Licence to pollute
We are all by now aware of the role fossil fuel companies play in driving the climate crisis. However, what is sometimes overlooked is the ability oil and gas companies have to continue operating despite massive public opposition to what they do. This is what’s known as social licence, and it comes down to clever – albeit misleading – marketing.
Oil companies spend many millions each year to tell citizens, financial institutions, and policymakers that ‘energy companies’ are doing everything in their power to safeguard the planet for future generations. Cast your mind back to the last energy advertisement that included images of refineries, drilling rigs, smog and geysers of oil. It doesn’t happen.
Instead we are inundated with ads full of windmills, nature, smiling children frollicking in green pastures, promises of a greener brighter future brought about through untested technologies. Greenwashing is a subtle art, cultivated over many decades.
Join the call for a high carbon ad ban
Hundreds of people have already written to their MP to call for an end to fossil fuel advertising. Will you join them?
Our work on Big Oil advertising
Adfree Cities has been working hard to combat Big Oil greenwash, and we’ve had some big wins.
Fossil ad ban debated in Parliament
In July 2025, for the very first time MPs debated a tobacco-style ban on fossil fuel advertising and sponsorship.
MPs from across the party spectrum ranging from Labour to Green, Lib Dem and Conservative, and including Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Michael Shanks MP, took part. The debate was triggered after a petition led by broadcaster and wildlife conservationist Chris Packham gained more than 110,000 signatures.
Read more about the debate and what happens next in this detailed blog.
Shell’s Ready for Greenwash
In June 2023, ads by Shell – made by agency Wunderman Thompson – were banned by the UK ad regulator following a complaint by Adfree Cities. The ads promoted Shell’s greener energy activities, like wind power and electric vehicle charge points, whilst failing to include any mention of its vast fossil fuel operations. The ads also used the hashtag #PoweringProgress, giving the impression that Shell is helping to drive the transition to cleaner energy and tackle climate breakdown.
Our complaint held that this was misleading, given that Shell’s business at the time of the ads was over 95% reliant on fossil fuels, and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) agreed.
Fighting the source
We don’t just challenge the Big Oil giants, we take the fight to the ad agencies that work for them.
Repsol the repeat offender
At the same time as the Shell ruling in June 2023, an ad from Spanish oil company Repsol promoting biofuels was banned in a suite of Big Oil greenwash rulings that were hailed as landmark actions that would prevent similar greenwashing in future.
Just 4 weeks later, however, another Repsol ad appeared, this time focusing on renewable hydrogen, a fuel type Repsol didn’t even produce at the time the ad ran. Amazingly, the ad regulator refused to ban the ads outright, despite being blatant greenwash. Instead, Adfree Cities had to submit a whole new complaint – which we subsequently won.
Regulation of oil and gas greenwash is wildly inadequate. That’s why we’re calling for a comprehensive ban on fossil fuel ads to be introduced at a national level, just like how we don’t allow tobacco ads. Find out more about a high carbon ad ban here.
Equinor
Throughout the spring and summer of 2023, as the UK government was gearing up to make a decision on the controversial Rosebank oil field, Norwegian oil giant Equinor (who own 80% of Rosebank) filled the pages of the Financial Times and The Economist with ads brandishing “Broader Energy” claims.
In December 2023, the adverts were banned as officially “misleading” by the UK advertising regulator for implying that wind farms, oil and gas, and carbon capture played a balanced role in Equinor’s energy mix, when in fact the company remained overwhelmingly invested in fossil fuels.
In a moment of ‘saying the quiet part loud’, Equinor admitted in response to the ASA’s investigation of the ads that “[the ad] did not advertise any consumable product or service, and was not aimed at the general public, but at decision-makers and their influencers, a group that included politicians in government and opposition, as well as advisors and journalists.”
The Hell Bus tour 2023
In September 2023 we joined artist Darren Cullen (aka Spelling Mistakes Cost Lives) and Switch-It Green to take Darren’s brilliant Hell Bus on a tour of UK towns and cities, raising awareness of Shell’s legacy of greenwash.
The Hell Bus is somewhere between a museum and a satirical art exhibition that charts Shell’s long history of misleading the public and policy makers on the reality of climate change and the company’s own role in driving it. The tour was hugely popular, attracting thousands of visitors to the bus and to the events we held in the places we visited.
All aboard and straight to hell
It’s difficult to adequately describe the Hell Bus, but this blog does a pretty good job. Strap in and ride along with us as we travel to the underworld.
Contact us
If you’d like to know more about our work in this area please contact veronica[at]adfreecities.org.uk.