Reaction to Greenwashing Law and Pathways Alliance’s Response

Reaction to Greenwashing Law

When Parliament passed a law last month banning misleading or false environmental claims in advertising, or “greenwashing,” the reaction from an alliance of six oil sands companies was swift. The website for their Pathways Alliance, pushing a carbon capture and storage plan for oil sands emissions, more or less vanished. Most of the companies scrubbed their own websites and social media pages of everything related to environmental issues.

Pathways Alliance’s Response

The Pathways Alliance, seeking billions of dollars in subsidies to capture oil sands carbon emissions, once vigorously promoted by the oil industry, now offers only a note on their website explaining that their online presence was removed due to the new law creating “significant uncertainty for Canadian companies that want to communicate publicly about the work they are doing to improve their environmental performance, including to address climate change.”

The statement from Pathways Alliance insisted that the removal of their website was not an example of greenwashing. They stated, “This is a direct consequence of the new legislation and is not related to our belief in the truth and accuracy of our environmental communications.”

Environmentalists’ Response

Despite Pathways Alliance’s claims, environmentalists, who have long characterized the alliance as a prime example of greenwashing, were not convinced. Emilia Belliveau, the energy transition program manager at Environmental Defence, commented, “Scrubbing their websites is such a telling indication of their greenwashing activity and shows that they have been making false promises about the impact of their emissions reduction plans.”