States should tax windfall oil profits to fund their way out of crisis

That pain meant unprecedented profits for fossil fuel companies. In 2023, the world’s oil and gas industry earned a whopping $2.7 trillion, and invested just 4 percent of its capital expenditure in clean energy.

These crises are moments of extreme injustice. Not only are people paying a price for fossil fuel use through the immediate climate impacts, but they are now suffering through increasingly frequent price crises where meals are skipped, jobs are lost, and lights are turned off. This public dip in conditions and cost of living runs parallel to an upwards swing for fossil fuel companies’ blood profits.

The least governments can do at this moment is impose a windfall tax on energy companies and use the proceeds to cushion the blow to households and fund an energy transition.

As was the case in 2022, the resurgence of fossil fuel company mega-profits we are seeing now has come about as the direct consequence of bloody conflict. In late February, the US and Israel attacked Iran. The conflict soon spread across the region. By now, more than 3,000 Iranians have been killed, including more than 150 schoolgirls and teachers at a school that was hit. More than 2,000 Lebanese people have also been killed, as well as 23 Israelis and dozens of people across the Gulf region.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz is triggering a global upwards shift in oil and gas prices. Recently released reports for the first quarter of the year, which includes the first month of the war, already show windfall profits for energy companies.

Last week, BP announced “stronger than expected” earnings of $3.2bn, far higher than the projected $2.63bn. Shares in the company rose 2.5 percent on the morning of the announcement. TotalEnergies also reported a 29 percent jump in first-quarter earnings to $5.4bn. ExxonMobil’s Q1 earnings were lower, but that is because some profits from sales in March will be reflected in the report for the second quarter of the year.

With analysts projecting a spike in oil prices even if the Strait of Hormuz is opened soon, these windfall profits are set to continue. A recent analysis from Oxfam International found that fossil fuel companies are projected to earn $3,000 a second in 2026.

This is the natural consequence of a global energy system dependent on the extraction and transport of a critical fuel through narrow, vulnerable chokepoints. But it is also very much an outcome of greed and the profit motive.

Fossil fuel companies have acted over the decades to ensure that humanity remains trapped in this system. This goes back to the efforts to deny climate change and attack alternatives as far back as the 1980s. It also relates to efforts to manufacture demand for their products by lobbying governments and pushing for investment in industries that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

As energy think tank Ember recently explored, previous fossil fuel crises have ultimately failed to decouple the world from this fundamentally vulnerable and unreliable system. But this time, wind, solar, energy storage and electric vehicles are significantly cheaper, even compared to 2022’s fossil fuel crisis.

Ember correctly highlights that there is no default destiny here, and that “the temptation will be to reach for the familiar playbook – more drilling, more subsidies, more supply diversification”. But temptation can be resisted.

Short-term sugar hits from cutting fossil fuel taxes only end up transferring even more money from ordinary people to the powerful, and those knee-jerk policy responses should be replaced with targeted relief for those who need it most.

Fossil fuel companies should, at the absolute bare minimum, be hit with windfall taxes, and that money should be shared with the most vulnerable in the form of social support for impoverished households. They should also be channelled to countries hit hardest by climate change. Such support would essentially act as reparations paid by high-level polluters for those suffering irreversible damage.

Windfall tax revenues should also be used to fund the transition away from fossil fuels in order to make countries more immune to energy shocks. Governments should introduce bold and urgent oil demand elimination programmes focused on public and active transport, and the incentivisation of small cars. New policies that help the most vulnerable citizens, such as Australia’s daytime cheap solar power scheme, should be urgently implemented.

We cannot survive in this system. Hooking humanity on a fuel that becomes more profitable for companies when there is more bloodshed and conflict is a guaranteed recipe for more suffering in every way imaginable.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.