UK advertising watchdog bans Equinor from repeating green claims

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The UK’s advertising regulator has banned Norway’s state-backed energy company Equinor from repeating environmental claims, which it made in the months before gaining approval for a North Sea oilfield project it will operate.

In the ruling this week, the Advertising Standards Authority took issue with Equinor’s suggestion that wind farms, oil and gas, and carbon capture play a balanced role in its energy mix, when most of the company’s revenues still come from oil and gas.

In response to the complaint by the ASA about a specific ad placed in The Economist in June, Equinor told the regulator that it was aimed at decision makers including politicians rather than the general public.

In a series of similar ads published across British media, including the Financial Times, Equinor said “wind, oil, gas, carbon capture and new jobs” were part of “the broader energy picture”.

The UK’s North Sea Transition Authority said in September it would allow Equinor and its partner Ithaca to develop Rosebank.

In its ban, the ASA said the ads were “likely to mislead if they exaggerated the contribution that lower-carbon initiatives played, or would play in the near future, as part of the overall balance of a company’s activities when making claims about green initiatives”.

The group told the FT it was “disappointed by” the ruling but respected it and would take note for future advertising campaigns 

Environmental campaigners argue that new oil and gasfields are not compatible with the UK’s plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and earlier this month launched legal action to block the permitting decision.

Equinor has denied the oilfield plan would increase the UK’s projected emissions. It is also involved in clean energy projects including the Dogger Bank wind farm in the North Sea.

Andrew Simms, co-founder of the Badvertising campaign, said the ban on Equinor’s ads that were placed in the run-up to the Rosebank decision showed “the urgent need to remove fossil fuel advertising’s influence from our public and political spheres”.

At issue is the public understanding about the role so-called lower-carbon fuels and carbon capture technologies, which are undeveloped at scale, could play in the shift from burning hydrocarbons to clean energy.

The climate deal signed by countries at COP28 in Dubai earlier this month pinned some of the hopes for the energy transition on the global expansion of “low-carbon” fuels as an alternative to coal, oil and gas.

The ASA said future ads featuring environmental claims “must not mislead by omitting significant information about the proportion of their business activities that comprised renewable energy and CCS [carbon capture and storage], or the role those activities played in their current business”.

Equinor previously fell foul of the regulator in 2019, when the ASA warned the group not to imply gas is a “low-carbon energy” source, a claim that is often made to portray the methane-laden fuel as a greener alternative.

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