This Ain’t Your Daddy’s Greenwashing: An Assessment of the American Petroleum Institute’s Power Past Impossible Campaign

After the Obama administration signed the Paris Agreement to limit emissions, the American Petroleum Institute, a lobbying group for the petroleum industry, created a consumer advertising campaign to promote the different ways that the gas and oil industries benefit U.S. citizens. The advertising campaign debuted in the most-watched television program in United States—the Super Bowl—during a time when the U.S. public held strongly different opinions on U.S. Energy policy from the incoming Trump administration and Republican-dominated Congress. Generally, citizens favor investment in renewable energy while the government favors expansion of oil and gas drilling. The American Petroleum Institute campaign attempts to persuade U.S. citizens that the petroleum industry can help U.S. citizens to ‘power past impossible’ and live better lives. This chapter evaluates whether these ads can be considered greenwashing, defined as to the use of messages with environmentalism or green credentials to suggest that a company’s policies and products are environmentally friendly. The Power Past Impossible campaign provides evidence of greenwashing through both explicit communications (such as unsubstantiated claims that ‘gas comes cleaner’ and ‘oil runs cleaner’) and implicit communications (the use of green imagery). The ads also conflate the benefits of innovative products made with petroleum and the production of these products, providing a halo effect that can be misleading.