oil and gas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome back to drilled I'm Amy Westerfeld. We are running a new series right now in both the podcast and on our website at drilled.

0:15.3

Media focused on what we've been calling false solutions. These are really new

0:21.8

climate problems masquerading as solutions, things that the fossil fuel industry has suggested as ways to decarbonize, but that actually just lock us into more fossil fuel development

0:36.1

for the next several decades.

0:38.4

I'm talking about things like liquefied natural gas, carbon capture, hydrogen, renewable natural gas.

0:45.0

There's a whole host of these technologies and new products that are being sold to both

0:51.0

U.S. and European and Asian consumers as quote unquote green when

0:57.4

actually they come with ever more greenhouse gas emissions. We've already put one story out about a fossil fuel

1:06.4

lobbying group that's trying to rebrand liquefied natural gas as a clean, low or even zero carbon fuel. Go check that out on our

1:17.0

website. We'll have a corresponding podcast episode about the LNG boom in the next week or so. In the meantime today we're talking about

1:25.8

something that's really insidious and that it's kind of hard to cover because it gets into the

1:30.8

weeds a little bit and that is the role that management

1:33.9

consultancies play in all of this. They have mostly been flying under the

1:39.8

radar where disinformation and false solutions is concerned but they play a really

1:45.6

important role in shaping information and data and giving the industry

1:50.7

sort of a credible bent to its proposed solutions. And they do that by

1:58.1

providing data and analysis and technical reports to industry groups and companies.

2:05.0

The catch is that the data is highly limited by parameters at the companies and industry group set.

2:13.0

So while the consultancy is doing a rigorous analysis,

2:18.0

it's also being asked to leave out some pretty key components of that analysis. This allows them to sort of hold up their

2:26.0

hands and say, hey, we did the data and analysis they asked us for, you know, that's it. That's our contribution. We aren't the ones that are saying that that justifies

2:36.1

this that and the other. But really that's kind of a cop out because of course these reports

...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -233 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Critical Frequency, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Critical Frequency and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.