Announcing the 2023 OILY Awards

The OILY is a new award, invented and awarded annually by me (Jim@jim-freeman.com) on the last day of the year. OILYs are awarded in several categories and meant to honor those individuals who made outstanding contributions to the destruction of the environment.

The crowd is hushed in anticipation, the formally attired guests murmuring to one another as they take their seats. All eyes are on the emcee as envelopes in each category are slit open…

This year’s candidates and winners are:

Category: Kicking the Can Down the Road.
For attending COP 28, the United Nations annual Climate Change Conference
          King Charles III of Great Britain
          Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
         Philanthropist and investor Bill Gates
         John Kerry, US Climate Envoy
         Khalid al-Mehaid, chief negotiator for Saudi Arabian oil export
         Sultan Al Jaber, COP 28 President, and CEO, UAE national oil and   gas company

And the 2023 winner is…Sultan Al Jaber, who managed the incredible feat of hosting COP 28, and serving as its president, while continuing his oil company’s record investment in oil and gas production.

Category: Meaningless International Confabs:
Innovation Zero, London, UK

With a name like Innovation Zero, how can they possibly be excluded from an OILY Award? Billed as a leading climate and clean tech event, it gathered over 7,000 executives, and 200 exhibitors. Wow, 300 speakers at London's Olympia on May 24th and 25th, 2023, you just know a great deal of attention will be paid. Sponsors include:
        Aramco Ventures, Amin H. Nasser, President & CEO, the world's leading integrated energy and chemicals enterprise, and largest provider of crude oil to global markets
        Phillips 66, Mark Lashier is President and CEO of Phillips 66, a diversified energy company.
        HSBC UK Bank, Ian Stuart, CEO, one of the biggest backers of fossil fuels in the UK and has been put in a “red” warning category based on an analysis of their fossil fuel investments and green policies.
        NatWest Bank, Paul Thwaite, CEO of NatWest Group has lent £3 billion to North Sea firms since the Paris Agreement

And the 2023 winner is…Amin H. Nasser, largest provider of crude oil to global markets

Category: Climate Change Deniers

Rex Tillerson, former Exxon CEO and Secretary of State. A recent InsideClimate News report also found the company under Tillerson has placed an enormous bet on developing the tar sands, despite its longstanding knowledge of the deposits’ impact on the climate. Exxon says on its website that tar sands will provide one-quarter of the Americas’ oil by 2040. The company is one of the biggest players in Alberta and holds contracts for 5.1 billion barrels.

Willie Soon, a Harvard-Smithsonian scientist and among the best known members of the scientific community to promote the theory that solar cycles drive climate change. His notion has been discredited by mainstream science, noting that the influence of solar fluctuations has been too small to account for the magnitude of modern warming. Yet deniers and politicians cite his papers as evidence that scientists are divided about what causes climate change.

Kathleen Hartnett White, has a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Stanford University in East Asian Studies and comparative religion. She advised the 2016 Trump campaign on energy issues and wrote in a 2016 op-ed that carbon dioxide from human activity is not a pollutant and should be considered “the gas of life.”

And the 2023 winner is…Willie Soon, who had the most compelling reason to know better.

Category: Contributors to Solutions

        Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University researcher outlines how 145 countries could meet 100% of their business-as-usual energy needs with wind, water, solar and energy storage. The study finds that in all the countries considered, lower-cost energy and other benefits mean the required investment for transition is paid off within six years. The study also estimates that worldwide, such a transition would create 28 million more jobs than it lost.

        Will Tarpeh, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford, working on a more efficient and affordable desalination process. “Desalination could be a powerful tool to mitigate water scarcity around the world, but it is limited by energetic and monetary costs for treatment and brine management. By reimagining brine as a resource, we aim to incentivize its collection and treatment before discharge.”

          James Tour, a Rice University lab chemist, introduced a new process that can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into valuable graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said “the flash graphene technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods. This is a big deal, the world throws out 30% to 40% of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We've already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene."

And the 2023 winner is…Mark Jacobson, a tough choice in a remarkable group, but the impact of his research was just too massive to ignore.

This year’s Oily Awards are just a taste of what’s to come

The Oscars are great, the Grammies intense, the Bafta, Emmies and Golden Globes set our hearts a flutter. But the OiILY awards, in their first-ever annual presentations, hold the future of humanity in their golden grip.

Watch this space throughout the year for announcements of nominations

Be sure to mark your calendars for the 2024 New Year’s Eve OILY Award ceremony.