[bryanlarsen]

Many oil companies did try. For example BP's "Beyond Petroleum" initiative was more than greenwashing (although it was also greenwashing).

Those initiatives failed due to short-termism, infighting, failure to commit sufficient resources, et cetera.

[kjkjadksj]

And yet solar and wind grow hand over fist internationally. One would think they would want to buy out some of these emerging companies in this sector and take advantage of the inevitable increasing investment and profit potential in this sector. Every other industry seems the investor class is elbowing and charging to get there first and secure marketshare e.g. ai but you just don’t see that sort of chomping at the bit with green technology for whatever reason. Seems so strange considering the entire world will need to be retooled and the money that stands to be made is so enormous. Probably more money that has been made in oil so far by several orders of magnitude thanks to parallel investments in other sectors and technologies that weren’t around when oil got its start 150 years ago.

[ZeroGravitas]

Wind and solar grew as industries, but solar in particular is regarded as a tough business to be in because new entrants keep making better and cheaper solar panels leading to cutthroat competition.

That's a very different skill set than gaining access to scarce mineral resources and monopolising them to extract maximum profit.

Some subcontractors may have transferrable skills e.g. offshore boat crews but at a high level the two industries are fairly incompatible.

It doesn't help that the fossil companies have succeeded in using politics to salt the ground of their potential new ventures at home. A real burn the boats moment for them.

[XorNot]

That's because there's nothing to buy. China dumped a ton of money into the sector and took full advantage of their tightly integrated manufacturing capacity to bootstrap it.

The US looked at that and said "let's tax raw material imports" and half the population is too stupid to realize that they're the ones paying those taxes.

EDIT: it should be noted this is hardly a criticism of China's strategy here- they wanted an industry they saw potential in, subsidized it and bought IP which other countries offered up, and reaped the rewards. They just literally played capitalism better.

[Workaccount2]

Solar has been growing predominately because the Chinese government is willing to lose billions in subsidies to panel manufacturers.