Comment by OrvalWintermute

I think Big Oil is less Big Oil than it really is Big Energy.

Big Energy has the massive capital to deploy for green energy solutions that are viable and will provide a renewable path forward off of more polluting or non-renewable sources. Big Energy's product of choice is mainly petroleum derived currently. Due to sourcing and limitations though, this is a mostly finite resource that they would love to replace for more profit.

Profit will drive them to new sources. When you see Big Energy actually moving to these new sources at the mega-industrial scale and not PoCs, prototypes, but deploying tens of billions of dollars, is when the true revolution will happen.

If they are funding Stanford and other parts of Academia, then that is a good thing.