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European oil and natural gas giant BP announced Friday it's investing $200 million over three years in Lightsource, one of Europe's largest solar companies, to acquire a 43% stake in the business.
The big picture: This is another sign of how big oil is slowly and gradually investing in lower-carbon technologies, alongside continued investments in oil and natural gas, driven by a series of overlapping factors, such as the notion of slowing oil demand and investor concern about climate change.
Yes but: This is a drop in the bucket compared to BP's nearly $2 billion net profit it disclosed as its most recent quarterly earnings. BP's renewable-energy assets, which also include wind farms in the U.S. and biofuels in Brazil, aren't "making a material difference to the bottom line," BP CEO Bob Dudley told an oil conference earlier this year.
Go deeper:
- My latest Harder Line column published Monday looked at the factors at play driving companies to make these decisions.
- ExxonMobil yields to its investors on climate risk, the company said earlier this week in filings.
- Dudley's full remarks about what the firm describes as the "energy transition," per BP's website.