Clean tech is now attracting $US1.8 trillion ($2.7 trillion) a year of eager money from hedge funds, private equity, and the wealth industry, dwarfing the oil and gas drillers three times over.

The IEA says electric vehicles will displace 6.1 million b/d of oil demand a year by 2030. Stricter fuel standards from petrol and diesel vehicles will shave another 4.7 million b/d. The two together axe a tenth of global oil demand.

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Rising oil use in plastic and petrochemicals will compensate up to a point, but new technology threatens to disrupt that too. Scientists have already found ways to turn photosynthetic bacterium into chemical ethylene, base for most of the industry. Fertilisers can be mass-produced competitively from green hydrogen wherever renewable electricity is cheapest and coastal, in Namibia, Chile, Morocco, Australia, or even Saudi Arabia (lucky again), without any need for fossils.

BP is gambling that oil and gas will have an edge for a long time. Its Energy Outlook 2024 published last week is unrecognisable from last year’s analysis under the departed Bernard Looney, a “green” who came to grief on other matters. “New boss, new forecast,” said one analyst acidly.

BP has raised its estimate for oil demand for both 2035 and 2050 by roughly 5 per cent, with crude demand still running at almost 78 million b/d in the middle of the century. It sheds crocodile tears over this Paris-busting state of affairs while actively contributing to it. Top prize for chutzpah.

The company is not alone in drinking deep from this heady brew. Goldman Sachs now expects oil demand to keep growing until 2034, perhaps even peaking at 113 million b/d in 2040 as if there were no such thing as climate accords, and no arms race between China and the West for clean-tech supremacy.

Where you stand on this analysis depends on what you think is going on in China, and whether you think technology change will be slow and linear, or lightning-fast and non-linear as the best research labs in the world put massive resources into breaking the old order.

China is today the world’s biggest importer of oil by far (over 11 million b/d) and the biggest car market by far. BP estimates that its oil demand will continue to edge up for several years “before declining post-2030”.

Xi Jinping is determined to prove BP wrong. China is straining every sinew to break dependence on seaborne imports of crude – and LNG gas – that could face a US naval blockade in a future showdown.

China’s oil producer Sinopec said in May that the country’s switch to electric cars and trucks is moving so fast that the oil demand will plateau as soon as 2026, much earlier than previous estimates. It will go into irreversible decline by the end of this decade.

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The switch to EVs could go exponential as new LMFP batteries slash costs towards $US60 kWh and push standard ranges towards 800 kilometres. Energy analysts RMI are forecasting that EV sales will hit 90 per cent in China by 2030, with spillovers through its satellites in Asia.

BP has based its central forecast on existing technology. From this delicious premise, it tells us that 60 per cent of medium and heavy trucks on the road will still be fuelled by oil in 2050, and half of all cars and light trucks. “It is a fossil fuel wishlist trajectory. The framing assumes stagnant policy and technology,” said Kingsmill Bond from RMI.

Can one ignore the galloping progress of solid state batteries, promising to triple energy density and electrify heavy haulage, short-haul flying, and regional shipping? China’s CATL is touting an electric plane with a range of 3000 kilometres by 2028.

Markets are celebrating BP’s brown bacchanal, but markets are fickle and regulatory politics can turn fast. For all the talk of an anti-green backlash, the “fossil firsters” in the British parliament have just been decimated by British democracy. They could fit in a kitchen with Nigel Farage.

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Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, said the new generation taking charge of large family fortunes and wealth funds is not as blasé about ecological vandalism as the previous cohort. They care about clean investment and will soon control the “whole pot of money”.

I have long argued that one must distinguish between good and bad actors in the oil industry, and that BP, Shell, Total, or Equinor were among the angels getting on with the task of the energy transition. They were recycling at least some of their cash flow into green tech. They had deep pockets and the engineering skills needed to decarbonise at scale.

I cannot claim that about BP any longer. The jury is out on Shell.

Environmental activist group Just Stop Oil always said it was wishful thinking to imagine that the oil incumbents could ever be part of the solution. I hate to say that may have been right all along.

The Telegraph, London

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